Learning is an Act of Choice

Having my interest in the concept of the intentional non-learner renewed, I spent some time reviewing notes that I had taken from a presentation made by Larry Lazotte at the Model Schools Conference in June of 2006. In that presentation, he had stated that learning is an act of choice. I wish I knew more as to his thoughts about learning as an act of choice. Not having more on the topic, I decided to attempt some understanding.

Without a doubt, some of our students choose not to learn, or not to learn what it is that we want them to learn. This is to suggest that there are students who are at varying levels of compliance. Some will do whatever we ask of them and others won't. The question becomes, "why won't they do what we ask?" Why do students choose not to learn?

I think there are at least two answers to this question. First, the learning often involves effort and there are many of us--I am included--who would prefer to avoid effort, if possible. (I believe that I have resigned myself to the understanding that the harder I work, the better off my life is. Therefore, I do what I have to do.) So, the learning looks like work...some students decide they really would rather not do the work.

Other students have tried to do the work and failed. Failure is a hurtful thing. They eventually come to the conclusion that when they try, they fail. Therefore, if they do not try, they do not fail and they can feel better about themselves.

Yes, learning is an act of choice...but there must be more to this topic.

Intentional Non-Learners Revisited

It has been a long time since I revisited this topic and a long time since I have posted an entry on my blog. There is so much to do every day that I've taken to placing more value on my down time. Probably a bad habit that I'm forming.

Anyway, I was researching Intentional Non-Learners and it led me back to my own blog...an entry from February, 2009. There I found a comment from a parent. His son's principal had told him that his son was a non-learner. I'm sure this made the father angry, although his comment on my blog does not come across as anger but certainly frustration and perhaps misunderstanding.

Let's be direct. If the principal actually said that the son was a non-learner, then the principal does not understand learning. The father talks about how his son asks so many questions that Dad has to ask the son to be quiet. This is indicative of an enthusiastic curiosity, which is the motivation to learn. If a kid is asking questions, he's a learner. Curiously, our schools often work to stop kids from asking questions. We kill the natural curiosity that students have, then we bemoan the fact that they don't want to learn what we want them to learn. Why do we do this? Because letting kids ask questions and make discoveries is messy business and we like everything neat and pretty and quiet and orderly. We don't really like kids that much. We would prefer that they all act like adults.

I'd prefer if adults would act more like kids from time to time.

Anyway...the term "intentional non-learner" does not mean that kids cannot learn. It means that some students choose not to learn what we want them to learn. They have decided that the system does not meet their needs, that they cannot function successfully in the system, that we don't really care about them, and that trying results in failure; therefore, why try? This is not a condemnation of the students. This is a statement against teaching practices in our schools. We not only allow students to become intentional non-learners, but we create the intentional non-learners.

This is why reform is so very important, and it begins with believing that every child can learn. From there, we begin to identify the students who are reluctant learners. We talk to the guidance counselor. We talk to the parents. Most importantly, we talk to the child. And we try to find out why the kid has decided not to do the work. Then we modify our lessons and differentiate the instruction in an attempt to engage the learner.

The desire to learn is something that we all share as human beings. It is one of the universal characteristics of the human experience that transcends all barriers and makes us able to relate to each other, to love one another. It is the responsibility of the school to nurture each student's desire to learn, not to kill it.

The Intentional Non-Learner label is not intended to dismiss students. It is intended to raise the awareness of educators so that we might better meet the needs of our students.

Don't Take It Personal

When a parent meets with a teacher to discuss issues related to the student-teacher relationship and the performance of the student in the classroom, it is difficult for the teacher not to take the concern as a personal affront. However, the teacher--as the professional--must do exactly that: not take the concern as a personal affront.

Taking a concern as being personal translates in to personal criticism: there is something wrong with me. From that point on, the teacher is no longer hearing the concern or focused on the better interest of the student. From that point on, the teacher can only hear in his mind, "Why don't these people like me?" "I'm doing the best I can." "Am I the only one here who realizes that I have to deal with 150 kids who don't want to learn what I'm teaching?" In other words, the issue has become not only a personal affront, but also a personal defense. The teacher is now so completely self-absorbed that he cannot do what is expected of him, concentrate on the issue as it relates to the student and try to find a way to get the student to work to his potential.

At this point, I would like to suggest that having a student work to his potential is something different from having a student work to the teacher's expectations. This does not mean that the teacher's expectations are not important or should be ignored. High expectations are important to the success of all students. However, when those expectations take into consideration the student's potential, then it may be possible to really stretch the student and to have the student learn more. Expectations alone will not do the job.

