Deeper Learning - Dance it out!

This week I danced, 3 nights in a row and at least twice in workshops during the day. Because dancing is what joyful people do! If you are part of a Deeper Learning rad educator conference, there ought to be dancing. If you love the work you do and believe every single child and teen should experience the freedom to be their whole fine selves, while contemplating utter wonder and soaking in felt connection to each other and your community - you dance. You MUST dance because you cannot contain all the force and love within.

Oh, we danced it out, my sisters, brothers, and I!  We held space for one another to show up as the leaders, teachers, and visionary business starters/innovators we are. My friends from the High Tech High Graduate School for Education flew in from around the country and world to be together and I have been a mess of uninhibited joy since we reunited. Yes, from Japan, Columbia, Brazil, the East Coast, the Midwest, Texas, Florida, and all the places I cannot recall, we found rest in the souls and spirits of each other. We learned about: 

• Affinity work for white antiracist educators

• Building a growth culture to transform your school

• Restoring the core of relationships when behavior arises

• Revisioning experience-based learning

• Radical dreaming for education futures

• Family engagement being the key to equity

• Living the learner lifestyle

• Growing a Project-Based Learning Community

• Equitable Assessments in STEM

• Beautiful lettering for a beautiful world (led by Ron Berger, founder of Deeper Learning)

I’ll stop there. That’s less than 1/4 of the offerings of learning we were invited to. I know it's a lot, and there was so much MORE!  It was the true impact of teachers and leaders leading each other, it was as authentic as those who led it.  Not to be outdone by the educators, the student Maker's Market had such high-quality items and marketing foresight parallelling the experience of any Farmer's Market, that you couldn't help but catch a glimpse of the power of showing teen learners how to build their businesses from the ground up. Also impactful, was the original music and thoughtfully chosen speakers who exude wholeness and vision bringing light to BIPOC leaders and the many learners we lead who are more, so much more, than their pasts and traumas that don't define them. 

I cannot attempt to summarize my thoughts on this week at the Deeper Learning conference and won’t limit the fullness of my experience to a summation. Instead, I will proclaim the audacity to dream wide and far! To allow people to DOUBT you because it is confirmation you are dreaming big (Kofi B, keynote). I will offer my observation that ANYTHING is an opportunity to learn! There is nothing too small, too strange, too simple, too big, or too scary to learn about. We can do hard things and must teach our learners to do the same.  Connecting the "anything's" to real-life experiences is where the power lies.  Learning without connection is irrelevant. 

We do, however,  need reassurance. This comes in the form of student-to-student and teacher-to-student support. Neither are enough on their own. I would add colleague to colleague, leader to teacher, and leader to leader. All of life functions best in connection. We are symbiotic creatures bound to one another. This is a stunningly beautiful discovery and can be devastating if we don't teach the magic of honoring the beauty and brilliance of one another. To be the source that starves the wonder is a most devasting way to be an educator. The satisfying, joyful work we get to do as educational leaders is to create conditions for thriving! What we do is deep work and worth all of our energy that regenerates us whole.

Deeper Learning was a space to heal, connect, learn, unlearn, dance it out, and be unapologetically ME.  As Kofi B offered us today, “What I am looking for is in me, the past does not define me.” I am remade and loved whole. My sisters and brothers in the High Tech High Graduate School for Education are pure fire and all heart. We will be the change and the disruption we seek in the educational spaces we touch. Every child deserves to be liberated, and so does every educator. Burn love, my friends!  Burn LOVE.