A Quiet Revolution Dedicated to You

[a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o
n]

a collaboration from around the world.

dedicated to you.
n]

Our county is 6th in the
nation in suicide rate.
Every 9 days someone
takes their life.

The measure we are
currently using toward
success, the actions we are
currently using to ﬁx
problems, even to
determine which problems
are problems, aren’t
boding us well.

3

structure & design :

A bit of insight into the book layout: This plan is encompassing and obscure
by design. It can be difficult to take in. It
Thomas, who introduced us to Ivan Illich, starts may appear too simple, or too complex.
us off with a compelling forward. The goal of these printed words is to
share a short, zoom out version. By
doing so, we hope that it’s easier to see
Amanda focuses us on story. how each part is connected and vital.
Pictures, videos, and links are added for
Our table of contents was crying out to be non-
further understanding. We tried to write
linear, so we let it.
so that they are not needed, link into
them only as your curiosity begs.
We end each chapter with a short summary, a We don’t think any of this is new or
perspective from youth, and one from parents. The five necessarily insightful, but perhaps the
chapters represent five elements we believe could scale this combination is. Perhaps just doing it is.
experiment across for anyone anywhere.

Next, a glossary-type communication effort, hoping to We hope you find this as intriguing
paint a clearer picture of what we’re experimenting and invigorating as we have. We
with. hope you believe, or begin to
believe, with each concept that
might seem ridiculous or risky,
And then, the begin being provides a bit of background
of some of the players. We want to point out though, that this
that the greater risk is an ever
perpetuating assumption,
is everyone, and happening everywhere. It’s not about us, it’s n] that we are playing it safe.
about all of us.

forward:

l life self-det ything.
Whe e is
atley
n
ermi
We are seeking the

n
brilliance of the human

nsic edom to mpose a

M eg
mind through freedom of
This book is a catalyst for mutative the human spirit. We’re

. -
respectfully calling into

to i
change in our educational system.
question our current
To this end, be you is a living

The ossible
(seemingly blind, deaf,
artifact of sorts that represents the

to al
and mute) allegiance to

fre
oral histories, deep narratives, our system of education

imp
based on publicly
research and ongoing movement of

It is
prescribed learning.

intri
real humans; their hopes, dreams,
This prescribed learning
disruptions and unshackled praxis. was not crafted with ill
Be you dares to look critically at intent, but has undoubtedly
modern education in form and sustained a crippling
function while also offering resilient dependency, an addiction,
at a global level.
working examples of resilient Social change can and will
learning ecologies. happen if we but question
- Thomas Steele-Maley the existence of the
prescription itself rather
than continue our efforts to
improve its deliverance.

attribution: I once read a
response from
some famous
person, after she
It’s so difficult to attribute people, was once again
applauded for
when so many inﬂuence you daily.
her ideas.
If you hear your words, as many of you
will, know we admire your art, your She wrote about
vision, to set people free. Free to be, to how much more
notice, to dream, to connect, and to do it would mean to
her if rather than
what matters most. thanking her and
telling her how
A book is unattributable. -Deleuz & Guattari great her ideas
were, people
would live out
those ideas.

I like that.

We are living out
your ideas.

A common complaint about schools reflected in the recent report of the Carnegie
Commission: In school, registered students submit to certified teachers in order to
obtain certificates of their own; both are frustrated and both blame insufficient
resources - money, time, or building - for their mutual frustration.

I believe that the contemporary
crisis of education demands that
we review the very idea of
publicly
prescribed possible
learning translation:
Rather than trying to motivate youth to learn our
rather than common core curriculum through shiny things,
like gaming, or fancy technology, or the latest
the methods used tools, or project based learning, etc, let’s call into
question our presumption that we must teach
in its enforcement. certain things. Let’s allow for just in time
learning. Imagine being blown away by what we
Ivan Illich, then notice, dream about, and do. Imagine
Deschooling Society, 1972 recapturing a soul peace from the connections
afforded in these spaces of permission to be.

story: the beginning is setting the scene. familiarizing us with the old story. the
roots of education. the listless classroom. (we want to move from here)
Once upon a time there was a boy. The boy was very
curious. The boy’s curiosity took him everywhere. The boy
Amanda on the was happy. Then people decided to teach the boy how to
importance of story, be happier. The boy obliged. And obliged. And obliged.
our story:
Parts of the boy started to die.
rhizome is what the
hero brings to us. the middle is the awakening. the detoxing. passion connecting to passion.
it is a way of (the hero's challenge. what we overcome. our bravery. our strength.)
learning that allows .
The world was very noisy, and very busy, and very
us to get out of our
rows of chairs.
stressed. The world couldn’t see that the boy was dying.
One day, a man heard the boy crying and asked what was
the beginning wrong. The boy told the man that he had lost himself,
middle and end somewhere. The man leaned in. He hugged the boy.
is our hero's
journey from
the end is connecting. integrating. (bringing it from the singular to the
disenchantment,
we. the community as classroom. our inspiration. our why.)
lost faith, to the
seed of possibility Once connected by their embrace, the man noticed the
that is sprouting. boy. This made the man weep. He longed to be the boy,
himself, again. He wondered if he could. And the
wondering, woke him up. He began being. He became
himself. The man was very curious. Again. The man’s
curiosity took him everywhere. And the man was happy.

The unmet need of our story:

People feeling free enough to be themselves,
to practice and share their unique art/gift/genius.

imagine an ideal home situation.
Quite possibly an unschooled home, where the parents trust that
learning is natural and non-linear. The natural part implies that life is
rich enough to suffice a curriculum. The non-linear part implies that no
prescribed basics are needed. This frees them up to focus on knowing
their child. This knowledge allows them to facilitate the unique curiosity
(curriculum) from inside.

This child has access to any resources needed, is known by someone,
believes he has nothing to prove, and is free to be curious, to be
himself. We’re thinking this is a more sane, equitable, and humane
deﬁnition or rendering of

no child left behind.

Our findings via prototyping of this story …

be you. The first two years have been a
true disruptive innovation, where
we were working in the shadows,
why in incubation,
Setting people free, testing and prototyping and
to be themselves. failing and learning.
We experimented with spaces
how where people could tap into their
Creating (physical & own genius, their own art.
mental) spaces of
permission. Spaces free of proof,
credentialing, measurement. We
what were seeking ways to facilitate
self-directed learning. Our
Soul peace
findings are not new. Practicing
unleashes brilliant minds/art.
them, however will require a
change in mindset.
start with why

It will require a culture of trust,
with (mental and physical)
spaces of permission.

Our ongoing vision of this story playing out…

The second (one) two years’ focus
be us. will be more on community, how do
we become us. This necessitates
more visibility, a coming out phase.
why
Setting communities free, We are ﬁnding out what types of
to share themselves. gathering spaces our community
wants, needs, believes in, most.
how
Creating (physical & This phase will be heavy on the art
mental) spaces of of conversation. How do we listen
trusting/giving. to each other without an agenda on
what an ongoing basis. Web access has
shown us the value of connection
World peace
and ways to better connect with the
allows for gatherings that matter,
invisible, and the silent, globally.
per choice.
We plan to use that insight and tech
start with why

to better listen to each other,
locally. We believe, for any type of
thriving sustainability to happen
within a community,
we must create, be, together.

on why
Setting people free,
to be themselves.

