Creating a Path for Learning in the 21st Century

Reading Jim Burke’s blog post The Tao of Teaching (and Living) and reflecting on my blog post from yesterday, Writing in public for everyone to read, and the responses from Pat and Cathy Nelson, I am reminded how of a story of a person who works day in and day out in a Catholic soup kitchen in a big city.  Daily  people come and the same ones come every day. And in recent times the crowds get larger with new faces. Each day the wave hits and relief never comes.  One would think from all this hard work some type of social and economic change would happen, but it never does. The floods of tyranny happen daily. His response to his situation is “Sometimes in life we have to accept the impossible knowing we will never make it possible.” Sometimes the impossible becomes possible and sometimes the impossible never gets possible. “But that might not be the right reason to stop doing it.”

We start conversations. We go forward in action knowing it is an impossible task and it may never be possible to finish. The catholic worker believes his life will be greatly blessed because of his duty out of Christian service. The life of impossible makes it easier for someone else to come along and make a change.

November 26, 2008, I wrote post on Meeting Jerry Harste. I think about what his life work has done for other educators to grow and blossom.  For Pat and Cathy Nelson and the many other educational blogger in the world, we never know what people will one day look back and learn from us. It is our hope that our actions and our thinking in our blogs will transcend some type of change and make possible for other that follows us in this profession.

I do not agree with statement this soup kitchen worker made because he fails to see the big picture. I can continue to do my work even when it seems impossible and at the end of the long day I know that I have done my best.

I wonder in 100 years when some is doing research and run across my blog what will they learn and say about me. If it is worth it for one person, it was well done.

Credits:  Parker Palmer’s podcast A New Year.

Photo credit: http://pauldazet.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/renewal.jpg