Learning Chaos

“Join the resistance” brings visions of fighting against tyranny and oppression. Most of us “join the resistance” when we’re about two years old, and we get in the habit of countering: pushing back rather than connecting. If we want to build more candid and powerful relationships, we can stop countering and start understanding.

We make up stories about what we do and who we are. As leaders, we have responsibility to engage everyone in the story OF – what we do, how and why we do it. And we have a greater responsibility to be skeptical about the stories ABOUT ourselves and others. Never forget, stories reveal the author more than the subject.

We carry around a marvelous instrument for influence and impact. Our voice. Yet how much time and effort do we put into developing this marvelous gift? With a little time spent rethinking how we speak, a little effort on development, we can create a huge change in how we connect and lead. Move beyond your voice being merely a drain for the brain!

Two seconds of conversation with Leilani Cauthen is all it takes for her enthusiasm to grab you and hold you captive. She’s passionate about the amazing opportunities presented at the intersection of technology and the classroom. Her organization, The Learning Counsel, is a national research institute and news media hub focused on digital curriculum strategy and tactics, helping school and district leaders determine next steps in their digital transition.

Teleology is a simple idea: let’s not adopt new stuff (including technology) until we’re clear that it serves our purpose. For our classrooms, let’s re-define teachers’ roles as guides of insight and meaning rather than as sources of data. And let’s be sure any new technology we introduce (i.e., purchase), contributes to meaningful, lifelong learning.

Our better angel loves to listen. We can always improve our leadership by improving our listening. Here are some experiences and insights that will help you listen better, the route to knowledge, learning, and understanding. Not a bad payoff, right?

In education, equality is about everyone; equity is about each one. Though we need to keep working on the first, we must shift our focus to the second if we are to improve learning. Students achieve more, much more, when they're invested in not just what they learn but in how and why.

Embracing leadership includes embracing discomfort. New people, new situations, new ideas always bring what I call “the itch of discovery.” I need to remember that discomfort and pain are not the same. One connects to challenge, the other to harm. Confusing the two keeps us from exploration. Here's how to make a difference.

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. For some school systems, this approach has become dogma. Find out about STEAMED, a more fun acronym for sure, AND a less restrictive, more powerful approach to learning and development!

Conflict is essential, illuminating, and energizing. Why not change our assumptions about conflict so we can use it as a resource rather than build on it as a barrier? That change is neither far-fetched nor naïve. It’s not easy, but it’s very simple.

X marks the spot of the treasure in pirate stories. X marks the spot of disappointment in our life stories. If we can practice accepting everyone’s mistakes as an opportunity to build trust and increase learning, we can move from blame to gain. Let’s lose the X.

The “streams” in our schools – administrators, teachers, parents and students – seldom flow togethers, as if learning needs to be broken up in order to be managed. It’s time, past time, to see learning through a framework of leadership rather than management. That framework needs to nurture mutualism and interdependence, to make everyone in the learning community an equal partner, beyond titles, roles and grade levels.

NEAR ENEMIES is a term I found, accidentally and with great delight, in a novel by Louise Penny, The Cruelest Month. A Near Enemy is an emotion that is damaging but that feels very much like a positive emotion, often masquerading and causing harm while we feel we’re doing good. I think this one will grab you!

Sonny and Mac continue their conversation about transforming schools. You’ll hear their passion as they recount stories and research that clarify what may already be obvious: what happens in most classrooms wasn’t even all that effective 50 years ago and is serving no one well now. The conversation moves through what we know works toward establishing a culture of feedback and possibilities as a first step toward real school reform.

TMI. We’re flooded with surveys and percentages, data everywhere. Numbers are useful for management decisions; for leadership decisions we need to engage in conversations. We can move toward accepting ambiguity and different perspectives that cannot be captured by quantitative thinking but only by qualitative thinking: insight over counting. Conversations over computations.

Sonny Magana and Mac Bogert met through a mutual friend—an editor who shares their passion for learning. Sonny’s book, Disruptive Classroom Technologies, and Mac’s, Learning Chaos, both rely on research and decades of teaching experience to forecast a vision of the classroom as a generative, exciting place of exploration and discovery. Together, they have a mission to transform our schools. This podcast is the first in a series, Chaos Innovation.

Schools will soon have uniform access to the internet, with all its promise and pitfalls. The arrival of the web in the classroom will bounce off old ideas about teaching and learning. Access without rethinking application will only produce frustration; let’s take this opportunity to finally bring the classroom out of the factory age.

Seems to be a big push to see technology as the answer to poor learning in our schools. Until we free teaching from the strait jacket of industrial-era thinking, we will miss the opportunity provided by the internet and IT.

