See who is in there with you

Icebreaker: "Share a baby picture of yourself, and we'll all try to guess who is which baby. It's even better if it's a picture that shows off your personality. But don't make it too easy to guess!"

It's hard to describe the discomfort many introverts feel when asked to participate in icebreakers. Icebreakers are meant to reveal a little something more about the people you work with, or the team you've found yourself on in some capacity. Icebreakers are used in corporate meetings, design sprints, team-building exercises, trainings, introductory discussion posts in online classes... Just about any situation where there's a desire to "see the real you" and to get people feeling comfortable with each other.

The "baby picture" icebreaker is one I was asked to join in late last year at the start of a new product design sprint. And again when I was introduced at a small company as a short-term contractor. I don't have any baby pictures, though, because when I was nearly 4 years old, my family's house burned down, taking the pictures of my infancy with it. There's not really a plethora of later photos, either, as my family wasn't particularly focused on building albums of memories.

Finger exercise: "Answer the question, 'what is school for?' You'll have five minutes to write your answer, and anything you come up with is good. Try not to judge your own writing. You won't have to share this with anyone unless you choose to. But here's the thing: keep writing. No matter what, don't stop moving your pen or typing with your fingers—for the whole five minutes. If you get stuck, start the next sentence with 'what I want to say is...' and keep writing that phrase until you can finish it."

I used this exercise several times with groups of teachers. Once as part of a presentation in Toronto, another at the University of Warwick, and a few other times as part of a "Writing about Teaching" track at Digital Pedagogy Lab.

I was introduced to "finger exercises" by Natalie Goldberg, in her book "Writing Down the Bones." Though in truth it was my Creative Writing teacher at Metropolitan State University (Metro), Sandra Doe, who exposed me to Natalie Goldberg and pushed me into my first experience with finger exercises. Dr. Doe was a wildly red-headed woman who rarely wore matching socks and one day showed up in two different shoes—one with a heel, one flat-soled—and who had a an original carousel horse from the old carousel at Elitch Gardens, decked in Christmas lights, in her small living room. She was, in many ways, a walking icebreaker. And she hired me while I was still a student to help her open Metro's first writing center. She had faith in what I could do. Me, the staid, shy student who was anything but wild, red-haired, and uneven.

What I learned from her was: never stop writing. If you get stuck, look for what you want to say, and start again.

What I want to say is...

Affirmation poster: "It's okay to start over and try again."

This is in the office where I receive weekly treatments for what's been diagnosed as treatment-resistant depression, the hydraulic at the bottom of a cascade of anxiety, trauma, and loneliness that began three years ago and has kept me in a churn ever since.

It's very complicated to be diagnosed with something that, by definition, will resist treatment. Depression is common enough amongst, well, everyone, but depression that resists treatment is like a dog that won't stop trying to escape the backyard. I had one of those once, a wolf-hybrid that I was told was nothing more exotic than a Lab mix, whose wild sensibilities could not keep him safe, but drove him to go it alone. He didn't know what was good for him, and so I spent most of his youth chasing him down, finding him in yards, school playgrounds, on the street adopting a stranger to walk with. He and I went grey together, and when he died, I howled.

I have been howling a lot the last three years. And I don't know. I don't know if it's okay to start over and try again.

From an email to a friend: "Writing about AI right now, or the attacks on education from technology and the government, or about resistance and community… where would I start? The likely answer is 'somewhere, anywhere,' but the blinking cursor feels like an invitation to too much."

What I want to say is...

I used to speak to audiences of educators around the world. The icebreaker of a giving a keynote to an audience of fifty or a thousand was always a bit more than this introvert could handle. But I wanted to help, and I was asked to help. So, I tried my darnedest to show up, say good things, be hopeful and pragmatic, critical and utopian, to do good by those who asked me to speak. I have spoken in person or virtually in Canada, the UK, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Finland, Russia, Egypt, Pakistan, South Africa, Malaysia, and across the United States.

In those days of speaking about teaching, and writing about teaching, I felt I understood teaching. A lot, actually. And what I want to say is that now, I don't know that I do. Not because I spent three years not-teaching as a corporate executive (I did a surprising amount of teaching there). And not because much of the community I was a part of wrote me out of their work when I took that corporate job.

It's because... It's because...

What I want to say is...

I have always understood teaching as a utopian work. This comes from my study of Paulo Freire and critical pedagogy, which resides almost entirely within an effort borne of hope. Not wishful thinking-type hope, but hope that's crafted from the enduring capacities of human beings to change their world for the better. I read recently on a LinkedIn post that "pedagogy isn't belief," and while I didn't write any kind of response, I disagreed utterly. Pedagogy exists because we believe in what might be, in what might be different, in what can come from teaching people to learn, learning from people who learn, and constructing knowledge together.

Today, I don't understand teaching because what I see of it is largely LinkedIn posts by people refuting or advocating for or resisting or shining on AI. And those who aren't talking about AI are trying to voice their opinions about other things louder than other people can voice their opinions. I remember this from the days I was on Twitter, too; and in fact a lot of my work in those days was trying to put a focus on certain voices, voices that might not get heard without a platform. I built platforms, I turned the spotlight, I listened when they spoke.

What I wanted was community, and what I wanted for all of those people was community. A just, kind, diverse community where people could feel they belonged.

But today, teaching feels contentious. And no wonder: it is so profoundly threatened by those who don't teach, and who see education as an institution that can turn a profit. A house that can earn equity, so long as they convince its owners that there are many, many repairs to be made, and they proffer their offer to flip the house and make it shiny again.

But teachers, not technology, are the residents of this house. And we are entirely equipped to maintain it.

What I want to say is that education technology has never been necessary. And what I want to say is that AI certainly isn't necessary. Nor is it inevitable. I told a reporter recently that ed tech's big lie is convincing education and teachers that it's essential, and that it's the only thing that can fix the holes in the walls... the holes in the walls it's already convinced us are there.

The big lie that AI tells is that life is best lived efficiently, and that it will solve our loneliness.

Hopi Elder's Prophecy: "There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid ... Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

"And I say, see who is in there with you."

I am in the river. You are in the river. I think it would be helpful to recognise that we are in the river together, both of us moving toward a destination. That education isn't doomed, but it is challenged. That AI isn't inevitable, but it does tempt us with a much-needed sleep. It's normal that we would be tired by now, that we would want to surrender that fire that makes us and the future possibility because it takes more and more effort to keep it lit.

Text message: "Some days—or a lot of days— I wake up and feel there is no hope. Not that I am hopeless, but more that the world has been drained of hope. That doing the work of hope is like painting on a thin paper surface that will simply dissolve under application.

"But today, I saw a small bunch of balloons that had been loosed or lost. They flew high over the traffic in a quiet celebration. And I remembered that these things happened when I was a child.

"That these things still happen now gives me hope. That maybe the paper isn’t so thin. That the work will take. That we will come back."