Paris, Crowds, and the Art of Learning

Learning anything in a formal classroom often runs the risk of engaging in learning removed from its context. While building foundations and creating frameworks, it can also be overly academic. Somewhat stultifying. Sort of like looking at a dessert you love without allowing yourself to take a bite, savor the taste, enjoy the fragrance, and relish its textures during the instant it first danced upon your tongue. Or gazing at a set of cliffs without being aware of the wind on your face or the smell of ocean spray caressing your nostrils. Or watching a sunset without feeling the air around you suddenly turn chill as day melts into dusk melts into nights that lead to sunrises and other sunsets.

I think of the hours I have willingly spent in formal language courses, or working with fantastically creative and supportive private tutors, or poring over grammar books, or struggling with literature and nonfiction in the languages I’m studying, or absorbing the vocabulary and rhythms of that language by watching television programs, viewing videos online, or listening to a radio. All useful. All productive at a certain level, as far as they go.

But it all comes back to life for me, meaningfully and enjoyably, as I am visiting wonderful art exhibitions in uncomfortably crowded museums here in Paris. Listening to the conversations all around me in French and other languages as they cajole and embrace me. Struggling to read the labels and pamphlets that introduce me to the content and provide useful information—which I can use immediately to add to my appreciation of all that in this moment surrounds and entices me—about the work into which I willingly am diving.

You could make me sit at a desk all day, drilling vocabulary into me and making me repeat it until I replicate it mechanically, without feeling, without understanding it essentially. But I can assure you I’m not going to feel and viscerally understand that a falaise is the French word for what I know in English to be a “cliff” until I’m standing here (in Paris, in an exhibition in l’Orangerie) in front of a magnificent Impressionist painting of a young woman stretched out on the ground at the seaside and gazing toward a falaise. Or, a couple of days later, strolling through the galleries of the Impressionist museum near Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny and finding myself in a gallery with paintings united under the theme of falaise. I know, when I return to California, I will once again be captivated by cliffs that line the coast north and south of San Francisco, but I also know that when I see them and briefly connect them to the word falaise, it will be the French settings that come to mind as opposed to all the cliffs in Pacifica, Big Sur, and Point Reyes that come to mind when I use that English-language word.

In the same way, when I see paintings grouped within a gallery under the theme of coucher de soleil (sunset), I begin to see and think about what the French term suggests intrinsically: putting the sun to bed, or the sun going to sleep. The vocabulary is no longer a set of tools mechanically to be employed, forgotten many times and then relearned until it is anchored into memory. It is an extension of the art, a connection to the world as it is perceived by those who use French rather than English to think about and describe their world. It is art reflecting and describing life, life reflecting and describing art, and learning as an essential act of living/breathing/embracing all that is around us.

This does not mean in any way that formal classrooms—onsite as well as online—no longer have a place in my world; they are, in fact, a part of my daily life and my ability to earn a living. But what it does remind me of is what is at the center of all I try to bring to those learning opportunities I provide: immersing my co-conspirators in learning—aka, my students—in situations that immediately connect the lessons learned to the world into which they will carry and apply those lessons. It reminds me—and the colleagues with whom I so often explore the ways we approach training-teaching-learning—that learning comes to life and becomes meaningful when we stop treating it as something that pulls us away from work or our day-to-day existence long enough to engage in it before we return to work or our day-to-day existence. When we carry the falaise and the coucher de soleil back into our workplaces and our daily existence, we acknowledge we have somehow been transformed. Have somehow connected learning, life, and yes, even art into all that we do. And in that act of connecting learning to our daily experiences and our daily experiences to learning, we work together to create a better, more compelling and stimulating playful world, a world so enticing that the concept of being bored no longer has a place in it.

NB: This is the fourth in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Paris, Friends, and Support Through Social Learning

There are clearly parallels between entering a new learning space onsite or online and stepping into an unfamiliar city. There is a sense of anticipation as well as one of fear of failure—particularly if the city into which we are stepping is one where the language is one in which we are nowhere close to being fluent, the subway and bus system is one we have not begun to master, and even the challenge of learning how to activate the systems that unlock doors or find someone to repair our glasses when one of the lenses chooses that moment to pop out of its frame.

Musée d’Orsay, Paris

In learning spaces, friends help each other; prop each other up; and, in the best situations, celebrate the positive, transformative learning moments that came from their collaborations; in immersing ourselves in unfamiliar cities, we immediately begin to make those cities feel somewhat familiar through the presence of our friends—those who timed their visits here to at least partially overlap with ours as well as those who, living here, are welcoming us as warmly as we welcome them each time they visit San Francisco.

Both in those learning spaces and in those unfamiliar and enticing new places—“classrooms” in their own right—we quickly realize that all that comes naturally, all that is familiar, suddenly is not at all available. Buying a ticket to gain access to a subway platform becomes a struggle; it is as if a lifetime of experiences has suddenly been snatched away, and even finding the right words to ask for help becomes a challenge, an exercise in redefining how we interact with the world that now surrounds us—and how, in turn, it responds to us. It changes, at a basic level, how we see ourselves.

