Skateboarding Bulldogs and “Little” Cities

“Cause if you never leave home, never let go
You'll never make it to the great unknown till you
Keep your eyes open, my love.” Keep Your Eyes Open from NEEDTOBREATHE

I recently spent six days in Michigan for the New Tech Network New Schools Conference. It was long and tiring and an amazing experience. We planned interactive projects to begin the school year and learned a complex yet stimulating model for project-based learning. However, it seems more lessons were learned from the journey (as always with me). Here are some interesting insights that came to me after the flurry of the week had ended:

1. The world is a big place, and we are a small part of it. The view from 30,000 feet is enlightening. Rivers seems like tiny twisting scribbles and cars are miniscule moving dots. Huge cities like Chicago look like a small rustic village on the banks of the great ocean that is Lake Michigan. Getting a plane’s eye view is enlightening and humbling and amazing all at the same time. It also makes you feel simultaneously powerful and powerless. You think: How can I, such a puny ant on the scale of the huge world, make any kind of difference? But rather than being depressed and feeling insignificant, I was actually just more on the reflective side. I decided that the difference I make is up to me, and that difference will be in MY little rustic village.

2. The amazing part of life is the journey, not the destination. Interacting with travelers on the airplane, speaking with individuals at the conference, and observing those we ran into at night in restaurants and on the street were great learning opportunities. I sat by a man from India on the plane ride to Chicago. We talked the whole time about life in India versus life in America. We took out the map of the world from the airline magazine and compared the places we had both been and would love to visit. He lamented his 24 more hours of plane travel to arrive at his home, but missed his loved ones just like I did. I also met teachers who face the same struggles as I do and have the same hopes and dreams, which makes the world seem a little smaller.

3. Look for opportunities all around you to change your thinking. On the way home from one of the local eateries we saw a woman jogging with an English bulldog behind her riding a skateboard. That is definitely something you don’t see every day.  Of course we had to get pictures. The dog seemed like it was so natural to ride a skateboard and his owner acted like it was another day at the park. I noticed that my engrained thinking about what the world should look like is colored by my own narrow views. Just when I think I have students figured out and I know the way I should visualize the learning process, my training at the conference showed me a new way. I moved outside of my little box and discovered a world that has no easy answers--unpredictable and new every time the sun rises.

At the risk of being cliché let me end with this: The joy is in the journey. May you open your mind to different ways of thinking and strive to make a difference as you travel the streets of your rustic village, always contemplating the view from above.