The Haunting

I think I have been haunted
By a girl that I saw.
She was young and fair
Long golden blonde hair


I saw her for a flash
As I drove down the road
A dark picture
On a stick
Flowers and a cross.


Could it really be
That someone so young
Fell dead at the side
Of the road,
On the way to the
Casino?


So I googled her fate:
"Dead girl Rama Road Casino"


She was 23 with a future
That I got to live
These past 26 years-


Two kids, a home, 4 cats, and memories-
And she didn't- She is gone;
I got to live; she got to 23.
[does it even matter?]
I feel her presence


And somehow


I think I have been haunted
By a girl that I saw.
She was young and fair
Long golden blonde hair.

SHOULD WE SHARE?

Should We Share? (by: Tom Johnston- Sep. 24, 2011)



In a  period of great transformation it takes time for people’s minds to focus on the transformational issues at hand. Here, in 2011, certainly a year worthy of being called transformational, with the Jan 25 Revolution in Egypt, the Western economies in decline and technology continuing to shake things up, our culture is being ripped in two diametrically opposed directions.



Some people are passionate about using the tools of technology to share their thoughts, their creativity and their passions online; and many want to collaborate and achieve and grow in ways never before dreamed of. Any artist can now be published instantly, and can share their work for free, for the pure pleasure of sharing their human passion and creation. Humans want to share food, they want to share ideas, and they want to share their passions. I can think of no greater or nobler deed in life than engaging in the creative process, collaborating, and sharing the fruits of that effort with others with material value($) being secondary.




The other direction western culture is heading is in corporate control and ownership of everything including our genes, our water, and our creativity- Imprisoning every creative urge of humanity with lock and key only to be opened with a dollar bill($). Who was it that said: “Money is the root of all evil.”? And the attitude of this is: Anyone who got anything for free is engaging in piracy.” Remember those commercials demonizing innocent people for file sharing? (Movie Piracy)



We are emerging out of an era that has a meme (a behaviour) that is in its best, achievistic, and in its worst, narcissistic. Don Beck developed the ideas of Clare Graves with something called “Spiral Dynamics”. We develop through eras and periods and epochs and those eras can be mapped. The individualistic, achievistic era- Beck uses the colour Orange- is best represented by the recent scientific and industrial revolutions. The behaviour is the goal achiever, the industrialist, the inventor, the self made ‘man’/"woman", hence achiever and narcissist. In the documentary “The Corporation”(see link later in article) the movie compares the qualities of a corporation with that of a psychopath. It will do anything to maximize financial profit. Spiral Dymanics
Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics website

Don Beck’s Spiral Dynamics http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j22/beck.asp

Today, in 2011, many people are reminding us that no one is self made- they had a school system, a town system, a water system, etc. around them. “Ubuntu”, a free open source platform that replaces Windows (and extremely well I might add), took that word from an African worldview: “I am what I am because of who we all are.” (translated by Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee).

The Spiral Dynamic eras we are moving into are called: Green and Yellow (in that order). Green has us coming out of our individualistic, narcissistic stupors and realizing that we are destroying the earth in our hyper consumer obsession with wealth and ownership at all costs. Green is letting us know that it is in fact at all costs. As the polar icecaps melt we will see exactly what those costs will amount to. Perhaps, instead of taxing the corporate rich we’ll be putting them in prison for crimes against humanity. (See the documentary, The Corporation” http://www.thecorporation.com/ )

Of course we are completely complicit in the destruction of the earth as long as we continue to obsessively visit those dollar stores and corporate big box stores in order to get the latest gadget.

The next level in Spiral Dynamics, Yellow, is called Systemic-Integrative. "Express self for what self desires, but to avoid harm to others so that all life, not just own life, will benefit." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Dynamics#Yellow

Thinking globally, we can now start to get clarity on how we are inadvertently hurting others and our earth by living in our own little gasoline and all-you-can-eat-buffet lifestyle. I can think of no other symbol that better represents this Yellow era than THE INTERNET.

As we come out of our Orange narcissism, we enter Yellow Web 2.0 where the individual can see that who he/she is, is also who so many others are. We can put up our tweets and our pics, and our Facebook profiles and we can learn about our own humanity in all its strengths and weaknesses. Never before could we be virtually in touch with so many diverse cultures, ages, genders, attitudes, etc.