Back to the making it personal...

Sitting in a conference between a teacher and a parent, the teacher stated, "You make me feel bad when..." I don't know that I have heard a statement of more personal self-absorption. The teacher could not hear the concern of the parent. The teacher was not interested in the needs of the student. The teacher felt that he was under attack and that those attacking him were wrong and needed to know that. In other words, the teacher was not being a professional in that moment.

It is important to know that parents have a privilege of being emotional. Teachers, as professionals, are not afforded the same privilege. Teachers are required to listen to a parent's concern and to respond to the concern, without making the issue personal. That will communicate to the parents that the teacher is a professional, that the teacher places the concern for a student's well being and achievement first, and that the student is in competent hands. And that is what is expected of us, as professionals.

Grading, Assessment, and Feedback

Grading is an issue. It really probably shouldn't be an issue, but it is. I think much of the issue hinges upon a complete unawareness of the purpose of grading.

When I think back about my personal realization of grades, I believe I became distinctly aware that it was a rating system, designed to determine who was smart and who was not, before I ever thought that grading expressed how well I might know or understand a concept.

In a very real sense, these are the dominant reasons for grades: sorting students in such a way that a grade A student is better than a grade B student, and using grades to determine whether a student has mastered or learned a concept.

Of the two, I much prefer the latter. People get sorted enough, often of their own doing, without needing grades to mark the differences. Honestly, as one student may need more time to complete a task that another can do faster, the reality is that both students can complete the task and therefore have somewhat equal reasoning skills. It is only that one is faster.

Okay, faster is better in some situations. But slow and steady is also good. Sometimes, it is better to take one's time. But I'm way off the topic.

The topic is still, "What is the purpose of grades?" I believe this is an important question that every faculty of every school has to answer and agree upon, for then every practice regarding grading will be founded upon this belief. And that will be a good thing.

Another Good Year Has Begun

I'm tired after the first day of a new school year, and I really don't have a lot to say. I must have walked around the building twenty times, stopping in to ask teachers if everything was going well, talking to students and helping them find their classes, and just taking it all in. As I talked with teachers, I tried to keep the conversation light. I tried to offer compliments when possible. I tried to build the teachers up, help them to believe that they were and are capable of doing incredible work. I think this stems from a belief that I hold about how to get the best work out of people: you have to help people to believe in themselves. When a person believes in himself, he is willing to take a risk. He is willing to put in the extra time. He is willing to hear a critical review. He is willing to become more. Perhaps it is because he trusts that he isn't going to be attacked. No one is going to yell at him. He is safe.

In public schools, we talk a lot about providing a safe environment, and we immediately think about Columbine and kids bringing weapons to school. We think about some guy gone crazy walking in and shooting up the place. Those are certainly threats that we have to take seriously, but I think there is something much more important regarding having a safe environment. Students and teachers and everyone in the school have to believe that it is okay to take risks, to take chances. It is okay to be wrong, as long as you're trying. It's not okay, certainly, to be wrong and remain wrong, but it is definitely okay to make a mistake. The problem is that most schools are places where people don't feel safe enough to risk being wrong. Certainly their peers will make fun of them, but that's because the teacher holds the mistake up to display it and to embarrass the student--I don't know why.

There are ways to look at student mistakes without causing embarrassment. I used to retype passages from student essays onto an overhead transparency so that I could talk about the mistakes without the student's name being on the paper. I also made sure that the student whose mistakes I was using was not in the class. Relevancy was not an issue. A good portion of the students in all of my classes were making the same mistakes. It was relevant.

The president of our school board spoke to the teachers and administrators and classified staff on the day before students arrived and said that we were engaged in profoundly important work. He was right. And because it is important work, everyone involved in the work needs to feel that they are in a place where it is safe to take a chance and to risk being wrong, hoping that they might just be right. And what they will learn is that learning is a journey of discovery that takes them to places they couldn't imagine.

Such rambling....

Awareness--Preparedness--Confidence

I've talked a lot about confidence. There is a balance between a lack of confidence and an abundance of confidence that is the point at which a person feels capable of handling a crisis, a conflict, or a situation. A lack of confidence undermines an individual's ability to address the crisis, conflict, or situation in a manner that will be beneficial or productive. Indeed, a lack of confidence almost ensures failure and reinforces the lack of confidence; you can bet the person isn't going to try that again soon. An abundance of confidence can be just as detrimental to successful resolution, for the person who has too much confidence will probably have already decided how the crisis is to be resolved, will dismiss the ideas and concerns of other people involved in the crisis because he already knows what needs to be done, and will expedite the resolution regardless.

