George Needham: Hope and Inspiration

I clearly wasn’t alone, upon learning this morning that George Needham passed away earlier this week, in feeling as if someone had blown another immense hole in the world.

George Needham

A tribute from his colleagues at the Delaware County District Library, where he ended a career spanning approximately 50 years in and around libraries and those who make them the community gems they are, noted how “heartbroken” they are; briefly celebrated “his distinguished career” (which included a Librarian of the Year/Hall of Fame Librarian award from the Ohio Library Council in 2022; and invited friends and colleagues to post their memories along with the lovely set of photos on the library’s Facebook page. Skimming the 42 comments posted during the first 24 hours that the post has been online, and doing the same with the more than 20 comments posted on another friend’s Facebook page in the first five hours that post has been online, provides a glimpse of what George meant to so many of us.   

He was an incredible source of inspiration to me in all that he did—creative, positive, forward-thinking, and, as if all that weren’t enough, someone with a wonderful sense of humor. The work he did with Joan Frye Williams—webinars, podcasts (alas, apparently no longer available on the Infopeople website where they were housed for many years, but there are several recordings available on Vimeo), conference presentations, onsite workshops—taught me a lot about consulting, collaboration, and teaching-training-learning—lessons I continue to pass on to others to this day by emulating the best of what George and Joan offered through their work. Their ability to seamlessly interact with each other during their learning sessions—one often completing a sentence the other had begun as if they were telepathically connected or sharing the same brain; each of them appearing to effortlessly hand part of a conversation off to the other—helped me better understand how to work collaboratively with training-teaching-learning colleagues face to face (and, later, online); it was always a skill that suggested hours of rehearsal, and conversations with them helped me understand—to the advantage of the learners I serve and the partners with whom I work—how to develop that rapport with new collaborators in moments rather than hours of actual rehearsal for any one learning event.

The lovely (all-too-infrequent) conversations George and I had at conferences, in libraries, at library consultants’ onsite gatherings in Nashville, and at Infopeople gatherings when all of us were part of that fabulous training-teaching-learning consortium serving library staff throughout California, always made me appreciative of his ability to make all of us feel as if we were the most important person in his life when he was with us. Even though he was very much (and justifiably) a center of attention wherever he went, he never left me (or anyone else I know) feeling as if he had somewhere else to be or someone more important to see. He had that amazing ability to handle the interruptions graciously and quickly return, fully focused, to our conversation—a skill I admired, cherished, and continue to work diligently to hone as a result of how effectively and consistently he demonstrated it.

I wondered, as I was thinking about George this morning, how much of that glowing memory of his warmth, his generosity, and accessibility was colored by the passage of time and how much of it was accurate. Locating a few YouTube videos showing him in action erased any doubt I had. Watching the first part and the concluding moments of his “Creating the Hopeful Workplace” keynote address he delivered for iLead in October 2013 assured me he was even better than I remembered: He began the presentation by thanking those who had contributed to the presentation; acknowledged the debt he owed Joan Frye Williams for helping develop the workshop they jointly delivered and from which his keynote address was drawn; and displayed the fine combination of humor and serious, useful, timeless content that was always at the center of what he (and Joan) did. After all, what could be more timely for so many of us now than an engaging reminder of what it takes to create a hopeful workplace that inspires the best in all of us and all we are lucky enough to serve?

Andy Havens, one of his colleagues from the years when they worked together at OCLC (a global library organization), captured George magnificently in a piece he posted on Facebook earlier today and acknowledged the challenge any of us faces in trying to capture George in one burst of writing: “I’m not going to post a link to his obituary because, like all obits, it is a smattering of scant, flimsy text that cannot do justice to the life of someone who meant so much to so many.”

But in acknowledging the challenge, he also captured something essential. The George Needhams in our lives are wonderfully complex, irreplaceable parts of our existence. And perhaps the best way we can honor them is to share the bits and pieces we know about them, and do our part to assure that the spirit behind the person is spread as far and as widely as possible…while saying the obvious: I’m going to miss him tremendously.

N.B.–For more from those who knew George, check out Episode #349 of Maurice Coleman’s podcast T is for Training, recorded November 30, 2023.

Giving Thanks 2023: ATD South Florida Chapter

As I sit here in San Francisco thinking about the ATD (Association for Talent Development) South Florida Chapter’s annual Champions of Learning event (to be held next week in Fort Lauderdale), I think about how grateful I am to be associated with this community of learning that is, itself, comprised of champions of learning.

Its members have always, for me, represented the best of communities of learning and communities of practice. They are active locally, regionally, and nationally in training-teaching-learning through ATD conferences and the day-to-day work they do. They are ardent advocates for learning that makes the world work better. They are welcoming, inclusive, and rarely content to simply rest on their laurels, preferring, instead, to look forward to identify and help meet the needs of the various communities they serve in a world where the need for effective, focused learning never stops.

My own experience with chapter members began long before I was aware of how dynamic the chapter is overall. Without being aware of their chapter affiliation, I met several of them individually at the annual ATD International Conference and Exposition (ICE) conferences and annual chapter leader gatherings held in various locations around the United States. Some (including Steve Parkins, Steve Feinstein, and Jessica Potter) were at chapter leader events I attended near Washington, DC; another, Jennifer Dow, was actually on the National Advisors for Chapters (NAC), one of the national volunteer committees during my own NAC term. But it wasn’t until I unexpectedly landed a three-month gig that expanded into seven months of back-and-forth cross-country travel between San Francisco and West Palm Beach that the pieces fell into place.

Remembering that Jennifer was in the South Florida area, I contacted her shortly before making the first of numerous 10-day trips to the area. Telling her I was expecting to be in the area regularly for at least a few months on two-week cycles, I asked whether she knew of any ATD activities I might join while there. The response was immediate: she let me know that chapter members were having an informal gathering the Friday after I first arrived, and invited me to join her. Walking into the bar where they were meeting, I saw Steve Feinstein across the room. Telling him how surprised and happy I was to see him there, I asked what brought him to the event.

“I’m chapter president,” he responded.

Then I noticed Steve Parkins and asked the same question.

“I’m president-elect,” he responded.

Being a relatively quick learner, I didn’t have to ask Jennifer why she was there; I already knew, from the volunteer work we had done together, that she was active as a chapter member as well as regionally with some of the other magnificent ATD Chapters in Florida.