A turtle is protected by its shell. If someone took all the turtles’ shells
away from them, that would be deadly. Perhaps some turtles would be
strong enough to get their shells back. But for those not strong enough,
returning their shells to them would mean returning them to their
natural state. It would be a setting free of sorts. Free from the bondage
the stolen shells created. When the turtle is back in its natural
environment, the turtle is then ready to be.

We see public education as stripping away a kids’ shell. It’s as if their
culture, their natural state of curiosity, has been stolen. Setting free is
simply restoring their shell to each person. We’re not telling them who to
be or how to be or what to be. We’re just creating that free space. That
space of permission, that many haven’t seen since they were ﬁve.
[a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o n]
We see this space of permission, this shell, as a new way to look at what
it might mean when we say the words, no child left behind.

If you are setting people free, you aren’t empowering them. You are
doing the setting. You are doing the action. We believe empowered
people is key. Please help us challenge all the thinking we are sharing.

And now, ﬁve elements we’re seeing as critical to a quiet revolution.

changing the conversation
(self & community)
in
(physical & mental)
spaces of permission

table of contents:

n]

Strip the layers/toxins we tend to bury
ourselves in. Detox. Get back to what matters,
a natural state..
of curiosity.
ch. 1
(rhizomatic learning)

conversation
self with

Imagine a mental space of permission, where no one is measuring or labeling you. A space to talk to
yourself, question yourself, become yourself. Pause. Breathe. Swim in vulnerability. Practice the art of
self-reﬂection -- am I doing what matters? Imagine, how we could change a space, a country, a
person, if we focused on self-assessment rather than any standardized assessment.
n]
Most people are other people. - Oscar Wilde

change the conversation?
?
In our journey to redefine school, Simon Sinek’s TED talk about the importance of
why, got under our skin. Why why first? How seemed awfully huge. As did what. The
further we journeyed, however, the louder why became.

The world has been quite obsessed with how school is done, as seen by years of
w h y
study of pedagogy (method and practice of teaching.) Even our own research to
redefine school, as it intensified 3 years ago, was focused on the answer to how
because of our presupposed what (certain math, science, etc.)
We found, as might be expected, that everyone learns differently. Nothing is for
everyone in the how ie: lecture, hands on, book, video, drill. Most people accept that
these days. In fact most money, energy, and resources go toward differentiation of
the how. How we get those core standards (the what) into each student.
ie: by gaming, tech, project based, blended, flipped, online, charter, homeschool, ib,
ap, stem, steam, etc..

Well, imagine if we’re focusing on how to a wrong what. For a very long time now,
not many have questioned the what of school. However, questioning the what,
changes the game. It allows learning to be per choice, directed by internal
curiosities. A person’s or community’s how can then emerge holistically and
vulnerably in context.
w h y

There is no normal when the assessment is a self-assessment. We are individual
thumbprints. Via Godin, we are all weird, abnormal, extraordinary.
[for more on normality take a listen to: normal – why & what, or read Seth Godin’s
We Are All Weird n]

Many of us aren’t living our potential because we’re too busy working on the how of
an assumed what. We’re too busy being other people, comparing ourselves to other
self-reflect
people, rather than simply being ourselves. We’re not taking time for vital internal
conversations about our why. Imagine awakening indispensable people by simply
listening. Deeply. To ourselves.

We have been experimenting with a process of learning to learn, as a prompt to
these self-conversations, these self-assessments. The words aren’t magic, people
are modeling this everywhere. Either on purpose with some similar process, or
naturally. Notice a 4-5 year old. Notice any truly self-directed learner.

Detox, what we have penned this process, is a way to pause, reﬂect, and get back
to that natural state of curiosity. We see it as a means to shed the toxins that might
be suffocating us, as we have become dependent on a system that was simply
trying to help us. It was trying to help us gain efficiency, by managing us.

Perhaps this process, play acting a healthy mind, can redirect, facilitate, and heal
the masses who have lost their impulse to be self-directed learners (who have lost
their turtle shells). Perhaps this documentation we are gathering and sharing from
experimenting with detox could help eradicate (get rid of by the roots) the
standardization we perpetuate (become dependent on) in public education. Perhaps
it can help prepare us for uncertainty.

Via another of Mary Ann’s poignant posts, where she sites Vivian Gussin Paley’s A Child’s Work:
We who value play must do more than complain of unwanted drills that steal away our time.
We must ﬁnd time for play & keep daily journals of what is said & done during play if we are
to convince anyone of its importance.

choice Content (prescribed curriculum) has been assumed for so long, that many
believe it’s basic or essential. One problem is, that list of essentials keeps
getting longer and longer. ie: information was doubling every two years in 2006, every
three days in 2010.

The fact that we can’t keep up with this information ﬂow is actually helping us.
It’s helping us to see what matters most, choice.

Our mandates and assumptions most often hold us back. They often keep us
mindless as we follow the curricular directives, and do as we’re told. If learning
is indeed non-linear, can’t we start anywhere? Can’t we start with curiosity, per
choice? If we are tapping into an individual’s interest, the resulting deliberate or
deep practice requires no external incentives. We learn to think. We end up
knowing what to do when we don’t know what to do. We need to start grasping
what the power of choice means. There’s no right or wrong in a decision, it’s
about owning it. Owning is what makes things happen. What changes things.
For good.
people + why =

James Paul Gee’s research shows kids who are, at age 7, masters at a card game
called Yugioh. Gee says that the rules written for the game, are at a PHD level
language. It works, he says, because every piece of it is married to a physical
action in the game, and completely explicated in the movies, it’s lucidly
functional, and it’s per choice.

Gee suggests that for success, you have to have u i (passion plus persistence).o
[a q grit e t r e v o l u t i
He says, no one is putting in 10,000 hours of practice (what research says
n]
makes one an expert) to something, unless they have a passion, an intense
internal drive toward it.

Brain research tells us that people learn when they choose to. Choice
empowers and wakes us up. It causes us to act, to change.
a l i v ep e o p l e
Eric Mazur, Harvard professor, has done extensive research in what
learners are truly taking in. Studies dealing with his physics students
show that many who hadn’t taken high school AP classes, (one of our
current signs of rigor), were doing better than those who had. Eric
says that knowing how to learn can prove much more valuable than
spending time collecting (or appearing to collect) speciﬁc content.
Especially if the content isn’t coming from an internal drive.
Tory calls this a wanted stress. It’s not that people are waking up
every day hoping to ﬁnd ways to be lazy, or to avoid stress. They are
just craving choice. They want to work hard at something that
matters to them.
Live a full life, and call that our content.
Frank K Sonneberg writes in Managing with a Conscience:
The problem is that many managers don’t believe people should think for themselves.
Robert Waterman, Jr, makes just that point in the Renewal Factor when he tells the
story of a general motors executive who says that H. Ross Perot saw something that
needed doing inside GM and told a GM manager to do it. The man replied that it was
not part of his job description. You need a job description, fumed Perot, I’ll give you a
job description, use your head. The bemused GM executivie said, can you imagine
what chaos we’d have around here if everybody did that?

