Dear Flickr, It’s all your fault. I didn’t grow up taking pictures. One brother kept a brownie strapped around his neck on our trips, snapping away at who knew what (I don’t remember his photos or if he ever shared them, but I do remember his flash going off in my face…); my mother had [...]
Filed under: community, creativity, Emergence, Image Work, visual art | Tagged: 365Group, FLickr, photos, visuals | 12 Comments »
I taught my last class at Middlebury College in May, six months ago almost to the day, packed up my office, said goodbye and left. What a gift, I thought: to be 51 and launched on an adventure to explore learning and communities outside the safe, constricting walls of higher education. I escaped. But, to [...]
Filed under: community, creativity, Emergence, Leaving School, Local community | Tagged: CCDE, community, relfections | 13 Comments »
One of the greatest gifts I’ve received from leaving the Academy is a clearer perspective on what matters. As layer after layer of those years slip from my shoulders, I can see, breathe, think more fully than I have in a long time. I often feel delighted by the promise of what is possible. And [...]
Filed under: Emergence, Ethics, family, Image Work, Leaving School, politics, Questioning, Uncategorized | Tagged: cancer, land, place, politics, Walking | 1 Comment »
Time moves inexorably towards November. An enormous flock of robins clusters in the near copse, resting and feeding; the yearling deer have separated from their mothers and are hanging about together as hunting season approaches. The turkeys gorge on wild apples. What leaves remain, deep gold or rust, rustle noisily, catch and hold the clear [...]
Filed under: community, creativity, Discoveries in the Blogging World, Emergence, politics, Questioning, transitions | Tagged: blogging, fall, future, gardening, reflection, students | 9 Comments »
Three times this past month I have traveled back to school all while steadily journeying far far from that world. What a strange feeling to have so much I want to say and explore with people still on the inside while rejecting the structures of formal education. My closest colleagues, even in the Centers for [...]
Filed under: Emergence, Leaving School, Questioning, Teaching and Learning, transitions | Tagged: learning, talks, ubc | 7 Comments »
I am lucky to live in a place as beautiful as this–from my door every day I walk for miles across the farmlands. An 18-mile loop trail crosses our neighbor’s land, but mostly I prefer to range pathless with dog and camera across fields and scrublands. And without the burden of frustration welling up from [...]
Filed under: CCDL, community, Emergence, Ethics, Leaving School, Local community, Projects, Questioning, transitions | Tagged: CCDE, changes, community-based learning, cusps, equinox, Local community, open education | 11 Comments »
Dean Shareski’s post reflecting on his experience with the 366 Photo Project and Alan Levine’s comment back to him about using metaphor on/in both image and writing have me thinking again about the relationship between image and text in my blogging and more actively creative explorations. Like Dean, I’ve written numerous times about the power [...]
Filed under: creativity, Emergence, Image Work, visual art | Tagged: blogging, creativity, discoveries, photos, writing | 11 Comments »
Be forewarned, this post is more of a personal reflective narrative about where I find myself than an exploration of ideas and practices of our times, so if you don’t like that sort of thing, go ahead, bow out now. My blog, morphing into an open laboratory, will include some messier-than-in-the-past posts about my doubts, [...]
Filed under: CCDL, creativity, Emergence, Leaving School, Questioning, transitions | Tagged: hybrid_learning, teachers, transitions | 12 Comments »
“…for most [people], the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school.” (Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, 1970 p.xix) I’m an unabashed generalist. A near novice in any field. Now that I’ve left my teaching position, I’m no longer qualified for it–I couldn’t even apply, wouldn’t make the interview round. No joke. A [...]
Filed under: CCDL, community, creativity, Emergence, Leaving School, Local community, Projects, Questioning, Teaching and Learning, transitions | Tagged: CCDL, community, education, hybrid_learning, learning, school, unschoolm deschool | 15 Comments »
“Imagination, more than any other capacity, breaks through ‘the inertia of habit.’” (Maxine Greene, Releasing the Imagination, p.2 quoting John Dewey) “The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.” Pablo Picasso “I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.” Flannery O’Connor A few years after college–after [...]
Filed under: Emergence, Questioning, Teaching and Learning, visual art | Tagged: art, creativity, imagination, Jenny Holzer, learning, MASS MoCA, museums | 5 Comments »
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