Question 271 of 365: Who will we let change us?

My son has never liked being changed, not even when he was very small. He is absurdly strong and his hips seem to have the superhuman element to them that allows for him to swivel out of all but the tightest grips. He screams and he asks for whomever is not changing him at that moment. He doesn’t care if he hasn’t been wiped yet and he doesn’t mind struggling for ten minutes at a time. This is who he is.

Now that he has shown an incredible interest in potty training, I am finding myself extremely relieved. I cannot wait until I never have to hold him down as I struggle to keep the biodegradable insert in place for his earth friendly diaper of choice. I will not miss the dance that we have to play to get him to just lay down and start the work of changing him. I will not miss the chase or the defiance in his voice when we ask him the status of his diaper.

This process also makes me think about why he never let us change him. It makes me think about his insistence that he be in control of everything that is happening to him. While he has always wanted our help with things that he can’t do, he has always made it known that he is the one in charge, that he is the one orchestrating the whole thing. Seeing as how we have changed hundreds (perhaps thousands) of diapers in his two years of life, he has let us do it. It may have been a struggle, but he has never let himself go unchanged for very long.

Even though the metaphor may be a little gross, I wonder who we are really willing to let change us. With all of the excrement that we come up with in our formative stages of work and collaboration, who are the people that we actually will let wipe it away and give us a fresh start each day? Who are the ones that we struggle with, but inevitably allow to see us at our most vulnerable? And as we are training to be better at what we do, who are those people who will encourage us and give us incentives to keep on doing it the right way?

Those people are the ones that I want to be surrounded by: those mentors that don’t care if we fail? occasionally, those ones that stay with us even though we may struggle against them. They are the ones that see our successes as their successes. They are the ones that cannot wait for us to stop needing them so much and go our own way.

I want my son to outgrow me and our current struggle, just as I would like to outgrow all of those that keep on pushing me to be better at collaborating, communicating and creating the future. I’m sorry for pushing back so much and for all of the crap you have had to put up with. Soon, I will be better. I promise.

Communal living

I never realized just how important community was to me until my wife
and I asked our best family friends to come and live with us while
they are saving up to buy a house.
 
For many years I have written about online communities as being an
essential part of authentic learning. Yet, I have never lived in such
close quarters to another family, and thus did not know how much is
learning by being a part of a close-knit real-life community.
 
Daily I learn what actions by my children and theirs “really mean”. I
now know why personal space has so much value. I know what to expect
from our community and what my community expects of me.
 
The reason for this post is that it has gotten me thinking about our
need for a nurtured real-life community that supports everything we
attempt to change in education. While I would like to think that the
twittersphere is all that I need for support and community, I need the
people that I can look straight in the eye and brainstorm the greatest
learning activity with.
 
I guess I will just state this idea as a challenge to myself: if I am
not cultivating my real community as hard as I am doing so for my
online community, I will never be able to accomplish all of the things
I would like.
 
Or, to put it another way:
 
The number of people you can touch with your work depends upon how you
work with the people you can literally touch. (Although, that sounds a
little creepier than I wanted.)

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I bought a house today!

This post doesn’t have a whole lot to do with educational technology, but I really had to let everyone who might care to know that my family is moving into a new house. It is our absolute dream home.

I have toyed with the idea of putting up the video tour that I did in order to show my parents, but I’m not totally sure that anyone that reads my blog casually really needs that kind of a detailed view of where my children sleep. If you truly would like to have that kind of voyeurism in your life, send me a direct message on Twitter.

For now, though, just know that I am happy with our decision, and that I cant wait to move in.

I believe in burning out.

As much fun as I will have reflecting on CoLearning 2009, I am too burned out to do so tonight. I am too burned out on conversing with anyone but my wife about anything but my two children. And I am glad for this burn out. I am glad that my brain can and does reboot from time to time on matters of educational importance. My wife is glad too.
 
But, tomorrow is another day, and I plan on starting the work for CoLearning 2010 (or even a fall version of the conference, if I am reading the wind right). I encourage you to burn out sometime soon too.
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The power of opening your eyes.

When I look out onto the learning landscape, I see people who are heavily invested. In making sure that students know what they need to, invested in the future, invested in the past, invested in keeping kids in schools, invested in unschooling children. We are invested in so many things, and that is why the landscape is so beautiful.
 
I don’t ever want to live in a place where we only want one thing in education. It would be easier, but so much less fulfilling.
 
Let’s never try to kill the landscape of learning with saying it only has to happen one way. We are all invested. Let’s find a way to make a huge return on all of our investments.
 
(Although I would like to find a way to make it less cliche.)
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