Enlivened people crave creative ways to shareior expose their ideas,
[a q u e t r e v o l u t io
their code, their tacit knowledge, their art. This energy unleashes
n]
adjacent possibilities. As more are freed up to play, we become
robust communities of practice (happy people).

speed read do we change the conversation?
This year, we experimented a little more with the art of talking to
yourself. We’ve been calling it detox. We’ve designed a physical space (the
be you house), and are encouraging more people, even those not in need
of much detox, to help log and reflect on their experiences with it. We’ve
got a detox booth, where
People can self-reflect into a laptop: their being, what they’re
noticing, what they’re dreaming or imagining, who, what, how
and where they’re connecting, and what they’re doing.

We’re interested to see what transpires as a person experiences
spaces of permission, calling for a new conversation. We’re wondering
about some sort of activity systems mapping or video speed reading
similar to Deb Roy’s worm mappings in his TED, The Birth of a Word. Roy
v i d e o

was able to track latitudinal and longitudinal linguistic patterns as to when
and where his son was learning. We’re interested in patterns people
undergo while learning, and while learning to learn.

We’re also interested in Roy’s vantage point in our next phase, not just
observing an individual’s change over time, because of self-conversations,
but observing a city’s change over time, because of community-
conversations.
People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few: that the
organization of the entire economy toward the “better” life has become the
major enemy of the good life. Like other widely shared insights, this one will
n]
have the potential of turning public imagination inside out. - Illich

We’re imagining as well, developing an app for
detox similar to what seeclickﬁx does. Imagine
texting what you noticed, what you’re dreaming
about, or what you connected, and within the day,
you receive 5 text #’s of people in your community,
or virtually, that were curiously pursuing the same
thinking/things. Imagine creating local and virtual
gatherings that matter, because they are per choice.

For many years, people like Ivan Illich have written and talked about the importance of
non-prescriptive learning. They were yearning for the day that learning would be owned
by the learner. Today, there are pockets of this happening everywhere, but often still
partially prescribed, and access to these pockets is not equitable. [Equity not equality.]
Equity will come with more spaces of permission, spaces per choice. Scaling across
thrives, grows exponentially, when people are free to create.. it.

Our dream is to unleash people, to change how we spend the 7 hours a day we currently
call school. To focus on conduits/channels to communities of practice (gatherings with
your people), where the only standard is self-reﬂection. Making this change is a multi-
player game, bigger than any of us. But today, this can turn on a dime.
n]

People are quite capable of a new conversation. Many people know the power of
talking to themselves, of daily questioning, and then doing what matters to them.
Many people currently, just don’t have/take the time, or the agency to create/

p
hack it. Freeing people up, and then trusting them to carry it out, a simple plan.

u We’re thinking of detox, as a
temporary model or tool. Once we
free ourselves (our minds) to explore
self-directed learning, the very
natural abilities of a 5 year old, will
free people

not be held back, but encouraged
and facilitated.

Many of you, especially those
unschooled, probably will see no
reason for detox. For the rest of us,
we’ve taken extra space to explain
and encourage it.

for more info/insight on the what of detox,
take a listen:
Affecting the research
[a q u i e t revolutio
n]
The Human Speechome Project MIT Media Lab

conversation might matter to everyone? …
the one going on in their head.

Again, the words are not magical: be, notice, dream, connect, do, but they have
been diligently sought after in order to capture a natural process of learning when
a learner is provided mental and physical spaces of permission to be. Wrapping
that process in user-friendly verbiage, we hope to create as much of an authentic
means to practice and possibly document how people experience, and experiment
with, this process. Documentation and mapping, but especially practicing this
process could provide:

1) insight from reﬂection for the learner in order for him/her to become a
more self-directed, life-long learner, creating legit, ongoing, and internal
feedback loops and reﬂection.

2) pay it forward sharing - an insight repository for others seeking to be
self-directed learners, or as a means to create serendipitous gatherings
that matter.

3) perhaps, a means to monitor growth in public education, so we can
offer an alternative to standardized testing of a very restricted, and today,
very prohibiting and limiting, content. A growth in comparison to self
rather than to others, or to other countries, ….or to some standard…?
n]

A brief description of each of the ﬁve words of detox:

be.
notice.
dream.
connect.
do.

26

be.
Rid your mind of chatter that has previously
determined who you are. For some, for most even,
this element of detox could take quite a while.
We have become so used to pleasing others, to listening to other voices.
We need to listen to ourselves, to our gut, daily. We change daily.

While it’s difficult for some to be alone, many need space to listen from within.
Spaces of permission and of solitude help cultivate a culture of trust. It’s not about
prescribing you, or proving you, it’s about becoming you, unveiling you. Now.
Perpetually now.

It’s less about finding a specific passion, and more about being awake, being fully
alive. It’s not as much about finding good to do, as it is about finding that which you
can’t not do.

begin being.

for more on be
books: buccaneer scholar, significance of life, tools of conviviality, mindfulness, we are all weird,
linchpin, orbiting the giant hairball
n]
Not so much about balance, but of self-awareness, knowing when you’re off balance.
- Meg Wheatley

notice. Step out of the routine and notice the unlikely.
Ellen Langer writes in Mindfulness and Colin Ward writes in The Child
in the City, how focus on outcomes can lead to mindlessness.

Many of us need directions. We’re afraid to wander. We don’t embrace
failure as an opportunity. We get impatient with the unplanned, the
unlikely, the undeﬁned. Yet, these are the very things that afford us
spaces to make decisions based on the newness of the moment.
Vulnerability in context (alive in the moment) begs noticings.

You can’t explain perpetual beta because it is always changing.
Mindfulness isn’t an alternative if you choose to live awake.
Noticing alone could change the world.

for more on notice
books: mindfulness, child in the city, rework, walk out walk on, feynman

28

dream.
Imagine yourself doing, solving, becoming, creating, and making.

Roger Martin encourages us in The Design of Business to question
everything respectfully. Too often we quit or fold because of something as
simple as the raising of an eyebrow.

We need to boldly and gracefully confront reliability-thinking (proof/data
speaks) of the corporate world and of our traditions.
We need to wonder and ponder.
We need to question assumed risk.

Might we face a greater risk in playing it safe?
Meg Wheatley in Walk Out Walk

On, quotes Paulo Freire - If you don’t have any kind of a dream, I’m sure it’s
impossible to create something.

for more on dream
books: linchpin, art of possibility, war of art, democratic ed, we are all weird, walk out walk on,
stop killing dreams [a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o
n]

connect.
Today, even in public education, you really can choose what,
when, where, how and with whom you want to connect.

Connections can start with the personalized framework of why.
That choice has the potential of ultimate empowerment. That
choice facilitates and enlivens a person’s curiosity, getting at a
deep, intellectual, just in time learning.

Connections, our new currency.

for more on connect, higher ed & cities
books: talent code, power of pull, reality is broken, diy u, diy college credentials
people: downes, siemens, cormier, ..

30

do.
The criteria youth have determined for doing: does it matter?
and is it awesome?

Both beg to whom, which is exactly the mindset we believe is vital to this
paradigm shift (change in basic assumptions.)

We can now facilitate personalized deﬁnitions of success in public ed.
Youth’s drive, contrary to the belief of some, contrary to perceived activity
or inactivity, is not toward laziness. Youth crave hard work.

A great question for a healthy self-perpetuated feedback loop, am I doing
this to ﬁnish or am I doing this just to do, to be, to make?