The presence of our friends and newly-found acquaintances, on the other hand, keeps us from completely feeling adrift and disconnected—something I realize and appreciate as I willingly dive into the challenges of exploring and continuing to learn about Paris while I am handicapped by woefully inadequate knowledge of the language the Parisians speak. There is, of course, that completely liberating moment of realizing and accepting that I, like everyone else I know, am never completely alone, and none of us needs to function without the support and assistance of others. Each of us brings some overlapping experiences to the situation. And each of us brings a separate strength. Some of us, having been born in France and lived here all their lives, are here to walk us through what baffles us but is as natural to them as inhaling and exhaling is. Some of us have spent months preparing for our immersion by reading everything we can find about Paris—its history, is geography, its art, its churches, its parks—while others have continued to augment their knowledge of and comfort with the all-important art of communicating in French and translating for those of us who struggle tremendously with the language.

The central concept here is the concept of developing, nurturing, and sustaining a sense of community. One where each person brings something unique to the community. Contributes something important as well as pleasurable. And, when absent even for a moment, leaves the rest of us feeling as if the community is incomplete. And whether it is the shared and cherished moment of finding a small, welcoming sandwich shop where we enjoy a meal and conversation with each other as well as with the people who created, own, and make that inviting space what it is—a safe space for social learning in every sense of that term—or whether it is that experience of making reservations to see a popular new art exhibition in a series of very uncomfortably crowded galleries and then finding out that the reservation process didn’t work as it was meant to work, which requires us to renavigate the process of successfully gaining entry to the world-changing set of painting with which we are about to engage.

Restaurnt, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

Our friendships grounded in years of common experiences grow deeper. Richer. Because we share and meet that challenge, or share a meal provided by the most welcoming and accommodating of service staff in the lovely setting of a world-class museum. Because we create new memories that bind us together more tightly than before and, as we look at Monet’s paintings of water lilies, we are simultaneously anticipating our upcoming visit to the home and garden where those exquisite images were brought into the world. Our friendships become richer as we have coffee at a table outside a café we have never seen before this moment and may well never see again. They become more firmly intertwined as we interact, together, with someone kind enough to put us back on track when we have unexpectedly taken a wrong turn.

The presence of our friends in unfamiliar settings is like the presence of colleagues with whom we struggle while engaged in a particularly challenging workshop or webinar. We thrive in our willingness to throw ourselves into the unfamiliar. To expand the sense of who we are and how we fit into the places we have entered. And we realize—and relish—that the more we push ourselves into those unfamiliar places—cities as well as learning spaces—accompanied by friends, the more we find ourselves.

NB: This is the third in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

Paris, Escape Rooms, and Lifelong Learning

A friend, during a conversation a few days before I arrived in Paris for nearly three-weeks with my wife (Licia) and a friend (Ann) who will be with us the first few days, described with childlike wonder and glee the pleasure she has been taking in designing and entering escape rooms—those playful spaces where you willingly allow yourself to be locked into a room with other people so you can all collaborate on how to escape in the shortest time possible from the seemingly exit-less room.

This is all far from my thoughts when, arriving at the flat where we will spend the first of our three weeks in Paris, we are met by the mother of the man who rents out the flat. She lovingly and patiently shows us around. As any good trainer-teacher-learner would do, she shows us how to get into the building and makes sure we understand how everything in the flat works. Reminds us that we haven’t a care in the world and shouldn’t do anything other than have fun while we are here. Then leaves us.

Everything is perfect for about five minutes. And then her brief, informal training session begins to fall apart. Because we are tired and don’t absorb everything she tries to teach us. And because she shows us how things work without taking time to make us practice what she demonstrated.

The fun begins when, after briefly settling in, we decide to take an early evening stroll and find a place for dinner. But we don’t even make it out the door of our flat on the premier étage—the first floor of flats, one level up from the narrow shop-lined street with multi-story buildings featuring shutters and grill-work on the balconies—before we begin to stumble. Walking toward the elevator, we look—initially unsuccessfully—for the stairway she used while we brought our suitcases up in the elevator. All the doors initially look the same through my weary eyes. All seem to be entrances to other flats. It is only when the doors to the elevator are closing and my field of vision is forcibly narrowed that I realize the door across from the elevator—which I had assumed led to a flat since it had a number “1” posted on it—actually was quite different in appearance from the others (plain rather than ornately decorated as the others are, so much so that I really hadn’t seen anything other than the number before visually searching for an entrance to the stairs). So I step back out of the elevator. Look to see what is behind Door #1. And voilà! There they are: that hidden-in-plain-sight spiral staircase, descending into darkness. (Reminder to self: when working with learners, be sure to overtly draw attention to the subtle clues that help them remember what they are struggling to absorb. They might be as tired as someone who has just stepped off a cross-Atlantic flight and might not be operating at full capacity.)