Elaine Biech

Attending my first Champions of Learning celebration (that wonderful event the highlights the creative, cutting-edge learner-centric work done by businesses and other organizations in the Chapter’s service area extending from West Palm Beach to Miami) in December 2011, I saw the chapter at its best in an evening that featured Elaine Biech (a consummate writer, consultant, and learning advocate who currently has written more than 80 books—when stacked, they produce a tower of writing that is nearly as tall as she is—on a wide-range of topics centered around training-teaching-learning and consulting) as keynote speaker. Elaine, being wonderfully accessible, spent some time talking with me after the event—a conversation that was the first in a sporadic, ongoing series of exchanges that have offered me the opportunity to be included in a few of the anthologies she has produced; to learn with her at her own ATD ICE sessions several times; and to include her as a welcome, popular guest on Maurice Coleman’s long-running T is for Training podcast a few times.

When the “three-month” project finally concluded, I thought that would be the conclusion of my frequent interactions with South Florida Chapter members, but they had other ideas: they offered me a complimentary one-year membership, and when they reached out a year later to see if I wanted them to extend the complimentary membership for another year, I said “thanks, but no thanks. I want to actually pay for my own membership to continue supporting what you do and learn whatever I can from you.”

The participation and learning has continued now for several years. It includes the annual chapter mentoring program where I have been serving as a virtual cross-country mentor to several fabulous chapter members who have become lifelong friends as a result of our interactions. It has also included occasional behind-the-scenes volunteer support for the Chapter’s work and participation in the virtual chapter events that began with the disruption of the COVID-19 and offered me a chance to connect with those colleagues through one I facilitated after Jennifer helped make the arrangements. It also brought me full circle back to the experiences I had during my time in South Florida from August 2011 through February 2012: I had a virtual return to Champions of Learning event in 2021 where Elaine was prominently featured and, again, wonderfully accessible.

My affiliations there have also had an extended reach beyond bringing ATD colleagues onto T is for Training; while actively involved in the work of ATD South Florida’s dynamic West Coast counterpart—the ATD Sacramento Chapter—I introduced colleagues there to the Champions of Learning event and was gratified to serve as keynote speaker for Sacramento’s initial offering of that event.

To say that I’m grateful for what I gain through my affiliation with these wonderful cross-country colleagues—and the parent organization that offers us such a magnificent opportunity to interact through what it does at the annual International Conference and Exposition and other activities—would be a tremendous understatement. My affiliation with the South Florida Chapter, the Sacramento Chapter, and with the overall ATD organization makes my life much richer than it otherwise would be, and I hope that this love letter to my ATD colleagues brings the organization and its members to the attention of others involved in lifelong training-teaching-learning so they will pursue membership and participation there, too.

N.B.: This is the eleventh in an ongoing series of posts on the theme of giving thanks.

Giving Thanks 2023: Hidden Garden Steps and SF Parks Alliance

                                                                                                      

Although I walk San Francisco’s Hidden Garden Steps nearly every day, I felt as I were completely re-engaged with them earlier this week when Kate—one of my neighbors—and I went onsite for a long-delayed bit of graffiti removal.

Detail of the Hidden Garden Steps (16th Avenue, between Kirkham and Lawton, San Francisco)

There was a time, before the COVID-19 shutdown in early 2020 disrupted everything, that a group of us went out on the second Saturday of each month to sweep the steps, spruce up the gardens we had planted up and down the hill on either side of the 148-step ceramic-tile mosaic that artists Colette Crutcher and Aileen Barr had designed and produced before employees from KZ Tile were paid to install that large-scale public artwork for its public dedication on December 7, 2013—nearly ten years ago. Those monthly gatherings were heartfelt expressions of and tributes to the spirit of community, volunteerism, and collaboration, in character with what had driven all of us to undertake and complete that effort to transform a small, neglected piece of San Francisco into a public art and garden sanctuary that, like its inspiration (the 16^th Avenue Tiled Steps), attracts visitors from all over the world on a nearly daily basis.

When I think about the Hidden Garden Steps, I think of an almost sacred space created in a vibrant, bustling city of dreamers, and I am still amazed that the more than 600 donors and dozens of volunteers who contributed to the enhancement of that space the way it appears today managed to make a permanent, positive change in a long-established city. I think about those who poured their hearts, for four years, into setting aside differences; giving hundreds of hours; and transforming a shared vision into a space where neighbors as well as complete strangers meet to talk. To breathe. To appreciate the arts, the gardens, the squawky scrub jays, cooing mourning doves, soaring hawks and ravens, and the squirrel who runs up and down the power lines and leaps from tree to tree. And I think about how all of us continue to be inspired to engage in wide-ranging dreamy projects because the joy fostered by that site reminds us of what is possible.

View from the top of the Hidden Garden Steps, looking north

I also think about the numerous hours many of us spent, before the pandemic brought our efforts to a crashing halt, pulling weeds and planting succulents, California natives, clivias, and so much more that now provides an ever-changing palette of shapes, textures, colors, and fragrances throughout the year. I think about those people who worked so diligently and uncomplainingly to contribute to that spectacular place where people, art, nature, and the spirit of San Francisco intertwine to foster the sense of connectedness that is so often lacking in our daily lives. I think about the growing number of friends who helped enhance that space and are no longer with us and remembered by fewer and fewer people, having moved from the area to pursue other dreams or who have succumbed to cancer or other thieves who steal away the wonderfully vibrant lives they led and the community they helped sustain. And yet a handful of us remain to welcome new members into this community, to cherish what the site produces in terms of joyful interactions, and to remind us that certain places invite and compel us to slow down. Linger. Breathe.

So, here Kate and I are, the day before Thanksgiving, standing side by side as we cover graffiti with a fresh coat of paint. Talking as neighbors so rarely take the time to talk. Saying “hello” to and smiling at the occasional passersby who say “hello,” smile back at us, and thank us for what we are doing to help keep a lovely public space as enticing as it is meant to be.

As we step back to look at the freshly painted wall, we notice a couple of women coming down the steps.

“Are you volunteers?” one asks.

“Yes,” I respond, and then briefly tell the two of them what we have been doing..

“What’s your name?” one of them asks, and when I tell her, her smile grows much broader and she supplies me with her own response: “I’m Gina.”

Gina!