Remaining mindful of that mindset could set you free to experience the
richest of lives. Find and do that which you can’t not do.

for more on do
books: at work with thomas edison, reality is broken, rework, the war of art, linchpin, tools of
conviviality [a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o
n]

rhizomatic learning
summing it up for ch 1:

conversation w/self
detox (rhizomatic learning):
A temporary means to:

1. get people back to a natural state of learning, being, and
doing. The wonder and intellectual curiosities most of us

on
had at least until the age of 4 or 5.

reﬂect
2. come together as a people to eradicate the
standardization of public ed as we know it, freeing
people up to spaces of permission q u i e t r e v o l
[a to be. utio
n]

via young people:

Be: Be yourself. Find yourself. Not what others want. Your true you.
Notice: Start noticing things, notice things that seem impossible.
Notice what you normally don’t like in your life. Try to go to the
things that everyone says not to.

Dream: Dream big. You should never stop dreaming. When you
dream big you’re going to do big things. Dreaming what everyone
told you you couldn’t do. The sky is the limit.

Connect: Connect with people. We need each other, so it helps
everyone. Connecting with ones you are passionate about but also
the ones right next to you that you don’t notice.

Do: The doing, just start. Just go out and do things. Doing your own
passion, your potential is untouchable.

via parents:

Be: Who is your child? Who is your child when nobody is telling
her what she should be doing? Who is your child after the
boredom has been exhausted?

Notice: To what kinds of things, to what experiences is your
child attracted? What kinds of things are noticed when space is
given to notice?

Dream: When left to her own devices, to what place does her
mind travel? Is she dreaming of singing? Dancing? Gardening?
Baking cookies? Riding on the space shuttle?

Connect: Facilitate times for her to connect with others who
dream of singing. Others who dream of dancing. Or gardening.
Bake cookies with her if that's her dream. Bring space to her in
whatever way within your means.

Do: Give her the tools to sing, dance, garden, bake, and travel to
the moon. Give her the space to do those things.
34

Linda and Gage encourage each other to ﬁnd u i e t r e v o l u t i
[a q new ways to notice, o
dream, connect, do, …and eat. These spaces of permission allow for
n]
more natural connections. We are working toward families taking back
time to grow together.

Crowdsource, create, reinvent, and
then share, .. physical spaces. City
as floorplan. Your community
becomes your school.
(rhizomatic spaces)
ch. 2
shared
spaces
Imagine spaces filled with resources you’re craving. Imagine that in sharing, we find we have all we
need. Imagine spaces filled with people, addicted to learning and sharing. Imagine meeting up with
your people, there.
n]

Dave Cormier, community as curriculum
If we fix the cities, we fix the world. - Tony Hsieh
The end of this plan,
youth crafted two
years ago, has
community as
school, with the
entire city as the
floorplan. The high
school buildings
become resource
centers and meet up
spaces. There is a
city-wide art hall and
engineering hall,
forensics hall. The
town acts more like a
university campus..
where people are
walking and biking to
and from buildings
through the course of
a day. University/
school as coffee [a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o
house even.
n]
In the US, when you say real life people tend to define it as:
outside of school. - Michael Wesch

As we offer more options for learning, we ﬁnd we don’t need more resources.
When we simply start talking to people in our community, we come to ﬁnd out,
the lady down the street has been translating Japanese for years, the man
across the street is a lawyer on the board for a homeless safe house, a woman
across town is a local university researcher, looking into the Antarctic ozone
layer. We’ve got locals building robotic arms and sending things into space,
and artists doing art like nobody’s business. We learn to use the resources and
spaces already in the community.
We notice what we have.

One great advantage to this is that now
school becomes life.
Learning is considered natural again
and life-long learning is embraced.
Just in time learning redirects energy,
time, space, and most of all people.
Who’s together in a room or space becomes a per choice proposition.
Imagine spaces within your city where people come to share ideas, to share
dreams.
How do we engender spaces where joy is more important, more salient than core cont
standards and an endless sea of standardized tests and the accompanying narrow pedagogy t
gets enacted in order for students to get ready for such minutia? - Mary Ann Re

n]
Where people can roam, … in the wilderness.
nomad
ic spaces
..wilderness areas are vital for the human spirit and for creativity.

eclectic Today, people are learning online, on boats, in buses, in classrooms, in
schools of all sorts, in other countries, at home, in the city, … this is great.
What we are suggesting is that we no longer pigeon-hole learners to any of
these spaces. You want to learn on a boat. Great. But let’s not say now, that
you are a boat learner only. Maybe tomorrow another space will serve you
better. Change is good if we choose it. Learning is change, it’s innovation. And
it’s never ﬁnished or set.

More liberating (and breathtaking) mindsets/spaces emerge when we focus on
curiosity rather than proof. Curiosity in where, when, how, what and/or with
whom a person is connecting. Curiosity in what is going on in their head. The
more differentiated those answers are,
from person to person,
but even more important
within one person,
each person is

the more
evidence
of life
and
learning.

These shared spaces
begin to let Joe
be Joe.
n]

The time, money, and people we currently spend on classroom management and
policy is no longer needed. Imagine if we instead of compulsion, we offer exposure.
Imagine if we simply facilitate connections (virtual and local) to gatherings that
matter. We have been heavy on the options that currently aren’t being offered, but
that doesn’t mean we wish what already exists will go away. The focus here is on
everyone. The people who love lectures, chemistry, school math, want to be a
doctor,.. they will beneﬁt from this freedom as well. ie: People gathered with them in
their space, will all be there per choice.

“Once we understand that learning can and should occur outside the classroom,
it will become commonplace to see students engaged in learning activities
throughout the community.” - Stephen Downes

MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses] model this disruptive space/learning online
incredibly well in higher ed. It’s open, participatory, distributed, and supports life-
long learning. It’s an ongoing event, that people gather around, per choice.

The be you house models a vision of the city, eclectic and accessible. A city google
sketch up will enable co-creation of spaces, as we crowdsource communities of
practice. People drawn to these, free up existing school spaces, so we can
restructure them toward more permission and delight.
Perhaps a better way to spend ourselves than current plans to simply manage
people.
Ebook: city_as_ﬂoorplan video: video describing this mesh mentality of space. http://
vimeo.com/20320782 scale free schools n]
books: big picture, democratic ed, child in the city, the mesh; deschooling society, buccaneer scholar, tools for
conviviality, for the love of cities, triumph of the city, and Zappos downtownproject

via city
share rhizomatic spaces

shared spaces
city as ﬂoor plan (rhizomatic spaces):
Finding and utilizing shared (mesh) spaces. The city as one
great big resource center for its people. City as school. City
as university. City alive.

n]

via young people:
I can go anywhere that I’m living and get help. The highschool,
the house, soccer ﬁeld. The whole community together, helping
each other. It’s all connected.

via parents:
It was Toni Morrison who said, "You really need the whole
village [to raise a child]." Why should a child learn about life
from books, stuck behind a desk, when life is out there,
waiting to be lived? Let us make this a community where the
love of learning is shared by all, everywhere. A community of
trust and unlimited learning opportunity.

n]

Find people and things that help
you become you. Revel in being
known by someone. Embrace
interdependency.
(rhizomatic connections)
ch. 3
connections
Imagine choosing your people. Imagine gathering with people you choose. People crazy about the
same thing you are crazy about. Imagine a network of your eclectic people, because you are
eclectic. Imagine ﬁttingness (eudaimonia) vs ﬁtting in.
n]

The term interdependency came as we were researching laws for homeless teens.
While some states allow 14 year-olds to declare independence, often resulting in
homelessness, some are trying to restate that to a declaration of interdependence,
where each teen is matched up with an adult. If we want to create spaces of
permission, where learning is accomplished through living, we feel this
interdependency will provide stability in the
potential, and in fact encouraged, chaos.

