Reflections On Mentoring / "Only connect..."

This week, I've been thinking about the role of the mentor. I understand my official role as a mentor. But I feel like it has taken me some time to develop what I can do for students who connect. I am not the line editor, although I can pick out places where I think the writing needs work. I am the mentor who connects. Perhaps it is partly from the obsession I have with E. M. Forster's epigraph at the beginning of Howard's End that says simple "Only connect...." and he adds three pesky ellipses that just don't connect. Ugh! That idea is like a hand grenade in my brain. It is such a simple puzzle: elegant, beautiful, and sad. This relates to my mentoring philosophy. I want to find ways to enhance the likelihood of the writer writing. That is my job. 

#DigiWriMos / The Invisibles / Thought on the Metaphor Project

The world is becoming more visual. Almost all of our social media and interaction online have some pictorial element. From icons to robust ads (with color and motion), we are constantly connecting image to word. That being said, I write is to create something that someone can imagine, conjure, and experience in a way that isn't attached to my image, but with the user (the reader and creator). And the stories that are important to tell are those containing "invisibles" or things that cannot be seen or even reconciled without individual interpretation.

The idea of "invisibles" comes from the idea that no one thing represents what we are trying to describe. No one can tell you what love looks like. They can try, and you can accept or reject it. But love is complex and usually needs a series of figurative ideas and elements to make it work. Most people have a complex and changing vision of "invisbles" like love - so in one story it will appear significantly different than the next. 

In October, I discussed the thought of creating a study on the metaphor of rhizomatic learning to define why we use the metaphor to explain elements of this type of connective learning. It is a tricky endeavor. The use of a metaphor is a figurative affair that must pay off on both sides of the metaphor. So much resides on the reader's experience, the metaphorical correlation, and the way it is applied. How the hell can you possibly study those elements? Perhaps you can't but you can collect metaphors and see how they are being used. It reminds me of electron colliders - you never see the collision, but the explosion after the fact. "Invisibles" are the quintessential reason for writing. It is why poets and writers can spend a year writing a novel that creates something bigger, something epic, something brilliant that has never before been experienced. It makes sense that religion and myth derive from oral and written manifestations. Gods draw off the tongue and miracles emerge from the page when we use figurative language to define the possibility (see what I did there?).

If we look for the origins of why we write and why we admire writing - it comes from how it changes our perspective of a person, a time, or an object. Amazing stories change us because we see and learn something new about what is possible in the world. But that doesn't come from facts - it comes from the figurative nature of listening and hearing words. Figurative language has a power (simile) to compare, to encompass (symbolism), to bring to life (personification), and to experience a visionary world. Writers know that there is a little bit of magic in these things called "invisibles" -- not because they can cast spells or turn a prince into a frog, but they can give you an experience that is refined. Our lives are not stories filled with "invisibles" - and that is what we long for when we read. By way of the word, we experience them deeply.*



*I typically add an image with my posts to make them a bit more dynamic, but this one deserves words alone.  

#Rhizo15 / Yup, Did It Again

Part of the problem with rhizo thinking and learning is that I always come across a few students every semester who needs to go on a rhizo learning experience. I have to say, at the beginning of the semester -- I didn't think I would have anyone to even consider this type of learning, thinking, and writing. As the semester made it to midterm, I found two people. Both future educators, both ambitious, both ready to take on something bigger than the class.

I am so excited to give them the opportunity to push and do something outside the traditional lines of the classroom. One will be doing a case study on a school system and investigate what it will take for the student to get on the local board of education. The other student will be working on a study that defines Native American access to local waterways including catch limits, licensing, and other issues with waterway usage for Native Americans.

I am very inspired by their ambitions - and I am very excited to see them move forward. It should be mentioned that a student who went rhizo on me last semester just emailed me sample chapters from a book of essays she is writing on ambitious in women. It was good. It was rhizo. And it was great.