Gina Kotos.                                                                                            

Our official contact at the San Francisco Parks Alliance, that wonderful, world-changing local nonprofit organization that has, over a very long period of time, partnered with the San Francisco Department of Public Works and community volunteers to create well over 100 public projects that transform long-ignored parcels of City/County property into small-, medium-, and large-scale volunteer-maintained spaces that are the somewhat hidden gems we stumble upon and marvel at as we walk around the city.

Gina and I have sporadically exchanged email notes since she, in summer 2022, became the latest in a 14-year-long string of Parks Alliance contacts since the Hidden Garden Steps project was initiated in January 201, but the combination of the COVID pandemic and scheduled that never quite seem to align have kept us from meeting face to face. Until now. So we stand here, smiling at each other, talking about what the project has meant to the neighborhood, and doing what always happens when people meet on the Steps: meeting more people. For just as Gina happened to come along at exactly the right moment—when she and a friend were walking part of San Francisco’s 17-mile-long Crosstown Trail—other members of the Steps community just happen to come by, including Greg McQuaid, who leads a daily walking tour of the Steps and other highlights of the area and contributes part of his earnings each year to the Parks Alliance to pay for new plantings along the Hidden Garden Steps.

So here  we stand—Parks Alliance staff member, Parks Alliance volunteers, and Parks Alliance donor—relishing this not-so-hidden gem that reflects a piece of what makes San Francisco San Francisco. Enjoying what the city offers and what the spirit of community and collaboration through organizations like the Parks Alliance produces. And receiving a well-timed reminder, during the week of this year’s Thanksgiving holiday, that there is abundant cause for pausing and giving thanks.

N.B.: For more information about the Hidden Garden Steps, please visit the Friends of the Hidden Gardens Steps online site; for a sample of videos produced about the Steps, please visit this YouTube playlist.

Creating, Collaborating, and Appreciating: Building Step by Step

              

Reading Oliver Burkeman’s wonderful Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals makes me realize how so many of the challenges we face in training-teaching-learning carry over into almost every other endeavor we undertake as we struggle to find/make time for and sustain a productive and satisfying sense of all we want to accomplish. We commit to completing something (a lesson plan, an onsite or online workshop, or a webinar, for example) and immediately begin thinking about numerous other distracting tasks and challenges we want to tackle and need to manage efficiently. We then inevitably and ultimately become overwhelmed by a Sisyphean nightmare of our own making: thinking about and being distracted by just one more workshop to design and deliver, just one more webinar to blast through (before starting to work on the six other webinars we want to do as soon as this one is designed and delivered). As Burkeman so accurately suggests in his own book about how the more we do, the more we want to do (and the more unsatisfying, soul-killing work we attract/create for ourselves), we end up burying ourselves under a ridiculous number of undertakings that leave us feeling completely drained rather than fulfilled.

More importantly, we miss the most important part of what we are doing: taking pleasure in the moment-by-moment decisions and actions to relish the inherent satisfaction and intrinsic value they offer, then relishing those almost magical unexpected outcomes that flow out a sense of focus that pushes distractions aside.

It’s something I again recently experienced—this time outside of the training-teaching-learning work I do, but paralleling the processes I use to produce pleasurable results in that consistently satisfying and inspiring field—as my wife and I approached a series of interrelated projects around our house. The starting point was simple: the atmospheric river storms last winter completely battered our house and garden and, among other things, partially pulled a board away from the side of our house, here in San Francisco, and created a situation that clearly required timely attention.

“Doesn’t look good,” my wife and I agreed as we looked at that loose board, so we decided to contact a contractor we trust to see how serious the problem was and what would be involved in properly repairing it.

As long as we were going to work to resolve that problem, we decided, we might as well ask what other long-standing projects we might address while the contractor and his employees were on site (just as, in tackling a training-teaching-learning challenge, I work with the best collaborators I can find to look for multiple pay-offs from one cohesive, seeing-the-trees-and-the-forest-simultaneously effort). So we made The List. There was that unsightly hole in a ceiling we never got around to repairing after a burst pipe required that our plumber punch a hole in that ceiling to replace the pipe a few years ago. The drainpipe that had pulled away from the side of the house. The deteriorating three-foot-by-three-foot square rickety porch that served as an increasingly unsafe transition from my office in our house to our backyard garden: the wood on the porch was becoming so soft that I was more and more frequently having awful visions of stepping down from the back door onto that platform and putting my foot through the rotting wood, thereby ending up with a cast while a broken bone healed. The deteriorating, sagging fence along the south side of our yard: The storms had given it a nearly fatal push; it appeared ready to fall over the next time one of the neighborhood cats leapt on it during their daily patrols. And the back of the house was looking fairly needy: we had never gotten around to painting it during the more than 20 years we have lived here, so paint that could most charitably be referred to as a “nondescript” color was flaking off more and more frequently, exposing the underlying wood to the possibility of dry rot.

In the same way that an initial meeting with key stakeholders in a training-teaching-learning initiative plays out, our initial meeting with the contractor was straightforward. We had a clearly-stated objective: complete an interrelated set of repairs and enhancements in the most playfully creative, efficient, flexible way possible to enhance what was innately beautiful about the backyard and the house so we could take advantage of opportunities that came up at every stage of working toward reaching that goal. We discussed the possibility of tackling some of the individual projects in a series of well-timed phases so we could pay as we went. Then we discussed the advantages of doing a few projects simultaneously so workers with specific skills could do their parts of each project in a well-coordinated, carefully-timed sequence of steps to more efficiently complete everything.

But the heart of the creating-collaborating-appreciating process involved a simple step: the one the contractor, my wife, and took together as we literally and figuratively stepped back in the yard to take a larger view of the entire set of projects and began asking basic questions like “how could we best use and enhance the available space taken up by the existing porch and the underutilized surrounding area if it were replaced by a deck that addressed some of the underlying problems we had with the existing set-up?”

The design of the porch, for example, dated back to the time the house was originally built (1939) and had never been well-integrated into the backyard. For one thing, stepping out the back door into the porch to descend into the garden required a step down of approximately one foot rather than a step from one space (the space inside the house) to a space at the same level immediately beyond that door—something you don’t think about much until, over a period of many years, you find yourself reticent to use that space because, among other things, that innocuous step-down creates an unnecessary, jarring, and clumsy transition from indoors to outdoors: There was nothing inviting about it; it was simply a noticeable line of demarcation from one space to another where a more subtle transition might have served as an invitation rather than an impediment to using it. For another thing, the step-down left us with an uninviting transition space that made us quickly want to continue down the rickety wooden steps to get into the backyard rather than providing an inviting space where we might be inclined to stop, linger, and look into and appreciate the garden rather than simply racing down those stairs so we could dive into the work required to maintain the garden.