A person has to have confidence that he can resolve the conflict, find a solution to the problem or crisis, while at the same time the person has to recognize and honor the concerns of other people involved in the conflict or crisis. Such confidence does not come naturally. Confidence has to be developed or nurtured. Through an understanding of the need to develop or nurture confidence, the individual understands that there is a process that moves him closer to true confidence. This process moves from awareness through preparedness to end in confidence.

Awareness is the key to all understanding. All learning, all understanding begins with awareness. We become aware that we are hungry, that we have a need to eat, and we move to satisfy that hunger. Consequently, the satisfying of the hunger preserves our being. When we become more aware of the relationship between satisfying our hunger and the preservation of our being, we realize that it is not simply eating that is important but what we eat. In other words, eating a large bag of chocolate covered peanuts and raisins may satisfy our hunger, but we would not be receiving the right nutrients for a healthy body; therefore, we may become overweight and lethargic. Our health might suffer in spite of our having plenty of food to eat. Becoming increasingly aware moves us to a better understanding of life, of our relationship with all that fills our world, and allows us to make better choices.

Once we have increased our awareness, we move to prepare ourselves better to meet the circumstances and situations of which we have become more aware. In the case of conflict and crisis, becoming more aware of the characteristics of conflict and crisis helps us to prepare to meet those qualities. For instance, when we understand that people become emotional when engaged in a crisis or conflict, we become aware that we need to allow people to express these emotions, we need to listen to what they are saying, and once we have identified their genuine concerns, we need to restate those concerns to them so that they will realize that we have heard their concerns and listened to them. This is a first step in conflict resolution and seems simple. However, if we are not aware that emotion is a natural part of conflict, then we may not take the time to allow people to express their emotion, we might not actually listen to them, and we tend to force our solution without taking into consideration the concerns of others. It all begins with awareness.

Once the individual has become more aware and moved to prepare himself to better meet the circumstances of the conflict or crisis, he becomes appropriately confident in his abilities. The confidence will not abandon him. He can face any conflict, no matter how angry another person might be, and rely on what he knows to move toward resolution.

It all begins with awareness that moves the individual to prepare, which gives rise to true confidence.

The Crisis of Confidence

Some years ago I sat in the cafeteria of the school I was teaching in to listen to a person present information about brain research relative to teaching. I consciously remember very little about the presentation; the concept of brain research relative to teaching was new and foreign to me. I am still barely knowledgeable about brain research as it relates to the educative process. However, I came away with one important idea that day: the crisis of competence.

As I already stated, I do not suggest that I know much about the brain, but I recall that the crisis of competence created a reaction within the amygdala, a portion of the brain responsible for the creation and storage of emotional memories. The most important emotional memories may well be those associated with fear, resulting in fear behavior. It is our memories of the things we fear that promote our survival. Certainly, when we are young and mistakenly touch a pan that has been used for cooking and receive a burn, we remember that a pan that has been on the stove may be hot and that we should use caution. But the reality is that we now fear the hot pan and that emotional memory is stored and retrieved when needed to keep us from burning ourselves over and over again. It is a survival skill.

At this point it is important to address then what the individual perceives as necessary to his or her survival, for it is not only that which threatens our physical health that may be perceived as a threat to our survival, but our emotional health is also threatened from time to time and is also important to our survival. Another way of saying this is that we have to feel good about who we are. We have to have a good sense of self worth. Those who lack a strong sense of self worth become targets for ridicule and perhaps more, making their survival tenuous on a daily basis.

Accepting that the individual needs a strong sense of self worth to survive and that the amygdala stores memories of the things that create fear--cause to be concerned about one's survival, it is reasonable to establish that an individual's self-worth may be threatened from time to time, causing the amygdala to send an alert through the brain, calling for the individual to move into survival mode. Moving into survival mode generally means that the individual resorts back to the skills that are most comfortable and most protective. During a physical attack, the body bends more toward a fetal position, protecting vital organs, and the individual may look for ways to strike out in defense. During an emotional attack, the individual again bends inward and looks to strike out. The bending inward is seeking that which is most comforting and protective, providing the stance to launch the counter-attack. These emotional attacks create in the individual the crisis of competence: sensing that the self is under attack, the individual's confidence is challenged, perhaps weakened. Therefore, the individual seeks that which is more familiar, that in which he or she has greater confidence, so that he or she may return to security, to survival.