It should be mentioned that a rhizo writer -- or in my case a rhizo writing teacher is someone who is able to see the moment when a student is ready to go rhizo. Not because they are the best students, or even the most ambitious, but because they need something more than what everyone else is doing. They need to go rhizo. This also ties into the Digitial Writing Month and how important it is to consider the right tools, the right mode to tell a story, write a book, or propose epic legislation. Part of the experience is listening to what the student wants to do and guiding them through some possible tools. They will have to find their way through digital writing like we all have - sometimes it is just typing on a word document, but sometimes, it is a collaborative - connective statement of who we are and what we can do as writers. 

#DigiWriMo Kicking It Off

In thinking about Digital Writing Month, this is the space where I need to innovate and be creative. And it was terrifying. Often writing is so filled with conventions and focused areas of format that we don't think about creativity in form and delivery. To be honest, I don't think genre-based writing helps that because that is about form and what people expect.

It was with this uncertainty that I looked out to the community of smart writers who are in the #DigiWriMo community to find some inspiration. And it is here that I found some people who think in ways that I admire and need to emulate. It is among these communities and within these challenges that I think we can be inspired and focused. We might not be able to sustain a year of intense writing because of the world around us, but I can certainly work like a dog for a few weeks. In the end, the results and inspirations will outweigh the hard work and long hours.

All my life I've wanted to be a writer, and teaching writing always seemed like a connective important way to live this working model. And teaching has been a significant element to better writing and connecting with other writers. In the end, the hardest work is the most significant work. The hardest part of writing is still the writing. Not because it is harder or more complex (although I like that challenge), but that the important elements of writing and getting better at writing are cast aside to in the art of teaching. I always wonder if Wallace Stevens had it right as an insurance saleman working, working the nine to five schedule - and writing on the boundaries of that life.

Now, being a bit older (mid forties), I feel the increasing urgency to just spend all my free time writing and writing and writing. Not because I running out of time, but I've finally come to a place where my ability (which was lacking in my twenties), and my experience are finally converging and working. It is not easy to be a writer, it is not easy being a teacher. To bring those two ideas together is to be something complex, determined, and questing for knowledge. That is what drew me into #Rhizo15 was the purposeful examination of new ways to think, write, learn, and connect to other people. Now, looking at how that might work in digital writing - it feels like my life on paper keeps aligning itself more accurately and precisely to what Annie Dillard explained as the writing life.


Declaration of a Writer for DigiWriMo
My writing goals for this month is ambitious, but that is where I tend to find inspiration. 1) I have an academic manuscript that needs to be fostered along. Everything is there and I need to work on it like it is a thesis that is due in December. 2) Write an opener for a novel. I have a great story to write, but I have been terribly stuck on a few things. I want a twenty-page opener that works for me. 3) Lastly, I would like to consider creativity, connectivity, and the community of thinkers in the DigiWriMo community. I want to think about new ways to consider texts and connections. It is here that I want to respond, connect and contribute to that important element of my work. 

About The Door: A Reaction to "Why We Rhizo"

In the article Why We Rhizo, by Autumm Cains, she describes the metaphor of doors and what that might mean. It is important to understand what is happening when we use a metaphor in explaining rhizo learning, because typically it means that some significant idea is shaping and while it may not have a perfect definition or context, the metaphor is helping to shape that moment (that is when I pay attention). It has happened a lot to me in the rhizo learning experience and I think as someone who is interested in rhizo learning and creativity (particularly through written expression), that the metaphor is a powerful tool to create comparable language to things yet to be named. That is for another article (probably a lot of them).

#Rhizo15 / The Humanistic Devotion

In the New York Times Sunday Review there was an interesting article on one of my hot topic issues, atheism. As someone who considers atheism and humanism the only path of understanding our lives, I feel that sometimes, the rhizome learning style is made for nomads, made for people who want proof not a philosophy. Reading that article and opening with the idea of meeting on Sunday with people leading a lecture series is interesting to me. Why Sunday? Why at all. Rhizo15 and the concept of nomadic learning, finding your own way, and taking ownership of your vision knowledge is autonomy and self-reliance made real. I agree with the article that we shouldn't be a political social group that goes after other religions and faiths, but finds common ground with them. I am not opposed to going to church. All of the churches I've been to have been very kind and open to my attendance. 

