Simmel (1971) classifies me as an unusual stranger, for I am not thewander who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather...the man who comes today and stays tomorrow...The stranger is an element of the group itself, not unlike the poor and sundry "inner enemies"--an element whose membership within the group both being outside it and confronting it." (as cited in Lemert, p. 185)

As the stranger I possess the potential of curricular-instruction change, and because of this difference I "splinter" myself from the "interdependencies that [can] be created with others" (Hurst, p. 23, 2000). My presence is perceived as a threat, not a deep-dark threat, but a threat against the "curriculum of sameness." A stranger possesses the differences of the world, free of the entanglements of the existing system. The system fears differences; for we are afraid of, yet attracted to the messages of strangers from the outside (inside) because we instinctively know that this is the origin of possible and pure change. Simmel clarifies this in stating that the stranger has perception free of prejudice, and an understanding that may very well enclose "dangerous possibilities."

Xenophobia - the abject-the ob-ject

STRANGER! if you, passing, meet me,
and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you? (Whitman, 1900)

Clandinin (1985) legitimizes my position as an experiential educator because all teachers are "active holders of knowledge, as well as agents in the reality of the classroom and the conceptualization of personal practical knowledge" (p. 9). However, within a traditional school setting I had no one to talk, plan, create curriculum with. There existed no learning community for me. I did not share the same culture. I may as well have been a foreigner, a visiting traveler, and a plundering nomad ignorant of cultural nuances. I desired to articulate the rational principles of my current practice of experiential education through our common educational understanding. The sharing of "outside" knowledge was to give way to an accepted way of knowing and teaching. This knowledge could express a more embodied education that speaks to the spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social and physical development of a teaching community. How could a concept of outdoor education become a "dangerous possibility?"

Upon entering union with staff members, I would face the onslaught of sneers, jokes and hints at offensive humor regarding my position. "Back from your fun Andrew?" "Always playing in the woods eh!" "Are you ever going to get a real job one of these days?" To make matters worse, I did not share a curricular history, an intellectual interest or instructional commonality to feel a part of this learning community.

A sharing community

The "man of the wild" label leads to many misconceptions and fallacies. I do not even know how to talk to the teachers in my school. The focus of their discussions always center on their expertise. They never open the conversation to my areas of teaching. I am not able to share my background in teaching. How am I supposed to work with Nancy's group? I have always managed to miss these days, claiming the need that to be inserviced in my "teachable" required seeking instruction and immersion off-site. This inservice was unavoidable for the focus was the school improvement plan and attendance was mandatory. The gathering was a forum to share our personal vision of school improvement. Staring at my hand, I see my pen waiting to write and my vision locked onto the mission statement of the school. I see the tips of my fingers stained with from many days spent in the outdoors. After staring long enough I swear I see a hint of yellow bleeding through. (Personal Reflection)

The fringe

Teaching outdoor education has positioned my practice in a place of the non-traditional. I exist as a teacher in the fringes of education. My practice is not suited for a traditional school. The academic solution to teaching and my belief of experiential practice severs me from truly being in the academic-scholastic world. As a beginning teacher, I knew there had to be a different way to learn, away from the test, the desk, free of text as the deity of knowledge. Still I ask how can I situate my practice, as a teacher, in the current education system that alienates those that are different?

Working with non-traditional teaching methods has positioned me on the fringes of the teaching community and I have come to understand that "[t]eaching experientially can be lonely" (Morrison-Shetlar & Heinrich, 1999, p. 10). The notion of the educational fringe is understood as teachers living on an edge. "That edge is made lonely by the fact that experiential teaching approaches are still viewed with suspicion in many departments and risky because promotion and tenure committees may value more traditional teaching methods" (p. 5). Alienation is deeply rooted on that educational edge.

My collegial relations revealed that I was not a part of my staff philosophically or in practice. What is it about my educational practice that my community of teachers rejects? Am I the abject of the ob-ject, (Oliver, 1993)? "It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated. It beseeches, worries, and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside: sickened, it rejects...a vortex of summons and repulsions places the one haunted by it literally beside himself" (Kristeva, 1982, p. 1). Is outdoor education, the experiential, too unpredictable for acceptance? Does educational system deny of the bodily experience, perpetuating the dualism that separates body and mind? Is it the strange practice of the experiential, the outdoors, the dirty-unknown wilderness, and the other side of the Cartesian dichotomy- the body? "It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules" (Kristeva, 1982, p. 4). "Abjection arises when something that cannot be literally rejected is nonetheless cast in ambiguity and left "outside" what symbolic culture deems legitimate" (MacPherson, 2001, p. 207). I am a victim of xenophobia because my practice exists "outside" of the traditional school. I can understand the fear strangers bring because we have been taught to distrust the "unknown," but I was one of their own. I sensed this rejection on numerous occasions during inservices and staff room visits. I looked the part, played the role, but when mixed with the staff, a strange sensation would push into my consciousness, leaving me powerless. I sensed aloneness.