This culture of sharing, is really identity sharing, and it means that everyone is out of the closet. That’s right, for better or for worse, our identities live, not in the town square, or on the soap box at the park, but in a globally public domain. (and by the way there’s more of a chance of being physically assaulted in the market square than there ever will be of living online. In fact physical violence is virtually impossible online)

And so, out of the closet, we rise up by offering insightful information and opinions; we rise up by starting a Poetry blog; we rise up by respectfully disagreeing with some-one's tweet. We engage in discussions; we change our opinions because of what we are discovering, not because of mainstream information but in spite of it. We rise up by being the creative beings that we always knew we were.This is more than evolutionary; this is revolutionary.

Nothing has ever transformed society so quickly in so many aspects; Schools, Businesses, Artists, Politicians, Philosophers all have changed the way they go about their activities because of the Internet.

Some INTERNET Background and How its Nature is Sharing

The Internet began as a military tool to maintain another level of communication in case the other systems (phones etc.) went down during a war. It was then passed over to the scientific world so that scientists could share their data. Along came Unix(1969) and later Linux , Linux being one of the greatest examples of open source free software. The Internet runs mostly on free Unix operating systems.

In the 60’s M.I.T., AT&T (Bell Labs) and General Electric developed an experimental operating system and due to many problems, began to withdraw from the program. One of the scientists, Ritchie, says,

"What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around which a fellowship could form. We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close communication."  (emphasis mine) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

Today there is a curious and wonderful quality of the Internet: It’s anarchical. It can’t be controlled by government (Free Speech) and it can’t be controlled by corporations(file sharing). Now, this remains to be seen, but the very nature of the Internet will make it very difficult to put chains on. The reason for this is that the Internet is a network of nodes and roots and connections and there is no central controlling origin.

Picture: Tree of routing paths (from The Opte Project)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

The Effect of the INTERNET


The result of this is a great deal of power over information placed in the hands of the masses- from old retirees to teenage hackers and hacktivists. This power is not well liked by Government and Corporations because of the loss of power and money due to the masses engaging in free speech and file sharing.

I believe that Government and Corporations will have to adapt the people and not the other way around. This process will be tumultuous. Corporatocracies will not give up wealth because the nature of a corporation is to make money at all costs (yes, even cost to humanity- especially costs to humanity)



In terms of artists getting paid, Professor Lawrence Lessig addresses the issue. Rather than declare file sharers criminals, as has been fairly successfully put over on the general public, he proposes putting in place a way of directing money from the consumers to the artists which is fair. Look at the link below specifically between minutes 8 and 18. Lessig identifies the desires of people to collaborate, share and create, and the government response. He also offers some new and innovative approaches to paying artists.

Prof. Lawrence Lessig on File Sharing and Piracy(Vimeo)

The government in its “Infinite Wisdom” creates more file sharing every time it tries to bust a network. This is the anarchical nature of the Internet. Gordon Graham on Anarchy (University of Aberdeen)



Hopefully this will mean in the future no one will become a billionaire because people like their songs. In the Yellow communal age there is no need for someone to become a billionaire. Even if they are Philanthropists, philanthropy will be a communal, group process rather than the public naively hoping the rich guy contributes.

This future is a long way away, but the Internet has given many of us a vision of a better world, a world where we are occupied with creativity and sharing, rather than producing products and consuming. Maybe a day will come when we will reminisce and feel shameful that we actually purchased bottled water.Ultimately, it is not the Corporations or the Government that will decide; it is the masses and their day to day creating and consuming behaviour. Do we want to be shoppers, or creators?

"What We've Always Known About Education"

Here's an interesting take on "Education". What do you think?

What We’ve Always Known About Education    (From Will Richardson's Blog)

So this morning it’s David Weinberger that’s got me thinking. No doubt, David has been one of my favorite Web philosophers for a long time, someone who almost always seems to open the window just a bit more for me. Today, it’s this:

…we knew all along that atoms were never up to the job. We knew that the world doesn’t boil down to even the best of newspapers, that it doesn’t fit into 65,000 articles in a printed encyclopedia, that there was more disagreement than the old channels let through. (What they called noise, we called the world.) We knew that the crap pushed through the radio wasn’t really all that we cared about, or that we all cared about the same things within three tv channels of difference. The old institutions were the best fictions we could come up with given that atoms are way too big.

