Tag: Love

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Letters From A Change Agent: #findyourlight

Life gets challenging in unique ways when working internationally. You find yourself in a different landscape with different cultural norms, often different languages you may not understand, and different methods to accomplish the same goal. I feel I have become pretty good at rolling with the changes and ambiguity of this work, however, this last month has challenged me in ways I never expected.

I’ve been with a group of university students from New York. We have been volunteering at an orphanage in Northern South Africa. The moment my group first met with the matriarch of the community, we were inspired and moved by her candid approach to the circumstances at the orphanage. The essence of what she said to us was, “Find your light.”

Despite my optimism and constant ability to be patient and open, I tend to lose my light. I lose it in logistics, outcomes, and other people’s needs. I feel this is normal and not negative but since Mgogo (grandma) said this to us, I’ve been unsettled by it. This last month has had me questioning, how can I keep my light all the time? What if our light was constant just like a happy thought in Neverland? So I’ve been trying.

The first weekend here, I got thrown into a situation of selflessness, courage, but mostly need. The community was putting together a funeral for a young mother who lived in the informal village next to the orphanage’s campus. It is tradition for the younger men to be very involved with funerals. Most men my age have passed away from AIDS in this community, so I was needed to be a pallbearer and then assist in burying the coffin. While shoveling dirt in front of family and loved ones, I couldn’t help thinking, “How do I find my light in this?”

Fortunately it has been easy. I find my light in the faces of these children who always have love to give. Despite being refugees, being raped, losing parents to HIV/AIDS, and some being HIV positive themselves, they are always giving love and able to receive it. One woman in my group described these children as, “warriors of battles we will never know.” As I venture into the day care today, I will remember this and hug my heart alive.

I also have been able to find my light in my Peacework participants. These ten courageous young adults have left the comfort of their homes to come volunteer in the most non-traditional of circumstances. They are up at 5am to get 200 children ready for breakfast and school while handling their individual projects, which are more challenging than most jobs they will be offered out of college. Even though they are tired, overworked, often ill and homesick, there are always smiles on their faces.

I believe to make our light the most available, we must better know that human connections are important. We must acknowledge that we are apart of nature and that real human connections are the key to unlocking the light that we already own. The light must be accessed but it is always there. We must train ourselves how to reach it when we need it; Just like a happy thought in Neverland to fly.

How do you access your light? Who helps your light appear immediately? How often do you connect/see/interact with them? Do you make their light appear?

I get reminded all the time that just like food and water, I need interaction with certain people. I try to be conscious of this and work it like a muscle. We must train ourselves on what connections are healthy and assist us in finding our light so it is always available. I don’t think this strategy will change the world, but anything is possible when bettering us on an individual level.

Good luck on finding your light!

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Voices We Love: Teachers

Earlier this week, NPR released a fantastic story on NPRed. The story is called, Five Great Teachers On What Makes A Great Teacher.  This article is just a great read for entertainment but also, it will bring “uh-huh” moments and makes us think about our education, teachers we have met along the way, and that teachers all have different approaches. Here is a slice of the article. Check out the entire thing on NPR.

What kind of training and experience makes a great teacher?

Bain: I know I’m going to get pushback on this, but I think one of the major problems we face in cultivating great teachers is that we don’t pay enough attention, especially in K-12, to the learning of the teacher. We should help them develop the dynamic powers of their minds and should continue to do so throughout their lives.

Second, we should help them develop an understanding of some of the major ideas coming out of the research and theoretical literature on what it means to learn, how the human mind works, and all of the personal and social forces that can influence learning. This is a dynamic field with lots of important research and ideas emerging almost constantly, and the training and experience of a great teacher has to include the opportunity to explore, understand, and apply the ideas and information that is emerging.

Finally, great teaching includes the ability to give good feedback and to make assessments.

Jose Vilson: It really depends on the environment around the teacher … with more experienced staff, it’s important to get beyond the humdrum PDs [professional development opportunities] and get into something truly transformative, which is hard to find. That’s why so many of us have to seek out PD opportunities both on and offline on our own time, past the meetings and opportunities provided by our school.

