A Sense of Urgency, A Sense of Agency
Dear Friends,
Thanks to everyone who sent appreciative emails after receiving the first newsletter! These notes were very much appreciated, and a big encouragement to keep this work going. If you find these to be helpful, please share with your friends and colleagues, and encourage them to subscribe!
A sense of urgency, a sense of agency
If you live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area, you know that this is how our skies looked last week, in the middle of the day. It was apocalyptic. As I write this, the air is just starting to become breathable again.
For months, we all have been deprived of gatherings, spontaneous encounters, travel and exploration, sharing our highs and lows, and noticing the feelings of the three-dimensional people on the other side of the screen. The weeks of smoke and heat further isolated us in our own homes and apartments, all while we were trying to keep our classes and school communities running. And then hearing Dr. Anthony Fauci say that life might not approach pre-COVID ‘normalcy’ until late 2021.
It all felt so heavy.
To be sure, there is a lot of hidden grief in our zoom classes and remote meetings that we need to acknowledge. We ourselves are grieving many things, a majority of which are “ambiguous losses,” losses we sustain without closure.
And yet we need to remind ourselves and those around us of our inalienable sense of agency, in the face of the multiple crises we are facing: environmental, public health, political, and social. We may not have the resources to implement our dreams, but we have the human and moral agency to act, to speak up, to notice, and to care. Fundamentally, we have the agency to recall the deepest goals of education — creating a healthy public, raising caring and creative citizens, building resilient communities — even when the short term goals become difficult and our means have to change.
Recently Kara Lawson, the coach of the Duke women’s basketball team, posted a powerful short video talking about the difference between working hard, and being internally motivated to compete: (3 minutes)
I have been thinking about this with respect to our work as educators. We’re all working hard. Hopefully we’re not trying to compete against one another, but I wonder whether we can draw a similar distinction in education: just working hard versus being deeply, internally motivated to bring opportunity to more students? To building healthy relationships with our students and faculty? To wake up with that kind of ambition for the greater good?
One of the speakers from our February “Future of Work / Future of Education” event is an inspiring example of this kind of agency. Dr. Youngmoo Kim runs the ExCITe Center at Drexel University. Check out his 49 minute talk on Civic Engagement for Inclusive Innovation:
See all the talks from our Future of Work & Education playlist, here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLClhmDT3ximXcR0svrulnf4ql9Y3zVVZE
Briefly noted
It’s not too late to join this free online course about teaching students how to sort truth from fake news, from two world-class instructors (Justin Reich of MIT, and Sam Wineburg of Stanford). Details here.
Speaking of Justin Reich, his new book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education was just released yesterday.
The Center for Humane Technology released their new documentary about the harms of social media last week, called The Social Dilemma. It’s unflinching, not at all a cheerful tale. I’ll be interested in hearing your reactions.
Next week:
In the next edition, we’ll look at the future of education with respect to the tools we choose, and how we might encourage our students and teams to build and maintain their own toolboxes.
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