George and Joel talk about their work with students making student-directed documentaries on self-chosen topics. Scott Shelhart also joins to ask questions from an elementary school teacher’s perspective and to show us a couple of videos made by George's middle school students and Joel's high school students.
A video by George Mayo's students, describing a current project - in the podcast at 21:21
Monika Hardy has a few reflections toward the end of this webcast as well. And if that's not enough, we are also joined by Brian Paccione who will be working with Paul Allison in April on a documentary video project to add to the education videos in the MyBlockNYC project http://myblocknyc.com/#/video/id/424
Brian created this Web site and project with friends and he currently serves as the education director for MyBlockNYC.
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Recently, Paul started asking his students to reflect on their work, dreams, thoughts, and learning on Youth Voices: http://youthvoices.net/channel/31618
Monika and Paul are joined in this conversation by a co-conspirator with Monika and a researcher of Detox James Folkestad, from Colorado State University.
We also get the perspective of youths from two of Paul's high school students Evelyn Salazar and (on the phone) Shamar Smith. In addition there are valuable insights from 7th Grader Kelsey Shelhart and her father Scott Shelhart as well as Fred Mindlin.
After listening to this podcast, you might be inspired to try something similar in your classroom or perhaps your students are already doing this kind of reflection on who they are, what they are doing, what they dream could happen, what they are noticing, and what connections they are making.
Either way, whether you are starting something new or continuing a valuable process in your classroom, please let us know about it. We'd love to hear if "detox" is spreading virally or "scaling across trans-locally" to use some of the language that Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze have given us in their book Walk Our Walk On:
Taking things to scale doesn’t happen vertically through one-size-fits-all replication strategies... experiments move horizontally, scaling across villages and nations, trans-locally, as many diverse people learn from their discoveries and are inspired to try their own.
( http://www.walkoutwalkon.net/mexico )
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In 2001, Deborah Frieze walked out of her career as an executive in the high-tech industry. She was disillusioned by a business culture that emphasized short-term results, looked upon growth as an end rather than a means, and cared more about compliance than community. A year later, she met Meg Wheatley and a community of pioneering leaders who, like her, were walking out of organizations and systems that were failing to contribute to the common good. These were friends and colleagues of The Berkana Institute. She currently lives in Boston but can more often be found visiting friends and colleagues around the world who are creating healthy and resilient communities.
In addition to getting to know each other better, on this episode, we also brainstorm possible questions for Deborah Frieze's visit on the next episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers.
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Are you a Walk Out? Read these couple of paragraphs from the book and Web site, then come join us on Wednesday, 12.21.11 for a chat room at http://edtechtalk.com/live-ttt and watch the LiveStream.
ALSO - if you would like to join us in the Hangout soon, if you have read the book and would like to get in on the conversation directly, just let us know.
Inside dying systems, Walk Outs who Walk On are those few leaders who refuse to work from the dominant values that permeate the bureaucracy, such things as speed, greed, fear and aggression. They use their formal leadership to champion values and practices that respect people, that rely on people’s inherent motivation, creativity and caring to get quality work done. These leaders consciously create oases or protected areas within the bureaucracy where people can still contribute, protected from the disabling demands of the old system. These leaders are treasures. They’re dedicated, thoughtful revolutionaries who work hard to give birth to the new in very difficult circumstances.
And then there are those who leave the system entirely, eager to be free of all constraints to experiment with the future. You’ll read their stories in the next pages. But even though they might appear to have more freedom than those still inside, they encounter many challenges that restrict their actions. Old habits and ways of thinking constantly rear up on their path. It’s easy to get yanked backwards, or to doubt that this is the right direction. It takes vigilance to notice when these old ways of thinking block the path ahead.
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