What if, we mused, that step-down became a space large enough for us to use as a place to look down into the garden, to sit and read, to take a lunch break on those days when both of us are working from home, or to sit with friends in a comfortable, quiet, attractive space when we wanted to engage in the long, meandering conversations that are an essential and appealing part of the relationships we maintain with our closest friends?

Following techniques I had learned from years of reading and absorbing the writing of an architect (Christopher Alexander) whose work I very much admire, we walked the small space repeatedly. Drew multiple outlines in the dirt to determine how wide and deep the deck needed to be to provide us with a sitting space, a well-integrated transition space from house to garden. Looked at how light hit the area during different times of day and in varying weather conditions. And how it might become a well-designed space, effectively integrated into its setting, capable of fostering wonderful conversations with friends in a place feeling as if it were removed from the city while remaining a part of it.

Slowly, miraculously, through the first of many three-way conversations we would have while construction was underway, a plan of action developed. We moved past the dilemma of taking up too much of that precious limited real estate by quickly abandoning what had been the initial, obvious plan to walk out onto the deck, then continue walking in the same direction (east-facing) down a set of steps that would end near the base of the six-foot-tall Italianate fountain we had installed in the center of the garden many years ago. Because the steps would have taken up quite a bit of space and left little room for the small gravel walkway we wanted to maintain between the steps and the foundation, the contractor suggested giving up a bit of the seating space on the southern edge of the deck by having the steps run parallel to the house rather than extend eastward off the main sitting area in a direct line eastward from door to deck to gravel path to fountain. Because those steps would lead down to another set of steps descending into the narrow garden pathway formed in the alley along the south side of the house running east-west from back to front, we also talked about the possibility of creating a small stone area at the base of the steps off the deck so we wouldn’t be stepping down into dirt or mud. (Only after the entire project was completed did we realize we had, in adding that small semi-circular stone area at the foot of the steps, created a pleasant shaded space where we could sit and enjoy lunch—as I did, for the first time, while writing the initial draft of this piece in my notebook—during that part of the day when direct sunlight makes it a bit uncomfortable to sit on the main part of the deck.)

At every stage, there were challenges to address and decisions to make: the choice of colors to use on the back wall to create a playful, cheery backdrop to a space that often is enshrouded in fog and can be a bit uninviting because of the damp chill that accompanies breezes and winds throughout the year. (We struggled with that piece of the puzzle for a couple of weeks as we added numerous swatches of paint samples to the wall so we could see how those colors looked in mid-day light as well as in the subdued light barely filtering through clouds and low-lying fog.) The repositioning of small water pipes in ways that kept them unobtrusive but easily accessible so we could hook up a hose and a drip irrigation system to easily maintain the garden. How to finish off the base of the structure in a way that would cover, but provide easy access to, the newly-created storage space we were creating under the deck. (The contractor, after exploring several options, ultimately suggested a series of fairly light-weight wooden panels, painted to match the color of the material he used for the deck, that could easily be lifted off a series of sturdy hooks so we would not have to struggle with a set of hinges and poles to prop doors open or to have to take up extra space to accommodate doors that would swing out onto paths when we needed to open them to gain access to the space under the deck.)

And step by step, what could have been seen as a set of isolated construction projects designed without regard to how each would impact and interact (or fail to interact) with other elements in the surrounding area developed into a cohesive set of elements that flowed together to create an appealing, integrated space that makes us want to move from inside our house onto the deck. Linger there to look at the trees and plants and flowers while watching sparrows, mourning doves, bushtits, robins, Townsend’s warblers, and scrub jays; red admiral and white cabbage butterflies; and raccoons and the squirrel that share that space. And continually remind us that we are, in essence, temporary stewards of a potentially magnificent space that is at once sanctuary, habitat, and a social center for those who enter it.    

Just as we often, in training-teaching-learning, design and deliver only what is necessary to meet the needs of learners in a particular moment and situation, we could have taken the path of least resistance by simply repairing the loose board on the side of the house and pushing other decisions and actions down the road. We might have even taken the extra step of repairing the board and replacing the fence, or having the porch replaced with new materials that mirrored what was already in place. But by recognizing the possibilities available to us—including those we could not initially anticipate—and collaborating with this creative and adaptable contractor who brings experience and a well-honed sense of craftsmanship and pride to the process of transforming possibilities into dreamy realities, the three of us operated in the spirit of what Burkeman pictures in Four Thousand Weeks. Focused on what was most important and enjoyable while shunting everything else aside. And produced something spectacularly appealing which continues to reveal unanticipated positive results with each new day—just as our best, most collaborative and effective training-teaching-learning endeavors produce results that extend far beyond anything we can imagine while they are in the planning stage.

ACP (Associated Collegiate Press) Conference 2023: Peer-to-Peer Learning in Action

The value of peer-to-peer learning was clearly and beautifully on display Friday afternoon during the second day of the three-day ACP (Associated Collegiate Press) 2023 Annual Spring Conference here in San Francisco. San Francisco Chronicle breaking-news reporter Jordan Parker was describing his one-year transition from being a reporter and editor for his university paper in Sacramento to being an intern with the Chronicle to accepting full-time employment at that publication less than a year after graduation (while also considering an offer from a Sacramento-area television station).

Jordan Parker

Collegiate journalists in the audience, after a couple of days of hearing wonderful presenters encourage them to follow their passion for journalism while also citing the familiar statistics about the decline of print publications and jobs within mainstream media organizations, finally were hearing a success story from someone their own age. And it clearly made a difference, as one audience member told me after the session ended.

It’s not as if the speakers I heard at the conference were anything less than encouraging. Santa Rosa Press-Democrat Executive Editor Rick Green, during an inspirational and highly energetic keynote address Thursday evening, provided a passionate, engaging call to action reminding conference attendees of the importance of what they do, and he reminded them that the 45 words comprising the First Amendment were among the most important guiding us. Odette Alcazaren-Keeley (director of the Maynard 200 journalism fellowship program of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education), during her own keynote address Friday, did a fantastic job of reminding student journalists of the challenges they face and the important role they play: “Student journalism is local journalism.”  

