ASKING QUESTIONS, EXPLORING OPTIONS, CHANGING THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION.

Leadership

Lessons from Kony 2012.

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Bridging the Distance between Criticism and Activism

As we all watched the groundswell and subsequent backlash of the Kony 2012 campaign, I could not help but get wrapped up in the momentum.  As one who promotes student service and social action, I was overwhelmed by the attention garnered by a movement fueled in large portion by youth.

I have had more than moderate exposure to the work of Invisible Children and have seen the organization’s marked ability to empower young people.  As I watched the video, I perceived a bit of what critics would begin to highlight in coming days.  I want to briefly share my opinion, not because it matters, but because it helps contextualize my comments.

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Leadership

Gardening With a Sense of Urgency: Innovative Leadership in a Revolutionary Age.

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I just finished Joshua Cooper Ramo’s alarmingly insightful bestseller, The Age of the Unthinkable.  Within his text, Ramo artfully unravels a large portion of our ideology and methodology in the arenas of foreign affairs and global economics.  As an educator and advocate, I am often prone to disdainfully approach this sort of heady discourse as platitudinous—luxurious dialogue afforded those intellectuals who have not muddied their boots in the developing world—great ideas with little impact other than to generate consulting opportunities for their exponents.  Despite my cynical starting point, the book proved to be a sincerely sobering work and without question, a watershed text for those seeking to exact sustainable impact in a radically shifting world.

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School House

Kryptonite and Social Action.

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Quest Early College High School. Senior Exhibition Project: Journal Entry # 2

Thursday, January 26, 2012.

This Thursday was one of the rare days of school that I felt I learned something profound and meaningful. Kap McWhorter stood before my class and requested each student draw a four scene children’s book about a social action project we might want to do in the future. After my class finished our drawings of hungry villages being given food and orphans being given homes, we were asked to reflect.

“Who is the hero in your story?” Mr. McWhorter wanted to know.

In our stories, the answer was clear. Most of my classmates and I had drawn ourselves as the heroes of our stories. We had envisioned ourselves as beacons of light bringing books to impoverished communities and “catalysts of justice” (to quote a classmate of mine) who brought disaster relief to Japan. We had drawn ourselves, as Mr. McWhorter pointed out, as supermen.

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Ed News

Occupy Education: Good Luck Finding a Room.

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One cannot attempt to stay abreast of current issues without colliding with the most recent field report from a public park or city square.  The Occupy movement has become a significant part of the American discourse.  Its constituents proffer a barrage of valid observations on a breadth of inequities in American society, but a cogent set of grievances or demands have yet to be articulated. 

Douglas Rushkoff of CNN tries to assuage a bit of the angst many experience with regard to a lack of consensus within the movement by explaining, “We are witnessing America’s first true Internet-era movement, which doesn’t take its cue from a charismatic leader, express itself in bumper-sticker length goals, and understand itself as having a particular endpoint…This is not a movement with a traditional narrative arc.  As a product of the decentralized networked-era culture, it is less about victory than sustainability.  It is not about one-pointedness, but inclusion and groping toward consensus.  It is not a book; it is like the internet.”  Though there might not be a central message, a few recurring themes seem consistent with regard to education.

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Making a Difference

Caring is Not Enough. Empathy as an Hors d’oeuvre to Social Action.

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As a teacher of Social Action and director of Service Learning, I find myself often charged with “getting kids to care.”  Isn’t this the constant predicament of most educators?

In truth, I have developed a whole career around crafting curriculum, activities, professional development seminars, and local and global service opportunities to answer this charge.  Though I have failed with some frequency, I am proud of this work; creating a culture of compassion within a system of competition has been and continues to be a pseudo-subversive revolution.

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