Summer is Here. Time for Recharging and Rethinking

Lehigh's campus has a few days left of finals. It's been a long and hard semester. Many projects, additional outreach initiatives, and more than a full plate of regular day-to-day tasks required some highly skilled juggling.

One of the tasks is to scan social media for what's happening in the arts on campus and in South Bethlehem. Of course, scanning requires a fair amount of self discipline. I set a timer to redirect the rabbit holes I inevitably go down. But every rabbit hole offers insight and knowledge that comes in handy when I work with incredibly focused people. I'm often bringing community relationships into conversation with campus programs. Those relationships are institutional as well as personal. I love to learn about faculty research. The social and cultural organizations in the Lehigh Valley are also full of intelligent, curious, and passionate thinkers who love sharing what they do with others. Helping to make connections between folks on campus and folks in the community is what I was born to do. But it takes an extraordinary amount of time to learn about the community through making and sustaining relationships. Sometimes, I'll even do a deep dive into an experience or institution to really get to the know the people inside it. I research and experience as many programs off campus as possible; especially in the summer.

You see, you can't connect the dots in community engagement if you don't know what's happening in the community.

But that is also where I get into trouble. I see some pretty awesome things happening, and get to meet some pretty awesome people. I want to be a part of all the awesome stuff. The reality is, just because I could do anything, doesn't mean I can actually do everything. Try as I might to ignore the limitations of physical endurance and the finite resources of time, there comes a point when I must limit the monkeys.

The what?

Throughout the semester, I've been referring to a well known Polish proverb:

I took on some pretty substantial monkeys this semester. One included a deep dive into high school musical theater programs, another was to co-chair a local festival. These two projects were piled on top of teaching a course that had a higher enrollment than it should have had (that will require lots of rethinking this summer), and taking a course on program evaluation that makes me want to rethink nearly everything I do..... And then there's is the local history research project I started in 2010 - and continue to peck at it as national issues bring me back to finding lessons from our past.

And what about the Mountaintop Research project this summer? This is the project I've been wanting to do since before I got to Lehigh.

I hope to write about each one of these topics and more through the next couple of months. All of this stuff made the semester a pretty fantastic circus.

In the next couple of days, I will be plotting out the reading/writing schedule and figuring out a routine that should keep me on track to finishing a few items while also taking required recharge and respite time.  That usually means staring at a large body of water (lake or ocean) until I'm ready to come back to the drawing board for another go at the circus.

Protest Music - the Concept radio show

A friend connected me to a wonderful thinking/community organizer over email. Alan Jennings and I met last week in which he wanted to tease out an idea for an episode of his talk show on local public radio, "Lehigh Valley Discourse." This is a weekly news/talk program that airs on WDIY 88.1 FM. Alan shared this show with three other hosts. Before I get into the show, here's a little bit about this host.

Alan has been with the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley since 1980, becoming its executive director in 1990.  During that time, CACLV created a wide range of anti-poverty initiatives, including the Second Harvest Food Bank, the Sixth Street Shelter, weatherization and other energy assistance programs, entrepreneurial training and microlending, homeownership counseling and foreclosure mitigation and neighborhood revitalization.  Alan has been outspoken in its effort to promote economic justice, affecting extensive public policy changes and building the region's capacity to address its problems.  The agency has received numerous national, state and local awards for its work, as has Alan, including being named by The Morning Call as one of the six most influential activists of the 20th century.  Alan is also on the adjunct faculty at Lehigh University, teaching social entrepreneurship.

We are both adjunct professors at Lehigh, teaching entrepreneurship courses through the Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation. But when we met for the first time last week over a cup of coffee - we connected on a whole different level. We explored the impact of music on social change. My music history muscle was flexing and my brain was whizzing through so much repertoire and history... I could barely keep my thoughts straight.

This is music that matters to people. By learning what connects people to music (so hard) that people will spend hundreds of dollars to see the artists perform these songs live. To scream along to every song in the crowd, in the car or in the shower. To relate a personal history or a cultural event that inspired the artist - THAT is the part of art that wakes me up.

I applaud Alan for taking on a subject that's interesting and fun while getting the listening audience to listen more deeply to music they may have been singing; but don't quite get the impact. Here's the list of music we are thinking about playing parts of and discussing on the radio show scheduled for June 12th at 6pm. Tune in to hear online. To listen live, look for the button at the top of the page.