But it did—and does—make a difference for these collegiate journalists to be shoulder to shoulder with someone who has successfully made the leap from the positions they hold as near-term job-seekers to fully employed journalists: “Journalism itself is not dying. This industry has opportunities if you take a chance and put yourself out there,” he reminded them as he described the various skills—web design, search engine optimization, social media management—that can connect applicants to media outlets. And the excitement in the students’ voices clearly showed how encouraged they felt as they listened to this peer describe opportunities they are eager to pursue.

Parker’s session Friday afternoon offered a first-rate complement to San Francisco State University Journalism Faculty Advisor Laura Moorhead’s “Striking a Balance: Meeting Student Needs in a Changing Profession” session (Thursday afternoon), during which she offered tremendous insights into what media employers seek from prospective employees. It also offered tremendous ongoing learning opportunities far beyond what collegiate journalists find through the work they do on campus: “A first-year job…it’s interesting. Sometimes I feel like I‘m learning on the job…At the same time, you get your own freedom” to pursue stories that are interesting, he told audience members.

He also provided a glimpse of what some of us recognize to be the lifelong learning environments in which we continue to improve our skills over a very long period of time by working alongside people with more experience than we have acquired: “I like to pick the brains of the veterans in the newsroom…It’s kind of like a crash course.”

Returning to that theme near the end of his session, Parker reiterated a point well worth hearing from a peer: “I’m still learning how to write…I don’t have all the skills yet.” And that is clearly a point any of us in training-teaching-learning needs to remember to make: we are often only one step ahead of those who are coming to us for help, and we can encourage them by letting them understand we are right there with them as co-conspirators and peers in the learning process.

ACP (Associated Collegiate Press) Conference 2023: Developing Careers

For those of us completely immersed in our (third or fourth or fifth) careers, it’s eye-opening to sit through a session on what employers are seeking in today’s job market. Which is why the first session I attended at the three-day ACP (Associated Collegiate Press) 2023 Annual Spring Conference here in San Francisco was such a fascinating experience.

San Francisco State University Journalism Faculty Advisor Laura Moorhead’s superb no-olds-barred approach to telling students in her “Striking a Balance: Meeting Student Needs in a Changing Profession” session what they face in seeking internships and jobs addressed the situation in our rapidly evolving journalism environment—a situation captured nicely at the collegiate level in a publication I read recently from the Student Press Law Center (“Nothing Is Going Back to the Way It Was: Creating Economic Sustainability for college News Organizations in 2020 and Beyond”) and in Jill Lepore’s “Does Journalism Have a Future?” piece in the January 28, 2019 issue of The New Yorker. And it also, without doing so overtly, served as a primer for anyone thinking about applying for work in a very competitive market by reminding us how much has changed in terms of how employers approach the hiring process.

The long-held belief that our résumé is our initial calling card took a bit of a beating when Moorhead told students that media employers first want to see your portfolio—preferably online. And then “you will be Googled, Slacked, and views on LinkedIn and social media….No one we talked to cared what your résumé looked like.” It’s all about the published clips you have acquired through hard work and creativity; they are looking to see how you pursue  stories, not what technology or social media platforms you have mastered, she said.

Some of the skills sought by media representatives carry over into many other industries my colleagues and I serve through the training-teaching-learning opportunities we design and facilitate: teamwork and collaboration; flexibility, follow-through, engagement, and effective use of social media. But it involves far more than simply saying you are active on social media or can make great videos—it’s what you do with those “basic skills” that separates you from the numerous other candidates with whom you are competing in our extremely competitive job market.

“A good clip can trump other weaknesses in an application,” she has heard from her media contacts. They also look for awards you have garnered and elements of diversity you bring to a workplace.

In another example of skills that go beyond what applicants for internships and jobs often overlook, she mentioned that a candidate’s ability to take feedback and to respond effectively to uncomfortable topics makes that candidate very appealing.

There was—and is—plenty for an applicant to absorb from what Moorhead offered. And there is, notably, plenty for any of us involved in training-teaching-learning and lifelong learning to absorb—and share with those we serve—a great reminder that as we foster learning, we learn along with our learners. And everyone is the better for having traveled that road together.

Presentation Essentials: When You Need More Salt

There’s a stunningly inspirational story told in Anne Bruce and Sardék Love’s Presentation Essentials: The Tools You Need to Captivate Your Audience, Deliver Your Story, and Make Your Message Memorable. Bruce recalls the moment when she began a conference presentation before a group of people who had had far too much too drink. One of the unruly audience members, from his seat in the front row of the room, immediately begins heckling her and ultimately decides—unwisely—that it would be appropriate to throw a tomato at her. Looking down at the splattered tomato that is now on the lapel of her white silk suit, she doesn’t miss a beat: she uses a finger to scoop a piece of the demolished tomato from her coat, tastes the tomato, and responds “needs more salt.” Which, of course, immediately has the audience completely on her side as the person who threw the tomato is led out of the room, and she receives a standing ovation at the end of her presentation.

That “needs more salt” approach perfectly describes what makes Presentation Essentials so important for any of us immersed in—or dreaming about being immersed in—a career that involves an ability to engage audiences through first-rate presentation skills. The need for salt reminds us that the way we season our work with a commitment to planning, practice, storytelling, the use of empathy, a commitment to excellence, and an ability to quickly recover from whatever is thrown our way determines whether we deliver a perfectly-prepared souffle or something that is so flat that it should never have been let out of our kitchen.

True to its title, this is not a book that lingers very long on any of its important themes; it covers the essentials, punctuates them with simple graphics that summarize points to be recalled and incorporated into our work; and includes an “essentials toolkit” a with concise lists of “dos and don’ts of presenting,” a set of guidelines for creating effective presentations, and a presentation-development worksheet, among other resources.

Bruce and Love bring, to their work, years of successful experiences as engaging, effective presenters in numerous countries, and what they cover serves as a primer for new and aspiring presenters as well as a review manual with plenty of helpful reminders to those of us who have been involved in teaching-training-learning and other presentation/facilitation environments for a considerable period of time.

