Exploration Journals 2024
Journals 2024 - Keyword Exploitation
Pause & Feel the sun
Pause & Look up to the sky
Pause & Reflect on the Known
Pause & Feel the rocks
Pause & Take a deep breath
Pause & Savor a taste
Pause & Sleep and dream
Pause & Hug
Pause & Listen to the birds sing
Pause & Sit and be still
Pause & Sit and be with pen, paper, a book
Pause & Walk the path to and from
Pause & Shower
Pause & Be with friends and family
Pause & Sit with pen and paper
I wasn't looking for stability when I first came to Korea. I was only only going to be here for a year. That didn't happen. I moved here permanently. Everything has changed so much. I have gratitude for all the things opportunities at Wonderland and Gaewon. I am thankful for Burton's school I am not thriving, but I have survived thus far. I do trust that things can lean towards heaven and hell. I want to know how to get my 1,2,3 and A,B,C working for me.
No wasted time commuting. Great before you have children. Not fun when babies are born. Miss some of the interactions with colleagues. Its an opportunity to build a better learning environment for and with my students.
abcdWhat do we learn from talking to the people who assess our progress or the progress of the people we care about? How do we use report cards to showcase a variety of metrics?
I have a pen. I have a paper. I sings and dance to PPAP. I shy away from the dance and step into taking myself seriously about joys of a tools to draw and write. I slowly used the tools to bring my vision to life.
Be compelled to practice and see the worth of practicing.
We may test out methods, but usually come to learn and trust a best method for use. Competing with self, others, and the top players. Who am I walking with?
I relate to the 7 mice because every time I move forward I bring back new knowledge and skills that change how i understand things. We need to stand back and connect the dots.
I am thankful for a dad that let me learn to do things on my own term, despite always bring the truck back in worse condition that I go it. Still now, I remind myself if I am up to the job of building a school. I want to work in ways that build trust for everyone involved. Hats off Articc Studio and iTDi for all the work that changed my school forever
abcdI don’t remember what it like being a young boy, but i was. Pictures remind me of my mapped path. My experience was emergent but it was lead and guided by adults and all the roles they played.
Taking pictures. Deleting pictures. Seeing patterns in the types of pictures that I take. Spending more time non teaching roles and feeling uncertain about the outcomes of the habits of working on my business.
I’m holding a bag full of pictures from events I participated in with others from Codette and Nipawin. It feels grounding to who I was and how I choose to be as a member of society as a child and teenager. Thankful to my mom as curator. Thankful to my dad for laying opportunity in front of me
Man coming over to my house to enroll me into DeVry. Dave calling me and telling me to come to Korea. Starting up a studyroom instead of a Hagwon. All low risks with high returns. But they are not.
Thinking from different perspective and being open to a variety of different domains through educational materials, interviews and narrative that lean towards personal agency in our personal lives. Being both in and out of the communities we live in.
The thought of working like a bee makes me tired already. I’ve shown up with all my emotions every minute of very hour of every year that since opening my home school. I can get triggered and I have to be careful and mindful of my lifestyle
I started with everything I had collected. Fueled by my ego and the possibilities of hitting my mark. Ready, Aim, Fire. Follow the mapped path of others. Let go of the puzzle metaphor and embrace the mosaic. Sequence the build for the lifestyle I'd like to have with those i’d like to do it with. Know and reflect on my building practices. Start build it.
Water allows for everything we know to work. We can be like water and go with flow, or become rigid like ice and/or evaporate and be everywhere and anywhere. I strive to be like water. Also it is what is always needed. Juice, coffee and pop never taste as good as water. I can trust this idea about water.
Solving problems for a the first time can be lot like a maze. We know where the start and end points are but we aren't exactly sure of the way to do to successful complete the maze. Usually we have to backtrack a few times. We want enough space that allows us to move around and make things work, but not too much that we can't be effective in our space. Figure out how to manage your physical and digital spaces so that you have the ability, skills and knowledge to grow your ideas.
A farmer, who has learned to farm, knows what he is planting and how the plant will grow in a variety of conditions. It is his business to know. A smart farmer will have processes and patience that allows them to use intuition, imagination, logic and science to plant, grow, care for the plants, and use the harvest to survive and to store surplus to make it through droughts, floods and other disaster on the horizon. Sell what people want. Give energy to what grows.
I am holding an image of me up. I wonder what he can grow with his heart, mind and guts. He likes the unknown but doesn’t strive to endlessly bridge both his known and unknown gaps. He want to explore what he has done and unpack what he has. He want to grow connection with his dots and also pass the growth on to his sons.
I remember catching a fly ball in the face. I enjoyed the game but couldn’t grow my skills with the complexity of the game. I was leveled out. Kids start with their reflex. They can catch. they can block. As they practice their reflexes develop into consistent actions. It is easy to see who can and can’t by how they choose play with you. We see tells. Kids not so much. They need to learn to see patterns in human behavior to know how to predict.
How do we choose to expand on the words and content. What gives us the permission to connect ideas. I was looking for a book with “dad. I found this book. Then I started seeing how it connected to Jack climbing up the beanstalk. I changed the pictures in my books. Ahha moments come over years of using content in tandem.
This was added at a different date.
This was added at a different date.
