Not So Distant Future

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

–When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

Yesterday, while live blogging with Maura Moritz’s class at Arapahoe High School, I realized just how imperative it is for me to have those moments of Symphony–those “aha” moments when everything comes together in a rush. During the class, the students were struggling with the question of whether it is better to live for today or to live for the future.  Their question seems to revolve around the challenge in Mary Oliver’s poem.  

And no matter their answer, it seemed to me they were trying to avoid simply passing through the world….that they wanted life to be significant and meaningful. They wanted to be married to amazement.

How often do we as educators forget to live with amazement?   Drowning in paperwork, the multi-variable needs of our students, the crush of so many papers to grade, the demands of our own lives, it’s easy to lose track of what brought us to the classroom doors.  

I realized while blogging with the students what brings me to those doors is that there is always something new.   And for myself, I have to keep it new.   I’m a librarian now, but in the teaching I still do, I am most happy when I am reinventing ways to share things, when I am discovering new tools or new ideas or new books or planning new projects with teachers.   I’m happiest when I am learning, too.

It’s easy to let rigor mortis set in.  To do the same thing day after day, year after year, and to let that content become solidified.  That’s really much easier than rethinking what you do.   That’s the easiest thing to do in any job.

But when we look back over our long lives in our careers, whatever they are, I’m sure the most satisfying moments for most of us are those that stand out, that inspired us, that challenged us, that brought out the best in us.  Those are the moments that we tell stories about, that we think about years later, and that keep us going.  

In The Big Moo, Seth Godin writes about the importance of renewing ourselves in his chapter, “Get Out.”   He points out, “you may be the master of your domain in  your office, but chances are you’re also a victim of your mastery.”   He challenges readers to:

“Go out and get some inexperience.  Go back to square one.  Put yourself in a position to discover something new.”

Like the exercises in Daniel Pink’s Whole New Mind, Godin suggests activities that help you see anew, like going on a field trip to somewhere you’ve never been, or engaging senses you don’t usually use(closing your eyes, for example) or just plain wandering.

What about visiting another very different school, if you’re a teacher?  What about working with someone you’ve never worked with before?  What about letting students select the text you’ll read together?   What about renewing yourself by giving yourself permission to attend a conference somewhere far away?   What about wandering through an art museum instead of doing the grocery shopping? What about giving yourself permission to play?  What about the things you love?  What about the things our students love?

Not only are we jaded about learning at times, our students can fall into that attitude as well.  How can we challenge our students to “get out” of their comfort zones, to see the world, to rediscover that sense of amazement they felt as children in kindergarden.  How do we give them time to do that?  How do we help them see “anew”?

 It brings to mind a slogan I love from Mabry Middle School, “Making Learning Irresistible for Over 25 years”

Learning should be irresistible.  It’s the most invigorating creative act we have as human beings.   So, as Seth Godin says, we must “get out!”  We must refresh ourselves, sharpen the saw, invite newness in, be willing to change, and embrace our lives. 

As Mary Oliver asks us in her poem, “The Summer Day”,

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

We just have this one time with our students.  We just have this one life ourselves.  What do we plan to do?

Some credits:

Thanks to Clay Burell and Diane Cordell for sending me in search of poetry.  And homage to Diane’s excellent post.  Thanks to John Pederson for sending me to the big moo.  And thanks to all of the amazing educators and students at SLA and Educon who inspired me to keep looking anew.

Image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/stateoftheart101/296605924/

I’m reflecting on Educon 2.0 this morning and the most powerful parts of it for me.

One of the most powerful aspects for me was online community turned real community -that in 140 characters on Twitter , bit by bit, you create connections with other educators. And when you meet them, it’s like you are just picking up the conversation where you left off, not like meeting them for the first time.

So, that’s what I’m hoping we do after Educon—pick up the conversations where we left off. I worry that when we leave the rarified environment of SLA and enter our own schools, that we’ll become discouraged. Once you see what things can be like, it’s difficult to go back.

  So, what was different about SLA and what did I learn at Educon?

–A mission–everyone knows what the mission is and what they are there for.  Every student you ask, every teacher, clearly knows that mission.   And everyone does what is needed to get it done.   One quiet little moment that really moved me was when I opened the door to the stairwell, and a student was there with a broom, sweeping up a little area of the floor, in a place no one would even really have noticed–because he cared about the mission of their school and it belonged to him.