It brought me back to the series of essays I wrote a few years ago and had one published based on literature and religion have areas of overlap which are intriguing and complex. In my study of literature and the art of fiction, it is no surprise that the stories in the bible and the complexities of religious language feels something like good storytelling. I understand the issue with calling the bible fiction, but it should and is often examined with the same tools and understanding that any book or piece of world literature would be considered. Hence the beauty of thinking about these stories on their face value, and as allegory and metaphors of understanding. 

So, what is my point. My point is that religion for me is like everything else in my world of learning and inquiry. However, it also comes preloaded with political and social contexts and conditions that one had to be understanding and sometimes careful with. My faith is in us, and we have all contributed to this understanding of the world. And that is powerful and enlightening in and of itself. I might move back into that series. And talk openly why and how I think we should value a discussion about religious stories, how they are told, and why they are important. And if readers want to find divinity in those ideas, that is their choice. And I will be looking at the humanistic perspective of how we continue to define our purpose and our thinking. 

Faith and Art: willing suspension of disbelief  

If anyone has like-minded projects, read books, or just has an opinion on this topic, I would love to hear your ideas and work. I am happy to share some of the other writings that have come from this idea. Be well. Long live #rhizo15! (until #Rhizo16). 

“There are two types of people in this world. Those who want to know and those who want to believe” – F. Nietzsche

#Rhizo15 / Benchmarks in the Study of "Nomadology"

It is strange being a writer. If you are an academic you have very specific points to start and stop. You have first day of the semester, you midterm, you have finals, and then it is over. Sometimes you have other benchmarks like submission of your project or thesis or senior presentation week. All these elements signal different markers. However, if we consider the rhizome path, or what Aaron Johannes-Rosenberg coins "nomadology" - there needs to be these markers around us to shape the experience and give us a chance to reflect and commemorate the work.

Working with writers for a long time, I've seen the burn-out of writers who never celebrate, who never take stock, and appreciate what they are doing. They work like dogs and just keep sludging along. These students immersed in the idea of "nomadology" need to refine the art of marking their work, finishing a rough draft, completing a long project. We don't need traditional benchmarks. We don't need grades. But we need moments to shift from action to reflection and prepare for more action. It is not a midterm exam or anything academic, a place to stand for a moment and see where you are. Even looking up through a gorge can be stunning and inspiring.

Oddly, I feel like we are coming to one of those benchmarks soon with the official close of #rhizo15 looming on the horizon, I feel that we need to move into that moment. I hope it goes on and this vibrant community of thinkers, writers, educators, and creative people continue to interact. But it also gives us a chance to think about what just happened and is still happening. I never thought I would fall into such a collectively amazing, thoughtful, and educationally necessary (for me personally) group. Not only did I find my own way of thinking validated, I also thought of so many things I am just wrapping my brain around. I really liked the respect, the humor, and the depth of thought in this group. And for some reason, I am amazed that I did so much on Twitter (which had not really been my go to social media outlet).

Rhizo15 is something that changed the way I think about a lot of things. It confirmed a lot of my personal scholarship, and it opened my eyes to how and why I should be setting more students out into their own vision of the rhizome. If we are destined to "nomadology" and the rhizome of learning, we should find new ways to connect the path, the purpose, and the vision into a something that will help choose the next path, purpose, and vision.