Lyrics to the final song list will be posted before the show. It's an effort to "do the homework ahead of class" so that the listener can get more out of it. Here's the possible artist list:

The Beatles
Pete Seeger
Gil Scot-Heron
Marvin Gaye
Style Council
Buffalo Springfield
John Lennon
Sex Pistols
U2
Public Enemy
Tracy Chapman
Bob Marley
Macklemore
Bruce Springsteen


The final segment focuses on Bruce Springsteen:

Inquiry Based Learning Experience

Do you know your best learning style? Do you immediately comprehend information from reading? Are you a verbal processor who has to practice restraint to let others have a chance in classroom discussion. Are you a deep-thinking introvert?

Have you been conditioned to think a certain way about how learning is measured? Are tests the only way to go because the law says so? Does project based learning really support building 21st-century skills? Do you learn better when you teach the material to someone else?

What is knowledge? What is your responsibility to knowledge (self and others?)

If this sounds like the worst writing assignment ever -- you probably haven't struggled with these questions yet, or are so overwhelmed by these questions because they face you at the end of every day. How could one possibly summarize their responses in one paper, or even one dissertation?

Since the dawn of recorded history, philosophers have wrestled with these questions. Generations of thinkers have wrestled with these questions. Students have wrestled with understanding the questions and the subsequent measure of demonstrating their comprehensive awareness of these questions.

It's exhausting, isn't it?

Why can't we just be? Well, for one thing, we have this millennial institution called, "higher learning." And we're in a state of crisis. At one point, higher education is seen as the solution that everyone needs in the creative economy. At another point, the digital age has brought an incredible access to information; almost like the breach at Helm's Deep (guess that literary reference). Behold, the MOOCs.

[Take a deep breath, hold it for 5 seconds, slowly let it out over 5 seconds. Relax your shoulders. Deepest apologies for the drama - but I'm asking for something that, for some, is a stretch...]

Each day you've been on this planet, you've learned about the world and your relationship with it. From the day you were born, you have learned through experiences. Your first lesson was compassion from your mother. You didn't read about it. You experienced it. Later in life, you learned what the word "compassion" meant in reflection of love and comfort. You may have learned deeper compassion by becoming a parent, or caring for another person. Or you may have learned about compassion by not having it when you needed it most.

What other values do we need to learn or to pass on to others? How do we express what we see, feel or understand about our world? This is not the kind of knowledge one typically demonstrates on a written exam. Last I read, there are no core curricular standards for "compassion." But this world surely needs it. So how can one acquire this knowledge, or other human values?

It is certainly the kind of knowledge one could develop in a life-long relationship with art.

Having a relationship with art does not require intensive conservatory study, hours in the dance studio, or years of solitude with paints or a keyboard. A relationship with art - especially since it's all around you - starts with giving the experience your attention.

Go ahead and say, "Hello, [insert art experience]." Ask it some questions.
"Where are you from?"
"What's a nice portrait like you doing in a place like this?"
"How in the heck did you think of that?"

Relationships are a two-way street, right?

It's time to think about approaching art with your own life-long experience. Don't check your baggage at the door. Let your relationships with other people and situations feed your knowledge. Even better, listen to what others see in the art experience. Their observations may highlight something you haven't thought of, or didn't see from your perspective.

This approach to learning was exactly what the first cohort of the Center for Developing Urban Educational Leaders (C-DUEL) did yesterday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was one of two "Creativity & Imagination in Leadership" seminars held in conjunction with the C-DUEL's partnership with the Maxine Green Center for Aesthetic Education and Social Imagination. The second one will be July 11th :

Creativity & Imagination in Leadership Seminar @ Lincoln Center

...This is a rare opportunity for participants to expand their awareness of the importance of multiple perspectives, collaboration, risk taking, and reflective practices. We will enjoy a live jazz concert and interact with the performers as to their practice in terms of collaboration, improvisation, etc. We have a final debriefing session as to how these experiences might impact our own practice as leaders and educators. The results, of course, vary from participant to participant but are usually quite powerful and in many cases have a lasting impact. 

The students in the first C-DUEL cohort are amazingly compassionate educational leaders. Through this shared experience, they revealed insight into their sensitivity and awareness of human value in others. I see great things in people who express curiosity about the world, who are also interested in understanding things they don't initially understand - people who approach learning by asking questions. Being open to this way of thinking can only inform their leadership.

You're a leader. Whether you are a long practicing educator, or a student, you are a leader of your own path of knowledge. The question is... do you want to know more?