The adventure in learning-a-new-environment while somewhat exhausted—not the best of conditions for any training-teaching-learning situation—is far from over. Stepping into that dark stairwell, I am unable to activate the wall switch to throw some light onto the situation, so abandon this part of the journey and gladly rejoin Ann and Licia for a quick ride down to the lobby. Exiting the elevator and now in full-alert mode, I begin looking for other hidden traps. Like the one that is immediately visible when we look from the small elevator lobby toward two consecutive sets of glass doors that separate us from the street—and we have no idea now to open the first set, which leads into a space created by walls to our left and right and those two glass doors forming a small perfectly square room with mailboxes between where we are standing and where our destination—the street in front of the building—is. It immediately becomes worse: we realize that even if we were to figure out how to open the glass door leading into the miniature lobby with the mailboxes, we have no assurance we would be able to reopen it to get back to the elevator or open the door that finally provides access to the street.

We stop. We look for options. We are stumped. Our only tools are the key to our flat and the small fob that is supposed to open doors like the ones we are contemplating. But we see no mechanism against which we can place the fob to unlock the doors. We try pointing the fob everywhere possible since there doesn’t seem to be a button to press on the fob to active it. We try pressing it against everything that looks like it might be activated by a fob—small white squares on the wall, the handles to the door, even the glass doors themselves.

Nothing.

We start pressing anything that looks like it might unlock the first of the glass doors.

Nothing.

And finally, out of sheer desperation, I begin running my fingers over the small white squares on the wall next to the interior glass window. And finally feel what my eyes were not perceiving: one of the squares has a very small lip along its bottom…which allows me to use my fingers to lightly press down on it and release the heretofore unperceived switch.

But now I’m really cautious. Apprehensive, And—admittedly—a bit excited by the challenge, for it’s clear to me that if we step into that middle glassed in space without identifying the release mechanisms—we could easily become trapped in that glass escape room, unable to re-enter the elevator lobby or exit to the street-until someone else came along to release us from captivity.

“OK,” I say with far less assurance than I am feeling, “let’s figure this out before we let that inner door close. You stay in the elevator lobby so you can hit the release switch if I can’t find my way out of the next room.”

This, of course, is not going to be easy; finding the solution to an escape room never is. I try everything—obviously looking for a similar white square that could be lifted from the bottom to release a hidden-from-view latch. Tapping the fob against everything that looks like a potential recipient for a signal from a fob. But to no avail. At which point we agree that Licia and Ann will go back to our flat to try to call the owner for a refresher lesson in Escape-From-Your-Building 101 while I continue trying to find a way out of our situation. And just when I’m assuming we’re going to spend the rest of the evening in our flat rather than on the streets of Paris, I notice a small black circular object on a wall-mounted intercom fixture next to the set of mailboxes. Which, of course, has a barely visible red light in its center. And which turns green and releases the latch back into the elevator lobby when I press the fob firmly against it. Which suggests that if I find a similar black circular object close to the door leading out to the street, I might be on the verge of finding the escape the three of us have been seeking.

When Licia and Ann return to the lobby without having yet managed to reach either of our potential rescuers, I proudly show them what had been quickly shown to us earlier this evening and just as quickly forgotten in the overload of information—the path to dinner.

It’s been a very long journey. And the evening is just beginning. Licia and I are ready to move. Ann, understandably exhausted and unnerved by all has happened since we arrived, decides to stay in for the evening. So Licia and I venture out. Find a charming market where we buy the basics for the breakfast we plan to prepare the next morning. Return to the flat to make sure Ann has comfortably settled in for the evening. Then, like the lifelong learners we are, we set out in search of a meal and a re-introduction to a city that neither of us has seen for more than two decades.

NB: This is the first in a series of reflections on traveling and learning in Paris.

The Lankes Corollaries: Librarians, Learning, Activism, and the Communities They Nurture

When my mother took me for my initial visit to a bookmobile, I met my first activist: Mel Turner, the librarian who brought that vehicle to our neighborhood once every two weeks. Mel probably would have laughed at the idea that he was an activist, but his job of connecting books with readers—and readers with books—to open worlds up to us was as revolutionary an act as any that a five-year-old child could have imagined. Mel brought that bookmobile and my own world to life. He helped my mother inspire in me a lifelong love of reading, learning, and exploring the world. And he became a cherished friend—one I continued to visit whenever I went back to my hometown during a college break or, years later, to be with my family in that mid-sized Central California Valley city during holidays.

I think of Mel, his role as a lifelong-learning advocate, and all he brought to me through a friendship that eventually extended far beyond the walls of that tiny, miraculous vehicle again as I read scholar-speaker-writer-educator-advocate R. David Lankes’s fabulous article “The Lankes Corollaries.” Not surprisingly, the depths and passion with which Dave consistently addresses the role of libraries, librarians, and the communities they serve in contemporary society—as in his decade-old presentation “The Faithful and the Radicals” and so much of what he offers through his presentations and publishes in his books and on his blog—are fully on display here and certainly go a long way in reminding us that a) to ignore libraries is to ignore a community resource we continue to need and cherish, and b) to ignore the people who work in them—and use them—to actually make them libraries leaves us (mistakenly) believing that libraries have little to do with advocacy and activism, community-building, and supporting the common good.

