Comments for Finding the Signal

Comment on Telling Our Story: Bright Spotting to Serve as “Two-Minute” Narrative Champions by Samantha

Samantha — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:23:57 +0000

Thanks so much for this, Shelley! I’m learning all the time, and Twitter is still new to me, but connecting with other educators at my own school and around the world has definitely inspired me and my teaching! Highlighting the “bright spots” within our school has helped me connect with members of the community that I might not otherwise interact with. I love being able to “see” what’s happening around the school and learn from the great things my colleagues are doing in their classrooms. I hope others decide to use bright-spotting to inspire their school communities!

Comment on Courage to Abandon the Shore by Lisa López

Lisa López — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:40:57 +0000

Hi Shelley,
I committed to evolving alongside my learners and am no longer able to “teach” in a paradigm that does not actively involve student input as part of the methodology.
Realistically speaking, not everyone is ready to let go of controlling the make-up and order of the equation in the classroom. Holly Chesser’s post “Schools that Harness Chaos” summarizes so well what it’s about; “living at the edge of chaos”.

http://saisnews.com/2013/04/05/schools-that-harness-chaos/

And it truly is not an EASY task. It is teaching into the unknown, which can get dark and overwhelming. It means being extremely dilligent in controlling your thoughts and responses when you are knee-deep in the mess and your past conditioning creeps up to tell you it isn’t working.
It is experimental, which means you don’t know the exact outcome or it isn’t the one you expected, it is messy, which may trigger emotional instability and requires immense creativity, which means you have to trust yourself.
You write: “Unrelenting partners and co-conspirators. This is the best part” and sometimes the hardest part.
Making it even more personal, two days ago I was informed that my colleagues were questioning my methods. Not directly to me, making it difficult to grow in conversation and learn.
It is here where the true unrelentlesness (new word?) lies. One can either choose to become a powerless victim of fear, or heed the call for deep transformational growth, the kind that makes a difference on many wavelengths.
Ah… and even harder feat. I circle back to Emotional Literacy, so important in having the ability, fortitude, vulnerability and resilience needed in dealing with life’s lessons. At the peak of the tower, though, stands faith. Faith in the path you have chosen; because it will unleash the magic that reveals help is really all around you. You must however, be willing to surrender to the process; letting go of the need to control the outcome and the details; there might be a false sense of comfort and security, but where there is fear and control, there’s no growth.

Thanks to your help, I have been able to express, reflect and as a result; learn one more piece of my lesson . Gracias amiga virtual.

Comment on Courage to Abandon the Shore by Impact the world – be unrelenting – light up brains, strengthen teams, unleash imaginations, grapple | Experiments in Learning by Doing

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:18:32 +0000

[...] is funny how ideas connect and collide. Yesterday, Shelley wondered out loud about processes to work on “schooling forward.” I thought all day about her unrelenting [...]

Comment on Courage to Abandon the Shore by Angel Kytle

Angel Kytle — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:57:15 +0000

I love your focus on being unrelenting!!!!!

Comment on Courage to Abandon the Shore by Bo Adams

Bo Adams — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:25:52 +0000

Shelley,

I like your unrelenting urgency, awareness, and partnership. For me, I wonder if it boils down to love. Really. We say we love children, but are we acting like we genuinely and deeply do? If we did, wouldn’t we be personing the ships to leave the shores and explore the seas, if only because we know that our current lands are not aligned with what we know about the brain, about the calling needs of our citizens and disenfranchised members of our world, about the growing fact that school is a lag and not a lead to addressing the needs of our planet and people?

I don’t mean to sound histrionic, but I don’t think we (us folks in school business, in general) are acting from our deepest love for children. Or even for learning. For if we acted just out of our love for learning, we would be curious about what could be on those other shores. And we would be so deeply curious and convicted by hope that we would ignore the edges of the loosely drawn map that read “Thar be dragons there.”

Okay. Back to family vacation and the water park at Great Wolf Lodge for me. Working on my water skills so I can leave that shore behind. And my boys, too!

Comment on Blurring the Lines: Co-Learning to Build Community by Courage to Abandon the Shore

Courage to Abandon the Shore — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 03:17:44 +0000

[...] Unrelenting partners and co-conspirators. This is the best part: Even though it has to be you, it doesn’t have to be you by yourself. In his TED talk “How to Start a Movement,” Derek Sivers shares the power of the “First Follower.” I think I prefer co-leading and co-following, but the power of two (and more) is unparalleled, in my experience, for giving me courage to abandon the shore. Increasingly, those partners are students as well as colleagues. [...]

Comment on Blurring the Lines: Co-Learning to Build Community by Losing sight of the shore a.k.a. challenged and delighted by opportunities to struggle, grow, and act | Experiments in Learning by Doing

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:27:21 +0000

[...] And what if, every day, everyone asked, “Were we better today than yesterday?” And could reflect and respond, with evidence, because we had created meaningful feedback loops — the minute-by-minute kind of assessment for learning that Dylan Wiliam espouses — for all of us, teachers and learners (whichever we happened to be minute-by-minute)? [...]

Comment on The (One Sentence) Story We Want To Tell by Losing sight of the shore a.k.a. challenged and delighted by opportunities to struggle, grow, and act | Experiments in Learning by Doing

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 17:25:22 +0000

[...] of the history of our age, are we writing the story that we want told? Shelley’s post, The (One Sentence) Story We Want To Tell, connects my question to her [...]

Comment on The (One Sentence) Story We Want To Tell by Shelley

Shelley — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 00:09:11 +0000

Yes, the “I” is everyone… following Pink’s model of “third person aspirational past-tense” (how’s that, English teacher?), this would become: “It was where they went to play, create, provoke, listen, empathize, understand, receive, stretch, discover, imagine, and love.”

That’s a legacy worth building!

Comment on The (One Sentence) Story We Want To Tell by Holly Chesser

Holly Chesser — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 16:41:58 +0000

Good point – statements are more like nouns or states of being, and questions are more like verbs or states of becoming. Bo, who commented above, often says, “If school is supposed to prepare kids for life, why isn’t it more like life?”