Background
Tomorrow Makers, founded in 2002, is the offspring of my efforts to understand learning and teaching. What motivates, inspires and opens opportunities for life-long learning? My ideas have continued to mature throughout my 50 years of active exploration.
My own inspiration came from teaching young children. None of my college years in education prepared me for what I learned in my first years of teaching (1961 - 1971). I believe that if I had followed what my college courses had offered, I would have become a burned-out, failed teacher within a few short years. Instead, I felt compelled to listen and respond to my students' questions and desires about learning and life. My young students (7 and 8 yr old) were incredible problem solvers given open opportunities. They were quite capable of learning with each other and solving complex problems. They were courageous in their questions and follow-through. After a few years of teaching in a public school, I studied Montessori and taught both preschool and primary Montessori classes. Still, it seemed to me, students were underperforming what they were really capable of doing. A bigger question forming for me though, was “What about teachers?” Are adults still capable of learning as the young mind does? Do we level off or even lose our creativity?
I founded The Learning Exchange with Mary Watkins in 1972 to help teachers and community members design and co-create courses and ways of learning and teaching that could become part of a school's curriculum. Everything we offered was heavily "learn by doing" and was novel yet exciting to adults as well as kids. Courses such as Economics in Action; The Unseen City; Art in Education; Cardboard Carpentry and a number of other courses. Sure enough, teachers, business leaders, scientists, artists, educators from pre-school through college, and parents were ready to learn with and from each other. Kansas City communities bonded together to create unique opportunities, not only for students and teachers but for the entire community. Twenty-two school districts, four private schools, three universities, and thousands of citizens were engaged. The beauty of this was our naivety. We ignored the naysayers, those who told us our ideas would never work. The Exchange lived for 25 years, well beyond my seven-year stint. Today, there are a number of offspring, each taking a different part.
One of the best aspects of the Learning Exchange is that all the children of our team were welcomed and often had important parts to play. Today when I think of the Learning Exchange, I think of my sons, young Jeff and Todd, finding their way forward with me.
In 1980, I with my husband and partner, Matt Taylor, founded MG Taylor Corporation to help people learn how to solve complex problems through learning new ways of working together. From our perspective in the mid 70's people were relatively dormant with their creativity. Most seemed somewhat helpless to know how to make change and create better worlds. Collaboration was practically unheard of. Project-based learning was an anomaly. As adults, most thought they were through learning. Go to college, get a job, get married, and live happily ever after. This apathy was occurring in the midst of exponential rates in the change of almost everything. Although no one could explain our process or method to others, it attracted people of all ages, from many disciplines. Our way of working set a benchmark for better ways to learn across diverse boundaries and circumstances, communicate, and solve complex problems. Today the process is world wide with many 100’s of practitioners and thousands of organizations and communities having benefited.
Here again, Jeff and Todd, were often a part of the process. Jeff when a young teen ager, assembled our workbooks for a course we were teaching. This was early on computers, before the integration of processes, before the internet. He also participated in workshops and partook in many dinner conversations around our evolving content.
After completing his undergraduate degree followed by six months teaching English in what was then Czechoslovakia, Todd joined MG Taylor’s Management Center in Orlando, Florida. As a part of our core team for over a decade, he was able to learn and serve in a wide range capacities of the system, and to work with business, government and non-profit clients and partners.
Tomorrow Makers, Inc., a non-profit network was founded in 2001 to take my learnings into teaching and facilitating communities to learn better more collaborative ways of working. More and more communities are asking questions regarding working with diversity, with complex problems, and with learning new ways of working. Todd Johnston was my partner for a few short years as we created the foundation for Tomorrow Makers. While we have been active in our work and mentoring, we have also been aware that there is more Tomorrow Makers can do.
Here again, Todd has made innumerable contributions to Tomorrow Makers, moving in and out of key roles in operations and delivery.
Today
My interest and intent with Tomorrow Makers is to create a community where those creating “tomorrow by design, not default” can come to find each other, combine ideas, co-create workshop offerings, access broad, deep bodies of knowledge and forge paths leading to a more equitable world. I want to bring my knowledge about simple rules from the classroom; community and workshop design developed with the Learning Exchange; and the process/method and deep understandings of complexity sciences which are at the core of the MG Taylor body of knowledge.
Once again, It is with great pleasure that Todd is working closely with me. Our conversations enrich us both as we seek where and how to contribute our values and ideas in this great migration from one paradigm to the new, still emerging one.
We believe, more now than ever, it is time for big dreams, for encompassing dreams large enough where many can find ways to contribute, to join with others, to step out and up to the challenges of this time of liminality. We’re hoping many will join with us as we leap the abyss, all together. —Gail, October 2023