And I’m wondering, deep down, have we known all along that this idea of an “education” was really a fiction, something we created out of necessity with the implicit understanding that in a world limited by atoms, it was never really the end all, be all, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances? And if we didn’t know that, can we admit that now?

The circumstances have changed. We’re no longer constrained by atoms. For 125 years we’ve been making the learning world small, and now the world is all of a sudden big…huge. All of a sudden, the walls have been obliterated. Learning is unbound, and “an education” is next.

The work now is in making the transition happen in ways that don’t hurt the kids or teachers currently in our schools. In ways that prepare our kids for a learning world where atoms still matter, but for very different reasons.  A peaceful revolution of sorts that starts…where?

Limerick for my class

There once was a Writer's Craft
Whose students were certainly not daft
When the teacher said "Write it"
They became quite delighted
And everyone started to laugh!

Meta Program #2 Toward and Away From

I discussed the Meta Program Sameness and Difference in my 'Seeker' blog. We have another Meta Program within us (of course Meta Programs are just ways of looking at our humanity- a model to help us understand. We don't really have software in us) [do we?].

The Meta Program Away From and Toward is especially helpful in understanding ourselves and others in terms of goals and motivations.

Let me tell you a story.

I had a friend once who had not taken a holiday for a long time. She liked to work. She had a sameness about that. Finally her holidays were approaching and her boss was going to make her take them.

I tried to be positive with her and asked her if she was excited and what would she like to do for her holidays? She looked rather anxious and apprehensive and said:

"I don't know what I want to do. I know I don't want to drive a long way. That would be boring and the last thing I want is to spend my whole holiday stuck in a cramped car."

Well, maybe you should fly off somewhere. Wouldn't it be exciting to fly off to the Caribbean or South America where it's tropical and hot?"

"No", she replied. "I don't fly. The thought of being up thousands of feet in the air with nothing under me but a little steel doesn't appeal to me at all. And I don't want to be uncomfortably hot."

"Well, then, how about going down to the big city and taking in some shows, good food, and a classy hotel?"

"Are you kidding?", she responded disgustedly. Big cities are dirty and noisy and over priced."

"Hmmm", I thought to myself. Then I decided it was time to end our conversation and said, "Well, whatever you decide to do, I really hope you enjoy yourself."

As Friday came, she seemed to me to more and more cranky and stressed out. She left on her holiday and two weeks went by and when she returned to work, I asked her how it was.

"It was awful" she said. "I didn't know what to do so I stayed home."

Now I have great respect for someone who is devoted to their job, but I also appreciate someone who knows how to have fun, relax, enjoy the leisure time that so many of us have. My friend was so focused on what she didn't want, she failed to move toward a deeper, greater and more expansive joy in her life. She spent a lot of time focusing on and moving away from things she didn't want.

Be aware when you are in the 'away from' mode and when you are in the 'toward' mode. Some people are always running away. That's a good thing in some cases. And some people are moving towards: towards their goals, towards better relationships, towards making the world inside them and around them a little better place than it was yesterday.

Starting a New School Year

The Seeker

I have spent a lot of time in my life and especially in my career asking the question: What does it mean to learn? We spend so much time doing it (learning) but I have always been the kind of person who questions everything. All of my life I have been driven by asking the question: WHY?

If there is one thing that defines me as a human being and as a teacher, it is my drive to ask that question. I've learned over the years not to expect to arrive at a definitive answer to the question 'why?' but I have found that I have developed an insatiable curiosity about the world. My curiosity is quite broad; however, if I introspect, I realize that there are things that I have no interest in (cars, engines, doing handyman work etc.). But I have always been interested in people, and what makes them tick, why do they do the things they do, and what goes on in the inner world of their minds? Writers always have a strong curiosity about people. 

That's why they are able to build characters and plots that are intriguing and suspenseful- they know a lot about people and how and why they behave the way they do. 