We have plan. We schedule it by years, months, days, hours, minutes and even seconds. Pay attention to how deconstruct the moments you share with the students during the activities you do. Watch how you present activities. Sense how you practice each step of a task. React to what is emerging. Take name. Write it down. Collect it so that you can see patterns into what is good, truthful and beautiful.
We are what we do. We tend to measure and look for metrics of the things we do. I couldn't measure everything and so I chose UNO. I compared the language in use between the start and the end of the course. I am curious how the process i apply to UNO will transfer to other pieces of content in the future.
We live live moving forward. We never start from excellence. We must practice to learn and learn to practice doing what needs to be done at school, work and all the relationships we are in. Yes, you will sabotage things. Iy helps you to reboot your thoughts but does come with tradeoffs.
Get a puzzle. Play with the puzzle. Solve it by luck then solve the problem by understanding the puzzle. Remove the complexity till it is a level that you can enjoy. Practice and master the movements and you'll become aware of the problem in high resolution and at different stages. Don't be afraid to reboot. You can quickly repeat all that you have mastered if you are willing.
We all have a part. We play our strengths. The coach stack the lines to meet the needs of the team. We learn to know who and who and how they rise (or don't) given to the current landscapes we are in. Good coaches and players know how to read the players, the fields, the plays, the environment. etc. They also know how to practice and automatize process that they want to complete without failure. Being our best self requires a worth opponent.
I am in the process of evaluating the yield from the series of courses I taught. I don't have a perfect plan, but I am present and sensing how to make the pivots as I go. I am thankful for the conversations with the people who have some skin in my game. But beware. There are always agendas. Don't be naive.
My friend Lisa offered me an opportunity to learn to write lovely letters. I took it. I bought some pencils, paper and she send a custom made booklet. Wow. Seeing it and actually doing it are totally different. It was seemed impossible for me to even come close to doing it the way it was suppose to be. Just because we have the tools and general skills, doesn't mean we can make beautiful things. It takes a lot of first principles.
I never know how to frame worth. Yes, I am satisfied, but there are many outcomes I haven’t reached which have caused conflict. I’ve shifted my present narratives for our future of sense making. Our language isn’t just a book.
I often worry about committing too much to one thing- being too me. I use my characters to help me flip my script for how I think about strategies to overcome problems. Rapunzel learned to braid her hair. She can use that same skill to make a rope and climb down. How do other characters overcome their challenges.
I had a lighter. I was looking for coins under my parents bed. I was having a treasure hunt. Well the bed caught fire while dad was sleeping. He had to carry it out the door and throw it out into the yard. Thankful he home and had the strength to throw out the bed and nobody got hurt. Blame is a tricky thing.
abcdI'm afraid of the big bad wolf. We look at the animals in awe because we know they are frightening. And We have to have our wits so that we can be careful. How do we raise kids to deal with fear of things? The wolves in Yellowstone put the ecosystem back in check. Things must die for things to live. The wolf predicts its prey. It can see where it going and how it will likely get there. They also hunt in back so that they can position push from the back and the prey in the front. I need to be resilient enough to move on.
I know there is opportunities. I have seen them. I have taken them. And so much can be revealed when we shine the light on things. My habits. My process. My bullshit. My Blindspots. I do use characters to help me shine the light on different ways to approach the day. I become a bit of an actor who embodies the situation of others. I don't want to be like the chefs in Nightmare kitchen who only see their strengths without negotiating the elephants. I meet up and talk to people in iTDi or Kotesol. I listen to general knowledge. And everyone needs a poke from time to time.
I talk about a rhyme about a hungry bear who eats up all the bits and the dates on a calendar. Fall and transition to how i am 40 now. It is what it is. I have today. I don't know what I am really trying to do but I do have me and my family. If I can choose my tomorrow. Where do i want to be? How can I build my tomorrow. I know the season change. I know I have some ideas. I am a bit anxious of growing old because I know I burned some bridges.
abcd
As I move forward in the future, I always look to the past. I remember when I came to Korea to the first time. I remember standing outside my world. I slowly circled my neighborhood so I could slowly map it my head. Then I bought a motorcycle. I got a big wall map.I drove to places that wanted to go. I took the same path till I could repeat it. then I started to extend past those points. Gradually, after 5 years on my bike, I could go almost anywhere. It is amazing how the brain maps the world when you have our bearings. After marriage, I stopped driving and I lost many of my skills with navigating. Going into the unknown requires both general tools and skills and very special tools so that you can overcome some of obstacles. We also need to know our breadcrumbs.
The future is unknown. It is unpredictable. We use our senses to make sense of our moments. Your younger-self would never have believed how things have changed. Life is full of uncertainty, but we do take many steps to make things certain. We discover truths, talents, information, energy that spark curiosity and the desire to move forward with our realizations. Know your feedback systems.
abcd"I'm possible makes me smile." I smile when I see my boys and my students making the connection they do in their aha moments. I like to linger in that smile. I like to experience that feeling that they have with my own work. My thoughts got messy with all roles, responsibilities and content type. I took iTDi to help me sort out my messy middles so that I could get to what my school makes possible.
I tell myself that I am going to be making explainer videos for all 1 piece of content that i do everyday. My goal is to go deeper into my rational for how the course works and why I chose the activity i did. I can make things look easy but all expert know that the actual doing of the task is what is the difficult part.