There is much to unpack, admire, savor, and act upon in the article, but one part that makes me think of Mel—and Dave, and so many others who work in libraries and help make them what they are—is Dave’s contention that “a room full of books is a closet, but an empty room with a librarian serving their community is a library” (the third of his five corollaries); the bookmobile without Mel would not have been a library in its broadest, richest sense, and libraries onsite and online without the people who help us navigate them would be something far less transformative than they are. It isn’t as radical a concept as it might at first appear to be, and it helps us understand the difference between those lovely, ubiquitous little free libraries that have become neighborhood gathering places for readers and those spectacular “real” libraries where people nurture, support, and influence communities in positive ways—just as any activist/advocate attempts to do.

If you haven’t spent much time talking to librarians about what they do and how they attempt, through their day to day work, to change the world, it might be helpful to you to be introduced to a simple set of precepts that continues to influence and guide their work, and see how the Lankes Corollaries build upon those precepts—S. R. Ranganathan’s five laws of library science (from 1931):

1. Books are for use.
2. Every person his or her book.
3. Every book its reader.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. A library is a growing organism.

To these precepts, Lankes adds his corollaries:

1. The  mission  of  librarians  is  to  improve  society  through  facilitating  knowledge  creation in their communities.
2. To be a librarian is to be a radical positive change agent with your community.
3. A room full of books is a closet, but an empty room with a librarian serving their community is a library.
4. Bad libraries build collections, good libraries build services, great libraries build communities.
5. A library should be a safe space to explore dangerous ideas.

All of this goes far beyond the constraints of any particular political point of view. Libraries and librarians, in spite of all the conflict they are currently experiencing through book challenges and disruptions to public programming, remain incredibly committed to doing all they can to provide access to a variety of perspectives and resources—that is part of what members of library staff do as activists, and that’s part of what I do through my involvement in the California Library Association’s Ursula Meyer Library Advocacy training program (named after the librarian who for many years ran the public library system in the same town where Mel worked and where I grew up). As Dave notes in his Corollaries, this does not mean that libraries and librarians are neutral: “Picking what tools and services a community needs is not a neutral act and it never has been. Before the 1970s public libraries wouldn’t carry paperbacks. Before the 1910s many didn’t carry novels. Before that public libraries didn’t carry fiction at all. Libraries have always depended upon specialists to use limited resources to best meet both the needs and aspirations of the community. That is not a neutral act. Ranganathan  might  have  written EVERY book its reader, but in reality, no library can collect EVERY book (or DVD, or 8mm film, or database subscription, or large print edition, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera).That’s  obvious, but this corollary is more than recognition of the obvious, it is about action and activism. Librarians are people of action; actively seeking to make a better society one community at a time”—with the involvement of the community members who contribute to making a library a library.

So once again I think of Mel, of Dave, and all the other first-rate librarians I know or have known. I think about how through the work they do, they remain some of the most influential activists/advocates I have encountered. And I’m left with what Dave writes at the conclusion of his Corollaries: “In the United States library leaders often talk about libraries as more than books. I’ve never been a fan of this line. It implies that things the library does beyond books are still  build on the foundation of materials. Yet the foundation of libraries should be the community libraries are seeking to serve. Ranganathan’s words talked about books and readers, but the spirit of his work was in service and communities.” And that’s where we all need to be. As activists. As citizens. And as fully participating members of our onsite and online communities.

Communities, Quotations, and Inspiration: Learning With and From Our Colleagues

I wake up this morning to a “homework assignment” from a colleague (George Couros, via an email message to his list of contacts): read through a list of quotations he compiled during 2023, select one of the quotations, and compose a set of reflections “written, audio, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, blog, MySpace, or whatever, and tag me on it in any of those spaces (except for MySpace!).” So I read through that lovely collection of thoughts from a variety of sources—some familiar, some new to me. And a funny thing happens: while I enjoy reading them, none of them makes me want to spend time composing a set of reflections. None of them offers me the open door that could entice me to enter another world.

So I set them aside. Breeze through some of the other bits and pieces of reading I want to do before diving into all I hope to accomplish today. Then, seeing a Facebook post from Deborah Doyle, another cherished friend/colleague/source of inspiration, I pause. Because it contains a lovely quotation. One that completely pulls me in. And one that puts me back into virtual touch with a writer—Paulo Coelho—whose work I very much admire: “Close some doors today. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they lead you nowhere.”

I pause. I feel a door opening slightly. That door that insists I drop everything else and take the time to peek to see what hides behind it.

The skeptic in me kicks in, asking “Are those really words from Paulo Coelho, or is this another of those Internet moments like the one reminding us that Abraham Lincoln counseled against believing everything you read on the Internet?” So I do a few quick searches and find plenty of references to Coelho having said or written those words, but no site providing a precise, definitive annotation confirming where or when he wrote or said those words.