I tend to be more interested in the philosophical aspect of writing and so I write more non-fiction than fiction.  Writing essays like this is where I'm most at home as a writer. I am curious about human nature, how we live our lives and what it means to live a rich and fulfilling life. I discovered a long time ago that these questions and issues don't 'get answered'; they just keep getting re-asked, with deeper and wiser interpretations. 

And one of the BIG questions is: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LEARN? OR, HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU'VE LEARNED SOMETHING?

I mean, think about it. Forget about school and the classroom for a minute. In your life, can you remember a time when you really know that you learned something significant- or even something insignificant? What was it? What makes you sure that you learned? What did it feel like? What did it look like? What did you do?

This is a challenging exercise because it requires the ability to INTROSPECT, to go inside and think about how you think. Thinking about your thinking is called META COGNITION. Whenever you reflect about relationships, or about your future, or about problems you may have, you are engaging in INTROSPECTION.

We are all SEEKERS in this world. Writers are seekers who want to understand. They are CURIOUS.

There are a few elements that I think are important for learning:

1. CURIOSITY- you can go anywhere you wnat in this world if you have an insatiable curiosity. You don't have to know anything about a subject or issue. If you are curious you can learn. Find the things that make you curious and pursue them. And of course, with the Internet and social media, you can find other people who are also curious about the same things you are.

2. GROWING-  In my research over the years I discovered an interesting idea- that we have these things called meta programs in us. One of them is: SAMENESS AND DIFFERENCE. Sometimes we want to be in our comfort zone and we want things to be the same- same habits, same routine. But, sometimes we want DIFFERENCE. We want CHANGE, GROWTH, something new. LEARNING most often is related to NEWNESS. Be aware when you are moving towards comfort and when you are moving towards change and growth. LEARNING usually requires us to leave our comfort zones.

3. UNCERTAINTY- When we are absolutely certain about something, we are probably going to stop looking for new information and new ideas. Absolute certainty can be very comforting , but it can also stop us from growing and learning. Question your assumptions and you may find an opportunity to LEARN. Seek understanding but be willing to question it.

BE CURIOUS, BE READY TO GROW, AND ACCEPT UNCERTAINTY AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW.

Words Wonderful Words

Words wonderful words,
Wallowing in the wide spaces of my mind.
I Stumbled upon someone's blog
From somewhere in the world;
I read his poem and wept

With joy at the image
That the writer offered me
For free. No ads, no selling.
A gift
From the wonderful world
Of creative urges
And surges
Of the conscious and unconscious mind
Using only one little tool
With 26 parts:
Words.

Respect for Great Authors

I have great respect for writers from every part of the world and from every historical era. The idea that you can communicate your life thoughts, your stories, your opinions and your creativity through a complex display of 26 symbols has never ceased to amaze me. Books and authors have changed my life. I have been actually transformed from reading certain authors- Ayn Rand, Jack Kerouac, Eckhart Tolle, Walt Whitman, Margaret Laurence, J.R. Tolkien, J.K.Rowling, Tony Robbins, Hale Dwoskin, Wayne Dyer, etc.


I read fiction and non-fiction, Philosophy, Psychology, Self-Help, The Classics, Poetry, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc. etc. etc. Most authors will tell you if you want to be a good writer become a voracious reader- READ A LOT!!!


One of the authors I find particularly interesting is Walt Whitman (May31 1819- March 26, 1892- 72 years old) . I'm just beginning to read "Leaves of Grass" an epic poem by Whitman, about his life and experiences. It is a very famous book. Whitman is considered the father of American Free Verse (poems without rhyme/rhythm).  Students in the United States all study Walt Whitman in school.

He's considered to be an Essayist, a Poet and a Journalist. Many writers began as Journalists. Most writers have to do other kinds of work until their books make a living for them. All arts are like that, so if you want to ACT, WRITE, DRAW, DANCE, etc. expect to be a waiter or waitress or Tim Hortons' Drive Thru attendant before your rise to fame.






A CLEAR MIDNIGHT
THIS is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
lovest best.
Night, sleep, and the stars.   (Walt Whitman)

Walt Whitman had a vagabond lifestyle much like the Beat poets (Jack Kerouac (1950's). Whitman is claimed to be America's first "Poet of Democracy". "You can't really understand America wihtout Walt Whitman..." (Mary Costelloe)

Song of Myself
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 


This is the first stanza of the first section "Song of Myself" from the poem "Leaves of Grass" 
What do these lines mean? Why begin his poem with them? Why do I use them in my subtitle?

