Siblings

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Just imagine the joy of getting up everyday to just imagine.                                   
-cary


On December 14th, my younger brother, Cary, passed away.  This is a tiny slice of his story and what I learned from Cary, his wife, Glenda,  daughter, Kristin, my brother, Bill, and his wife, Emmy, and the wonderful community that surrounded him as he left us. 

The quote above is from Cary's website. He was a designer and architect. He is one major reason why downtown Kansas City has come back from oblivion.  He fought for years to have the community re-envision the downtown as a vibrant community full of life and vitality, not only during the day, but at night as well.  He has a number of signature buildings in the city that helped to turn his dream into reality.  During our Remembering Cary ceremony, I learned just how much he had contributed to his dream. 

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Wayfinding

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Over the past several months, we—Gail and Todd, mother and son, partners in business, have been developing a long essay on what we call wayfinding. We have been working together as collaborative process designers and facilitators for nearly twenty years.  In this time, we have jointly designed and facilitated more conferences, workshops, sessions, happenings and other forms of convening than we can count.  While we have coauthored numerous essays, white papers and letters, this may be our most substantive written collaboration to date.

As we continue to iterate, refine, illustrate and hone our writing into a form that can be independently published, we have decided to post the paper as a series of journals, welcoming your thoughts and comments to help us move and shape our ideas going forward.

On to Wayfinding

... Rise WITH the Occasion

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Everyday our children spread their dreams beneath our feet.  (paraphrased from Sir Ken Robinson's TedTalk, referring to a poem by William Yeats.)

"A three year old is not half a six year old."  Both of these comments are from Sir Ken Robinson's 1010 Ted Talk.  Eighteen minutes and he can say so much.  This is definitely a talk worth watching.  I claim that we (most of us) understand what Sir Ken is saying. People from all economic sectors, races, cultures, understand his words and concepts.

How is it then that we are so slow to embrace the unknown? As Sir Ken emphasizes as he quotes Abraham Lincoln:  "we must rise with the occasion, not to it." That implies that we are all in this together. We are going into the unknown with each other, supporting each other, having the resources to seek together.  This is what a revolution is all about.  Let's get back in touch with real, vital, life-giving education.

Sir Ken Robinson says it all with humor and seriousness.  Let's undergo this revolution together student by student ... dream by dream.  I think it is time for a Slow Education movement.