More on Visionary Student Blogging: Does Shana See It?

The Long Preface:

“A teacher is only as good as his students.”

That’s how I prefaced my little “beginning to blog to the world” pep talk to my Advanced Placement Literature seniors. I already posted about the “Walden 2.0” idea – a grandiose name, granted, for a simple escape into the woods to film our “about me and my dreams for this seven-month blogging journey” clips.

“If you can’t be visionary, this isn’t going to work very well.”

I meant that. I believe that. But I knew when I said it, and still know now, that the battle was uphill. Either I was paranoid, or else their skepticism was palpable. And who can blame them? They get their fill of teachers trying to sell them irrelevant guff on a daily basis. Why should my snake oil be any different?

“Envision seven months of fishing for readers, comments, conversations, connections with experts out there in whatever it is you’re interested in. What does it look like?”

I tried to use my own blog as a datum – a real tightrope without a net, since first of all, I show it too them so often already, and second, it can be misconstrued as egotism regardless of how many times I state that it’s the phenomenon itself that’s the point, not me.

“Who do you want in your network? What teachers and helpers and mentors, what friendly supporters?”

I told them blogging has connected me with people who share my passion – education – and has enriched my understanding and practice of that passion beyond my own wildest dreams. And that it has encouraged me to dream even wilder. I told them about my own ten-month journey from a little in-school wiki collaboration in February, to a massive 12-country wiki collaboration attempt three months later, to Project Global Cooling now – how all of them succeeded, how all of them found caring audiences and partners, how all of these dreams, once articulated through simple, dogged self-publishing, became realities.

“So what reality can you dream for your own blogging journey?”

I told them I suspected dreaming their own pathway for their own journey would be very difficult for them, because twelve years of school had smothered any capacity for self-direction they might otherwise have developed. I told them about the student in the Danny Mydlack‘s Sudbury School “unschooling” documentary, Voices from the New American Schoolhouse, who spent his first year of unschooling “detoxing,” in his words, by doing nothing but playing video games – for an entire school year – while the unschool staff simply let him.

And how that same student, the following year, plunged into self-directed studies with a passion. He learned to script his own video games. He developed a passion for algebra. He found himself.

Oh what the heck – I’ve posted that student before, but he is so powerful, here he is again. Drag the scroller to exactly 4:00, and give him a five-minute listen. He’ll blow you away:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhp7jN0DZrU

(The entire documentary is viewable on YouTube as well.)

I mentioned the girl in the school who signed out regularly to go to the stables and groom and ride her horse, because showing, breeding, and training horses was the future she already knew she wanted.

Their eyes got a far-away look in them during that part. Imagine being trusted to want to learn stuff, instead of being forced to – and being encouraged to decide which stuff for yourself.

The Story:

Shana loves chemistry. She seems to have the vision. She seems to be blogging in hopes of finding fellow chemistry types out there for conversations. And she does it beautifully in this post about the speed of modern life and . . . the strangely spiritual chemistry of autumn. And this from her second week of blogging.

Ask yourself – if you were a chemist, wouldn’t you appreciate the young mind that produced this work? I’m not a chemist, and I do.

The Epilogue:

A “teacher” is only as good as his “students.” Shana makes me feel good right now.

I’m not so much of a dreamer that I think all of my students will get it. We all know the law of averages dictates otherwise. But if those rarities with vision learn to strengthen that skill – and vision, the more I think about it, seems to rightly deserve the label “skill” — and to apply it? Well, then: over the next seven months, we might be in for something worth seeing.

1. Visionary Student Blogging: or, The Ghost in the Machine
2. A Student Taps in to “Visionary Classroom Blogging”: JungHee’s Mission Moment
3. “That’s not Homework; That’s Writing”: Authentic Student Blogging (Presentation Snippet 2)
4. Update on “Visionary Student Blogging” Project

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