Carrying On

I’ve been in a reflective mood lately. I find myself at a crossroads, a wagon wheel actually, with spokes of opportunity beckoning me to follow them in a multitude of directions. Two years ago I found a home for my heart’s work with IDEA, the Institute for Democratic Education in America. In the stretch of time since, I have seen and felt much hope; hope for what education could look like, hope for equity and justice, hope for democracy in this country I love. 

I’ve studied many solid and successful models of education and met with passionate change-makers who, in a variety of forms have created the kinds of schools and learning environments students and teachers dream of. I have felt the conversation in my home state of Oregon shifting toward possibility, toward the sort of narrative open enough to embrace learning and growing as it manifests itself in all kinds of communities. People in power were listening and real change was in the air, or so I dared to believe. Armed with the knowledge of alternative approaches to education and inspiring relationships with a wonderful group of progressive educators, I stepped up, with my knowledge and all this hope, to do my share of the work. I could see the young people I know immersing themselves in the kind of meaningful learning that they can’t get enough of. I got excited, and motivated, and told everyone who would listen about my hopes. I was ready to change the learning world, ready to give to the future what I was never able to offer to my own kids or to my students. It is easy to be hopeful in conversations with IDEA teammates, progressive educators, my friends and fellow students at Goddard College, with the movers and shakers who have created the learning communities I have grown to love, those that have fueled the fires of change-making in my own heart. Taking the conversation into the wider world and addressing a deeply entrenched hierarchy of institutions with their tangle of policy and profiteers is a very different story. Sometimes it is downright heartbreaking. 

Recently I have felt discouraged. I feel the oppressive weight of conversations that have been burdened with topics such as Oregon’s Senate Bill 290 (which ties teacher evaluations to student test scores), to the national debate over the validity of those tests in the first place, to the implementation of Common Core State Standards, to privatizing education for corporate profit, to budget woes, teacher burn-out and student walk-out, and all the other pressures that distract us from the heart of our work as educators, parents and community members. It feels like carrying a candle into a hurricane. The flame leaps and dances brightly within the warm circle of my colleagues, but beyond the safety of understanding, the winds are fierce, and they are winds of destruction, not of change. 

I am trying not to be discouraged, trying to keep a steady pace, trying to keep the pictures in my mind of the articulate, confident and deeply engaged students I’ve met over the past two years. Those who once had been lost, abandoned and disinterested but had stumbled into one of the “other” schools and remembered once again how great learning can be. Those students and the educators who serve them have joined the circle I surround myself with, protecting my own candle from the winds. It flickers when storms rage the angriest, when we’re all a little too tired to stand together, but that flame has not yet gone out. 

Recently I was granted, by some blessed turn, a little time in the presence of a great leader. As I sat in Detroit, Michigan, my heart full of the wonder of it all, I watched and listened while Grace Lee Boggs spoke of things like time on the clock of the world, visionaries, solutionaries and historians of the future. I was reminded of all the difficult and dangerous work that has come before, and I understood a little better that my own work is but a continuation of what others have been living and dying for. I understand community a little better, and am grateful to those who have been gathering around each other for generations, protecting each others’ flames. If, at 97 years old, Ms Grace can still walk her talk and carry her candle, then the least I can do is join the circle and buffer a little wind myself. 

I’m doing my best to not get discouraged, to not get overwhelmed and to keep learning as much as I can. My IDEA teammates are doing great work like engaging in nation-wide twitter conversations with young people and educators, in local organizing efforts, national gatherings of leaders and activists, and the wildly successful Year at Mission Hill series which has over 100,000 followers after only 3 of the 10 episodes have aired. I am surrounded by brilliant, hard-working and dedicated people who will stand with me in that time honored way, guarding each others’ flame as the winds blow.