A particularly refreshing and helpful section, for me, came early in the second chapter (“Presentation Structure”). Although I have, for many years, been writing and presenting material in highly-interactive sessions designed to inspire positive transformation among those I serve, I’d never quite thought about the process in the terms outlined by Bruce and Love: creating that single, overarching “Big Idea Statement” that, in one sentence, explicitly expresses the problem, the expert insights to be offered, and the stakes that are driving the need for change among my co-conspirators in learning, aka, the learners with whom I am working. I always design and share sets of goals and objectives, but reading Bruce and Love’s examples, including this one (on a theme I frequently address with colleagues and learners), are immediately helping me up my own presentation game in terms of going for the direct, concise, emotionally-engaging challenge that drives the work I facilitate and the opportunities for transformation I attempt to foster:

“More than 50 percent of your virtual training content is a complete waste of time, money, and resources, leaving team members unprepared to fulfil their job duties, thereby putting your human capital investment dollars at severe risk.”

Delivered to the right audience at the right moment, that summary statement offers the invitation to and promise of change that is at the heart of what so many of us attempt to do through the presentations we design and deliver. That example alone, with the outline of the process that leads us to develop that level of challenge, makes the book one well worth reading and rereading.

“Before designing your presentation, you must create your Big Idea Statement,” the authors remind us. “The Big Idea Statement is the main point of your presentation, and its purpose is to compel your audience to reconsider what they know to be true and take action to change.”

A theme that pops up a few times in the book is the need for adaptability in our approach to designing and delivering effective, engaging presentations, and the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on our is acknowledged on page 64 and again in Chapter 10 (“Delivering Online Content”): “The Covid-19 pandemic unleashed a seismic transformation in the way presentations are delivered. Presenters are now expected to be fully capable of delivering presentations in person as well as virtually across multiple platforms. That’s an extreme example of being adaptable.” (p. 64)

For those of us who had already been engaged in extensive online-presentation work via Zoom and other platforms well before the pandemic hit full force in early 2020, the transition was hardly noticeable, but it did create a tremendous expansion of opportunities among those who suddenly, forced to go online for learning and other presentations. An area of exploration beyond the scope of this book—and one in which I’ve been immersed with colleagues for nearly three years now—is what new opportunities this rapid transformation has provided and what we can do to hold onto the best of the opportunities rather than shelving them away and going back to practices that were commonly pursued before so many of our colleagues and learners were forced to move full-steam ahead to hone their presentation skills in online environments.

Regardless of environments (e.g., onsite vs. online vs. hybrid), plenty of elements remain consistent and essential to our work, and these are the elements Bruce and Love capture so effectively throughout the book as they suggest a variety of presentation seasonings we can add to our work. The summary of “Six Keys to Audience Engagement” (on page 65), for example, are worth reviewing every time we sit down to design a new presentation:

Be Bold

Be Brief

Be Novel

Be Memorable

Be Confident

Be Adaptable

And their reminder regarding how to approach practice and rehearsal—“Don’t practice your presentation until you can get it right; practice your presentation until you can’t get it wrong”—needs to be in the forefront of our minds when we move from the design phase to the delivery phase of the work we do as presenters.

Whether you quickly read through the entire book in a couple of sittings or spend more time working your way through it by reading a chapter and then applying lessons learned, you’ll find the time spend with Presentation Essentials to be well worth the effort. And your co-conspirators in learning, action, and positive change will be among the beneficiaries of your effort.

CLA Conference 2022: Thanks for the Gifts

For three hours yesterday, I was shoulder to shoulder with a wonderful group of colleagues facilitating a highly-interactive advocacy workshop for people working with libraries and the communities they serve throughout California. These are people—Crystal Miles from the Sacramento Public Library, Mark Fink from  the Yolo County Library, Deborah Doyle from the Sonoma County Library Commission, and Derek Wolfgram from the Redwood City Public Library—with whom I interact on a regular basis via Zoom. We have—up to that moment yesterday morning when we were onsite for the preconference workshop here in Sacramento on the first day of the California Library Association (CLA) 2022 Annual Conference—been designing and delivering online advocacy training sessions through the CLA Ursula Meyer Advocacy Training Fund program I manage, and we will continue to be nurturing the online series that continues next week with a free two-hour workshop on presentation skills for library advocates.

But this was that wonderful moment when, for the first time since the COVID pandemic radically altered the way we all work, we were shoulder to shoulder in an onsite setting with a group of dynamic learners who were also relishing the opportunity to be off camera and physically (rather than virtually) together. There were plenty of tongue-in-cheek comments about how strange it was to be seeing each other’s faces without having those faces framed by the all-too-familiar Zoom boxes that provide us with (cherished) opportunities to interact online. And there was also the not-unexpected attention we continue to give to safety protocols—including those ubiquitous N95 masks so many of us continue to wear in a dual effort to avoid unintentionally spreading COVID or to contract it from unsuspecting carriers of the virus.

But when all was said and done, an underlying cause for gratitude and celebration was that all of us in that particular room were acknowledging that the gift of gathering offered by CLA was another step toward our collective commitment to creating “a new and better normal” rather than sitting passively while waiting for a chance to return to a (pre-COVID) “normal” that, in many ways, was not all that great for many of our colleagues and, frankly, many of us.

As we explored the basics of advocacy and how it is evolving in a world that, two years ago, was forced to switch quickly and (sometimes) adeptly to a world where online interactions needed to be a seamless part of our interactions and collaborations, we noted and celebrated some of the positive opportunities that have come out of the tremendous tragedies and losses COVID has brought to each of us. We even, at one point, held a brief, lively, tongue-in-cheek debate about the advantages and disadvantages of onsite vs. online advocacy. (Taking the side of arguing for the benefits of online advocacy, I was gleeful when Crystal, assuming the playful role of the judge awarding points to Derek and me as we went back and forth, ultimately and very generously called it a draw and observed that our new and better normal might be one in which we recognize the importance of incorporating onsite and online efforts into our advocacy toolkits.) And as the session came to an end, we were gratified to hear participants—our co-conspirators in learning—note the ways in which their time with us was inspiring them to seek new ways to become even better advocates for libraries and the communities they serve than they already were.

It doesn’t, however, end there. The shoulder-to-shoulder interactions extended into conversations on the conference exhibits-hall floor, moved outdoors as some of us took our lunches into the plaza outside the conference center so we could unmask and enjoy lunch and extended conversations. And, as always happens in these conference settings where friends and colleagues are unexpectedly waiting for us right around the corner, the conversations became richer and deeper as friends stumbled upon long-unseen friends and picked up right where they/we had left off.

