Category Archives: change

What’ll Be Different?

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When my brother- and sister-in-law were expecting their first child, people kept telling them, “you have no idea how your life is going to change once this baby is born.”  After several months of hearing this unsolicited advice, my brother-in-law wisely began to respond, “I hope so.  If we have the baby and nothing changes, I’ll be disappointed.”

That story, and the fact that today is commencement for this year’s class of MIT Sloan Fellows, has got me thinking.  Next year at this time, how will I be different?  Like my brother-in-law, I’ll be disappointed if I earn the degree and engage in the experience, and I don’t change at all.

The question is, how will I change?  What’ll be different about how I think, about how I problem-solve, about how I approach my life and the world?

I’m feeling homesick for New York City today, so I’m wondering how I’m going to feel about Boston after a year.  I’m also wondering about what I’ll be thinking about the fields of teaching, learning, education, schools, and higher education, to name a few.

Someone who spoke to our group yesterday said that this year is a gift.  I agree.  It’s an amazing gift we’re giving to ourselves.  We’ve uprooted our lives, put our trust in an experience we’ll both participate in and create, and we’ve put previously-crafted identities on hold for a year or longer.

One year from today, when I graduate from the program, how will I be different?  Equally important, how will I have allowed myself to be open to all the experiences I have the opportunity to participate in this year?  What choices will I make?  How open can I allow my mind to be?

Here’s to a fearless year!

 

Boston Beginnings

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The Learning Year . . . that’s what I’m thinking of calling it.

A new city.  A new “job” (I’ll be an MIT Sloan Fellow this year; MBA as the goal).  A new commute (20 min. door to door by bike; plan to get faster as the year goes on and the weather gets colder).  A new perspective (lots to learn; lots I won’t know).

I guess I could have taken up a new hobby.  Kept promising myself I’d learn to speak Spanish.  I’d get back to my yoga classes.  I’d study art history.  In the back of my mind, though, I knew I had something I needed to do first.  I needed to get an MBA.  I can’t explain it.  I can’t even tell you exactly what I’ll do with it.

All I know is that I am eager to learn how to ask a new set of questions.  I feel like I keep asking the same ones.  Like I’m hitting the rewind button on my approaches and mindsets.

Mindsets . . . yep . . . can’t stray far from my dissertation focus . . . Jack Mezirow and his theory of transformative learning.  One of my favorite things.  Super scary, but oh so fascinating.  Jar yourself enough to allow yourself to see the frameworks you’re using and the limitations of them.

Doing this program is going to help me do that.  I am so going to be jarred – that’s a given.  I’m also going to be jarred by the experiences of those around me – people from all over the world.

Doing all the pre-reading is already shaking me up – so many things I never knew about Wal-Mart, about the factors that influence how businesses are built, how they grow, and how they die.  Incredible.  Can’t explain why I’m so wound up about these ideas right now, but I definitely am.

Woo-hoo I can’t wait to get started!  When’s the last time I said that or felt that way?  It’s been a while.  Bring it on!

When’s the last time you felt that way – really excited about something you were learning or about to learn?

Change

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Our speakers this morning talked a lot about change.  I liked this quote from our program director, Stephen Sacca: “To effect change, you must be willing to change.”  I looked around me at my fellow classmates and soon-to-be cohort members and thought about the courage we all have to be uprooting our lives for 13 months, starting this June.  At my table alone this morning, I sat next to business people and engineers from Brazil, Saudi Arabia, China, and Michigan (a former White House Fellow).  It was a humbling experience.

Tools for (Re)construction

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I’ve been following the exchange between Will Richardson and those who’ve commented on his recent blog post, A Parent 2.0′s Back to School Dilemma.  Will’s astute assessment of the current state of schools and schooling has fired up many of his readers and rightly so.

As a parent or guardian, what do you do when your expectations for schooling are at odds with the reality of the experience for your child?

My initial reaction, and it may be naive, is to take advantage of social networking tools to drive the changes we seek.  If public schools are everyone’s schools, then why not refashion them using the tools we value?  The world of politics, of business, of marketing, and of fundraising and development are taking full advantage of the power of these tools.  Why shouldn’t educators, families, parents and guardians be doing the same?

Why can’t we pool our local, regional, national, and global learning resources to transform schooling?  At the least, what about organizing a day or week of “We’re Keeping our Kids Home Today” to communicate our commitment to the changes we seek?  At the most, why not use these tools to create the collective learning spaces (virtual and real) that we want for our young people?

We want our schools to change.  We are our schools.  We fund them, and we populate them.  We must enact the changes we seek.

Freire and Illich say it much better than I ever could . . .