The Limerick

To all who are naturally gifted
My hat I have enviably lifted
They have their own path
That I search for in wrath
Oh, how it seems I have been set adrifted.

Limericks are fun and challenging because you have to fit them into certain structure and meaning format.

There was a young rustic named Mallory,

who drew but a very small salary.

    When he went to the show,

    his purse made him go

to a seat in the uppermost gallery.

                                                            

There was a Young Person of Smyrna

Whose grandmother threatened to burn her*;

But she seized on the cat,

and said 'Granny, burn that!

You incongruous old woman of Smyrna!'  (Edward Lear)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick_(poetry)

The standard form of a limerick is a stanza of five lines, with the first, second and fifth usually rhyming with one another and having three feetof three syllables each; and the shorter third and fourth lines also rhyming with each other, but having only two feet of three syllables. The defining "foot" of a limerick's meter is usually the anapaest, (ta-ta-TUM), but limericks can also be considered amphibrachic (ta-TUM-ta).  (from Wikipedia)


For your first attempts stay true to the structure even if the meaning is off, just so you can practive the actual structure. Without the structure your Limericks don't work.

The Haiku

I follow #Haiku on Twitter. People all over the world contribute their thoughts and experiences through short 3 line poems using syllable structure:  5-7-5. Haikus are originally Japanese and they are both easy and offer wonderful insights into our human experience. They can be about anything (traditionally they have a nature theme). Haikus often have a juxtaposition of two ideas or images (juxtaposition is the placing of two things close together for effect.
Here are two EXAMPLES: 


My lips long / For the wetness of your touch / My dreams run dry (from Sahrazad528- Twitter)


Notice the contrast between wet and dry and how the dryness implies loss. Also notice that she didn't follow the syllable structure. Here is another. What is the juxtaposition?


Bird song signals dawn /Crickets chirp, cicada's whirl / Nature is noisy! (from josepf Twitter)


Here are some links:


Wikipedia (3 qualities of a haiku)


A good resource on Hakius with some famous Japanese poet masters.


Keep a journal of your haikus. Post your best ones on your blog. You could add a picture for effect- or make a poster with the haiku on the image. Use creative commons for copyright safety.

WHO AM I?

Who Am I?

In my grade 12 university English class one of the major themes of the course that recurs through the texts is the question, “WHO AM I” (“A Separate Peace”, “The Educated Imagination” by Northrop Frye, and “Hamlet”),

Of course, this is a philosophical question that reaches many levels: Who am I as an individual? Who am I as a productive person, a husband/wife, father/mother, son/daughter, a Canadian, a westerner, a human being, a sentient being in the universe?

“Who am I?” is a question that is more worth asking than answering because as soon as we answer it we die in some way. Until we come back to the question of who I am, we have stopped growing, learning, we’ve stopped groping for new answers-we become hardened.  This is the paradox of life- answers are so wonderful until we realize they have a little death in them every time we get them. Somehow, paradoxically, we have to have answers and still hold the questions up to view and consider, new questions perhaps, but without those questions, you might just as well put me in a casket and incinerate me because I am already dead.

People who are so certain of the ways of the world, in any endeavor- they may even be the Tiger Woods of their subject- but if they hold such certainty they have stopped growing.

So the question of who I am continues and what I find fascinating is that while Hamlet questions himself within the context of his castle and his ‘family’ problems, and Gene and Finny define themselves through their coming of age and the mistakes they make as teenagers, today, in a web 2.0 world, our definitions of who we are extend to the entire world through what we blog, what we say, the quality of our ‘friends’ in social networking, the purposes we use the web for. What we are doing here defines us as much as anything.

‘Who we are’ is no longer our little personality in our little community. It must grow to be much more than that and our strengths and our weaknesses will become much more public than ever before- that is if you are willing to take the leap into the 21st century and join the online communities who are thinking through issues of today. What issues interest you? And how far will you stretch and grow and continue to ask: “WHO AM I?”