But the trainer-teacher-learner-writer in me swats the skeptic down. Reminds me that it does not really matter whether Coelho is the source. What is important is that the sentiment is appealing. Applies to so much of what my colleagues and I live and breathe and do. That a friend has given me a key to open and pass through that door. And that it is a wonderful reminder, at the beginning of what appears to be another year of wonderful possibilities, and exploration, and growth, that one must pass through open doors to see what’s on the other side.

It all comes down to how we choose to use the limited time we have. Those words remind us that we all are faced with far more doors than we will ever have the time to pass through. That for each door ignored, another beckons. And for each one chosen, other doors remain unopened, as do the experiences we might have had by choosing them over those we chose.

For those of us who want to do it all—open every door; try every dish on the menu at our favorite restaurant; read every book written by the authors we love or see every film made by those who consistently create enticing dreamy worlds into which we can escape; study and use the numerous languages we hear around us as we move through communities where English (or whatever mother tongue we speak) isn’t the only game in town—the choices can be overwhelming. And the decision to close a door so we can make space for a different is sometimes painful, sometimes filling us with dread or guilt for walking away from something or someone important to us. But setting aside the pain or guilt in recognition that the closing of the door might ultimately be better for us and what/who we leave behind, we find ourselves applying a different set of eyes and ears and desires leading us to something tremendously stimulating and rewarding.

Reading and absorbing books including Daniel Goleman’s Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence,  Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and James Hollis’s Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up over the past few months has provided an enormous sense of perspective and encouragement in terms of deciding which doors to open—and how many. Each writer takes me closer to the realization that we are going to be much happier and productive if we take the time to decide how many doors we are going to open, close, or leave closed before trying to determine what it might reveal. Which door is most important and potentially rewarding to us now. Each writer reminds us of the importance of choosing the most important door right now. And not wasting time or energy in this particular moment on worrying about what those other doors might have offered that would have been more appealing.

It’s a realization that is at the heart of all that we do as trainer-teacher-learners: we help ourselves and our learners to focus. To be mindful. To produce the most rewarding experiences possible by choosing that single door that most appeals to us now. Opening it completely so we can see what lurks behind it. Exploring what is there to our own satisfaction whether that set of explorations requires a few minutes, a few days, a few months, or a few years. Absorbing it in ways that allow us to more fully contribute to the communities in which we live and work and play. And, when we pass back through that door or through another we discover along the way, we carry with us what we have gained so we can share it with others. As George and Deborah and other beloved members of my various communities of learning share with me, today, the reminder that a small, well-connected set of words is sometimes all it takes to lead us through a door into the world of our dreams.

Giving Thanks 2023: Learning Through Mentoring—The Two-way Street

Anyone who has ever been involved in mentoring knows that it is a fabulously rewarding two-way street and an essential part of our training-teaching-learning landscape. Protégés working with dedicated, well-trained mentors gain knowledge, wisdom, experience, and inspiration they would find in no other way, and mentors (often to their surprise) gain the same through the interactions they have with dedicated, hardworking protégés.

My recent post acknowledging the positive, priceless impact some of my best teachers and advisors have had on me—and, by extension, those I serve—hints at the value of mentorship. When I think about what my interactions with them produced and continues to produce, I realize that mentoring was often at the heart of all we did. They, through examples and storytelling rather than reliance on lecturing, inspired me. And I, much to my surprise at the time and in retrospect, apparently offered something of tremendous value to them: the knowledge that what they taught me would, in turn, eventually be shared with others.

That, to me, is the heart of mentoring: it is the act that reminds us we are not simply involved in a series of unconnected moments with little impact; it is an act of engagement that involves tremendous continuity, from person to person, generation to generation, that connects us with predecessors and successors we will never physically meet. In a substantial way, it makes us part of one wonderfully productive, unbroken line of community and collaboration that produces its own form of “immortality.” We, and they, live on as long as the seeds each of us plants are nourished and bear fruit that feeds others.

The topic is one that is tremendously deeply personal as I complete this post. I recently was surprised and overwhelming gratified to see a Facebook post from a long-time colleague who took the time to publicly reflect upon the “mentoring” he has received from me over a very long period of time—surprising because what he saw as mentoring was, from my point of view, an ongoing series of conversations where we each shared stories about what we were doing; responded with ideas that built upon what we had accomplished and were hoping to accomplish; and involved the camaraderie that is, for me, at the heart of the best of the friendships and collaborations that I am lucky enough to have.

A few examples of how symbiotically rewarding our relationship has been: whereas I was always very vocal about how much I learned from his incredibly incisive and instructional blog posts (I saw them as complete “lessons in a blog,” where I could absorb as little or as much as I wanted to by following links and reading background material on the training-teaching-learning topics he was exploring), he consistently recalls those conversations as encouragement from a published writer to someone who was exploring and developing his own (already formidable) writing skills; whereas I saw our conversations about consulting as a two-way exchange of ideas, he saw them as an informal training ground where he could explore his own interests in setting up what is now a very successful consultancy with clients across the United States; and whereas I saw our hallway and mealtime conversations at conferences as an extension of our personal and professional exchanges, he saw them as mentoring that influenced his own approach to the work he was pursuing.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I glanced at Facebook earlier this week and learned, from his most recent post, that he had attempted to commit suicide. The fact that he was not (thankfully) successful has obviously been another of those two-way-street mentoring experiences: he (I hope) is learning from the tremendous levels of support he is receiving from all of us who adore him that he is an important, cherished, vital part of our community, and we would be devastated to lose him any sooner than we absolutely have to lose him. And from my point of view, I’m reminded once again that to procrastinate about making the occasional effort to reach out to those who most matter to me might have tragically long-lasting impacts on all of us.