–Constructivist learning –Students who are so incredibly committed to their school not because of extracurriculars or sports, but because they know they are learning and they’ve made a commitment to their own learning.   Students who are making meaning by discovering knowledge, discussing things in class–students who are expected to bring themselves to the classroom.  I saw an incredible presentation led by a group of students on their collaborative playwriting process, and the students were so excited and committed as they talked about what brought them to spend their “extra” time working on this project.   Like Konrad Glogowski spoke about in his presentation, let’s stand like Caravaggio on the side of the painting and shine a light for our students while they learn.

–The people–When Al Bichner, CIO of Philadelphia Schools spoke at the opening session, he said that he knew he had a “first round draft pick” in Chris Lehmann.   The staff is incredible.  The students want to be there.  The energy of the people in the building make a difference.

–Student voice–Student voice is respected, desired, and a critical part of this community.  And it was a respected, desired, and critical part of this conference as well, and it made everything different and better having students there with us.

–The power of collegiality—This permeates the school.  Students feel empowered to express their opinions , and teachers feel the freedom to let their students learn through discussion and exploration of ideas.  You see a principal and teachers who are colleagues in the real sense of the word, working side by side for a truly shared mission. As one teacher put it today, “What’s different at SLA is that we all want each other to bring our best.”   Everyone is in it together.

– Community. There’s a sense of everyone looking after everyone else. Community based around everyone on campus as a learner. Not just students but teachers. I saw students leading workshops, students from both SLA and from elsewhere. And by having students show up, all of us learned.

For example, at the end of my own workshop, we reflected twitter-style(briefly) on our experiences at Educon. Several of the students present commented that what they learned was that  teachers really are passionate about learning, and that there are teachers who really care. And we as teachers saw in action how powerful adding student voice to the mix is.    How sad it is that somehow we aren’t conveying that to our students in every school, that we really care about learning, and that their voices are so valuable to us.   That is something we can change.

I’ve been thinking a lot about an article I read in American Libraries recently, which pointed out that libraries can get overly focused on the “commodity” of books rather than the customer. I see this as an issue for secondary schools.   We focus on the commodity of content over the learner themselves sometimes.   We get so consumed by content that we don’t see the “whole” school or work together.

Two students over the course of the weekend told groups of us that their best learning experience had been elementary school, because they learned by experimenting, by doing, by playing.  One of the most innovative ideas I heard was from Arthus Erea, a high school student from Vermont, who pointed out that he felt students should be asked to make a learning plan with each teacher reflecting what the student would like to learn from a course. We dialogued in Arthus’ session about the fact that we indoctrinate students from an early age and so they sit there passively expecting to be told what to learn, because we don’t ask them to be partners in defining their own learning.   When Arthus shared the example of receiving his syllabus in the mail, “telling him” what he was going to learn–my eyes were suddenly opened.  Where is the invitation in that for our students?   Are we inviting them in to our classrooms?

–Conversations.  As I mentioned yesterday, the power of conversation was everywhere at Educon, and I suspect everywhere at SLA.  It is a school that talks about ideas.  And the conference was the same way.  The conversations were happening everywhere in every corner, stairwell, hallway, and conference room.   Sylvia Martinez pointed out in the panel discussion on Sunday that the system of schools in our country wasn’t really so big–100,000 schools isn’t really that many to change.     We just need to keep spreading the conversations.

So, let’s pick up the conversation where we left off.  Let’s go make our schools even better.  Let’s go talk to our students, start conversations with our staff, and keep sharing with and supporting one another.   Let’s go make change. 

I’ll be writing more for weeks I’m sure about the conversations and sessions at Educon this weekend, but in looking over my notes this morning, the thing that strikes me the most is the power of conversation in learning.

One of the most powerful part of Kevin Jarrett’s and Sylvia Martinez’s session, “Influence Without Authority” about the Future Search process, was that Sandra Janoff, who initiated this process, was there in the room, and in the conversation with all of us.   Future Search is a method of bringing key players together in a specific process to discuss change.