Isolation

"There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house" (Hoffer, 1955, p. 20). The perfect place to put an outdoor educator is out of site, away from the everyday flow in education. Out of sight, out of mind. Room 231 was not a classroom. It was too small. Historically, it was the school's depository. The VP thought it was the best place for me to establish my practice. This, however, was only to preserve tradition. They had to put me somewhere. I soon learned why 231 became the record room in the first place.

Compounding the small area to facilitate lessons, was the oppressive heat, and fumes from the boiler stationed in the basement below 231. That area of the school happened to be condemned. I was in no position to complain, for I had a probationary contract, was new to the school, had no department to support me, and the very person who slated me into room 231 was in control of the hiring. I was on my own, isolated from the rest of the school, the teachers, and student body other than those who were enrolled in my class.

Room 231

Finally my own room! I even have a key. I have waited for this day since graduation. This makes it all worth it, three years bouncing from school to school, program to program, and here room to room. Now I have a place to call my own- Room 231. I think Peter is right, its good that I am at the back of the school, I can come and go unheeded. This will be easier for me. I know it is a bit small, but I am just thankful. The school did not have to clear out the Guidance Records. They did this for me. I even have my own desk. With a bit of cleaning and decorating, I will have this old room looking like a real classroom, a classroom for outdoor education. This will be perfect for storing my gear, supplies, and it will serve well for a meeting place.(Personal Reflection)

Being-in-the-world with Others

Being-in-a-school did not result in "having a place." Room 231 was segregation from the main population. Personally, it was an experience that caused me to be "factically torn away from" (Heidegger, 1962, p. 222) self. "[T]his alienation drives it into a kind of Being which borders on the most exaggerated "self-dissection," tempting itself with all possibilities of explanation...This alienation closes off" (Heidegger, p. 222) from authenticity of self and forces an inauthenticity of self. This alienation positions a teacher to doubt their practice. Through isolation and disconnection from the community, the focus becomes an attempt in trying to explain the justifications for alienation--is my method of instruction appropriate? The alienated exist in a state of mental entanglement, which becomes a potent source of lack, doubt of one's place in a community, even the belief, despite the rational, that one is a stranger in their own school.

Alienation, rooted in isolation, causes the 'I' of my being to constantly struggle in my relation with Being-in-the-world with Others (Heidegger, p. 155). I then experience an anxiety that is caused by my Being in a mode of existence that is "nothing and nowhere" and possibly expressed as a feeling that one would have if they sensed "not-being-at-home" in the world (Heidegger, p. 233). Once tagged the stranger, the alienated, how can one find community within the system? "After the primordial phenomenon of Being-in-the-world has been shattered, the isolated subject is all that remains" (p. 250).

The inauthentic 'I'

Outdoor education, specifically, experiential education, was an attempt to reform a teaching practice, but the incorporation of this strategy left me with a sensation of lack. I have heard many times as a graduate student that we write from a lack. I have never given this an honest questioning or even a superficial examination. What do I lack in my teaching experience? Is the lack (Evans, 1996: Lacan, 1979) I am feeling emanating from the educational concept of outdoor education? The lack and the alienation that I live with seem to be intimately connected as a "gift" which "robs us of certainty and takes a bite out of ego and body" (Ragland-Sullivan, 1991, p. 75). I sense that the origins of lack to be a secret place in my "lifeworld" that makes me the teacher of the fringes. Questioning my pedagogical belief is a grasping for reflexive understanding of who I am as a teacher within the current system of education.

