So my last few blogs have been HEAVY! Impeachment, troubling times ahead for higher ed, and the brain’s propensity to focus on the negative instead of the positive are pretty weighty topics! So, as we prepare for that glorious day of stuffing ourselves silly, let me honor the tradition I have adhered to for two decades and make sure this blog is one of thankfulness.
Whether you wait to read this on Thanksgiving or do so in preparation for the food coma that you know is coming, hopefully this helps warm the cockles of your heart just a bit during this festive season. (By the way – what is a cockle exactly? My whole life, I’ve never known what that meant…)
One of my favorite things about this blog is the interaction. I know, I know….some of you may be thinking that there are no comments allowed here. In this day and age of anger and anonymous vitriol, there is a reason that very few bloggers still allow commenting. Just spend a little time going through the Twitter feed of anyone who posts anything even remotely political and you’ll understand my point.
I know it’s twisted, but posting this picture has also become a Thanksgiving tradition for me….
But it does not stop some of you from sending in emails or connecting with me on other platforms. (jeffb@iceinstitute.org or @bordenj or https://www.linkedin.com/in/prospeaker/…Does it drive anyone else nuts that LinkedIn forces you to communicate only on their system???) And those of you who do contact me with thoughts or ideas or suggestions always challenge, surprise, and interest me a lot.
(In fact, the one anonymous email I did receive, which was horrifically vile and angry, was a bit of a badge of honor for me. They say if you aren’t making someone mad, you aren’t really providing an opinion…)
But it’s those of you who contact me that I’d like to thank here. In fact, I’d like to give you a bit of a platform to show you that your thoughts and words really do stick with me. I save all of the emails and even reread some from time to time. So as my way of showing that I’m thankful for you, here are some interesting considerations:
Frank from Iowa has communicated with me several times. In fact, we have been on again / off again about setting up a Regional Workshop at his institution regarding “best” teaching practices. But Frank always has insights and thoughts that suggest he is a really intentional educator. In fact, one email conversation asked how to create a really poignant, engaging experience for online students, when he stated, “I had decent experience in my recent certified online instructor training, but I feel like I learned more in the discussions with classmates than I did from the instructors. My main takeaway is that I could do a much better job creating teacher training courses than they did and I am seriously giving that some thought.“ Frank is also the guy who loves to talk about what engagement “looks like” and varied ways to differentiate instruction and assessment. All good stuff I love to talk about!
Ellen, also from Iowa, took me to task a bit. When I nonchalantly expressed frustration that faculty have so little training as teachers, she reminded me that there is a whole cadre of faculty who TEACH education out there. Those Ed professors (of which I consider myself one) often have had K-12 pedagogical coursework which they bring to the table once they become faculty in higher ed. Some of these instructors have had dozens of hours of education instruction, in addition to assessment of their own teaching and often assessment of others. So, as I was insisting that peer review in higher ed can often be the blind leading the blind, she was quick to correct me to suggest that a healthy portion of professors do know the brain science, the andragogy, the mindset training, and more. Fair point Ellen!
Geoff from Missouri and I are actually old friends. So his emails are more pithy than looking to go deep. In fact, just a few months ago I blogged about how he was a good follow when he reached out to me, thanking me for the professional relationship we had built over several years. But his words also shape my thinking in many ways. One of my favorite quotes from Geoff, “…how much can you possibly learn about someone in a 30-minute interview? Especially when their whole job is to tell you what you want to hear and your job is to ask questions in such a way that they know exactly what you want to hear?” Geoff is passionate about outcomes, evidence, portfolios, and a lot of other “heady” things that can plague parts of higher ed.
Rob from Pennsylvania is another colleague turned friend over the years, but his comments always make me stop and think. When reacting to a call to action about transformation, Rob had this to say: “Every day I accept what is just so logically wrong in education. I see it with my own children daily. And I actually promote its continuance through my work. But to your point, nothing’s going to change if we wait around. It just has to be done and then sold back to education. You can’t argue with something that is proven successful, sustainable, and scalable.” So, as we talk about what it will take to create a school (K-20) system that actually helps students learn, think, and prosper, it makes me glad to have such a big thinker on my speed dial. (Rob has also recommended a handful of books over the years, perhaps the greatest read being, “The End of Average” by Todd Rose. I can’t thank you enough for that one!)
Judy from North Carolina does not write in every week or even every month, but when she does, I immediately click on the message because I can’t wait to see what she has to say. Judy was the first person to encourage me to read through the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Road to the Provost” series, helped in part by some research McKinsey did on the subject. In it, Judy paraphrases, “Higher Ed’s lack of outside the box thinking and nepitistic nature has not served us well. The old guard of people who were raised to think like a Chair, then a Dean, then an Associate Vice President, and then a Provost, yet never thought to think like a CEO, Entrepreneur, or Project Manager, often do more damage than good. At our university’s most recent search for a Provost, we actually looked to have as many non-Academic administrators in our interviews as Academic. The result – we found a Provost who has taken us out of the gloom and doom of layoff talks into our first year of growth in more than a decade. He came from industry (textbook publishing) and he has made a world of difference.” Judy went on to suggest that I throw my hat in the Provost ring somewhere. She said, “As a coach of academic leaders, you should use your vast knowledge of the university context mixed with your sampling of work in other streams and use it to help a school thrive!” Thank you Judy. If only your great attitude was shared by most traditional institution search committees!
Finally, I wanted to end with Kurt from Austria. Kurt heard me speak at Online Educa Berlin many years ago and just looked me up one day, to find the Institute’s website. In addition to asking me to come back to Europe to speak (happy to Kurt!), he reacted strongly to my post about Epstein’s book, “Range.” He said, “My experience is that students do not know the general NOR the specialized. The way we teach may seem and feel like specialization, but in reality it is just an intermingling of abstract ideas absent from process or consequence. So I disagree that we should stop specializing for our students. The real point is that we should start teaching something – anything that actually sticks, whether specialized or generalized!” Kurt, we may actually be arguing in agreement. 🙂
So, to you all, and to the more than two dozen other people who have taken the time to react to a blog post over the last year, thank you. The debate, conversation, and ongoing generation of ideas matters. So I appreciate (very much) that you are willing to use your energy and resources to do so. Education benefits from your thoughts and insights, as well as your willingness to keep the dialogue going.
Oh…one last thank you, respective of this blog. I can’t thank Heather enough for reading through these words every, single week and giving feedback, copy edits, and more. You’re keen eye for my misplaced commas and dangling participles is a blessing to me. So thanks.
Good luck and good learning.
(Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving one and all….)