Showing posts with label action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label action. Show all posts

Sunday, February 5, 2023

My Fathers


January 25 was the one-year anniversary of my father-in-law's passing. Krishan Syal was a good man and one of my fathers. I miss him profoundly. I wrote this for him after he died. If I could, I would like to talk to him about what I'm going to write here. We had so many conversations about important things like this. Kris was one of the most authentic men I have had the privilege to know. He cared for me, respected me, and shared what he knew. He was a mentor and a friend. He was a father at a time when fatherhood is increasingly difficult to define. We need a new definition of what it means to be a father in the world today.

I'm reading "Of Boys And Men" by Richard V. Reeves. The book is an exploration of why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what we can do about that. The book addresses many elements of the male experience, and fatherhood is a prominent theme. A quote from the book stuck out for me,
A man who is integrated into a community through a role in a family, spanning generations into the past and future, will be more consistently and durably tied to the social order than a man responding chiefly to a charismatic leader, a demagogue, or a grandiose ideaology of patriotism." 
- George Gilder, 1973

When I read the words "charismatic leader," "demagogue" and "grandiose ideology," I don't need to think very hard to provide many contemporary examples of each one of these types of men. These are men who are lost in their perception of masculinity. They believe that to be strong, others must be weak. They possess insecurity and fear without knowing how to be humble and authentic. Locked in a zeitgeist of days gone by, they are confused about their place in a society that no longer fears them, and can no longer be controlled by them. They deny the true nature of their emotions masking them with anger and aggression. This is a diminished state of manhood that cannot be sustained. To say that our next evolutionary step forward for humanity depends on the formulation of a new definition of fatherhood is no exaggeration. 

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Cultural Tails (Tales) - The Story Everyone Tells

de·us ex ma·chi·na
/ˌdāəs ˌeks ˈmäkənə,ˌdāəs ˌeks ˈmäakənə/
noun
  1. an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel.

Our lives are a series of stories that evolve in quantum ways every second as we are affected by the realities in our environments and the decisions we make surrounding them. Much of what goes on around us is beyond our control. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Psychology, it's phenomenological in the sense that,
the discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.
How capably we are able to engineer our own stories depends on our ability to accept that the phenomena that surround us is essentially beyond our control. Sometimes, as in literature or theatre, a deus ex machina is helpful in resolving the seemingly hopeless life situations that are ultimately beyond our control, but not beyond our personal influence and ability to internalize and accept. Partly as a response to what I wrote recently about how the path of teaching chose me, and also just because it's front of mind, this resolve is what I want to talk about today. 

Essential to the stories of our lives, recognizing deus ex manchina that have unexpected power to resolve a sense of hopelessness, or what Victor Frankl would characterize as a lack of purpose, is critical to our resilience and happiness. Viktor Frankl's (1946) Man's Search for Meaning chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live. According to Frankl, the book intends to answer the question "how was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" He observed that prisoners who found something to do every day appeared less vulnerable to the guards, and subsequently were judged as useful in one way or another; not as expendable. I simply cannot even imagine the horror of that reality, but nonetheless, it was documented by Frankl, (perhaps that was his purpose in attempting to make any sense of the horror,) and it makes sense to me.

I took away from this book the notion that without purpose, there is nothing. I think I already knew this on some level, but not to the point where I was considering the concept as part of my minute-by-minute navigation of daily challenges. I have come to realize implicitly that purpose needs to be at the core of everything I do. Purpose is a deus ex machina that resolves nearly all hopeless situations in life. It's a very critical one and we may need help finding it sometimes, but we have to have it. Hope is an action word.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

A Real Emergency in Education- Crisis As Opportunity...

Let's face it, to some people everything is an emergency.

A Chinese symbol for crisis is made up of two parts:
danger and opportunity…
                                    _
Crisis as Opportunity (wéi ji) 

Danger – originally pictured as a man on the edge of a precipice
Opportunity – a reminder of the seemingly small but important opportunity that can come out of danger

There is controversy surrounding the symbol above and its interpreted meaning, but that's for other people to worry about. For the sake of the point I'm making, I believe as interpreted, the idea behind the meaning of the symbol above is very important. How it's further interpreted in practice is exponentially more important.

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. "I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."
Emergencies are often what we make of them. 