Where did we get the idea that without goals, we’ll never amount to anything? What if we see goals as useful but not necessary? What if we tended our tendency to let goals drive our anxiety and to reduce our flexibility, maybe even our effectiveness? Here’s a quick look at some ideas therein. Have more fun!

The generational divide. It keeps cropping up, as it should. Maybe we of the advance guard, the baby boomers, can stop carping about what’s wrong with the groups coming up behind us. After all, it’s their turn, or soon will be. Why don’t we model acceptance and be interested in, rather than frightened by, their wonder? Become amazing grays.

Maybe being tense is an addiction. Like alcoholism. What if we could learn to replace what I call present tense with present relaxed? Listen for a few minutes, just listen without trying to do anything else. Inducing tension is a habit; we can learn that the feeling of excitement from being tense is not strength but noise.

Renee Sandell has found a life in art. An accomplished artist herself, she is passionate about art’s central power in life and in living. She brings that passion to a focus on art education. We can all understand art’s form, theme and context and bring that understanding into everything we do, developing our capacity for living. You’ll hear her passion as we have a conversation about visual fitness.

What if the more power we share, the more power there is? The answer to Why Share Leadership? is “because it works.” Schools, businesses and agencies can establish a more powerful, transparent and productive community when they see leadership not as a commodity but as nourishment. Here’s how to make it happen.

Charles Sosnik is the Editor in Chief at edCircuit, a popular online magazine dedicated to education and learning. He and I share a devotion to improving the classroom, each of us hoping to make a difference in the opportunities for teachers, students and all of us to find and exercise the joy of lifelong discovery.

When I started teaching, I thought that my job was to know everything. After all, that’s how I thought of my teachers. We teachers can’t compete with the Internet. We must re-define our necessity by helping our learners to become managers of information so they learn to be focus on understanding, insight, and meaning—beyond knowledge.

The world is increasingly rife with ambiguity, has been for decades, and will continue. Rapid cultural, social, and organizational change can be intimidating and lead to nostalgia for what seemed like a simpler time. As Thomas Wolfe said, “You can’t go home again.” Ambiguity provides unease and also great opportunity (and necessity) for a new kind of leadership built on mutualism and creative tension.

We’re all faced with what may seem like unbridgeable differences. Between the generations, between employees and supervisors, conservatives and liberals, teachers and administrators. Lateral Listening is a practice that bridges these divides, if we have the tenacity to learn it and the courage to practice it. The payoff is astonishing.

Cadence is a powerful tool to help us improve our leadership. Cadence can serve as a frame to make us more effective in how we lead, teach, and even speak to one another. The podcast serves up some simple tips that can transform our interactions, from the class room to the board room.

Fingerspitzengefühl is a spectacular word, both to say and practice. The best translation I can find is "finger-tip feeling." Equal doses of instinct, intuition, and a gestalt approach to information can produce powerful thinking and decision-making.

One of the pleasures of my life is the people I work with. In this case, a room full of warehouse workers kicked me out for an hour while they figured out leadership simply and clearly. What they came up with is amazing! See what you think . . .

"Wicked Problem" describes any situation that can't be solved in the traditional sense with a single answer. 2 + 2 = 4 is a "tame problem" with a single solution. Learning and education are wicked problems - they need lots of different perspectives without the goal of "the correct answer." When we think we've solved a wicked problem, we're relying on too narrow a kind of thinking. As teachers and learners, we can start looking more at possibilities rather than searching for "the answer," and encourage our students to expand rather than contract how they see exploring solutions.

One of the qualities of every effective leader (regardless of her/his title) I have met is a willingness to laugh, especially in self-deprecation. Laughter releases endorphins, boosts our immune system, activities the deep learning part of the brain (watch kids!), and engages everyone around us. When we laugh with rather than at, we enlist those around us, an act of courage and trust.

Among the myriad buzzwords in OD (itself the king of buzzwords) are two that raise my hackles: "unintended consequences" and "empowerment." I'd like to suggest we reframe both, as they imply a kind of control we need to abandon.

How often do we confuse intent and impact, thinking that how others' behavior or words affected us is what they intended? When we react instead of considering the possibility of cluelessness as the cause, we remove the possibility of learning rather than blaming. We can give others the benefit of the doubt and move forward with feedback rather than getting stuck in our own assumptions.

There's nothing inherently good or bad about structure. We trainers, facilitators, teachers and leaders can make space for more excited and effective learners. An important key to improving our class rooms and retreats is to embrace bass ackwards planning.