Acceptance

Experiential education is just another way to teach. It's more then just running around in the woods. Why can't they see that? No matter how hard I try, they just shut me out. I do not know why I even bother going to our Social Studies Dept. meetings. They told me if I wanted, I could go with the Phys-Ed. Dept. because they tend to be more active. All I ever wanted was to work with a group of teachers willing to try new curricular approaches. This won't happen here. The problem is if I leave this school, I know it will not be any different somewhere else. These people do not want to make any changes. They do not want to hear new things. Keep your mouth shut; say no more at the Dept. meetings. (Personal Reflection)

das Gerede - talk

Do I belong to a community of those who have nothing in common (Lingis, 1994)?

To speak in order to establish one's own rightness is to speak to silence the other. Yet Socrates from the beginning excluded the possibility of establishing one's own rightness. Communication is an effort to silence not the other, the interlocutor, but the outsider: the barbarian... (Lingis, p. 97).

How often do we do this, to others, in our everyday meetings with those outside our immediate world? "Every new sentence also continues the bending, extending, and deforming of the code...communication is only possible between two persons used to the same...forms, trained to code and decode a meaning by using the same key..." (Lingis, p. 105). How often do we extend the key to others, the stranger? Or do we protect the key, preserving our power within the community. Lingis challenges the impression of extending the key:

One sees communication as a continuation of violence, but with other means. One sees in the dialectical cadence of communication, proceeding by affirmation and contestation, an interval in which each makes himself other than the other, when one sees each one speaking in order to establish the rightness of what he says. (p. 71).

Alienated in silence, for the stranger has no voice in a community that rejects and resists the outsider, eliminating hope to gain access in an accepting community. I am voiceless, even though I speak the language. I am not a traveler, a foreigner, visiting a strange land. Yet I have the same struggles as one from another culture trying to create their place in a new country. Teaching experientially situated my own practice as if I were speaking a different tongue or was from another culture radically different from the school community. This inability to communicate made me a stranger to myself for I could no longer trust my own words, I was silent and lacking...In confronting a lack I sensed an uneasiness of powerful alienation. Is there "space" within the current school system to embrace an educational practice that is experiential? Questioning the lack allows me to illuminate possible areas of "meaningful reflection" within my teaching practice. This "inward" focus (Pinar, 1972) on my teaching opens assumed understandings and personal meaning to scrutiny. Pedagogically, I am committed to lessons of "authenticity" (North Whitehead, 1967; Dewey, 1938) that the outdoors can provide. I knew this was not going to be possible in a traditional-school setting.

The day I discovered outdoor education marked the moment I abandoned my past notion of teaching and the identity of the traditional teacher (Taubman, 1992). However, from that moment onward there has always been a "strange sensation of lack" surrounding my decision to reform my curricular practice. I was liberated in one sense, in teaching with methods that satisfied my teaching style, but felt abandoned in another way. My philosophy became a driving force to continue reforming curricular practices, but the result was absolute alienation in the lack of community. Like Horatio, in Shakespeare's (1982) Hamlet, I need to learn to accept the stranger is not always welcome.

The legal Alien...

By accepting the fact that I may be the outsider, because of philosophy and instruction, confirms my position of "being-in-the-world" as a teacher that is alienated. This feeling of "alienation is not just a private emotion that we suffer inwardly... Alienation creates a radical hunger for the world" (Bai, 2001,p. 12). To think that I am viewed as something that does not belong to the teaching community is disturbing. Through writing, I may satisfy the lack, and allow language to "endlessly evoke and utter the unutterable, to map the uttered and to expose the absence under the fading presence of the world" (Taubman, 1993, p. 288). Pinar (1975) presents the alienation of personal reality due to the impersonality of school groups, to result in a "shell of human possibility" (p. 381). I am compelled to venture outside of educational theory and examine the social theorists that range from Marx, Weber, Simmel and an assortment of other leading theories to help quell the lack by proving potential explanations for the "lifeworld" of an alienated teacher.

In alienation I have maintained a struggle for a genuine community. As a stranger I have become disconnected from the pedagogic support of my peers. There is a compelling need to know why, and to understand one's "place" in a social framework. I must find peace within my practice as a teacher to prevent the same alienation, steeped in fear of anonymity, and spiritual doubt that victimizes Meursault in Camus's (1955) compelling and troubling tale of The Stranger. Unlike Meursault, the cause of my alienation is unknown. I am a credentialed teacher, not a barbarian, or some ignorant invader from the horde? My educational papers are consistent with the market status (Collins, 1988). I belong to the "order of teachers," my credentialed education should prevent me from being estranged, a victim of exclusionary closure (Murphy, 1994, p. 102). How can a teacher become excluded, shut out, from their very own system? I should have similar access to "power, resources, rewards, and privileges" (Murphy, p. 107)? I should enjoy the benefits of membership in a status group? The alienation experienced could be due to the exclusion despite the credentials, resulting in the absence of the expected "style of life," a claim by those "wishing to belong to the circle" (Murphy, p. 108). Why has social perception classified me as something strange, to be avoided, resisted? Do I pose the threat of uncertainty as the stranger? My "license of practice" did not buy my way into membership within the overall system.

