Trust and Community
August 24, 2008 by Intrepidteacher
Some of you may have met Lindsea online or here at the IntrepidClassroom, if you have never heard of her you should know that she is often an active member of our little experiment, and even when she is not actively involved, she is an ardent supported of everything we are trying to do at the IntrepidClassroom.
You can find her at her blog Love and Logic or on her Ning profile. After much contact online, Lindsea and I realized that we would both me in San Francisco this summer, and so we decided to meet. I will not get into the play-by-play of what we did and how it all felt. I will leave that for a future post or maybe Lindsea can pick-up on that. Instead I will paint a very abstract sketch of how it all went down: the two of us met, drove around the city, watched a drum circle near Hippy Hill in Golden Gate park, went shoe shopping, went to an herb store in The Mission, took in the view at Twin Peaks. We blasted music by local Hawaiian bands and Modest Mouse in the car driving through The Castro. We talked about- Adolescence, sustainability, education, music, Hunter S. Thompson, responsibility, hypocrisy, politics, capitalism, apathy and revolutions. I thought about how- I wish my daughter would grow up to be as wise as the young woman by my side, who hours before was reading Kurt Vonnegut. I wondered whether or not I could ever meet her mother and thank her for raising such an amazing young woman. I relished the thought that I have a group of young people who I am cultivating worldwide to aid in the revolution and how that is all I have ever wanted from teaching. I wondered why I didn’t have teachers like me when I was Lindsea’s age. I probably would have avoided a lot of confusion, but then again maybe it is in that confusion that I learned the most important lessons.
It was a good day.
After our meeting, we promised to write blog posts detailing every facet of our meeting, but as it so often happens, we both let life steer us towards other priorities, other projects. That is until last week, when we re-connected and had a chat on Skype. We recorded the hour-long talk and below you will find my first Podcast. Lindsea is also on a Monday deadline to post her Podcast. I am very curious to see what she found important to highlight and how she will view our talk.
Please comment on your impressions of what we had to say. I would love to set up Skype calls with any of you and talk about anything you wish to discuss. I hope that podcasts become a regular part of IntrepidClassroom.
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My notes from listening to the podcast:
Is it different if you are teacher/student in real life rather than meeting & getting to know each other online first?
Masks, revealing self via blogs. Twitter = moments of honesty
More comfortable being honest, unmasked
Art reveals our core.
Real world, open space, vulnerable
How to allieviate fear of online interaction? Express self online: blog, flickr…start slow.
Not all students will embrace blogging: majority consider it just another homework assignment. Need other ways to interact with students.
The best teachers no longer just filling students with information. Help them learn how to express themselves.
Avoid being a Web 2.0 evangelist with students – be subtle, don’t force it on kids. Introduce the tool, some will adopt it (moderate your passion).
What constitutes a “safe” risk? School doesn’t get you ready for the real world. Is school just a place to prepare for the next stage or a place to become “human”. What’s the purpose of schooling? Learn about yourself and the world. Learning how to take in and process info, interact with other people. Experience self-directed learning.
*I’ve followed your blog and Lindsea’s with great interest. I’m leaving my notes on your conversation here so that I can think more about some of the many excellent points you’ve made. Some day I hope to meet each of you in real life, but for now, this will do.