The act of mentoring remains something that goes far beyond the artificial time boundaries accompanying most mentoring programs I have helped organize or in which I have been a participant as a mentor or a protégé. It obviously formally begins when the program providing the structure formally begins. But it does not end when the formal program ends. It evolves as a protégé evolves into a friend/peer/colleague. And it produces some of its most rewarding moments when those former protégés advance beyond anything I have accomplished and, themselves, become cherished sources of inspiration. In the best of cases, former protégés become people with whom I have regularly-scheduled catch-up calls (by Zoom or any other technology that keeps those conversations personal and engaging); they sometimes become formal collaborators for projects including conference presentations.

Barb Potter

Mentoring also continually rewards me by expanding my own understanding of the value I can bring to a mentoring relationship. I remain deeply appreciative, for example, to Barb Potter (a former protégé through the fabulous ATD South Florida Chapter mentoring program where I have been a mentor for several years). When Barb—who already had significant experience in training-teaching-learning and clearly was consulting at a level parallel to what I was doing—first expressed interest in having me serve as her mentor, I was adamant in suggesting that she needed someone better than I was since she clearly could be mentoring me with her own successes serving as the foundations for that sort of relationship. She, fortunately, was not to be dissuaded, and those finalizing the mentor-protégé matching process that year were persistent enough to overcome my concerns and hesitation. The result was a lesson well-learned: I don’t need to know more than the person I am mentoring; my willingness to simply serve as someone willing to share ideas with a colleague could produce exactly what a protégé needs. So Barb and I continue to meet, friend-to-friend and peer-to-peer every other week, in what has become a personal and professional collaboration that leaves me feeling tremendous gratitude every time we finish a conversation.

I also am tremendously appreciative for all that recent UCLA graduate Naomi Lopez is bringing to the mentoring relationship that began early this year through the Daily Bruin Alumni Network mentoring program that I currently co-facilitate with Laureen Lazarovici. Naomi and I initially explored a variety of topics, including the writing she was already doing outside of the Daily Bruin and her interest in exploring travel writing as a career option after she graduated in June. Not having much experience in travel writing but adoring the writing that I read in that genre, I’ve helped put Naomi in touch with those far more experience than I have, and Naomi has diligently pursued those leads and added to her published writing by posting a lovely piece (on Medium) about her travel experiences in Japan this summer along with other stories she has posted there. When the mentor-protégé relationship formally ended in June, we made the transition to having peer-to-peer conversations via Zoom once a month. And, as happens with the best of these ongoing peer-to-peer calls, I always walk away at least as inspired as she appears to be and deeply grateful for all she brings to my own ongoing professional development.

If you have never served as a mentor, this might be a great time to think about what you could bring to that sort of relationship. And if you’ve never had a mentor, this might be a good time for you to look around for someone from whom you might learn something worthwhile and, at the same time, help by simply being in mentor-protégé relationship. It’s another step in a crucial part of training-teaching-learning: the essential realization that we are all part of something much larger than any of us represent, something that provides meaning to all we do and to all we touch.  

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

Giving Thanks 2023: Claremont EAP and Learning by Talking It Through

Although the timeworn cliché suggests that “talk is cheap,” I’m grateful that my work often reminds me how valuable it actually is in training-teaching-learning.

Facilitating hour-long online conversations on a variety of topics ranging from “conflict resolution” and “assertive speaking/active listening” to “honing your presentation skills” and “running effective meetings” through Claremont EAP, I routinely have an opportunity to use conversation as a dynamic, engaging learning tool designed to produce positive, measurable results for all involved. While it is really little more than an adaptation and simplification of the classic dialectical method (formal conversation that explores a thesis and then its antithesis in an effort to arrive at some sort of synthesis), this learning-by-talking-it-through approach is often fresh, stimulating, and productive for those in workplace learning/training settings; used to being subjected to “training” sessions comprised of a lecture and death by PowerPoint or asynchronous online learning offerings designed to provide learners with information/skills they need, test the learners’ comprehension, and then pretend that what  has been achieved through that approach produces something more than a certificate of completion, they are surprised and delighted to see that learning can be so fun and action-oriented, and that time spent in learning environments can feel as if an hour passes in the blink of an eye. (We always end with the question “What will you do differently as a result of having been part of this conversation?” so they know our time is meant to produce positive results.)