The labour of teaching

Do I even have a real job? Is outdoor education real teaching? I get paid from the board, they signed a contract with me, but yet, there is no connection here. What is it with my position? Am I not a teacher, I have the same, and more education than most. I take my efforts as professional; my work is valuable to kids. I never even get a chance to really share with others what I do. Inservice is just "talk." If I could show them, they may see and understand that what I do is not so different. They would see the benefits of an experiential approach as another method. That however is impossible. The schedule divides us, and the pressure of time is subject focus. You are English, Math, Science or you are on the fringe. Even Social Studies is one of the "core." I produce kids that are competent learners, and are knowledgeable. So what is the problem? Is not the end product of education to have critical thinkers, decision makers, those that can cooperate as responsible citizens? Is that not the measure of quality that we ascribe to the graduate? Do I not contribute to this? Are not my efforts, my pains of labour producing students for today, and citizens for tomorrow? I have the paper, and the paycheck that says so. So what if how I do the job is slightly different from the rest. That is no reason to exclude me from the everyday of this school. (Personal Reflection)

Societal roots

I want to employ social theory to "reject overarching, limiting principles and open itself to the world of differences" to discover a sensible, pragmatic version, understanding of the lived experience of alienation (Lemert, 1999, p.16). How could I be alienated? I have the education, the degrees, the advanced degrees, but yet I am cast outside the fold. The teachers of the system have yet to extend the invitation by offering a handshake of acceptance. They sense the stranger, for I must exude something that is detectable only to them, within the system they control. Lemert encourages me to use language for it "is the most important weapon for the weak" (p. 18). I will speak from the alienated, for one on the outside is oppressed, and within my imprisonment, I will speak for continued reform, even if it is hushed words on this page.

Is the power of oppression, causing my lived experience of alienation, forcing the status of stranger upon my practice as an outdoor educator? Is this the result of my type of employment? "The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power of its own confronting him" (Lemert, p. 31). Marx would position my experience as estrangement (Tucker, 1978). This contributes to my loss of reality due to my labour becoming bonded to as an "object of production." Payment for my efforts merely exacerbates a poorer existence of my inner world. This estrangement is a result of producing labour (education of students) as a professional activity. According to Marx, it is my very act (work) as the factor in alienation for it is capitalism that severs me from that in which I wish to belong. The act of teaching "becomes an alien power" and I succumb only to be enslaved (Hurst, p. 23). This self-estrangement is a disembodiment to a spiritual essence, from my relations with others, and my sense of essence. What is left is the lack due to alienation and existing as a stranger in society. Thus one has to wonder, if Engels is correct in understanding of civilization wrought with greed as a driving force (Tucker). Does this compulsion to want money, contribute to an unspoken class within school. Is there a class system within education, based on licensing (equal to money), levels of labour, to desirable positions creating a class of teachers that are oppressed because of the seemingly divided structure in schools?

This experience of alienation may be closer to Weber's explanation of domination of a special group over those with their control of policy (Roth & Wittich, 1978). To be alienated one would not be a part of the "status order," which becomes the controlling group for power within the community. "One of the principal characteristics of a status system are the boundaries that are drawn around groups to distinguish their members from outsiders" (Hurst, p. 136). This extends past the Marxian explanation of class because my sense of alienation is not entirely dependent on property; rather my lifeworld of stranger is a result of "status situation" that has for me no honor or distinction (Roth & Wittich). It could very well be the experience of stranger, becoming the lived experience of alienation that may be associated with "parvenu." This is the experience of non-acceptance by the privileged status group "no matter how completely his style of life has been adjusted to theirs. They will only accept his descendents who have been educated in the conventions of their status group..." (Lemert, p. 123).