A few things I learned this month: I've been in the rhizomatic learning system all along. I should stay in that learning system, and never come out. I also learned that I should lure people in with whatever means I can and tell them that it will be okay, look at me (ha!). And lastly, I was finally able to put a name and a loose metaphor to this world of learning, giving it purpose and distinction even when it feels like it is drifting or lost. Knowing the name of the thing you've always known but couldn't say is like finding the magic words to unlock a language, or a whole new way of seeing something. For that alone, I am grateful and so optimistic. Perhaps that is my benchmark - my moment on the vista. Now, I must go back and see what kind of artifact I can make for Dave. I do have a half backed novella cooking somewhere... maybe I should pull open the oven door and see if it will rise. 

#Rhizo15 / Week 5 / "Sapere aude!"

I wrote a long post about weeds, invasive learning, and strange metaphors. I wrote about definitions and realize I just copied Autumm's post over again (damn her all encompassing views!). Then I went back and read Dave's weekly post and I came back to learning as a motivation, not a means to an end.

And I felt better.

We must wander through books, through ideas, through the world. I went into a pond yesterday to recover something for someone. I thought it would be so cold, so mucky, so dismal. And the water was warm and the water was clear. And I swam, I kicked, and plunged down and saw the fish, and a stunning world of plants, rocks, and water. I was so worried about how I might feel, I never thought about how nice it would be. And it was brilliant. I swam, dove, and frolicked for more than an hour. I was the invasive species and I still had a great time.

When I found this quote, I recall reading the book, but a new idea bubbled. Perhaps the rhizome isn't a path to interrupt education, but a freedom to give to yourself. This path is the higher degree of thought, connection, and community. That is closer to enlightenment than I have ever come! And I can't help other people find their way to it, but just remind them that it exists and they should be looking for it too. Kant's spirited shout was -- "Sapere aude!" - dare to know. And it is in those moments, floating, diving, pushing in a foreign world that it becomes so evident. "What is the depth of my knowledge?" The answer is only "sapere aude."

“I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.” - Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

#Rhizo15 / Week Four / Writers Write To "Know"

There have been some very interesting and insightful conversations and connections out there this week in Rizo15.

The best way to connect to a writer is to give them other writers, give them other ideas, and let them refine their vision. By introducing a writer to another writer (living or dead) is to move them into new relationships with their own ideas and work. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

I've been in the business of subjective measurement for some time. How do you value a poem or a piece of fiction? Simply put: you don't. You measure their intent, you measure their access to the past, you measure their understanding of aesthetic quality. In the end, you measure their expectations, their visions, and their end product. Sometimes, I say simply: I didn't understand this part. Or, it reminds me of something you wrote earlier. When it works - I explain how it works in terms of my own reading. For example, "I like this poem because it presents two different ideas that oppose one another. Seeing those two forces might be similar to magnets or opposites and this is where your word choice could be considered polarizing." While I am making judgments on their work, I am merely telling them my thought process as I read. Not because it has more value than their own, but because it might illuminate an area for development. This could be a type of subjective conversation that leads to more inquiry or understanding.

Writing and thinking about creating new writing is always about connecting people together. Albeit, the people might be dead, but writers are experts in recommending a voice to interact with. Sometimes, it is a "one and done" kind of experience (a writer doesn't like a suggestion). Other times, reading becomes an obsession and writers will consume everything that a famous or noted writer produces. Personally, I think it is more effective when the writer is dead. That's not to say that living writers aren't important, but if we believe that people are content, then their life, their work, and anything else becomes the subjective understanding of that life, that work, and that experience in intellectual thinking. We know reading and thinking is complex. You can never read a great book for the first time - again. There is only one first and then there is again and again, in different ways and constructs. Writers are the network other writers study. They are the community, the content, and the ability to change something in the future. We are creating and building upon those who wrote before us. And we have the opportunity to commune with them, from Whitman to Carver at any time. This communion of ideas and connectivity is rhizomatic, and it is constantly evolving.