Our colleagues at Claremont make all of this easy to accomplish. They begin with brief, concise descriptions of what each session includes and what it is meant to produce (e.g., straightforward goals and objectives without using the jargon of training-teaching-learning to entice participants into a session). They then provide facilitators and learners with copies of a slide deck and workbook so that those inclined to engage in a bit of flipped-classroom learning (reading or doing something before the day of the actual learning session so that the live session involves using as much as learning something) can arrive fully ready to apply what they are learning at the earliest possible opportunity. They give each facilitator a large amount of freedom to decide how best to incorporate the materials into the session; those of us who value the conversational approach make it clear, at the beginning of each session, that this will not be a lecture and the slide deck will not be the center of attention; we are going to talk, use the deck and workbook to stimulate transformative conversations, and walk away with a plan of action that allows us to apply what we learned. Most importantly, Claremont (because of its work in the overall field of employee assistance programs), offers tremendous support which includes one-on-one conversations with those learners who want or need to more fully explore the challenges they are facing in their workplace—which makes this about as perfect and comprehensive an approach to learning as any I have seen or can imagine.

Through Claremont EAP, I work with some organizations that schedule me once or twice a month for specific days and time, while others may only want one or two sessions that address specific challenges within their workplaces. For those needing a limited number of these conversations/seminars/workshops, the focus might be on a specific situation; those with whom I have been working steadily for two or three years place the conversations within a broader context, e.g., an overall health/wellness program where the conversations are just part of what the organization makes available to its employees, and it’s there that I have a chance to work in ways that have, over a long period of time, been those I find most productive for everyone involved.

Meeting monthly or semi-monthly creates what I adore: the opportunity to work repeatedly with learners to develop a healthy community of learning where participants understand that we are pursuing something far more rewarding that a motivational talk or a lecture that is little more than a chance to step away from work for an hour. What quickly develops is a core group of learners who participate as often as they can, augmented by those who might want to only drop in for one of those conversations when they see a topic that is of particular interest to them. The result is that there is some stability and continuity to the learning, with the benefit of keeping things open to the less-frequent participants who, because they are new to the group, bring fresh perspectives that enliven already lively, engaging sessions.

The impact of our shared talks is clearly visible at several levels. Through the answers they provide at the end of each session, my co-conspirators in learning talk with me in ways that show they have acquired something they value and, more importantly, have concrete plans for how they will immediately use what they have learned. Initial post-session evaluations they later complete often document the impact our time together has had and will have on the work they do. Comments they make in subsequent sessions occasionally confirm that they actually have taken some of the steps they have said they would take, and demonstrate that our conversations have a continuing, cumulative impact since the learners continue building upon what they have already gained.

Yes, talk can be and often is cheap. But the incalculable value of conversations that explore challenges and draw upon the wisdom of all participants to inspire significant changes in behavior, attitude, and perspective is what continues inspiring me to work at the deeply emotional level Claremont EAP allows me to work. And, through sessions that explore topics including the importance of expressing and acknowledging gratitude in our workplaces and other venues in our day-to-day lives, In sustain and express the high level of gratitude which keeps me going with Claremont EAP and its magnificent learners.  

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

Giving Thanks 2023: Edunauts Revisited

An ongoing struggle for some of us who spend way too much time thinking about crazy things is the way our language fails to reflect the changing nuances of what we actually do. It’s a theme that several of us first began discussing nearly a decade ago over dinner, when we realized that terms like “teacher,” “librarian,” and “trainer” no longer fully captured the incredible depth of the work people within those professions do. My own clunky response over the years has been to adopt “trainer-teacher-learner” which, for me, describes what all of us do and share in common—any one of those three words, without the other two, paints an incomplete picture for me. My colleague Jonathan Nalder added to the conversation a few years later with the term “edunaut,” which I absolutely adore and which always seems to elicit smiles when I share it with colleagues in training, teaching, librarianship, and other learning endeavors, but it doesn’t seem to have gained much traction (yet).

Thinking and writing over the past few days about two of the major edunauts in my life (library advocate George Needham and T is for Training podcast host Maurice Coleman) has made me realize how many edunauts have helped—and continue to help—guide me over a very long period of time.

There was, in high school, the magnificent H. Lee Meyer, a gifted math and science teacher whose advanced classes I frankly avoided because I thought, at the time, that they were too complex for me. Lee repeatedly asked me, after I took the required introductory science course he offered, why I didn’t pursue the more advanced aspects of fields he clearly cherished, and I was honest in laying out my fears—at which point he told me that being “chicken” was not a good reason to avoid rewarding learning experiences. The taunt worked: I enrolled in an evening course he taught at the local community college and struggled my way through a very challenging and very rewarding introduction to geometry. What sticks with me and has continued to influence me after all these years is not anything about geometry itself; the real lesson, repeatedly relearned, is that whenever I have hesitated about enrolling in a difficult course for fear that it might affect my grade point average or be something at which I would fail, I remember Lee’s implicit reminder that learning is the willingness to accept challenges whether I believe I can meet them or whether I might fail at them. It has made me a far better edunaut than I would have been without Lee, and it certainly has made me encourage countless others to follow their hearts rather than succumbing to fear of failure.