This becomes the social reality, understanding the disassociation, the detachment of one's place within the social order. This sense is immediately felt; it is not mere curiosity of what could be wrong in particular social arrangement. The realization of stranger comes with the responses from Others. They misunderstand statements (unintentional and intentional), or refuse to accept your knowledge as valid. They lack interest in maintaining an open dialogue, often trying to escape the path of conversation. This is realized in the avoidance of eye contact, the strained responses, and the absence of contributing to sharing in the overall nature of the verbal exchange. This social encounter is so different from that experience when engaged with friends, colleagues that share a personal history and respect the views and professional contributions.

Simmel expressed the experience of the stranger adequately by claiming that a stranger by nature is metaphorically, landless, in terms of possible space that exists for members of a social environment (Levine, 1971). Simmel expressed that in education harmony between the members would provide strength and unity "because their interests coincide" (Rothstein, 1996, p. 143). The relationship of the stranger then is outside the group, the one who confronts the establishment. The stranger "is fixed within a certain spatial circle...analogous to spatial boundaries...but his position within it is fundamentally affected by the fact that he does not belong in it initially and that he brings qualities into it that are not, and cannot be, indigenous to it" (Lemert, p. 184).

In short, a teacher contained within the boundaries of the classroom divisions, subject matter segregation, and accepted intellectual alliances- the bounded group. This is not so much to do with the individuality of social constructions (Levine), but that of the alien-the Other.

The duality of the stranger or the social member is Self and Other. De Beauvoir reminds us that "[in] small-town eyes all persons not belonging to the village are "strangers" and suspect" (Lemert, p. 338). However, I do belong, I am a teacher, a so-called member of the educational landscape, not some foreigner of the "countryside." How then can a member become alienated, and made to feel, or be forced into the part of the community stranger? De Beauvoir reminds the strangers of the world that it is privilege and the status that comes with being the One, which is dependent on the numbers of the majority. Do I experience alienation because I do not have the supporting numbers of the social order to condone an experiential-outdoor practice in mainstream education?

Fur Sich

Being-in-the-world is accepting the notion of a "world-system [as] a social system, one that has boundaries, structures, member groups, rules of legitimation, and coherence" (Wallerstein, 1976, p. 229). This acknowledgment presents that the alienated must grapple with social divisions, classes and with this class-consciousness (fÊr sich). Alienation could stem for those of differing practices in education due to habitus- the collective practices, history, perception, thought, action, to ensure correctness (Bourdieu, 1990). Alienation may be experienced because, as Bourdieu theorizes, habitus is the genesis of a system, the life style, common sense behaviors, that are sanctioned. Is alienation the expected lifeworld when cultural knowledge of teaching is abandoned? "Education's virtual monopoly over recruitment, training, and promotion of personnel allows the educational system to adapt its programs and activities to its own specific needs for self-perpetuation" (Swartz, 1997, p. 206). Then, it may be that when a teacher does abandon "curriculum of sameness," they are counter to fÊr sich, and a threat against habitus. To be a member, fully, one would have to accept the confinement and restraining nature of the educational system. Is this alienation Giddens, (1990) dis-places of modernity? I have a school, but no real place within it, regardless of Room 231. I have the appropriate credentials, but not the association of a professional organization, just in name, Teacher-Class 6.

... one cannot be happy in exile or in oblivion.
One cannot always be a stranger.
I want to return to my homeland, make all my loved ones happy. (Camus)

Within The Stranger, Camus brought up many questions and a few answers. He created an outsider to society, Meursault, and showed us how he lived. Meursault was always indifferent. Meursault saw the purpose of life to be meaningless. The stranger is created to challenge our notions of reality, divinity, and universal law. I believe that Camus wants us to see this and begin questioning our existence. Camus shows that you can "hope" for the best without hope. "Hope" is optimism. Is teaching experientially within traditional education hopeless? Am I subjecting myself to an alienated-hopeless position within the educational system? Unlike Meursault, I see purpose and have hope, but sometimes a stranger is needed to bring messages from the outside in order for us to learn. Am I the real stranger, with a message of reform or is it the "system" that has become strange to me. The stranger in history was a messenger, the bearer of new information from the outside world.