Is

“Where I Live”

I don’t live in the role of father;

Although I do.

I don’t live in the role of husband;

Although I do.

And I don’t live in the role of teacher or friend or son;

Although I do.

I live on the crest of the wave

That flushes out the space

Between what it means to live this life,

And my existence.

Because what it means to live this life is the ethical question

The devil and the little angel that rest their horns and wings

On my shoulders, and the question never goes away.

I live this life in the guttural the vocal the physiological

Obsessions and insecurities, addictions and disease.

I live this life in the real the moment the visceral

Guttural way that life sucks me up, spits me out

Makes me feel - in juxtaposition to death.

I don’t live life in a plain and ordinary way;

Although I do.

I don’t live life in the linear, dry working-stiff life;

Although I do.

I live where Hesse creates the Steppenwolf,

Where Conrad creates the heart of darkness,

Where Salinger creates the dead-and-lost Caulfield.

I live where I seek the space between knowing and not knowing,

Where I connect to something greater; yet feel disconnected most of the time.

I live in my mind and my heart. And sometimes people get it;

But most of the time they don’t.

I live on the crest of the wave that moves through time.

No reason- no rhyme.

WORDS ARE POWERFUL, WORDS ARE MAGICAL

As human beings, we think, we feel, and we take actions. That's it- simple, really. And as we think, we use words; and as we feel, we use words; and as we act, we use words. Words can take us to the heights of exhilaration and success- and they can take us to the depths of despair. One word spoken from another to you can have the power to build and connect; or, it can have the power to disconnect and destroy.

Learning how to use words is a lifetime experience. It never ends, and that is the challenge: to continue to learn and grow and change your words, your ideas, your thoughts your attitudes and your actions. If you're always open to change, you'll always be a student of life- you'll avoid getting 'stuck'. As a student of life,  you have a great responsibility: To find the words that will make yourself, and others, better.

Towards a Definition of what it means to ” Learn”

Towards a Definition  of what it means to ” Learn”

Or

If a Tree Doesn’t grow, it Dies

            Learning is the easiest, most natural experience humans can have. The only time problems occur is when we stop doing it. We can make mistakes, small ones like ignoring the sound coming from under the hood while driving; or big ones such as collectively dumping so much garbage into the oceans that the seas die. But as long as we can learn, we will always have a chance.

            If we strip everything away and think about learning as part of our natural experience we can see that there is the obvious ‘growing up’ which is fated learning (learning whether we like it or not) and then there is the learning which is for the most part optional- we can choose to grow or not. The areas of learning include childhood to adolescent to adult, learning skills, a trade a profession, learning about relationships, lovers, friends, relatives, and learning about self- who am I? Now, what would cause us to choose not to grow in any of these areas?

One answer to this question is: we would stop growing and learning if we thought we knew enough. If, in our learning, we came to the lesson that spoke to us and said: “insert your name, you have learned enough, you are a genius, you should stop pursuing knowledge and understanding and skills because you are perfect now at this age of insert your age.” On the one hand, we are perfect just as we are. No matter what age or what innocence or what ignorance, we are perfect where we are; otherwise, we would always be flawed or in need, and then we could never be satisfied and I don’t believe that is our natural state. If we are perfect just where we are, then what to do? Answer: learn.

"The best thing for being sad", replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
There is only one thing for it then - to learn."

T.H. White, The Once and Future King, 1939

            The education system came up with the motto. “Lifelong learning” a few years ago and yet once you are out of that system you might  be led to believe that learning is the most boring, contrived, closed minded system ever invented. It could scare people from ever entering another school again. So how do you reconcile the idea that learning is a natural and positive experience with the idea that learning is painful schooling?

            It’s a tricky business to facilitate a learning experience. There are so many variables, and for public education, everyone has to be accommodated. But we are humans and most of us who are adult, recognize the disconnect between what learning is and the education we experienced.

            Learning is an effort to understand ourselves, others, and the world we live in. It is also an effort to get better at things (skills). At the same time we are growing in knowledge and skills, we also have the capacity for meta-cognition, to think about our process for learning skills and knowledge.

            But no matter the path we take in terms of our learning, learning is one of the most natural, most pleasurable experiences we can have as thinking human beings.