So, a writer then becomes the content by way of art, the subject or aesthetics by living, and the subjective learning group all at once. They can be mentors, teachers, students, and building blocks all at once - or at different times in the writing life of someone else. Why would someone become a Melville expert? Why would someone dissect every Whitman poem? Why would someone go to the place where a writer committed suicide? Because they want to "know". By that "knowing" we define the essence of subjective learning. We bring it to just that - to "know" we mean anything, everything, what we need, what we want, what we must find in order to create and add to the world. It is a brilliant and complex community residing on the pages of the rhizome. How it is accessed and interfaced is forever an exploration of form and creative endeavor. The hope is that we will never know its completion, but merely its possibilities. We need a new model - we need to define the path of creativity, and foster the infinite journey to be had there.

P.S. It is fascinating to connect some of the inspirations and conversations that writers had with one another. For example, Coleridge and Wordsworth inspired some fascinating writing. When you find and see some of the connection writers have with their contemporaries, the rhizome grows. The pathway augments and shifts. It has always been a connected group of thinking, we just haven't realized its relevance or power in our thinking process. Maybe now is the time. (Hope this makes sense).

#Rhizo15 / What I've Been Missing

It has been an interesting week and some really fascinating and creative ideas have been swirling around #Rhizo15. I can say that I am truly inspired and amazed at how powerful and connected this has been for me as an educator and a thinker.

I spend too long creating things in a vacuum. If I am creating a syllabus, a course schedule, resources, a blog, something to offer the students when they walk in the door, I have only met my own perception of what I think is going to happen in the classroom. What I've realized in thinking about content this week is that it means nothing until the students fill the class. I use to think I was a terrible teacher because after a few weeks, the syllabus, my ideas, and my connections to that "thing" I created before class was just thrown out like a piece of roadside trash. I would adapt the learning level of the class, I would spend more time on skills and conversation that I thought important. And those weeks of careful building would start to crumble.  By midterm, I was often in a state of chaos because I was the one at odds with my own content. Conversations, ideas, experiences - all coming from the students replaced my vision of the class. For a long time, I blamed myself for being caught between what I thought would and should happen and what was really happening in the classroom. And for the first time, this year, I feel like I can articulate this feeling of conflict with the content and the students. The more they infused ideas and good conversation - the more I grew frustrated that I couldn't pursue it, that I had to go back to those ideas that were created in a vacuum. 

What is and was missing was the fact that the students will be the content and the assessment, they will be the coffee, the cream, the everything - and I need to contain it (the cup). This has brought about a sense of relief and a sense of shifting into a new paradigm. 

#Rhizo15 / Week 3 / Content - Morning Coffee

This is a fascinating topic and I think it begins the root of one of my difficulties as a writing teacher. But before I ramble about that -- it is important to remember that we are the content, and what we say and what we think are diverse and complicated packets of thought. If we are the curriculum, we are also the content. We've been filling this space with content, but how it connects and how it all moves us through our learning paths and root systems, is not content but the result of the content and the curriculum moving in orchestra.

Course content to me is a dream. During my writing courses and working with graduate students, there is the content - which I always discuss in terms of coffee (content), and the cup which is everything else (form, ethos, pathos, logos, audience, time, place). I've been asked to teach courses with no coffee and all cup - and all coffee and just the mention of a cup. So, what is more important and why?

In the end, I need to give the students a cup of coffee. An empty cup doesn't serve them because they need the coffee, the caffeine, and something warm to ingest. On the flip side coffee can't happen without putting it into something or it will be a complete mess. And so the connection of these ideas have to come together. Form and content together. And let's face it - it is not all that exciting discussing comparative essays with no content. And writing about gun control without understanding how an argument works is mentally exhausting as well.

And if I might complicate matters a bit more, what if the coffee is the form and the cup is the content? What if I am the coffee and the writing is the cup? Sorry, I just get caught up in Rhizo fits of thinking.

Do I need content to talk about writing? No. But the difficulty is to explain "form" in a vacuum without content. And then explaining that it doesn't matter what goes into the cup or what the content is, as long as you understand the form and what it can do. It gets more complex when we get into creative writing.