When the teacher encounters a crisis of confidence in the classroom, he or she resorts back to the most comfortable methods of teaching or of classroom management, which tend to be those methods that were used when the teachers were students, teaching as they had been taught. And this is where teaching often falters. What the skilled educator must do is create a high degree of confidence in his teaching methods so that even when experiencing a crisis of confidence, he or she can continue to pursue the method chosen rather than resort to survival mode.

More on confidence and the crisis of confidence to come later.

The Posture of Conflict

When I speak of posture here, I mean more than a straight back and squared shoulders. Posture is the communication of an attitude or frame of mind, especially when one is involved in a conflict. Crossed arms communicate an unwillingness to listen and a resolve to have one's way. Rolling eyes communicates a disdain or disrespect for another person or for the other person's ideas. A loud sigh communicates a weariness with what another person may be saying, a message that one no longer has the patience for the other person or his ideas. In other words, posture is body language and we should make no mistake in recognizing that people hear what we say with our body sometimes better than what we say with words. For this reason, when one finds himself entering a conflict, he should be cautious and deliberate in his posture, if his intent is to find resolution.

As an educator, the conflicts I find myself involved with generally place me in the position of the professional, the one in charge. Consequently, my posture must be that of the professional, and I must assume a professional demeanor at all times. Without a doubt, there are times when I, too, want to scream profanities and yell louder than the other people, but screaming and yelling have never really resolved any conflicts. Certainly, there are conflicts that end when one party yells and screams, but this is not because the screamer has proved his point and won the conflict. It is more so because the other party has determined that the screamer has lost all contact with reality and that no resolution is possible; therefore, there is no reason to continue pursuing resolution. So, in spite of our desire to yell and scream, we have to remain calm and be the voice of reason.

A proper professional posture will communicate an openness and allow one to listen carefully to what is being said during the conflict. Through careful listening and through maintaining a calm, clear voice, the professional is then able to paraphrase what he has heard. This communicates to the person who is angry that he is indeed being heard, which often goes a long way toward resolving the conflict. But it all begins with the proper posture, with the proper body language.

The Origin of Conflict

In my last blog I alluded to the origins of conflict. I suggested that conflict arises from the fact that man is a social animal, that the conflict is a result of individual desires, ambitions, and space issues collide with those of other individuals. David Bohm, in his book On Dialogue, provides some discussion that supports this thinking (although I have to be careful because Bohm also identifies thought as the major culprit in creating conflict--more on that later, I hope).

Bohm begins with the premise that everyone has basic opinions and assumptions. The term "basic" suggests, in Bohm's words, that these opinions and assumptions are "about the meaning of life; about your own self-interest, your country's interest, or your religious interest; about what you really think is important." (There's that word "think" again.) The reader may wish to revisit an earlier posting that I made regarding opinion. Bohm goes on to say that when these assumptions are challenged or attacked that we step up to defend them, because "a person identifies himself with them. They are tied up with his investment in self-interest."

We can, therefore, determine that conflict occurs when a person's self-interests and beliefs, upon which is founded the individual's identity, are threatened. Our beliefs, opinions, and assumptions may be ill-founded, completely wrong, but we are offended when it is brought to our attention that we may be wrong. There is a connection between our opinions and assumptions and our self-worth. If our opinions and assumptions are wrong, then we are at fault, and that can't be a good thing.

The reality is that we are bound to be wrong about some things. Therefore, what we have to do is remove the personal attachment to the ideas, to the thoughts, so that we might better assess the value of the thoughts, allowing us to communicate more openly, without taking a defensive stance and allowing an emotional attachment to prevent our resolving the conflict.

The First Rule of Conflict Resolution

I have recently been dealing with the stumblings of a colleague with regard to his manner of dealing with conflict. The circumstances of the conflict are irrelevant, as they always are. Allow me to explain. Conflict is bound to happen. I think it has something to do with man being a social animal. The conflict, from my perspective, occurs because the autonomy of the individual--I guess you could say the individual's solitude or oneness or ego--anyway, the individual with personal desires and personal ambitions and personal space issues comes in contact with other individuals, all with similar desires, ambitions, and space issues. The group of individuals actually benefit from being in contact with each other, but their personal desires and such are now bumping against the personal desires of others. That is what causes conflict and, consequently leads to the first rule of conflict resolution:

Don't make the conflict personal.

