We’ll make it together, if we work as a team!

[Kevin]

Gloom and doom are the most dangerous things facing education right now. With all of the challenges and the slaughtering of sacred cows left and right, I’m convinced that the only real sacred bovine is our ability to remain positive and look for solutions.

I liken it to raft-mates facing seriously challenging rapids and my confidence in my colleagues is all I have to hold onto in uncertain waters. I want to say grab an oar my friends because at this point the rapids are no longer an optional adventure.

We’ll get through this if we neither fall out of the boat nor push others but EVERYONE must grab an oar. With leadership at the helm we can make it. We may paddle with new tools that look nothing like oars. We may navigate with new and strange compasses. People may row who haven’t rowed in years and yet we must all do what is necessary to shoot the rapids and come out into calm waters.

What we cannot forget is that we have kids in the raft and they are watching us to see how we will handle this situation and they are taking notes and either drawing confidence from our examples or losing it.
I’m seeing people display an amazing willingness to embrace new thinking and new solutions like never before and I know that if we stick together and bring out the best in each other, we will triumph over the current adversity.

Lastly I’ll say that we must watch carefully the things we throw from the boat in these times. Take the time to ascertain what is dead weight and what is essential for success. Know the difference between what is impeding us and what will soon be crucial, so that when we finally reach dry land, we will have what we need to survive and thrive.

[Laura Gibbs]

Exactly! Another big plus about the virtual PLN: my students can really share their passions online in a way that they cannot really do in the classroom, limited by time and space... and also by a little (or sometimes a LOT) of shyness that the online environment does not provoke in them. I think maybe it is that lack of a continuous positive feedback loop that enervates my colleagues in the classroom sometimes. :-)

[Kevin]

Laura,
That is what I love about PLN's, one doesn't have to wait to people of similar ideas and passions to come along, they are everywhere. We will believe our way out of this crisis!

[Laura Gibbs]

Kevin, I am so in agreement!!! One thing that struck me is the idea that the students are watching us - and our pessimism etc. can be a very bad thing for them indeed. For all that I get frustrated with my students at various times (they are often hasty in their work because they are insanely overextended, they are sometimes irresponsible in their actions, they are prone to take the easy way out if it is offered, etc.), I can never really accuse them of the kind of pessimism and paralysis that seems to afflict many of my colleagues. The students at least are prepared to row the boat, ha ha!!!

So, with my students, I really feel like I can make a difference, and they make a positive difference for me too (I learn new things from them all the time). This is less the case with my official colleagues... which is why I spend a lot of time here at Fireside. I learn more from the experiences and dilemmas of the people I interact with here than any of the nominal colleagues... with whom I seem to not have much in common at all... at my school! Fireside is a very congenial raft to have grabbed hold of in the floodwaters... :-)

[Kevin]

Wow, Skip
You knocked me over! You are a fellow believer and a finder of paths and in these dark times I know that our lights combined with those of our learners can find a bright future. Your words inspire me!

[Skip Zilla]

If many adults are spiritless, security-driven, authority-dependent "captives" to which kids are exposed, how are those kids to learn any way to be other than captive. Thank goodness, my creative friend, a fellow like you comes along and your colleagues and students get to experience "freedom" first hand. Liberators we all can be if we watch how you do it and try liberating learners for ourselves, in our own original ways. Want prophecy? There's a feast of human community, not a disaster of alienated dissolution, ahead. Yours is one of the arks in this time of flood, and a rainbow of new promise for all can already be seen.

Thanks, Kevin, for your leadership and for dreaming a wonderful dream of what can be.