The knock

I rarely get visitors. I pretty much have the entire wing to myself. There it was again, a gentle little knock, a tap, tap tap. Who could be at my door? This can only mean one thing, bad news. As I opened my door, I saw a bearded face and bashful smile. It was Peter. Now what would bring a V.P. to this room? He has only been here once, when he dropped me off on my first day. "Can I come in?" (Personal Reflection)

To find a home

There was a stranger at my gate and I opened it, welcoming him I invited him in. I share in Taubman's (2000) educational vision of hope that is "attune[d] to the thick meanings that we make with our students" (p. 26). Within the meanings comes a learning community, a place to belong. Meaning in teaching is the hopes in belonging to a supportive community where practice is respected. After my unexpected guest departed I sat in disbelief. My services were being requested for the school community needed me. His exact words were, "Do you think you could create an "outdoor sort of thing" for the marginal kids? You know, the ones that are not quite making it. We have a large group of at-risk youth, delinquent, non-conformists. You know the type I mean." Why is it when the inner world of a community is challenged, unravels or begins to falter, the members begin the search to the "outside" for solutions?

In the mercantile port cities of Greece, strangers arrive who ask the Greeks, Why do you do as you do? In all societies where groups of humans elaborate their distinctiveness, the answer was and is, because our fathers [and mothers] have taught us to do so, because our gods have decreed that it be so. Something new begins when the Greeks begin to give into reason that the stranger, who does not have these fathers and these gods, can accept, a reason that any lucid mind can accept. (Lingis, p. 3)

"I must confess that his society was at first irksome; but ... I now have hope that he may become a stranger of the gate" (Eldad the Pilgrim, Old Testament). The ancient practice of honoring strangers with hospitality and kindness rarely exists in postmodern society. I hope to make myself welcomed in the academic world with an experiential approach that is accepted for all students, not just the at-risk. This attempt to connect and blend our approaches in educational delivery can be viewed as reformist or progressive and as an attempt to teach as Dewey intended in learning experiences. "The real lack is what the living being loses..." (Lacan, 1979, p.153). Did I lose membership with the continued adoption of experiential methods? I have the credentials, the papers, and the degrees to rightfully claim my place within the system. What is the ground of truce between experience-based learning and academic learning? Can both have a shared place in the educational setting? Can one approach be effective without the other? Do genuine experiences and academics enhance the learning when combined? Still today I wonder if that was my moment of acceptance, the moment I found a home for my educational practice. Some how I am not entirely confident, but at least it is a start.

Opening the gate

In the world of Socrates and Plato's Sophist, the stranger, the philosopher and traveling thinker would challenge the questions of expertise, ability, and know-how of the "inside world." I am sure today they would challenge the education system by asking which subjects are solid, which are trivial, and the best methods to achieve student learning. The pursuit of the sophist gives the stranger an occasion to chart human expertise, mounting a critique of the inventory of human employments. There was a need for strangers; they were welcomed at the gate, invited in, and with hospitality, made to feel a part of the community, even only for a short time. Their message was honored and appreciated, for society welcomed knowledge and new challenging thoughts from the outside world. This was a time when strangers were treated kindly.

Then an aged Councilor who was there spoke to the King.
" O Alcinous," he said, "it is not right that a stranger
should sit in the ashes ... Bid the stranger rise now" (Colum)

I am placing faith in the promise of hospitality. The experiential approach will be the teaching modality that will bring the "face-to-face" encounter of the subject (the experiential, the body, the doing) and Other (the rational- the mind, the teaching community). It is hoped that an experiential practice will allow the mind and body to belong together again in curative unison to achieve a "healing and the end of alienation" (Bai, 2001, p. 18). Alienation could "give... rise to a pure possibility of being" (Fink, p. 52). Therefore, the creation of this text and language was the effort to expose lack in "the search for original meaning" (Ragland-Sullivan & Bracher, 1991, p. 17) of the alienated teacher. My account is the experience of a teacher facing the lack of belonging to an accepting professional community. True to Lacan's teachings, I have tried to negotiate words, meanings and language in "madness" (Ragland-Sullivan & Bracher, p. 11). I do not want to be the distrusted, the feared, and a stranger in my own house. The stranger for me was that old yellow chalk. However, in our world the ostracism of strangers is sanctioned, for the strange is unwanted. I do have hope that Zeus will protect me in the teachings of philxenia- love of the stranger. May I too find my Telemachus and end the alienation.

"Welcome to the house of Odysseus," said Telemachus giving him his hand. The stranger clasped it with a friendly clasp. [Both could see the stained yellow hands.] "I thank you, Telemachus," he said, "for your welcome, and glad I am to enter the house of your father, the renowned Odysseus." (Colum)

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