Creative writing is about telling stories and creating emotions. Story is content developed through the writer. I don't feel like my role is to change content in creative writing unless I have a reason based in form and function. To say, I just don't like this has to be based in reason, not just my own subjective taste. My job is to ground my comments in the function of form - and sometimes that is difficult to do. That is where I need to be a better teacher and mentor. I need to study narratology, I need to study form and rhetoric in fiction and linguistic. Their content is subjective which speaks to their story and ideas. And frankly, it bothers me when people judged my creative work without a functional purpose for change. How do I make creative writers produce better writing - I talk to them about everything but their content. I even make them write journals about why they are doing what they are doing and mapping out how they work. Shaping their form and aesthetic well-being will give the best fertile ground for growing something brilliant.

Having said that - isn't it ironic that I've been hired to teach "subjects" - content and not teach in an area where I can be effective in all modes of written expression. Perhaps that is a place in our academic world that we should subvert. We are all so much bigger than the content we teach. Perhaps that would go on our subjective portfolios and resumes - the place where all the really important things are listed and never realized. 

The Depth of Subjective Experience

I wanted to comment on something not related to education or students. Rather, I wanted to talk about my other life as a diver. I come from a background of scuba diving that started basic and moved into more and more diving, which resulted in deeper technical diving. All that means is that the diving became deeper, more equipment laden, and need a lot more contingency plans.

The more I pursued diving the more I took different types of risk. And I was content taking those risks. I saw some very exciting things, but I also pushed the limits of my personal safety. As I get older, I feel like I want to pull back from some of those risks. I want to be in the ocean more, but reduce risks.

In exploring the idea of free diving (also known as apnea diving), I realized that this was a world that held some risk, but also seemed more natural and made more sense. I wasn't closing out scuba diving, I was just readjusting my lens. I want to swim more, encounter more sea life, and move away from the need to dive deep.

I started reading and following the world of apnea diving. This is a fascinating sport. My approach to breath-holding diving was to basically push snorkeling into exploration. As I discovered, apnea diving has a wide range of ability and on the far end, is the extreme record holders that are breath holding to 200+ feet for more than 3 minutes. There is also different types of breath holding diving, like sitting idly in a pool and seeing how long you can hold your breath. It is competitive and takes a skilled athlete.

In terms of learning and understanding your own place in free diving, it takes some serious introspection, body control, and focus. In the end, when something doesn't work (like in thinking about academics) it can feel confusing and lost. World champion free diver Annelie Pompe discuss the reality of what it means to be the world champion, and realize that you can't dive any more. She explains in her post on her blog "I am one of the world's deepest freediving women soon to be in a freediving competition, and I can't freedive deep anymore."

She describes the experience as "When you freedive you close your eyes and dive into yourself. When you freedive you are utterly alone with yourself, your thoughts, memories and emotions." And that is a place where you can equally achieve and equally fail. The difficulty in subjective learning is the level of honesty in the reflection process. The closer we come to being truthful, the more refined we come to understanding the process. This article comes very close to the complicated nature of pushing yourself, pushing the limits of what is possible and reconciling that to what is doubtful, what is fearful, and what might stop you. That is a strange place to ponder the world, on the razor edge of great accomplishment, and failure.

The article ends with a very simple idea. "Freediving is difficult that way. 'You know why it is difficult?' my coach would ask. 'Because you have decided that it is difficult.' What if it's really that simple?"


Link to article:
http://deepeverest.se/2015/04/16/how-to-live-and-freedive-with-passion-and-how-to-do-without-it/

Confessions of a College Educator: Why I did what I didn't do...

In my previous post, I discussed the decision I made to let a few students who were doing well in the class, be cut free from the last few weeks of programmed course work so that they could do some rhizomatic exploration - or what is now being termed "free-range-learning". I discussed some of the student reactions, ideas, and the impressions they had moving into this new place of learning.

Dave Cormier mentioned in the Facebook group, "there must be at least one person in that room that you're worried about. Maybe someone who is overly passive yet a good student? Someone else who might not be all that self driven?" And it got me thinking.