Richard and I go way back. He's a consummate drummer, and he knows vinatge hardware like no one else, which is why the Rolling Stones called him when Charlie Watts had a drum emergency. Without the beat, the music doesn't move. Richard IS the beat.

Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” has been around a long time. We know that when people are fearful, their ability to think and perform at higher levels is compromised, so why is anxiety still so much a part of our schools and businesses? The podcast (and newsletter) contains three suggestions for reducing fear in schools and the workplace.

Though there are data to suggest a connection between grades and achievement, there are no compelling data to suggest a link between grades and lifelong learning. Grades and performance appraisals link learning to anxiety, a very non-productive connection in a post-assembly line world. Grades depend on a standardized approach to education, which hasn't worked effectively for decades, maybe longer!

I recently worked with a group where the word "tolerance" caused a wonderful, chaotic conflict. We finally reached agreement that tolerance (which comes from a word meaning 'to bear pain') is a tepid way to see others' differences. We agreed that acceptance and celebration are much better words, and much better thinking.

Leaders, including teachers as well as supervisors, either rely on imposing leadership - making others compliant, or exposing leadership - giving people a place for commitment, space to show up with their own unique leadership voice.

The second Learning Chaos newsletter focuses on making something in the class room and in adult training. Sitting people in rows and talking at them is not learning, it's punishment. "Build it and they will learn"!

After nine years of research and revisions, Learning Chaos: How Disorder Can Save Education, is finally available in print and as an ebook (Amazon inc. Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo). I'm proud that, with the help of my amazing editor Beth Rubin, I can offer a method to transform the classroon. The book is for parents, teachers, students, administrators, anyone who thinks we need to make learning the priority rather than mere attendance. You can find out more, and read the inrtoduction, at www.learningchaos.net. Thanks, MacBeth

Customer Service is really about relatinships, not just about goods and services. In schools, especially, we need to align the idea of service to include everyone in decisions at every level, especially schools' primary customers: students.

Lateral Listening is a technique that enables us to listen toward uderstanding rather than merely judgment. It's not hard to learn and practice, and its payoff is very powerful, especially for teachers and leaders.

Time Management. It's a popular concept, with lots and lots of books, slide presentations, and seminars. The idea arrived with the industrial revolution, along with the assembly line, org charts, and sweatshops. It's past time (as it were) to shift our focus to energy management - how we drain and charge our work "batteries."

I’ve loved (and played) music all my life. I also grew up in a time that generated lots of musical dissonance, from John Cage to Frank Zappa. In music, the tension between dissonance and melody benefits both. In my work, and in the organizations I serve, dissonance is increasing as more diversity—of generations, values, and expectations—creates conflict. We can see this as a threat or as a source of creative energy. Why not choose the latter?

I have just finished a book. I needed some promotional expertise. A friend recommended Marsha Friedman, so I called her. I knew nothing of her company, but was struck by her no - BS approach: “Don’t count on your book for a living.” was one of the first things she said. I’ve been in contact with other PR operations, and the very hazy quality of their service rang warning bells. EMSI, Marsha’s firm, is well-established and a bit of a maverick. They deliver rather than suggest. Her story is interesting, her staff smart and enthusiastic, and her brand (like mine) is a bit off-center. Marsha embraces relationships as the core of her business.

Seeing ourselves without judgment takes some reprogramming. Learning to see myself more clearly, without framing my preferences (shyness, introversion, stuttering) as deficits, has been a bonus in my work and life. The best part is I no longer tend to frame other’s “stuff” as deficits, but just who they are. Like Episodes One, Three, and Six, this podcast accompanies an AzaLearning newsletter on the same topic. Get in touch at macbogert@azalearning.com if you’re interested in subscribing to my newsletter.

I met Ken Green when I almost ran into his boat. I was struggling to sail up a narrow creek with an engine that wouldn’t start. Since then, we’ve discovered a common passion for learning, a childhood on Barnegat Bay, NJ, and two lives transformed by recovery. We both have trod an interesting career path and started our own companies in the past twenty years. Ken is passionate about his life, the environment, and renewal. His home is Greennest—I’ve been there, and the name is perfect—and his company is SusDev Tech. I’m still grateful for a bad starter switch.

I shared stages with Johnny a couple of decades ago and we worked in the studio together. I reconnected this spring online and found him as candid, unapologetic, and focused as ever. He’s a father, a joker, and a fabulous bass player. He and I both share the belief that no band can exceed its rhythm section. He currently drives the Nighthawks and the Thrillbillys as well as sparking memorable studio tracks. If the feet ain’t tappin’, the song ain’t happ’nin’.