Which is exactly what happened toward the end of the lunchtime conversation Crystal and I were having in that plaza on a warm, pleasant Sacramento afternoon. As Crystal and I were discussing another session we might soon be doing together, I felt the (reassuring) embrace, from behind me, of someone whose voice I could hear but couldn’t quite place. Relishing that unexpected embrace and the sound of a somewhat familiar voice I couldn’t immediately place, I just sat there and admitted “I have no idea who is hugging me, and I’m not even inclined to want to turn around and immediately find out who it is because it feels so good.” And when I turned around and saw familiar eyes peering out from above the mask that was covering the rest of that lovely face, it still took me several seconds to realize that the embrace and the voice belonged to one of my favorite up-and-coming librarians—someone I’ve known since the point in her life when she was still a student in a Master of Library Science program and I had an opportunity to introduce her to people who have helped shape her career.

You can see it coming: she joined the conversation for a few minutes before having to race off for an appointment she had previously set—but not before we agreed to reconvene later that afternoon to sit together outdoors over hors d’oeuvres and beverages that carried us through a lovely chunk of unplanned time we both had. And our leisurely conversation that led us from afternoon into the early evening hours before another colleague joined us briefly before each of us stepped away to join other equally lovely interactions and conversations which will, no doubt, continue today when all of us are back onsite for another day of learning, scheming, dreaming, and working with cherished colleagues to collaborate toward shaping the world of our dreams.

So again, CLA, thanks for the gift of regathering our community in ways that continue the work we have managed to do in online settings over the past couple of years—and will continue to do onsite and online for the foreseeable future. And thanks for the opportunity to carry us one step further down a road that is still very much in a state of development as we grow accustomed to, open to, and grateful for a world in which we no longer carry on, with any level of seriousness, silly arguments about whether onsite interactions are inherently better than online interactions, or vice versa. We are, step by step, embracing possibilities and relishing where those opportunities may take us—if we actively, positively are active participants in shaping the results those opportunities provide.

Lessons Imparted, Lessons Learned: Making Them Personal

The trainer-teacher-learners I most admire are those who understand that every learning opportunity we facilitate provides us with an opportunity to learn alongside our co-conspirators in learning (aka our students).

It’s an idea that inspires me to review, after each workshop or webinar or course or even a highly-interactive keynote address that encourages participants to learn with me, what I myself might learn from what we have just done together. It proves to be a rewarding, comforting endeavor each time I take the time to complete it, as I’m reminded today during a review of some of the sessions in which I’ve recently been involved.

Those sessions are a part of a continuing series of facilitated conversations, arranged under the auspices of Claremont EAP, on a few dozen workplace issues with which we all struggle at various levels. Each session comes with a PowerPoint slide deck provided by my colleagues at Claremont. It also comes with a workbook that can be integrated into the hour-long conversation. But the real payoff for the learners and for me comes from open discussions I facilitate and which are inspired by what’s in those decks and workshops. Using small chunks of the time we have together to show them slides about mindfulness in our workplaces, or adapting to change, or managing priorities, or incorporating acts of gratitude into our daily routines as I’ve done over the past few weeks through Claremont sessions with clients around the San Francisco Bay Area, is just the starting point. It’s the questions I pose in response to information contained on the slides or within the workbooks, the avenues I pursue with them vis-à-vis how those topics apply to what they are facing in their own workplaces, and the inevitable final question I pose at the end of each session—what is one thing you will do differently during the next week as a result of having spent time together today?—that brings it all together and transforms what on the surface appears to be an ephemeral conversation into what any learning opportunity should be: an opportunity to pursue positive change and to take away some level of pain that a learner is currently facing.

The conversations about adapting to change, being grateful for things we tend to overlook, and being mindful (attentive) to what is happening to us in any given moment and cherishing what it offers were not exactly at the forefront of my mind yesterday afternoon after I finished the latest offering of “adapting to change”; it had been a rewarding, inspiring day of meetings and sessions, but nothing out of the ordinary. All three of those topics, however, have been on my mind pretty steadily over the past several months as a lovely cat that has been an integral part of our lives for more than 14 years has been steadily declining in response to the progressive ravages of kidney disease. We think about her and respond to her at a deeply emotional level, but I also think and respond to her in terms of recognizing the massive change that will occur in our lives when she is no longer with us. When she appeared to be entering end-stage last September, and we were actually about to set up a time to put her out of the misery she was experiencing, we viscerally understood the importance of being mindful—cherishing every remaining moment we had with her. And when some new medications and simple, non-invasive measures suggested by the wonderful vet who has been treating and supporting her produced a turn-around none of us really expected to see, we were relieved and tremendously grateful for what the vet accomplished and for the unexpected gift of additional time we were being given with her. And we were mindful. Recognizing that this beloved companion was once again (at least temporarily) comfortable. That she was displaying as much joy as any six-pound ball of fur has ever displayed. That we might have her for a few more days or weeks. And that this was nothing but a postponement of the day, all too soon, when we would have to make the difficult decision to let her go—that moment when the lack of a decent quality of life overrode our desire to have her with us.

Those mindfulness conversations I have been having with learners have made me conscious every day—every time the cat sits on my lap and naps while I read, every time she goes skittering across our hardwood floors chasing a ball as if it were her sole mission in life to protect us from any harm that evil ball might bring us, every time she puts her sometimes damp nose in my ear at three or four a.m. to remind me that she expects a bit of attention in gratitude for all the joy she brings us—of what a magnificent gift those simple moments have become. The gratitude and mindfulness has always helped me enjoy the in-the-moment pleasures of having her with us, and helped me to not fritter them away by worrying about when her moment of departure might arrive.

So, I was surprised and not surprised, early yesterday evening, when I noticed something radically different about her. She suddenly seemed unsteady. Unsure of herself. Continually, slowly, moving her head from left to right and back again as if looking for something that remained beyond her field of vision. As if she were bewildered by what she was or was not seeing. And then it struck me. She was bewildered because regardless of how much she tried, she wasn’t seeing anything. Testing my suspicion, I moved my hands across her field of vision and saw no obvious response. I looked closely into her eyes and saw that her black pupils were filling the entire space that just a few hours ago had been mostly filled with luminescent gold-green—a color that now had completely vanished. I tried again to elicit responses by quickly moving my hands toward her face and stopping just short of the moment of contact, without eliciting any level of reaction. A quick internet search confirmed for me that sudden loss of vision was one of the signs that kidney disease in a cat was in its final stage. So, with heavy hearts and mindful that these could well be our final moments with her, my wife and I took turns holding her on our laps. Hugging her with every bit of love she had earned by being such a joyful companion over such a long period of time. Doing everything we could to figure out how the loss of her vision was going to impact her ability to function around the house. And seeing her gently bumping into walls and furniture whose position had been familiar to her over a period of many years, we were mindful of what this sudden change meant in terms of quality of life for her. So we made the call.