The reason I selected the two students came about because they were safe. I knew they were academically sound and if they didn't do another stitch of work this semester they would be in great shape. They were proven to be motivated and focused, their research papers were focused and well executed. So, I knew that they would understand the idea and run with it.

But to get to the heart of the matter, why didn't I ask someone less accomplished, someone not doing well? Part of it was not being able to see that perhaps the method was the issue. If I am being honest, perhaps I thought lazy, lack of motivation, and lack of perseverance was a "student" problem, not a "design of the course" problem. Now, it might seem evident that a student allowed to "free range learn" might prove all of those assumptions on my part as false.

At this point, I should sit on this idea. Part of my thinking process wants to set up a basic engagement process - a student must understand what I am asking them to do; the student must be able to work independently; the students must be.... Yeah, that is where it gets conflicted - why shouldn't they have the same experience, the same opportunity, the same possibility to learn?

Taking the best students sets up better rate of success, but it doesn't gives us a true vision of what is possible. I was never the A student - but I was the person who would have really benefited from doing things differently, thinking differently. And when it came down to it - and no one gave me those options, I created them myself. I wrote a novel in my junior year of high school because I wasn't being challenged, I made my teachers read it and talk to me about it, and that was my own rhizome learning exploration. I wasn't in the honors society, or the top of my class. But, I knew the value of work and refining what was important to me as learner. I can't believe I missed that in bringing this concept to the classroom.

Rhizo15: From Connections to the Classroom / Part I

So, I did it. I sat down with two students in my writing course. I told them this is completely optional and they do not have to do this. They were selected because they had both done an exceptional job with every assignment and all I was asking them to do in the class this semester.

Three weeks left. And I told them, "I want you to spend this time doing something important to you and the research you've done in this class. The hard part, I am not going to tell you what to do. I am not going to even try to grade what you are going to do. I just want you to do something that is important to you and then tell me about it."

Immediately, one student said, "Because of my writing and thinking about the topic of my research, I really think I want to write a book. I want to take this time to actualize this book and start sketching out who this book will be about and what it is meant for." She went on to explain that she would create a daily journal where she continues to grow the ideas and the direction of the book. She would share some of that writing with me and what she has realized about herself in the process.

The second student listened and the said, "I wish all my teachers were like you. This is how I can learn, this is what I can do." I explained they wouldn't have to come to class anymore, but they would have to report back in a few weeks. They would be able to email me any time and I would help them, guide them, or mentor them along if they got stuck, wanted feedback, whatever. She leaned back and said, "This is so exciting, and a little scary. But it is what I can do." She waved her hand and said, "I'm getting emotional." And I knew where she was coming from. She said she was going to create a survey based on her research paper and try to refine data. She wanted to research and push what she knew about her topic. She wanted to do something rare, she wanted to find the information that was missing when she was looking for sources for her paper. She is picking up the path of others, standing on the shoulders of giants.

We set some ground rules. Your grade now is your final grade (they are excellent), or I can add on more for the work you do in the next few weeks, but I am not sure I can or want to assess that in terms of grades. I told them they didn't have attend class, but they had to communicate with me. In a few weeks, we will have a meeting to check in and see where their learning went and why.

And for a final examination - we will have a final examination lunch and discuss how this felt, what they expected, what they thought, what they learned, and how they feel about this type of learning.

Not only could I see the excitement of ideas and connections - but I could also feel that they were prideful, owners in their learning, excited that they were in control, and happy to be considered someone who should learn in this way.

Thinking back, I wish I started them earlier, I wish I trusted myself to trust them sooner. They have begun. I know they are excited and they will take this time to do something amazing. It feels strange that I am teaching less, and empowering them to do more. These feelings are the conflict between the traditional, objective methods of teaching in higher ed, and a model that has allowed two students to feel the excitement and the freedom of their own choices and ability in academia. I am excited for them. Today felt like a step in the right direction.