We have to recognize that the conflict is made up of a matter of circumstances that seem to be at odds. Therefore, the best way to resolve the conflict is to examine the circumstances and to consider how they might best be resolved. However, the conflict becomes more complicated when the persons involved choose to make the conflict a matter of personal pride, personal dignity, personal hurt. One can always tell when this happens because people begin to make accusations: "But you said...;" "You have never liked me;" "I was forced to act..." The people involved in the conflict want to blame somebody. They want to absolve themselves of all responsibility. They want to win and that means somebody else has to lose.

Conflicts are not sporting events, although sporting events are made of conflict. Indeed, if most people stopped thinking about their personal gain or loss before the conflict occurs, there would be less conflict. People would then base their actions on the integrity of the moment, on the more mutually beneficial way to act.

A good practice in training one's self to deal with conflict in line with the first rule of conflict resolution is to practice writing and talking without using personal pronouns or names. This practice gives communication an academic tone, and an academic tone is more objective, open to hearing the facts before passing judgment. In contrast, when people make a conflict personal, they pass judgment before considering the facts. The conflict is made complicated by personal prejudice.

Practice the first rule of conflict resolution. Don't make it personal

The Insanity of American High Schools

I apologize that I am not interested in accuracy, but I recall that Albert Einstein once said that if we continue to do as we have always done but expect different results, then we are insane. That, ladies and gentlemen, defines the problem with American high schools clearly.

Schools never did look to engage students in learning. Education has always been something that is done to the student. Schools discourage curiosity, questioning, thinking. Schools reward unquestioning conformity and mindless parroting. Our best and brightest are the ones who conform the most and think the least.

All efforts to educate students in the traditional American high school result in making students dependent on teachers for their learning, in allowing students to remain immature and prejudice in their thinking, in upholding all that stands in contrast to learning. And we do this with pride!

Something has got to change!

We have enabled our students to be ugly in their thinking and repulsive in their learning. People take pride in not reading. A colleague of mine--an English teacher, by God!--once admitted to me that he had read only one book in his entire life. How in name of humanity can a person go through life without knowing the joy of reading?

Some of the greatest books I have ever read have transformed my thinking, have inspired me to make a difference in my living, have made me proud of my humanity. Most importantly, my reading has made me independent of my teachers. I am not dependent on them for my learning, and that is a testimony to the good that my teachers have done. They did not want me to be dependent on them. The mark of a great teacher is that he or she becomes increasingly unnecessary. For a teacher to believe that no learning occurs without his or her being present is the ultimate self-indulgence and self-pride.

I am so very frustrated with stupid people and their damn pride in their stupidity. And I am more so frustrated with our schools' contributing to the stupidity.

When will it all end?

The Learning Perspective Revisited

Okay...I'm back...because I have something to say.

The American people have lost their way. Their thinking is askew, and the craziness of the epidemic is best summarized by the now popular statement, "Perception is reality." This statement is false. It would be better stated, "Perception is the illusion of reality."

To say that perception is reality is to say that what one thinks defines his world. There is validity in this statement to an extent, but I want to focus on the limits of this thinking. Taken to an extreme, if I perceive that a dog is really a monkey, then I am a fool. Still, perception is reality. That dog is a monkey in my world.

In a more realistic light, perceiving that a person loves you does not make that person love you. Perceiving that drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is a good idea does not make it a good idea. Basing one's decisions on perception keeps one from considering the facts related to the concept, keeps one from realizing the truth.

Consider a continuum of truth. To one far end is what is referred to as absolute truth. I have a difficult time providing an example of absolute truth. Nevertheless, I believe that it is a concept that helps us to consider degrees of truth and helps us to place concepts along the continuum. Somewhere in near the middle of the continuum is opinion--based on truth but not completely grounded in truth. Perhaps somewhere a little further down the continuum is belief, a little less founded on truth but still drawn from truth. Then to the far other end is perception. In other words, I place perception as far from absolute truth as it can possibly get. This does not mean that perception is the opposite of truth, because the entire continuum is founded on degrees of truth. However, perception is a long way from truth and, I suggest, a long way from reality.

What I have just done is drawn a connection between reality and truth. This could be further stated as what is truth is reality. What is not true is not reality. The legerdemain of a magician is not reality. It is all a hoax and we take pleasure in being fooled. (I suggest that being fooled is the process of becoming a fool. Funny that we delight in that, isn't it?) In reality, there is much about our culture that is founded upon our being fooled, upon our being mislead by our perception, upon our escaping reality. I think we would all agree with this, as we love movies and novels and games and so much more that helps us to escape the reality. But we don't like being called fools. But we are sometimes.