Moore: There is so much in teaching that would be best learned through apprenticeship, rather than the current system of leaving most new teachers to trial-and-error their way through. The teachers who become great or master teachers seek out the help and PD they need as Jose mentions, but I agree with the work of Deborah Ball and others that we know enough about teaching that we can, and should, be much more systematic in sharing that collective wisdom with our newest members.

Also, Ken is correct about the importance of being able to assess student learning and give timely, appropriate feedback. The current overemphasis on test preparation and other misuses of standardized testing have taken much of this critical professional skill out of the classroom and away from teachers.

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Letters From A Change Agent: #Empathy

Many studies would have us believe that empathy needs to be taught. I believe the contrary. I feel we are given the power of empathy in early development. It is in our DNA to care and feel what other people are feeling. Empathy often empowers us to react for the good. I see it in my nephew all of the time. When another kid doesn’t have a toy or someone else to play with, he takes responsibility for making that child feel better with a toy or his companionship. He is four. He doesn’t know the word empathy but he feels it.

As we mature and society beats us up, we lose track of that feeling.   We aren’t aware of when our empathy is telling us to take action. Therefore, we have to learn how to access it. Because it is so hard for our post modern, technology filled society to genuinely reveal our empathy, organizations and campaigns must be extra witty and cunning to use our empathy to take action. Too many resources are spent doing this. We shouldn’t have to be tricked into acting and doing good because we feel someone else’s pain; that action should come naturally.

To thicken the wall between our actions and ability to naturally access our empathy, corporations advertise products to be intermingled with our emotions. That is f***ed up! When did heightened emotional stimulation become the new version of the bandwagon technique? My favorite current example is an American Eagle Outfitters commercial. We are told to cherish our imperfections. Be proud of our imperfection but also buy these clothes. I get it, there are imperfections in the clothes but that does not bring me security.

All the corporations do it. From Coke to Verizon, our positive emotions are being triggered and paired with certain products. Advertisers are so good at it that often, we don’t’ recognize it’s happening. We must be able to consciously say, “that is not really how I will feel with this product” along with, “this is causing me to be less empathetic.” I included a commercial I saw last summer in South Africa. It displays my point perfectly; a corporation that has nothing to do with the inspiration it’s igniting in the commercial.

We are entering the season when our empathy is the main tool for driving sales. As change agents, we must be strong and ask if the empathy and action being produced is authentic? Or, is it being stimulated by some corporation that desires you to leave your family on Thanksgiving to beat the Black Friday traffic? Please be mindful of what is being asked of you this month. We have individual power to take action. This agency can be combined with other people’s free will and real action will happen. We are all positive change agents and no one controls us or our empathy.

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We Have Hit Three Months

It wasn’t until I heard my friend tell me a story about her visit to China while she was in the graduate school on a cruise ship that I really began to digest what I have been doing for the last three months.  If you haven’t been following me and Project Kinect, here is a rundown of the first three months.  Writing this down also helps me comprehend what I have done and where this year is going.

I started out the end of February in Las Vegas. There I met with the Human Feng Shui Project, witnessed my god daughter’s baptism and got a good look at the economy of Vegas and what they are doing to try and grasp the magnitude of their situation.

From there I was in Texas.  I spent a good amount of time in Austin with my friend Jess.  There I helped with the Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations (APASO) conference, witnessed the South by Southwest Interactive portion.  I also got see some extremely innovative theatre and learn about the ATX equation.  Austin led me to San Antonio, a thriving city, and then to Beaumont, which is a barely hanging on city. 

 With the assistance of my friends Alyssa, Levi and Megan, we journeyed to Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Mobile and onto Saint Petersburg. Outside of Mobile, AL we checked out Dauphin Island and how it has coped with hurricanes, the BP oil spill and the constant erosion that is inevitable for an island in that location of the gulf.

  In the Tampa/Saint Petersburg area, I learned about what is being done to fight against the high rate of pedestrian accidents.  I spent a night in the Gram Place Hostel and met Jo and Valoree who are contributing to their communities in great ways.  After the hostel I met Stacy, a friend of a friend and we got to talking about technology in schools and what that looks like as an educator. 