I can't tell you how many times I've had to address the emergent situation that someone dared to park in someone else's regular parking spot in our staff parking lot. 
e·mer·gen·cy
/əˈmərjənsē/
noun
  1. a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

The Birds Keep Singing...

 **This is a cross pollinated post from hopeallianceblog.ca, a new venture connected to my hopealliance.ca passion project. It's been a very long time since I posted to my beloved blog KARE Givers, and I have rediscovered many, many draft posts so it's time for me to get out of writing what I used to way too long ago. I'm feeling revitalized and rejuvenated... finally.

Hope without action is wishful thinking.

Hope without fear doesn't exist; that's called naivety.

Hope is the alpha. All fear, all resilience, all action is derived from hope, "the thing with feathers... that sings the tune without the words" as so beautifully described by Emily Dickinson in her poem entitled "Hope"...


  
As I sit at my desk in my office listening to the birds sing in the courtyard outside my window, I'm reminded of this beautiful poem and what it needs to teach us during this most fearful time. 

This global pandemic is the storm creating fear that what we need to become true, beautiful and good in the world once again may not happen the way we intend it to.

Resilience is the tune without the words perched in our souls allowing us to keep going despite this fear. 

The birds keep singing.

Their song is the action that can never stop at all in times of crisis and despair, because this is what turns hope from something we wish for, to something we can do.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Hope Without Action is Just Wishful Thinking...

flickr CC image via emilydickinsonridesabmx

I first heard about Geoffrey Canada by reading a book called "Hope: How Triumphant Leaders Create the Future," by Andrew Razeghi. 

Since 1990 Canada has been president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in Harlem, New York, an organization whose goal is to increase high school and college graduation rates among students in Harlem. His story is a remarkable example of the can-do attitude I believe is required to reform education, not as an end to a means, but rather a perpetual process that should never cease to evolve. I've been following Canada's speaking session at the ASCD 10 Conference in real-time via my Twitter friends (how amazing it is that real-time tweeting allows me this privilege!) and just as they did when I read Razeghi's book, his comments are resonating with me.

I designed a recent post I wrote (Why Is It Always About the Funding?) to ask the question of why reforming education seems to always come down to economics. The goal of the post is to solicit ideas from educators detailing how they believe we can improve education for free. At ASCD, Canada made this statement, "When it comes down to saving kids, we get tripped up by things like money, but we should have a plan for that." Indeed we should. I'm not so naive to believe that the education system can operate for free, but I am also of the opinion that much of the more meaningful actions we can take to reform education would cost nothing at all.

Canada also stated at the conference that, and I paraphrase, "the American education system is the equivalent of reaction to Hurricane Katrina; people waiting for a plan. We are the plan." Right on Geoffrey! I admire Canada's pragmatic approach to education reform, and I believe teachers make up a massive segment of the "we" he's referring to. I also believe he would define this plan as one connoting action. In Andrew Razeghi's book about hope, he contextualizes it as an action word. Did he ever get it right when he chose Geoffrey Canada as an example of this paradigm? It's time for teachers to adopt the same perspective and stop waiting for someone else's plan. We are the plan, and I assert that the best ideas to take action on within our plan cost nothing at all.

I'm getting some early feedback on this idea. Adam Burk, (@pushingupward) appears to agree. He responded to my blog post by saying "a positive school culture is created by positive attitudes. And last time I checked those were available for free." Amen to that! I've also received some great comments pertaining to the replacement of traditional forms in schools (i.e. paper textbooks to free online texts & paperless 1 to 1 teaching) as technology integration cost-saving measures. The ideas are out there, we simply need to share them. Teachers know how to reform education, and I think they also know that the education reform plan we personify is really a process as opposed to a plan, and one that can never stop.

Learning should be an organic, concentric process, not a linear one. The world surrounds us; it's not a point to point path, however, our education system is set up as a 'from here to there' journey- not a great reflection of what I will call natural learning. Teachers need to reflect on this concept, question their acceptance of the status quo inherent in some of the less-effective forms of traditional teaching and learning and stop waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.

Teachers- think, create, tweet, evolve, share, apply, synthesize... join a developing movement that doesn't even accept that there is an end to the means of education reform.

It's high time we adjust our attitudes toward how we do what we do, and begin taking our rightful place as perpetual pedagogical innovators.