When we set people free to choose their mentors, their connections, their interests,
amazingly, we discover that we don’t need more resources. If you take a look at the
community around you, there are incredible mentors and teachers and unlikely
topics, in unlikely places. That’s not even tapping into virtual resources. We are
recovering from a year where we thought virtual was all we needed. What we found
was that within the school system, Skype didn’t always work, and sometimes the
time zone issues kept us from meet ups we were craving. Turns out it was good that
virtual didn’t always work. It brought us back to local. Face to face. The global web is
teaching us how to better tap into our local community.

Virtual connections are huge. In fact they are what is making this paradigm shift
possible. They are what Illich and Dewey and so many others were hoping and
waiting for.

In Walk Out Walk On, Margaret Wheatley refers to this as trans-local. You have a
global connection and insight, yet you maintain your local culture. Perhaps we
maintain and nourish a person’s unique culture through interdependency.

In Net Smart, Howard Rheingold refers to this as networked individualism, via Barry
Wellman. Rather than relying on a single community for social capital, individuals often
networked
must actively seek out a variety of appropriate people and resources for diff situations

individualism
- the person has become the portal.

First we saw Joe, choosing available spaces/gatherings (ch 1), here a student/learner
chooses people (above left), and a person, aka John T. Spencer, (above right), simply
choosing, … living. These connections provide needed support, safety, accountability. The
belief that you are known by someone is a most liberating feeling, an incredibly vial piece
to freeing your mind up to being,
to becoming you.

serendipity
Some resources we are falling in love with,
that help …
c r e a t e
Alex of hOURschool.com is a great connection for us. They’re matching up
people to local mentors and teachers. When you arrive at their site, you
are simply asked, what do you want to learn? They find people
within your local community to help you with that topic. We share so
many common threads with Alex and Ruby, but the biggest is -- looking
for those mentors in local yet unlikely places. We look forward to experimenting with
them.

Brian’s project in finding the expert on your block at
myblocknyc.com. Hover over the yellow lines to see videos of people
sharing their expertise. What a great way to pull down walls in a
community. Help you find your people. Learn that all people have more than one story.

Katherine of radmatter.com, life is rad, make it matter. Katherine is working to link
people directly to their future, taking out all the middle man and middle time worries.
Career incubators, if you will. Missions are submitted by companies. Solutions are rated
and reviewed. The more you play, the more you level up in talents you enjoy, and find
employers that need those talents, developing relationships along the way.

Vic is starting up an physical space incubator of [a q u ifte t
80,000 sq at revolutio
plugandplaycoorado.com. n]

Steve with readitfor.me has a potential game changer as well. Once you are set free
to learn via choice, you find books to be very addictive, (if you hadn’t already). You
find you want to know more of your art. You want to get into the heads of great
thinkers of your art. We’re thinking Steve’s
growing resource of book summaries could
become a wikipedia of books. We’re imagining
people growing his site, especially as he is offering
a Tom’s Shoes gifting to schools.

Kirill at instagrok.com has created a space that let’s the user’s choices perpetuate
an ever changing visual portraying an individualized network (ameba).
Not to mention, allowing the learning to drive that ameba.

Dale of uncollege.org writes about creating serendipity
..how an intellectual match might work in New York City. Each man, at any
given moment and at a minimum price, could identify himself to a computer
with his address and telephone number, indicating the book, article, film, or
recording on which he seeks a partner for discussion. Within days he could
receive by mail the list of others who recently had taken the same initiative.
This list would enable him by telephone to arrange for a meeting with
persons who initially would be known exclusively by the fact that they
requested a dialogue about the same subject.

Very similar to our vision, once again, of detox on qphone app. Text your self- t i o
[a a u i e t r e v o l u
reflection. Some hours later, get 5 text #’s of people in your same town, with similar
n]
reflections. Meet up in one of the town’s spaces of permission.
More connections like this happening here. (Dale’s city as university post included.)

Neighborland, and Sonar, and . . .
There are countless means to learning what you choose, by connecting.
No end really. And the beauty of all of this, it isn’t an either or, but rather, an
incredible and.
ie: Imagine, an 80 year old, who most likely takes too much medication, his family/
friends rarely visit, so he spends much of his time watching TV.

Imagine a 12 year old, who most likely takes too much medication, spends a lot of
time playing videos games, yet who dreams of being and doing something similar
to what the 80 year old has done and been.

Imagine these two connecting per passion, per choice, rather than per kindness.
Soon, neither can wait to get up in the morning. And at night, well the 80 year old
now has wiﬁ, and is stretching his expertise to no end, from the curiosity and
energy ﬂowing over from the 12 year old, and vice versa.

being known = well being
This surpasses the issue of school, of achievement gaps, even of learning. This takes on
the matter of what it means to be human and alive. A declaration of interdependence,
being known by someone, could be more vital to a person than food, water, or shelter.
Imagine if we were to focus on feeding the soul, rather than on our current (often
unquestioned) dependencies, ie: feeding the test scores, the number crunch. u t i o
[a q u i e t r e v o l
n]
We are because we belong. We are all connected. - I Am (documentary by Tom Shadyak)

What we’ve heard from kids.. school is a node in the network of learning.
It (connected learning) is absolutely a work in progress.. a work that should
never be ﬁnished. - Connie Yowell

To make a system healthier, we simply need to connect it more to itself.
- Meg Wheatley

This is a quiet revolution to overcome a dependency that most of us are
hardly aware of. Many of us tend to believe that the internal issues and
struggles we face daily are just something we are dealing with because
perhaps, we just aren’t normal.

That misunderstanding can soothe us into apathy, or it can create a
resistance large enough for us to rally about our rights and declare
independence. While independence seems a better space than what we
may be currently experiencing, a declaration of interdependence can be,
not only more liberating, but more meaningful, as it has relationship,
connection, at its core.

n]
Nothing live lives alone. Life only and always organizes as systems of
interdependency. -Meg Wheatley

gather rhizomatic
summing it up for ch. 3:

connections
interdependency

ommunities
(rhizomatic communities):

Your support system. Your people. The essence of relationship.
Being known by someone. Actualizing the potential when we
live, learn, and be, per choice. Finding the gatherings that
matter to you.
n]

via young people:
We all need to interact with other humans, that’s how
we were made. We plan to connect everyone with at
least one person.

via parents:
This is a means to ground someone in a safe block.
They are connected to someone. Like the buddy
system. So in all the chaos of this freedom, they are
not lost.

n]

Gean and Sierra get together at least once[a week to e t rholistic lipu t i o
a q u i create e v o l balms,
ointments. Sierra will soon be the youngest yoga instructor in the nation,
with plans to build a local food pharmacy n] well as a wellness center.
as
Connections are feeding the hunger of her mission.