Stacy brought me to the train station and I went to New York with a fifty degree change in weather and an incredibly empty pocket book.  In New York I met with the Central Park Conservancy, The True Colors House and a whole bunch of different people adding their gifts into their communities.  New York was amazing because I had a chance to see what ten years of healing looks like after the travesty of September Eleventh.  New York came and went so fast that I feel like I hadn’t accomplished any connecting but then look at my picture from the today show and remember what great strides were made.

From New York I went to Connecticut, more specifically Mansfield, CT and hung out on the University of Connecticut (UCONN) campus for a few days.  I chatted with some graduate students about how their lives had changed at UCONN and sat through the technical rehearsal of Urinetown which is a musical that has so much relevance to our society right now. 

I then was in D.C., had a great sit down at the EPA, realized how amazing it is that majority of the Smithsonian Museums are free, and just took in our nation’s capital in a way that I had never done before. Washington D.C. was pivotal for me though when I realized I had connected an idea from one community, Yoga for youth, to another community.  That was when I realized what I was doing was actually getting people to think about what is happening in their communities and what they can learn from other communities that don’t cross their train of thought.

D.C. brought me to Baltimore.  In Baltimore I learned about what a city with such a bad representation with crime does to change the opinion of an entire nation.  Baltimore’s most significant addition that I saw was The Circulator that is a free bus.  It has three routes that venture through much of the city and prides itself on ten minute services until nine in the evening.  When I return, I will look further into the managing of this by the local government and how that bus system got budgeted in.
I then arrived into Milwaukee where it was raining, snowing, hailing with thunder and lighting and I was whipped around like a leaf from a leaf blower.  My friend Melanie picked me up and got me safe to Rockford where I gathered for her birthday, painted a wall and spent some time with Dana from the Weed & Seed Kishwaukee Corridor. 

Dolly came and got me from Rockford where I went home for a week, spent some time in Madison getting some follow up news on the Governor Walker Protests in February and March.  I had a quick look at Porchlight and the AIDS Network while I was there but I really wanted to spend some time with family before I was off to Los Angeles. 

In Los Angeles, other work had to take priority but I still got a chance to talk with the film maker Katherine Brooks and her summer project Face 2 Face where she is going to spend the summer meeting fifty of her facebook friends and filming it.  How amazing is that?

From LA, I flew into Minneapolis/St. Paul and went to an organizational meeting for the creation of a new nonprofit that will be dedicated to the goal of connecting LGBT youth so they have an even larger support system which will ultimately help to lower the rate of teen suicide.  To be on the ground level of such a purposeful endeavor was truly a gift.

I then went to hide out at my father’s house in Eau Claire, WI.  I spent some time up at our cabin, and then attempted to get caught up on editing and developing the next three months.   I had a chance to inquire into my Circle K club from college and to find out that this once small service club that I was once the president of is currently the second largest club of the entire international organization.  That is a ton of service hours helping to benefit the world that we all live in from an enormous group of selfless young people. 

I then made my way back to St. Paul and the Minnesota Aids Walk with my friend Danny’s kids from St. Paul’s area Gay/Straight Alliance clubs.  The following day was a huge rally at the capitol building where I interviewed people who were fighting for the right for gay and lesbian couples to marry.  The week gave me a chance to see four different people from extremely influential moments in my life.  It was a great week of reflection and then two fantastic female Lutheran Pastors drove me back to Wisconsin Dells where I am now preparing for a month helping out the schools that were destructed in and around Tuscaloosa, AL.

As I proofread this, it reads as if someone else has done this.  I sit and digest that this is my journey and I think how it is missing so many great details.  If you are reading this and this is your first introduction to Project Kinect, then please read what you’ve missed.  Something may inspire you to look at the communities in your life and involve yourself in a new way. 

If you are a faithful follower of what I have been doing, then please continue to follow and PLEASE share this with your friends.  My project doesn’t work if it isn’t shared.  I need people to continue emailing me, commenting and adding what they feel when reading and watching what is happening.  It is a group effort and in this group, everyone counts.

Well, next is Tuscaloosa.  I’m going to go get dirty with my friend Alyssa for a month and really try to help a group of people who lost everything.  I’m teaming up with The Forsaken Generation but still need your help.  Larger sponsors haven’t joined on yet so I’m still depending on the last of my savings and donations for living.  If you have been wanting to donate and haven’t yet, now is the time:  Now that my fourth month is starting, there is really no turning back…

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