Back to their future – together!

This was part of my speech on August 7 at Portland, Oregon during the 8th Annual AERO Conference — Transforming Education & Our World and was originally posted at the TEDxKids@BC website. I hope you will enjoy the video I made for the occasion – bear in mind that this was my first attempt at video editing! I am looking forward to your feedback on my thoughts around bringing the kids into a partnership with us adults and making a social change and shaping the future together

Try to imagine a future without kids. It hurts to even think about this, right? It’s a nightmare we better never see! How about kids without a future? Unfortunately, the world in which many kids have no future already exists — we live in it every day.

I am not talking runaway climate change roasting the biosphere here — from poverty, to no access to clean drinking water, to diseases, to no basic human rights — examples of this kind abound. But the kids also face problems like outdated school systems, inefficient healthcare, disconnectedness from nature, society that values conformity over authenticity…

In our world, adults decide for the kids: From serving chocolate milk during school lunch to opting out from vaccines… From cutting school budgets and enforcing standardized testing to choosing energy sources and CO2 limits… From what to learn and whom to learn with to when and how to play!

Our split identities

Today, I had a chance to meet Judge Robert Watt, an appointed Citizenship Judge for Vancouver, BC. Yes, you guessed it, I got the honor to sing “O Canada, our home and native land” together with him, my family and 77 other immigrants to Canada — who like us, have come to this country about 4-5 years ago, leaving their home land, extended families, even parents, brothers and sisters, seeking a better life!

As Judge Robert was using his charming baritone and inspiring words to warm our hearts giving us one of the best motivational speeches I have ever listened to and congratulating us on our wise choice to pick Canada as our new home, I started thinking — Why is it that we care so much which piece of land we are going to call home country? Is there an intrinsic value that one could claim when choosing to “belong” to this and not another part of the world?

“Albania, Argentina, Bangladesh, …, Macedonia, Myanmar, … United Stated of America, Vietnam” — Judge Robert’s voice still echoes in my head, as he was reading the 24 countries we, the 77 immigrants, called our home land before coming to Canada … 24 countries!! … What a diversity! … I still can’t grasp the grandeur of this number … it means that there were very few countries represented with more than one family in  that room today … For real, the diversity is striking! … It made me appreciate the total number of countries in the world!

Please don’t take my blanket away!

This post was originally posted at the Cooperative Catalyst.

Image credit: Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts

As I was taking my younger daughter to her daycare this morning, making sure I don’t forget her favorite stuffed toy — Piglet, of Winnie the Pooh fame — a sequence of pictures flashed in front of my eyes:

The warmth of our home, causing my brain to recall familiar smells from the baking in the oven and family voices mixing in a symphony of noise my ears could enjoy forever, making me forgetting all about the milk my daughters spilled this morning on the floor as they were chasing around the dining table.

The inviting playfulness of my daughter’s daycare, with the chaos of toys, crayons, drawings providing happy food to my soul, despite the fact I am late for a meeting and getting to the exit door seems to take forever as me and a handful of other parents try to avoid stepping on the little fingers that seem to be in almost every square foot of the floor.

The messy desk at work is full of family photos, yellowing old paper with some uplifting message I must have printed ages ago that says I should chin up to challenges , my daughters’ pile of drawings and crafts mixed up with project plans and architecture diagrams — all bringing comfort to my emotional brain, even though I feel stressed as I can’t find that report I printed for the customer meeting in 5 minutes.

Suddenly, my older daughter’s tidy classroom full of organized boxes, lined up tables and chairs, sorted books, etc. looked strangely uncomfortable. As I was puzzling why I didn’t noticed that 30 minutes ago as I was dropping her off first before driving to the daycare, I realized I couldn’t see any object in the classroom that had emotional value for me or that I could connect with any of the other three pictures that popped in my brain just before.

I invite you to my learning!

Photo credit: Salzburg Mountain Advent (Grossarl valley)

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I don’t spend much time in the kitchen — though the time I do, when making the few things I know how to, feels quite good! Therefore, I was excited the other day to try and bake apple strudels after my wife tried out an easy recipe with a pre-made dough one could buy from a supermarket – I know, we’re cheating, but the strudels taste great nonetheless and we all enjoy them in the family so much that not one survives for more than few hours, no matter the quantity.

My older daughter (6) decided that letting daddy do it alone was not fair so she set out to help me — or rather do almost everything herself. I am all for letting the kids learn through experience, but when she reached for the knife to cut the dough I hesitated for reasons I can’t explain — after all, she’s been using a knife for long time and the worst thing that could happen was that the dough pieces would not turn out perfect squares (big deal!).

Anyway, I sobered up and let her cut the dough and do as much of the work as she wanted, standing happily on her side and marveling at the happiness at her face as she was doing it! Of course, being six, her attention got diverted by a new cartoon that started playing on the computer she left running when joining me in the kitchen so after about 5 minutes I was left alone to finish the preparation and do the baking. Still, in those 5 minutes I felt I helped her learn something, though I wouldn’t call myself a “teacher” for what I did!

What is in a year, really?