Become usefully ignorant. Listen. Practice
vulnerability in context. Decide to
deliberately not teach.
Rather, mentor alongside.
(rhizomatic expertise)
ch. 4
facilitators of
curiosity
Imagine someone listening deeply to you, without an agenda, and then strewing/offering resources
that match up with your thinking/curiosities. Imagine people around you modeling expert learning.
Imagine the you that would surface. Imagine people awakened by the belief that others want to see
and facilitate their unique genius. n]

If you are lucky enough to be connected to someone per passion, or be known by
some youth, one key element toward facilitating self-directed learning, is to
deliberately not teach. We live in a world that is so used to directions, so used to
being told how and what to
do, it’s hard for many of us to
function on our own. In most
learning situations and
opportunities, we seek out
the perceived expert, sit in
their path, and wait to be
ﬁlled. This mindset disables
and disengages the
indispensable person from
within.

This pattern, tradition,
training, encourages
mindlessness.

If the goal is self-directed learning, if the desire is youth who know what to do
when they don’t know what to do, if the aim is for youth to fall in love with
learning, then the mentor, needs to be positioned, physically and mentally,
alongside. Alongside, doing their own thing, modeling what it is to learn, what it is
to be. [a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o
n]
The word assessment is derived from the Latin verb, assidere, which
means, quite literally, to sit beside.

Useful ignorance, then, becomes a space of pedagogical possibility rather than a
base that needs to be covered. ‘Not knowing’ needs to be put to work without
shame or bluster. - Erica McWilliams

Mentors available to the youth, and ready to learn from the youth are most
beneﬁcial. The mentor’s mindset should be that of keen interest and inquiry
into what is going on in the youth’s head, not the mentor’s.

Sugata Mitra calls this the method of the grandmother: friendly but not
necessarily knowledgeable in that topic.

I don’t know…
Wrongologist, Kathryn Schulz

56

As mentors, listen without an agenda, demonstrating and communicating genuine patience
and caring. Encourage the expression of ideas, even (and especially) if they are different than
our own. Rather than alarm, try to honestly understand the underlying sentiment, in order to
more fully understand.

For an effective mentor, “I don't know” is always an okay answer. “I don't know” is an
opportunity to access and use resources together. When we don't know, we brainstorm
together with youth.

Keep from developing an inﬂated view of our roles; there are mentors all around us. The key
element is to deliberately not teach, as constant instruction encourages mindlessness.
Encourage independence. Youth need time for self-discovery. Time to be. Trust that learning
will happen. No, know that learning is happening.

Be available to youth, modeling what it is to learn, what it is to be, doing our own thing,
exploring our passion, discovering ourselves.

As mentors, we should underscore the importance of learning and working for oneself and
one's own self-improvement. The youth should understand that they alone assess their
progress, without outside inﬂuence. We also need to recognize the effect of inappropriate
praise. Praise shackles youth to a course of pleasing others, rather than themselves.

Amy Lewark

unschooling mom
n]

A person cannot teach another person directly;
a person can only facilitate another's learning.
- Carl Rogers, 1951

Most of us are convinced that learning only comes from teaching. That
thinking can create an unhealthy dependency. Dependency on someone
else teaching us and/or someone else praising us.

Educators will need to spend less time explaining through instruction
and more time in experimental and error-welcoming modes of
engagement. This is supported by ﬁndings from neuro-science about
the way in which the brain is ‘changed’ (see Zull, 2004) through hands
on, minds on experimentation and how it is not changed by
instruction-led pedagogy. - Erica McWilliams

Prepare people for uncertainty.- Dave Cormier

58

Natural, self-induced feedback loops help encourage self-directed learning
by focusing on hard work and effort as opposed to talent and/or
momentary success.

The rhizomatic capacity of networks to ﬂow around a point in a chain
means that teachers may be located in a linear supply chain of
pedagogical services but excluded from their students’ learning
networks.
- Erica McWilliams [also see Carol Dweck’s Mindset]

Youth need to be doing with people that are doing, with people that are
modeling vulnerability in context. We’re redeﬁning No Child Left Behind to
be this vast exposure to mentors who listen without an agenda and who
breathe curiosity themselves.

We’re suggesting authentic basics show up when you
are fully alive in the moment.
They show up in naturally intriguing and breathtaking ways.
n]
No need to conjure up non-essentials to practice rigor.

The reward is brilliant minds set free, to be.
We will be absolutely blown away by brilliance only when we offer
support and create these types of spaces. Spaces where the heart of the
matter, the very heart of the matter, the only agenda, is the curiosity, the
curriculum if you must, residing within each person, each youth, each
learner. A rhizomatic space, community, learning, where there is no
hierarchy. A space where everyone is practicing, experimenting.
Becoming. To foster optimized self-directed learning, mentor alongside:
question prescribed learning,
just be there,
being you;
learn alongside,
listen;
listen without an agenda.

It is impossible to change others.…harvest invisible intelligence.
n] - Meg Wheatley

Partial Freedom is no freedom.
- Krishnamurti, The Signiﬁcance of Life

Pseudo-freedom may be worse than no freedom at all.
- Steve Denning
Ed & the Signiﬁcance of Life -high
recommend (pdf)

The child is the result of both the past and the present and is therefore already
conditioned. If we transmit our background to the child, we perpetuate both his and
our own conditioning. There is radical transformation only when we understand our
own conditioning and are free of it. To discuss what should be the right kind of
education while we ourselves are conditioned is utterly futile.

Sensitivity can never be awakened through compulsion. One may compel a child to be
outwardly quiet, but one has not come face to face with that which is making him
obstinate, imprudent, and so on. Compulsion breeds antagonism and fear. Reward and
punishment in any form only make the mind subservient and dull; and if this is what
we desire, then education through compulsion is an excellent way to proceed.
- Krishnamurti

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion
obtains no hold on the lmind.
[a q u i e t r e v o u t i o
n] -Plato

harvest rhizomatic

facilitators of
curiosity
mentor alongside (rhizomatic expertise):
A means to realize and utilize the expertise in everyone.

via young people:
Neither the mentor or the student is greater, they
are feeding off of each other.

via parents:
Often I learn more from my child than I can take in,
if I’m listening. ie: I asked my two and a half year
old what came ﬁrst, the chicken or the egg. He said,
the nest.

n]

Hannah and Tim get together daily. They trade off teaching v o lother i
[a q u i e t r e each u t o
about music, dance, leadership. They’re modeling the potential when
n]
the 7 hours a day is owned by a person, living out a culture of trust.

Break down walls. Assume good and
become rich. Realize communication is
never ﬁnished. Cultivate a culture of
trust. Question ego, that incessant need
ch. 5
to prove ourselves.
(rhizomatic currency)

conversation
others with

Imagine a world where we don’t feel the need to manage people, to play defense, to fake that we
n]
know things for validation. Imagine a world where people and connections are our gold. Imagine
believing in each other so much that each person feels valued, right now.

Clay Shirky tells a story of ten daycare centers in Israel in his book, Cognitive
Surplus. The story really gets at this culture we believe is vital to change.

Here’s the short version:
These ten centers had no late fee for picking up children and very few parents came
late and not by very much. Then they imposed approximately a three dollar fine on
7 of the 10 centers. The number of late parents increased, and stayed elevated even
after the fine was dropped. Shirky explains, the parents see the day care workers as
participants in a market transaction rather than as people whose needs should be
respected. Parents viewed workers time as a commodity. They assume the fine
represents full price of the inconvenience they were causing.