Kevin and Sylvia were exploring through their conversation whether technology could enhance the process–if wikis or blogs or other methods could support the Future Search.   And the astounding thing that took place as we all talked was that Sandra Janoff shared that she didn’t know about all these technologies, that she was learning from our conversation and that she was very excited about the possibility for finding out how they could be used as a support for the Future Search.  We were all learning together.

Similarly in Arthus Erea’s session on Student Voice, one teacher in the room was struggling with how to balance teaching to the standards and embracing time for exploration.  She was an experienced teacher who was struggling with this but as the conversation evolved, and students added their voices, and others of us talked about it, you could see that her view was shifting and she was becoming an excited part of the conversation.  Having student voice involved in the discussion was a significant part of that.

We’ve been talking alot about change and how it can happen and what facilitates it in many different sessions at Educon.  So what strikes me is this–how could we take “conversations” into our own districts and campuses?  How could we take a constructivist approach to learning into our staff development, our campus meetings and committees so that we can better learn from our colleagues and students, and have conversations that matter?   How can we make sure that all the key players are present?

Sandra Janoff identified an acronym–”arein”–to explain who should be present–people with the authority to make the changes,  the resources, the expertise, the information, and the need.  That seems like a very helpful construct in planning conversations.   And Arthus’s session made it clear that those conversations we are having in our schools should include student voices, our real constituents.

Much to think about, and I’m off to day 2 for more conversations.  (I’ll be presenting a session at 2:30 on developing some globally contributed best practices relating to intellectual freedom/internet filtering.)

Kate left a comment on my blog yesterday about personal  learning networks, and that now all we need to do is show teachers the why.

And sitting here, at Educon 2.0, surrounded by so many other dedicated professionals that I never would have met otherwise, is my reason why.  There are educators and bloggers from around the country here–from Florida to South Carolina to New York to Canada who have gathered here because they are passionate about education and want to share ideas, (and gadgets!) and learn.  It’s astounding what we as educators and librarians and tech professionals have to learn from one another.

And to think that most of us would never have met without these online learning networks that enable us to stretch our gaze farther, and find those who share our interests and passions!   It brings home the power of the network.

Tune into the Ustreams today and tomorrow and join the conversations!

This summer, at the NECC conference, I was sorry to have missed the first “Educon” — an informal gathering of educators/bloggers who had only previously met virtually –who were meeting in Atlanta to talk informally about education. 

Tomorrow I’m leaving for an experience I am very excited about–and the seeds of which were planted at that first meeting.   If you aren’t familiar, I’m heading to Educon 2.0, which takes place at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, and is composed entirely of conversations about education (and I hope will lead to many actions as well!)

I’m nervous but excited to be hosting two conversations.  The first conversation on Saturday at 2:30 will be “Extreme Makeover: Library Edition” and will be hosted by Joyce Valenza, Cathy Nelson, and myself (this will my first time to meet Cathy also!).   We’ll be having a conversation about Library 3.0 and what that can look like, and ways to start getting there.

The second conversation I’m hosting is Internet Filtering and Intellectual Freedom, which takes place on Sunday at 2:30.  I’m following a session by Tim Stahmer on the balance between access and safety.  Hopefully our conversations will build upon one another.   The goal of my second conversation is to begin building a shared “go to” site for information about best practices in schools regarding the issues of filtering.   We know the problems–but what can we do to insure that our districts follow “best practices” and that we have examples to share?

Chris has already established wiki links for each session and every session at the conference will be Ustreamed.   Check out the agenda and links for all of the sessions here.   And since it’s on a weekend, this means if you want to follow a session from home, no worries!   Plus they’ll be saved for later viewing as well.

The most inspiring part of the conference is the roster of attendees and presenters(if you can call leading conversations presenting?).  I’m going to get to meet so many bloggers and teachers that I’ve read about or admire.  We’re going to get to have a tour of the Science Leadership Academy, and I’m really looking forward to seeing practice in ‘action.’

And on a related note, I’m wondering why within our campuses, we can’t host an “educon” for students–why not have a day where our students present workshops and learn from one another?   One of the other sessions I’m very excited about will be hosted by Arthus Erea, a high school student from Vermont who will be attending the conference.   What a great example–I can’t wait to hear his session!

And the very best part of all of this is that it’s a group of peers who have come together to learn from one another.   Peers learning from peers–all of us there because we are passionate about education.  What could be more inspiring?