We’ve had to do this before. It’s never easy. But it is, for us, part of what we feel we owe to the cats who have relied on us to be there for them during the easy as well as the difficult times. The rest of the evening, of course, is already a bit blurry in our memories. Comforting her as we transported her to the vet’s clinic. Having a frank discussion about what was reasonable and not reasonable in terms of expecting her to adapt to the unexpected change she had just experienced. And what quality of life she was going to have as the loss of vision was just one of a rapidly approaching series of losses that would make her more miserable and ultimately result in her death. None of that made the decision easy. But it made it the best of the decisions we felt we could reach, given our desire to offer her the gift of sparing her additional pain at a moment when her life—and ours—had inevitably changed.

I’m numb and filled with grief today. I feel her presence everywhere around our house, and think about and visualize all the things she was doing here less than 24 hours ago. But I also am mindful of the fact that I have a great community of friends and colleagues around me who are already doing all they can to join the circle of grief and, through their caring comments, offer me a lifeline out of this overwhelming grief and back into life when I’m ready to begin adapting to the terrible change that has just occurred. I’m grateful that I have the continuing opportunity to work with people who trust me enough to help them through the small-, medium- and large-scale changes they face just as others now are doing that for me. And I’m grateful, that because of their attentiveness and dedication to lifelong learning to produce positive changes, they offer me the gift of lessons imparted and lessons learned through every interaction we have as co-conspirators in learning.

Because of a Teacher: Learning With Stories

Our greatest teacher-trainer-learners often turn out to be wonderful storytellers. Through their stories, they provide a context for our own learning. They engage us and inspire us. And they transform us. So when innovative teaching, learning, and leadership consultant, speaker, and author George Couros published a collection of stories by teachers—Because of a Teacher: Stories of the Past to Inspire the Future of Education—last year, we just had to know we were in for a treat: a collection of stories by storytellers who incorporate storytelling in their work. It’s as if we were invited to an evening of stories by some of our best peers.

We recognize, as we dive into the opening pages of the book, that we are in for a real treat. And Couros and his co-conspirators in producing this wonderfully engaging evening of learning with the storytellers do not let us down for even a moment. We know, from the title, that we’re going to be hearing teachers talk about the art of teaching; those of us involved in lifelong learning as trainer-teacher-learners recognize that we are with kindred spirits as we spend time with those teachers working in formal academic settings. We also know, if we are familiar with Couros’s “Three Questions on Educators That Inspire” series on his Innovator’s Mindset podcast, that those stories, as Couros himself writes, “have the potential to help improve current practice. And they can inspire current teachers while honoring the educators who once inspired them” (p. 3).

Certain themes flow consistently through the book. The teachers with whom we are spending time acknowledge the support they have received, throughout their careers, from peers, mentors, and administrators. They consistently cite the power of collaboration with their peers and with their learners. They are, themselves, consummate learners who learn from their own mistakes and recognize that the temporary failures we all face are part of our lifelong learning endeavors and actually make us more appealing and accessible to our own learners because, through our actions and admissions, acknowledge that we, too, are human and fallible.

There’s something absolutely universal and appealing about many of the stories, and I found myself appreciating the pleasant, transformative experiences I have been lucky enough to have had as I read these storytellers’ variations on the themes we shared. Steve Bollar, in his “The Art of Relationships” chapter, for example, recalls how his art teacher nurtured his growth by providing a safe space—her classroom—for him to work before the formal beginning of the school day. When he suggested “letting a few of my friends hang out in the morning with me,” the teacher readily agreed so that, “by the end of the school year, there was a sizable group of students hanging out in the art room before the school day began.” Hearing that story produce an effect akin to being struck by a (non-fatal) bolt of lightning, for it vividly brough back memories of the high school history teacher who provided a similarly safe and stimulating meeting place for many of us when we were in school. Furthermore, it brought back memories of how creatively that teacher approached his own efforts to nurture our growth as learners and how it created a lifelong desire for me, in working with my own (adult) learners in a variety of settings, to create those same types of open, welcoming, dynamic learning spaces that produce the results my co-conspirators in learning and I produce whenever we meet face to face or online.

There are numerous gems among the gorgeous stories. Deidre Roemer, for example, reminds us that “the power of a caring teacher can be felt for a lifetime” in her “Inspiration for a Lifetime and Beyond” story (p. 33). “Making students feel welcome in their learning environment is a critical first step for building strong, lasting relationships as an educator,” Mary Hemphill writes in “Teaching Full Circle” (p. 36). “It’s all about relationships,” Tom Murray remembers hearing a cherished mentor say in “Fingerprints of Impact: The Legacy of a Mentor.” “‘If you make that the core of all you do, you’ll have amazing success in your career’” (p. 43).

George Couros

The first third of the book, capturing stories about the teachers who inspired these teachers-as-storytellers, leads us naturally into the second section: stories about administrators who inspired our peers in Because of a Teacher. Couros himself sets a nice tone for that section in his opening story, “When Someone Believes in You.” He recalls feeling as if he had completely destroyed his chances of being hired into an assistant principal position by being drawn into serious arguments during his interview for the position. Discovering not long afterward that he was being offered the job because the principle wanted someone who would disagree with him when disagreement was productive, Couros walked away with a valuable lesson: “Archie [Lillico, the principal who hired Couros as his assistant principal] and I had a ton of disagreements in our time together, and that made us both better at our work. Isn’t that the point of education? Shouldn’t we want to learn new ideas and take actions to best grow in our pursuits?” (p. 56)

Couros, one page later, recalls an earlier interview completely comprised of talking “about the things that made me passionate and the things that excited me. It felt less like an interview and more like a conversation about education with colleagues in a staff room. Looking back on it, I realize that was intentional. The typical interview process doesn’t happen often in our everyday practice, but those conversations do. How we interact in those spaces really matters.”

We read (and hear) these words. We reflect on what they suggest to us. We feel inspired by them and want to immediately work them into our own practices. And by the time we finish reading the book and relishing what the stories suggest to us in terms of possibilities  in our lifelong learning landscapes, we realize we have absorbed what Couros and his colleagues set out to offer us. We are better off then we were before we picked up the book. Because of a teacher.