Comments?
Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Labels

learning (55) teaching (49) education reform (29) authentic learning (24) students (24) EduKare (20) school (20) effective teaching (19) resiliency (19) educational leadership (13) creative teaching (12) education (12) hope (12) change (11) collaboration (11) creativity (11) educational change (11) perspective (11) #edchat (10) 21st Century Learning (10) Glendale School (10) caring (10) leadership (10) school climate (10) school culture (10) support (10) assessment (9) #EduKare (8) culture (8) empathy (8) professional development (8) teachers (8) at-risk kids (7) inquiry-based learning (7) learning circles (7) learning stories (7) student success (7) technology (7) technology integration (7) Sean Grainger (6) at-risk (6) collaborative teaching (6) pre-service teachers (6) purpose (6) resilience (6) responsive teaching (6) teacher training (6) Alberta Education (5) Bell Curve (5) Twitter (5) action (5) empathy reboot (5) engaging (5) integrative thinking (5) kids (5) mentor teachers (5) public schools (5) relationships (5) student (5) teach (5) teacher (5) beliefs (4) belonging (4) bullying (4) children (4) debate (4) diversity (4) high-stakes testing (4) hope wheel (4) inclusion (4) learn (4) pedagogy (4) possibility (4) school leadership (4) #ACE #school #edchat (3) #cpchat (3) ConnectED (3) LCU (3) action research (3) child development (3) choice (3) classroom (3) commitment (3) communication (3) community (3) counseling (3) creative (3) dreams (3) duty to care (3) ed reform (3) educators (3) failure (3) fun (3) growboys (3) hope alliance (3) inquiry (3) interculturalism (3) karegivers (3) life-long learning (3) mentorship (3) mindfulness (3) nemetics (3) professionalism (3) reflection (3) thinking differently (3) transformational leadership (3) understanding (3) #KARE #students (2) #ecosys (2) #nemetics (2) #redcamp13 (2) #teaching (2) Bloom's Taxonomy (2) Control (2) Google (2) Innovative Voices in Education- Engaging Diverse Communities (2) Moore's Law (2) PD (2) Tao Teh Ching (2) adversity (2) alternative teaching (2) audience (2) balance (2) behavior (2) behaviorism (2) best educational practice (2) blogging (2) boys (2) bully (2) bully prevention (2) care (2) challenge (2) change agent (2) character (2) circles (2) classroom management (2) competition (2) connect (2) connecting with kids (2) covid19 (2) development (2) dialog (2) digital technology (2) disagreement (2) edcamp (2) edkare (2) education change (2) effective classrooms (2) etmooc (2) evaluation (2) facts (2) fear (2) feelings (2) formative assessment (2) future (2) goals (2) groupthink (2) growth (2) heuristic (2) ideas (2) independent thinking (2) innovation (2) interdependence (2) journey (2) learning story (2) listening (2) love (2) management (2) mastery (2) mindful (2) morphic resonance (2) multiculturalism (2) new teachers (2) opinions (2) opportunity (2) passion (2) personal learning network (2) phenomenological (2) philosophy (2) project-based learning (2) question (2) resilient (2) resolution (2) responsibility (2) self-esteem (2) self-organized learning environments (2) servant leadership (2) share (2) social-media (2) special education (2) standardized tests (2) struggling schools (2) student support (2) success (2) sympathy (2) teacher growth (2) teacher welfare (2) trauma (2) trust (2) unconditional love (2) unconference (2) university (2) values (2) vision (2) voice (2) words (2) "Art of Possibility" (1) #LCU (1) #bellletstalk (1) #ccunesco2014 (1) #covid19 (1) #humanKIND (1) #learning (1) #positive childhood experiences (1) #printernet (1) #rip (1) #schoolleaders (1) #speakchat (1) #teacher (1) #tg2chat (1) #toughloveforx #michaeljosefowicz (1) 40 Developmental Assets (1) ATLE 2010 (1) Africa (1) Black Swan (1) Brokenleg (1) Calgary Science School (1) Circle of Courage (1) Curate (1) Daniel Durant (1) Dry Island Buffalo Jump (1) FBA (1) Fouth Way (1) Geoffrey Canada (1) Grow Boys (1) Howard Gardner (1) Impact (1) Instructional leadership (1) John Dewey (1) Kathryn Schultz (1) Lao Tzu (1) MIT (1) Michael Josefowicz (1) Nunavut (1) Occam;s |Razor (1) PBL (1) PLN (1) Phoebe Prince (1) Piaget (1) Red Deer (1) SBL (1) SOLE (1) Search Institute (1) Second Way (1) Shankardass (1) TED (1) Vygotsky (1) Wangler (1) ableism (1) aboriginal (1) accountability (1) achievement (1) actions (1) anger (1) answer (1) applied behavior (1) applied research (1) apprenticeship (1) aptitude (1) aquaintances (1) at risk (1) athletics (1) authentic (1) autonomy (1) badges (1) being wrong (1) believing (1) benchmark (1) blended learning (1) blog (1) borders (1) brain research (1) budget (1) business (1) cdnedchat (1) chaos (1) character education (1) charity (1) child (1) child-development (1) clarity (1) collaborate (1) communciation (1) communicate (1) conference (1) confidence (1) conflict (1) consciousness (1) conversation (1) cooperation (1) coordinated children's services (1) counselling (1) critical thinking (1) curiosity (1) curriculum (1) democracy (1) destiny (1) developmental (1) differentiated learning (1) differentiation (1) digital citizen (1) digital immigrant (1) diigo (1) dissonance (1) dyslexia (1) early learning (1) education innovation (1) effort (1) emotions (1) enabling (1) endogenous (1) engaged (1) engagement (1) equity (1) ethics (1) excellence (1) existentialism (1) fail (1) faith (1) family (1) fate (1) fatherhood (1) feedback (1) feminine (1) finding voice (1) focus (1) forgiveness (1) friends (1) gender differences (1) gender identity (1) global education (1) goal setting (1) governing body (1) grandfather (1) happiness (1) happy (1) hard work (1) hardware (1) healing (1) healthy (1) high school (1) higher education (1) homework (1) honesty (1) hop (1) humankind (1) humility (1) iconoclastic (1) ideology (1) imagery (1) imagination (1) improbable (1) inclusive (1) inclusive education (1) indigenous knowledge (1) inspiration (1) instinctual (1) interdependent (1) internalize (1) internship (1) interpersonal (1) intuitive (1) judgement (1) knowledge (1) lacrosse (1) leading (1) leaps of faith (1) learning circle (1) learning disabilities (1) learning disorders (1) learning from place (1) learning goals (1) learning spaces (1) learning styles (1) learning tools (1) lecture (1) library (1) lifelong-learning (1) limits (1) literacy (1) lobby (1) manhood (1) masculine (1) masculinity (1) math (1) medicine wheel (1) men (1) micro-blogging (1) mindfullness (1) mission (1) mistakes (1) morals (1) motivation (1) navigate (1) negative reinforcement (1) network (1) networking (1) new year resolution (1) objectify (1) objective (1) open education (1) open-source (1) operant conditioning (1) outcomes (1) overcome (1) pandemic (1) partisan (1) pass (1) patience (1) peace (1) polarity (1) positive (1) positive reinforcement (1) positivity (1) positve dissonance (1) postmodern (1) poverty (1) power point (1) practice (1) pride (1) private logic (1) productivity (1) professional organization (1) progression (1) questioning. Socrates (1) rally (1) rationalization (1) rdcrd (1) rdpsd (1) re-frame (1) re-tool (1) reality (1) receive (1) reclaim (1) redcamp15 (1) relative (1) relativism (1) relevance (1) research (1) resourcefulness (1) rest (1) revolution (1) ritual (1) routine (1) scholar (1) scholarship (1) sciences (1) scrutiny (1) self-deception (1) self-determination (1) self-help (1) significance (1) silence (1) simple (1) sincerity (1) skate park (1) skateboard (1) smile (1) socialize (1) society (1) software (1) solution-focused (1) speaking (1) sport (1) standards-based learning (1) stories (1) story (1) strangers (1) strengths (1) stress (1) student engagement (1) student evaluation (1) sustainability (1) synergy (1) taking risk (1) talking (1) tangibility (1) targets (1) teacher evaluation (1) teaching. learning (1) textbooks (1) therapy (1) thinking skills (1) thought (1) thoughts (1) trans-species (1) transference (1) tribes (1) unconditioned response (1) unconditioned stimulus (1) universal (1) urban gardening (1) urban schools (1) victim (1) visceral (1) wellness (1) wisdom (1) work (1) work week (1) worksheets (1) writing (1)