He goes on to explain the difficulty, once a new mindset for the relationship has
occurred, to go back to the culture of trust and humanity. Dealing with one another
as a market can fundamentally alter relationships.

people
Have we turned relationships into marketing transactions that now require such a
agenda

large overhead that we have lost the art of living? Are we trusting and valuing
people? Or are we trusting and valuing paperwork that basically represents
mistrust? And that takes billions a year to run in public education alone.

We could be educating the world, but policy keeps getting in the way.
- David Wiley
Cease to settle. - Ivan Illich

Well over 50% of our time in all areas of life seem to be spent on
policy, on management of a system created because of mistrust.
While the mistrust isn’t necessarily blatant, it’s a learned habit.
It’s how it has always been. The system makes us dependent
upon the system. We often default to seeking proof and validation
and consumption and order.

Wherever you look in the natural world, you ﬁnd networks not
organizational charts, and they are always incredibly messy, dense,
tangled, and extraordinarily effective at creating greater sustainability
for all who participate in them. - Meg Wheatley

Perhaps we compromise too much be seeking proof for things.
Imagine experimenting more with a culture of trust.

People are good right now. You are ﬁne today.

green
Here’s to being/doing more of you.

about people

remix, original via Will Richardson
To the right, ﬁnd:
our AUP for tech use,
our dress code,
our house rules,
our play and work rules,
our common core,
etc...

people
n]

reputation:
But that said, as more and more of a person’s life becomes available online,
the need for certification will diminish, as people acquire reputations of their
own. A person’s standing in a community can be recognized by members of
that community, and is acquired through months and years of participation
in the work of that community. Where certification is granted, people
presenting certification without having acquired a reputation for work in the
community will be viewed with suspicion. - (Downes 2008)

If we want to awaken indispensable people, let’s try trusting them,
trusting ourselves. Let’s imagine that life is full and rich. Let’s imagine
that learning is natural.

Most of us focus more on proof than on being, on outcomes than
mindfulness. Imagine having time to be you. Imagine not having to
prove yourself, not having to document yourself proving yourself. What
if adolescence through mid-life crisis is actually a direct result of our
publicly prescribed curriculum…

If it’s your art, you’ll do
anything to give it away.
- Seth Godin

Imagine having time to do your art.
And then loving it so much that you can’t not give it away.

Imagine these connections turning into gatherings that matter.
Imagine us being more about facilitating and listening than managing,
or feeling the need to prove anything. Imagine people ﬁnding value in
community, in the actual working together and doing, rather than
accolades of efficiency.

Again, we’re interested in a space of transparency, perhaps modeled
after Deb Roy’s house. Deb exposed the goings on of his son’s learning
with video cameras and tech creating a ﬁsh bowl view.

We’re seeking to expose the goings on in the emergence of a healthy
community conversation.
• Can we use things we’re learning from the transparency of the web to
break down walls that tend to keep us locally at bay?
• Can we offer the freedom to *lurk, to build trust? The means to
listen-in, unacknowledged, until we hear people we had a beef with
did indeed have more than one story, or that other people really are
interested in listening and then doing?
• Can we tech infuse a weekly intimate kitchen table or coffee house
conversation by some app that might help us ﬁnd/share our invisible
selves, or videotech that can bring virtual experts in, just in time, to
free up our thinking about getting-in places, and focus more on
becoming us?

As we emerge individually, because of self-conversations, can we also
use tech to help us emerge and share openly, because of community-
conversations.

*lingering and persistent, though unsuspected or unacknowledged

give rhizomatic currency

conversation w/
others
culture of trust (rhizomatic currency):
This is about people. Each person matters right now. Each one the

via trust/people
unique thumbprint that will create us. There is no need to prove,
compete, judge, validate, separate. Worth is in our connection. The
more we share the more we gain. We assume good, together. It is
there we discover brilliance, beauty, breathtaking balance, peace.

via young people:
Money isn’t as important as humans. You
shouldn’t be trying to thrive from money,
but trying to seek other human beings.

via parents:
This is a People Agenda. People are
valuable. Treat them as such. Facilitate
trust.

n]

Peter and monika are working on ways q u i e t rshare o l u
[a to create and e v more tio
spaces of permission to be. Learning from failure, learning from
n]
transparency. Loving people enough to dream big.

glossary of sorts communication:
verbiage as we’re currently seeing and using it, because…

The single biggest problem in
communication is the illusion that it has
taken place. - George Bernard Shaw

n]
- Adam Mackie

adjacent
possibilities
Steven Johnson’s TED

The potential and
serendipity created when
you notice and connect
the unlikely.
Incremental potential
solutions to help people
caught in conﬂict or
looking for change to
keep moving.

corey n]

art
Perfection in making is an art. Perfection in acting is a virtue. -
Ivan Illich

Trying to get away from acting, being people that we aren’t lucas… doing
for whatever reasons, and instead, doing what matters most
to us.

Art is that interesting piece inside each one of us. It’s that
thing you can’t not do. In providing spaces to be, we allow
people to ﬁnd, grow, and create their art. If people are
doing, making, and being their art, they become
indispensable, rather than simply virtuous, or bored or
happy
delinquent or depressed.

We get so worried about, and expended in, a means to
improve or to prove. If we focus on authentic art, as
opposed to prescribed learning, the proving will not longer
be an issue. We’ll wonder what all the fuss was. The kids
already wonder. The art, the sharing of that art, because
you can’t not, is its own reward.

n]

On the other hand, and strikingly
the basics

We’re making too many decisions based on too little
information.
- Anya Kamenetz
more of a risk, yet more overlooked,
The most common question we denied, or accepted, too many
get is “What about the basics?” people aren’t getting what we think
Find a great answer to that on are the basics now. They may be
the site of the - Brooklyn Free playing the school game so well that
School. it appears they are, but legitimately
The answer is a question... “What getting the basics has been proven
are the basics?” Perhaps that’s time and again to be false when they
what we need to redeﬁne per an enter the job force or arrive at the
individual, per their community. university campus, and are unable to
The basics as deﬁned by school perform expected basics. Kids in the
is a very limited and restrictive lab are thinking that as much as 75%
set of skills. The word basic is of kids either cheat or cram the day
often referred to as essential. before a test, so that a week later,
Essential translates to absolutely they don’t remember.
necessary or extremely Even by their own measures and
important. If we deem something prescribed basics, test scores
as basic it should by it’s nature continually reveal a great
show up as we live, ... no? more here in options disconnect.
ie: It’s hard to go through a day of
For those worried about basics
real life without engaging in
that might not show up, these
mathematical thinking. School math,
can be strewn, offered, and
however, per the common core
exposed. But our urge to
standards, isn’t necessarily practical,
mandate perceived basics, most
useful, or basic. Have you
often cripples and compromises
the learner.
[a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o rationalized a denominator or
n] conjugated an imaginary number
lately? And if you have, how
common do you think that is?

