I’ve got lists everywhere; scraps of paper, post-its, an office whiteboard, the legal pad that slowly becomes an illegible doodle…
It’s all fine and well; thoughts jotted in the moment lead to other thoughts. Some bits and pieces get lost – others move forward into tangible form. I often laugh when I see a scribbled thought some months after writing it; sometimes I can’t recapture the thread I was slowly (haphazardly) weaving.
A thought isn’t so much the stick moving down the stream; grab hold or lose it forever. It’s more akin to the drop of water; always in movement, a times circling through eddies, stagnating as it loses contact with the current – yet in its eventual evaporation taking a new course, perhaps settling into another stream, ocean, glass of water…but not settling for long.
So what about a clean set of questions to anchor my thinking in 2015/16? Ten guiding thoughts for each hour, day, week? In those moments I am sure to be lost in the whirl of daily tasks – the spinning, disorienting eddy (Busy asserting its frenzied heft) – I would like a simple arrangement of ideas to reach for. Ideas that are less calm and gentle as they are provocatory – thoughts that push us out of our unconscious sprint, that bump up against Busy with their own gravity.
Being a good educator in 2015/16 (and beyond) doesn’t mean working ourselves to the bone (though we know that will happen); it means stepping away from the familiar frenzy and reorienting ourselves to new possibilities. It means welcoming uncertainty (questions) as a refreshing source of nourishment.
In 2015/16, quieting the noise around (and within) us is the real work. Stepping away from our fixed roles and perspectives will be our most significant disruption and noteworthy innovation.
Reblogged this on technolandy: site of Ian Landy.