The bottom line is that perception is not reality. Reality is truth. Only through seeking the facts that underlie a real understanding of any concept will we be able to understand the reality of the concept. The curious thing is that understanding the reality will alter our perception. Indeed, I would suggest that perception is far more influenced by truth and reality than truth and reality are influenced by perception.

By the way...Those of you with the Chinese characters leaving comments...Who are you? Can you leave comments in English so that I may know what you are saying? I apologize for being so very limited in my understanding of language, but I long to know what you are saying.

This Is the End

I started the year with some false sense of renewed virtues. I thought I might goad myself into writing more and perhaps accomplishing something. But it does not look likely.

I'm tired and very busy. Therefore, I quit. This blog is ended.

Perhaps I'll start another blog someday. Thank you to those of you who took the time to read.

Goodbye

There Never Was Any Bob Dylan

As I walked from the store into the parking lot, I heard the faint but clear sounds of "Like a Rolling Stone" from off to my left. I looked over to see some guy sitting in a Dodge minivan, his head thrown back against the head rest and his arm dangling out the window, a line of white smoke running up his forearm from the cigarette in his hand. And there it was: "You've gone to the finest schools, all right Miss Lonely, but you know you only used to get juiced in it." It made me smile. I loved Dylan and I was happy to know someone else enjoyed the music as well.

I kept walking across the lot to my car. I made sure to turn off the radio as soon as I turned the key. I didn't want radio music to knock Dylan out of my head. As I drove off I sang as much of "Like a Rolling Stone" as I could remember. Then I launched into "Queen Jane Approximately," but as I sang I could hear The Grateful Dead in my mind, and I could see my fingers forming the chords on a guitar. I stopped singing and thought about other Dylan songs that I had played and enjoyed over the years. The bass line of "Everything Is Broken" started through my mind and I thought about his album, "Time Out of Mind."

Dylan has stood the test of time, not only having created a long list of songs in the early days of his career that will remain fresh forever, but also having continued to write songs that are poetic and interesting. Even if his voice is shot.

More to come....

2010--Year Two

A quick review of the past year shows that I made 35 postings to this blog. That is less than one per week. (Yes, I am an Einstein.) I had hoped that I would have been more prolific, although I'm uncertain as to why. I have my doubts that more than a handful of people have ever read anything that I've posted. This is an important point to consider: Why does one bother to write at all? Is it for those who may read what has been written? Or does one write for some other reason?

I used to be an English teacher--and believe that I still am in many ways. That is to say, I am still concerned with the way people speak and the way people write. I wince at the damage that is done to our language by the casual concern most people give to communication. I cannot send a text message with misspelled words and inappropriate grammatical structures--although I may, from time to time, make a mistake when in a hurry. I still enjoy reading what I consider good prose and good poetry. (Let's face it, what one considers good prose or good poetry is largely subjective, in spite of anyone being able to argue his case with logic or gusto.) I still want people to improve the way they talk and write, and I desperately want everyone to find the real pleasure in reading that comes from finding a book that speaks to you. I am still an English teacher, in that respect.

Anyway, as an English teacher, I once read that some author stated that a person writes because he has something to say. That should be the only reason for continuing this blog. I do have something to say about education, about teaching, about learning. It really does not matter if anyone bothers to read what I am writing or what I have written. It only matters that I write.

To some, this may seem an absurdity. But what I also understand is that the writing process is one of discovery and of clarification. Through writing--perhaps especially through such free, reflective writing as I am doing now--one works through what he is really thinking and brings order to those thoughts. Discovery and clarification. It may be what Margaret Wheatly referred to in Leadership and the New Science--which is a must read for everyone on the planet--when she made reference to order rising out of what was seemingly chaos.

The bottom line is this. I need to continue the blogging. I need to step up my production of blogging. I need to recognize that I do not have to have something important to say every time, but that I do need to say something, which will invariably be important to me.

THE NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION ==> I will make two postings per week for the entire year of 2010. That will mean that I will have 104 postings added to this blog by the end of 2010. At that time, I will end The Learning Perspective blog. I will make my postings on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Ideally, the Tuesday posting will be on a topic from my readings and experiences and the Saturday posting will be purely reflective. Don't hold me to that.

Sounds like a challenge. I hope someone out there will come along for the ride.