connected adjacency
community of Many have said there will be no revolution within the system, within the
practice institution. While that makes mental sense, we also believe that the
Getting together with system, the institution, is where many of our best resources are, people
your people and doing, in particular. Today, especially in education, even though many are
making or learning breaking away to charter schools, online schools, homeschooling and
something you all just unschooling, the masses reside in the system. Through a connected
can’t not do. adjacency mentality we exist both in and out of the system. We spend
more of our time playing offense, than defense.
The coming together is Nothing is for everyone, so we seek to facilitate non-prescribed
because of that thing learning. We’re currently creating spaces of freedom for a very small
and that thing is what percentage to get at authentic experimentation and innovation. Spaces
you make or do. to test new ideas out within a community. Spaces where failure won’t
Community is built affect or offset the whole, but unexpected, unknown, and delightful
from each ones love success will certainly and pleasantly benefit the whole.
for that thing. Saul Kaplan, connected adjacency; google 20%

ie: I love to train dogs,
or make kites. I find
people in my city or
virtually that shares
that same love. We
connect and immerse
ourselves in that topic.
We become a
community practicing
that art. [a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o
Wikipedia’s more
formal definition.
n]

culture
What if transparency is the new currency? What if
knowing people, being known, building a community,
holds more value than what most of us end up
spending most of the hours in a day doing or getting.
We’re thinking school has perpetuated a corporate
America long beyond it’s need to be, if it ever was a
need. We’re thinking technology wants to free us up
and back to a focus on people – conversation,
community, sharing, and listening.

We’re experimenting with a focus on a social currency,
rather than a monetary currency. We’re thinking if you
want to know how good someone is, take a look at
how well the people around them are doing. Most of
what we’re suggesting, doing, and being, will only
thrive in a culture of trust. (read more in ch 5)
… the very word culture celebrates the human capacity
to learn and adapt, something the rest of society should
support. A sense of coherence is almost as needful as
food and drink.
Trying to improve people by interfering with their own
preferences often makes things worse.
The question for everyone living in a world of constant
contact between cultural groups, is how to become
routinely sensitive to patterns, even with minimal cues,
suspending judgment and looking for how they ﬁt
together. - Mary Catherin Bateson, Peripheral Visions

for more see slidedeck: more resourceful

detox
Detox is simply what we are calling
this manifestation,
this play-acting
or prototyping, if you will,
of the internal process
a healthy self-directed learner would model
if we could see
in their head.
We’re wondering if this jump start back to
self-reﬂecting, self-assessing,
might help many of us get back to our
propensity toward curiosity.
We’re wondering if it might help those of us
who have become addicted
to routine,
to directions,
to prescriptions,
to regain, unleash, strengthen, and awaken
our natural mindfulness toward
imagination and play,
toward self-directed learning.
We’re wondering if it just might be
the shot of adrenaline
our souls crave.
(more about detox in ch. 1)

We’re experimenting with *transparent
disruption (as per Clay Christensen) shadows:
[a quiet revolution] o 800+ raw footage videos on
By design, we are youtube (51295monk)
currently in the o facebook group (tsd innovation lab)
shadows at the left o info and update site
end of the upward (labconnections)
exponential curve. o stand alone site, (be you.)
As we begin being,
those most in love * Transparent shadows: We are still obscure
with the idea, to those not intentionally seeking us out,
experiment, fail, because we aren’t selling, pushing, or
and tweak, prescribing anything.
continually
making and being. We believe obscurity is key to self-directed
learning, as imposed deﬁnition, routine, and
focus on outcome, can encourage mindlessness.

We welcome the shadows, as we believe you may
be more inclined to be working, doing, and
failing there. You may be more inclined to be you
there. Publicity often nudges us toward theory
and meetings and defending and talking perfect
case scenarios, and following the masses, more
so than doing and being.
We believe in what we’re doing. And while we’re
n]
not selling or pushing, we believe we’re creating
something your soul might just be craving.

Where is this quiet revolution/
disruption headed?

We are seeking more spaces of permission to
be, for everyone. So while the shadows have
boded us well, we are emerging from them to
secure more spaces, physical and mental,
spaces of affinity. This is a work, a movement, a
revolution, that matters to people. Legitimate
hard work begs a multi-player mentality. It
begs more collaboration, more insight, more of
a coming together, than many of us are used
to. It begs a mindset most of us are not used
to. It also brings with it more beneﬁt. The right
end of the upward exponential curve. It
certainly delivers more happiness.

James Paul Gee, affinity spaces; death of the
expert (from dmlcentral); rhizomatic models;
more resourceful slidedeck books:
Clay Christensen, Disrupting Class; Jane
McGonigal, Reality is Broken; Ellen Langer,
Mindfulness; Jason Fried, Rework; Tony Hsieh,
Delivering Happiness; Carol Dweck, Mindset; [a q u i e t r e v o l u t i o
John Hagel & John Seely Brown, Power of Pull,
Seth Godin, We Are All Weird n]

equity
Equity doesn’t mean equal. Equity involves If one day they were
personalization. It begs choice. It allows for redeﬁnition to seek equal work
of success per individual, per community. The rather than equal pay
achievement gap is a misnomer when we prescribe what - equal inputs rather

…. that’s our equity.
the gap is about. None of the data we’ve been gathering, than equal outputs -
and spending most of our time, energy, money, and they could be the
people on, has a statistically sound basis. Everything is pivot of social

People have all the skills, creativity, and
variable. Everything is debatable. reconstruction.
Growth (of gaps of
ie: PISA, the test most often referred to when comparing countries, inequity) would stop

ingenuity they need. - Meg Wheatley
has it’s main focus on math. Math, many say, is more universal if women obtained
because there are relatively few barriers due to language. Yet, the equally creative work
math on these tests are more likened to school math, than for all, instead of
mathematical thinking. This can translate to a competition between
demanding equal
countries on a topic that is very restrictive and not beneﬁcial to
most people. We’re suggesting a more equitable means to monitor rights over the
growth, if you must. We’re suggesting we model more of a self- gigantic and
directed feedback loop, comparing personal bests. expanding tools now
appropriated by men.
Equity will come when we free people of a predetermined When maddening
outcome. Equity will come when we offer resources per behavior becomes he
choice and facilitate self-directed learning. Equity fades standard of a society,
the more we focus on a means to improve people learn to
standardization. compete for the right
to engage in it. envy
ie: We realize many more resources if we allow people to look at blinds people and
and use what they have. Many people have and prefer cell phone makes them compete
use, so why insist everyone have an ipad. Save the money for the
for addiction.
few that don’t have anything, but again, let them choose their
means of access. We’re thinking a good start for choice of
- Ivan Illich
connection or access involves laptops, phones, bikes, bus passes…

indispensable
Original thinkers, provoateurs, people
who care. People we can’t dispose of or
outsource. People who are vital. What we
want/need are indispensable people.
- Seth Godin, Linchpin

knowmadic learner
A creative, imaginative, and innovative
person who can work with almost
anybody, anytime, and anywhere.
Industrial society is giving way to
knowledge and innovation work. Whereas
industrialization required people to settle
in one place to perform a very specific
role or function, the jobs associated with
knowledge and information workers have
become much less specific in regard to
task and place. Moreover, technologies
allow these new paradigm workers to
work either at a specific place, virtually,
or any blended combination. Knowmads
can instantly reconfigure and
contextualize their work environments, a
greater mobility is creating new
opportunities.
- John Moravec
cristian

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