Archive for January, 2006

Why Change?

Posted on January 25th, 2006 in The New Learners | Comments Off on Why Change?

Have you ever dreamed of starting, building, creating your own “X” because you knew the shortcomings of the existing “x” ONLY TO FIND that you stood a greater chance of achieving your dream by innovating from the inside out? If not, why not? If so, how so?

After analyzing the Jim Collins book Good to Great (and his recent monograph for social sectors) the concept of a “pocket of greatness” seems more appropriate than many previously held beliefs about reinventing the system. Still, the quest for being “remarkable” (Purple Cow and The Big Moo by Seth Godin et. al.) begs for a more radical view of how the world perceives our business and value-added service (when, after all, it is the brownest cow on the farm ;-).

Amanda Fish

Posted on January 9th, 2006 in The New Learners | No Comments »

Can you teach Amanda Fish?

The passion that fills the heart of the learner-leader is not satisfied by periodic measurements of the test nor the quiz. Rather, it is the life of the child that is molded by those environments designed to provide challenges and success that is the source satisfaction of the true educator. For education alone is not sufficient. Nor is education, in its current and widely accepted form, the way to recognize the genius that lives within the heart and mind of every learner. As one voice can produce the melody of a composer’s dream, the confluence of voices into harmonies create the flow similar to the aroma of spiced incense that tantalizes the senses.

So the mission begins with the acknowledgement that while some are endowed with a multitude of gifts, a rare few discover these while enrolled in traditional classrooms across our country. Still, there are those rare diamonds that enter our lives. They change us by introducing us to ourselves. They love us, they care enough to view us as peers in a cycle of learning that begins at birth and continues beyond the death of the body. “Why is this,” you ask? it is for the same reason that a bridge spans a chasm or a colony of ants survives from year to year. The collective strength far exceeds the individual ability. While some will manage to accomplish tasks independent of others, this realization begs the question, “How much more might have been discovered with other voices arranged in harmony?”

All possess the stories that define our purpose. All revise these as each breath passes, as each turn is taken, and as new voices join and depart the song. One friend tells of her “Mr. Right” who touched her heart and changed her life before he discarded his body and moved into the next symphony. In the hearts of more than will be remembered by an aging mind, lives a passionate banjo player who allowed his children to discover themselves as persons of significance. There are the Noahs, Davids, and Debras who lead and love the reluctantly educated toward the discovery of their genius.

For these learners, rooms cannot contain the cultivation of their genius. Time cannot be measured in periods or hours. It is through seasons of play and seasons of pain and seasons of glory that construct greatness as mountains form from the collision of tectonic plates. Those who walk upon the heights of the land and into the depths of the abyss find solace within the truth of knowing that they have welcomed the hardship and glory in concert with the gifts received from diamonds found along the way.