Photo by Goran Kimovski, December, 2010

If a year was a bucket, it would start half empty…
But sadly, finish half full…

Somewhere death comes by night,
While a newborn smiles at his first daylight
An old man says last goodbye at work,
A child says Hi to her first homework
Mother’s cry, father’s pride,
Children’s voices race for the clouds
If a year was a bucket, it would hold life…

One child is born to never learn food is scarce,
Another is raised to respect nature’s resources
Yet another brings doom to many with his gun,
While his friends are looking up to the sun
White, black, girls, boys,  fast, slow, short, tall
Different but same, happy dreams for all
If a year was a bucket, it would hold hope…

Sir Ken Robinson and healthy food

“Had I the heavens embroidered cloths, Enwrought with gold and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet; But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” ~ W.B. Yeats

“And every day, everywhere, our children spread their dreams beneath our feet. And we should tread softly.” ~ Sir Ken Robinson

Image credit: Jamie Oliver (TED 2010)

Recently, I ran into a blog post from a middle school teacher who asked his students to explain how would they reform school. A noble idea to be commended! — you might say. That’s what I thought too, but then I saw the answers, including:

• Better cafeteria food with real ingredients
• A monthly educational field trip
• iPads, netbooks or laptops in classes
• More freedom in terms of leaving to use the restroom, eating a snack or getting a drink of water, etc.

Something feels wrong! Of course, there were some great ideas in the complete list — like more electives, feedback instead of marks, and community service once a week — but somehow the list suggested that all of the problems with the current education system can be resolved if we buy few iPads, stop making kids suffer with a full bladder till the end of the lesson and throw in a field trip or two?!

Looking at the list made me remember a lesson I learned in my career in software development – and somehow always forget and need to re-learn: Users (don’t!) always know what is best for them! Sometimes it takes someone from outside to notice what they’re doing wrong and show them alternative ways.

Superman got it wrong – public schools matter!

Image Credit: Hip Slope Mama

With all due respect to Davis Guggenheim I think he got it wrong in Waiting For Superman! Public schools have something to offer no other educational institution, be that charter schools, private schools, boarding schools, even the various forms of homeschooling can.

If you read my previous posts where I question the value of formalized education as we know it, you must be thinking I went crazy or got change of heart. Please be patient and let me walk you trough this post by telling you few stories first. We’ll talk again at the end of the post if you have any questions!

The first story is personal, involving my family and few friends with school age kids.

Ever since my older daughter reached school age (currently in grade 1) the question which school to choose loomed large on our lives. At the time my perspective on formalized education hasn’t shifted too much from the traditional view that you need to get educated and get good grades to be successful, even though I already had a chance to listen to Sir Ken Robinson by then.

Attention please! I just stopped paying attention – to you!

Image credit: Gary Olsen (Dubuque Community Schools)

No, you’re not annoying, just boring! Attention is the new currency in our world and you need to offer something in exchange if you want me to listen to you. Telling me what to do, how to do it, when to do it doesn’t cut it anymore. Teaching me old solutions for old problems doesn’t inspire me anymore. I get what I need to learn to cope in this world from other places!

Yes, I learn from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs… I learn from my neighbor who is obsessed with vintage cars and spends all his free time with oil on his hands. I learn from William half across the world who harnessed the wind to save his family from starving. I learn from Mark up in Maine pondering the question of mind while wondering if his bees have lessons for human communities.

I learn by exploring, digging, experimenting, opening, tinkering, building, hacking and playing with toys, plants, animals, rocks, wood, and all kinds of stuff — yes, even power tools!

Going back to color in our social lives

Photo credit: Rinasaur! (Flickr)

Once upon a time, there was no Facebook. There were no Twitter and MySpace, there were no emails … stop! … scratch that! I don’t want to write a romantic story about the past times when we all happily enjoyed our fulfilling social lives, visited regularly our relatives, had fun going out with our friends and took the time to give a call or even write a letter to those far to our eyes, but still close to our heart — because we didn’t! No offense to those few who tried hard in doing so, but you made the rest of us feel bad!

Fortunately, for those of us too lazy to give a call to our grandma — who couldn’t visit us any more because she had a gangrene and couldn’t even get our of her house let alone endure the two hours bus ride to our town — or scribble a letter to our best friend from elementary school — who moved away across the world leaving his old parents behind to send his regards every time we meet them on the street — someone invented Facebook!

Now we can simply “like” the photos showing our best friend’s kids playing with their dog or upload a video of our baby saying the first “googoo” so our grandma could watch it when the neighbor kid volunteering to help senior citizens visits and helps her turn on the computer and log her on to the world of social networks.

Inspiring learning or learning inspiration?

Learning to unlearn is the highest form of learning. ~ Buddhist proverb

At its very core, education is an innate expression of curiosity; a longing to understand and be part of the world; a manifestation of purpose and passion that every person carries within them. ~ Carey Elizabeth Smith, Co-Director of the Body Therapy Institute*

Image credit: IQ Matrix

I’ve been troubled lately with the question “How do we learn?” I don’t mean specifically  how kids learn in school, or how adults learn at a new job position… I’m rather curious how do we learn anything in general!