Another of those crossover high-school-to-community-college edunauts was Floyd Ohler. As I wrote when I discovered (many years after it had happened) that he had passed away in 1994, he “was a wonderful instructor whom I knew peripherally while he was teaching in a local high school in Stockton (California) and whom I came to know at a much more significant level while taking his English 101 course at the local community college there in Stockton during a brief sabbatical from my own university education. He was witty, vibrant, creative, and inspirational, and his two-word critique of the final paper I submitted for that course was transformative: ‘sell it.’ Those words, which I still remember clearly decades after he penned them, opened up to me the idea that I could actually write for publication—something I continue to do to this day. Deeply grateful for what Floyd inspired and for the example he set for any of us willing to pay attention to what he showed in terms of the important roles first-rate teachers play in our lives.” And I still remain deeply grateful that memories of Floyd’s unorthodox approach to teaching—he once spent the first half of one of those marathon evening sessions stretched out on his desk and asking all of us in the class why he should get off his desk—make me realize the transformative impact all of us as edunauts can have on our co-conspirators in learning (aka, students) through the use of just a few well-timed encouraging words.

Richard Drake

My years at UCLA put me in contact with quite a few inspirational edunauts, not the least of them being Richard Drake (a Ph.D. candidate teaching two related Italian history courses) and John Fleishman, the inspiring advisor we had during the years I wrote for the UCLA Daily Bruin. Richard’s engaging lectures (which were so densely rich that I always left the classroom with a sore hand from taking copious notes) were among the first to bring history to life for me and instilled in me a lifelong voracious, insatiable appetite for reading and absorbing history books (yes, Richard, I’m still at it, currently working my way through Mary McAuliffe’s wonderful books on Paris from 1848 through 1940); I have continued to learn from him through sporadic exchanges of notes over the years, watching interviews posted on YouTube, and reading some of what he has published, including his delightful biography of historian Charles Austin Beard a few years ago. Attempting to keep up with John has been equally rewarding: his well-received book Phineas Gage: A Gruesome But True Story About Brain Science (c’mon—tell me that title doesn’t make you want to read it immediately!) and his articles for Smithsonian Magazine consistently remind me to follow a lesson he taught me so many years ago: tell your story as quickly and as effectively as you can, then stop long before your reader has a chance to catch his/her/their breath. All these years later, his voice continues to be one that encourages, inspires, and brings a smile to my face whenever I encounter it through his formal writing, his notes to me, and his posts on Facebook.

So many edunauts, so little time to capture even a small percentage of those I have encountered—but two more deserve at least a bit of attention before I bring this latest expression of gratitude to a close: Alec and George Couros. Alec is someone I first met when he offered the transformational #etmooc—the Educational Technology and Media Massive Open Online Course in winter/spring 2013. The course spawned a community of learning that continues to thrive more than 10 years after the formal coursework concluded, and Alec continues to be someone to whom I turn whenever I need a positive jolt; he has joined me as a guest in online courses I have facilitated; very generously blurbed my Change the World Using Social Media; and continues to affect what I do in training-teaching-learning by providing continuing examples of what great learning involves. His brother George continues to be equally encouraging through his writing as well as his cutting-edge approach to learning; his Innovator’s Mindset massive open online course was a stimulating example of how an online book discussion group (centered on one of his books) can effectively incorporate a variety of online tools into a cohesive, transformative online learning experience, and his Innovate Inside the Box exploration of another book, with Instagram as the learning platform, introduced me to Instagram as something far beyond anything I had imagined in terms of using that platform to stimulate and support learning.

The edunauts in our lives are clearly well worth acknowledging, thanking, and emulating. And the real power of what they produce is that, if we are attentive and mindful, we absorb a bit of what they offer and give us cause for being grateful that we can become edunauts, too.

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

Giving Thanks 2023: Maurice Coleman and T is for Training at 350

Maurice Coleman

There are few more engaging online meeting places for trainer-teacher-learners working in or with libraries, library associations, and library consortia than Maurice Coleman’s fabulous T is for Training podcast, as I have noted numerous times on my blog, in conversations with friends and colleagues, and in workshops about building community and fostering positive, effective collaboration. It’s the sort of virtual meeting place where, like clockwork, you can drop in (currently every other Thursday evening at 9 pm ET/6 pm PT on TalkShoe, unless we take a break for holidays or to allow Maurice to watch a sports event he can’t bear to miss) to be with colleagues, explore topics of interest to all of us, learn with and from each other, and walk away much happier than you were before you arrived.

George Needham and Joan Frye Williams

It’s also a comforting place where community members and guests gather when we are in emotional upheaval, as was the case yesterday. Waking up to a Facebook post from R. David Lankes sharing the devastating news that the much admired library advocate George Needham had passed away earlier this week, I called Dave early that morning to see whether he would join us for that latest recording of the podcast—already scheduled for that evening—so we could explore what George had meant to so many of us. Then, having received an immediate confirmation that he was interested and available, and dreaming in a way that T is for Training inspires so many of us to dream, I reached out mid-morning to Joan Frye Williams, whose collaborations with George when they were both affiliated with the library training organization Infopeople taught me more about training-teaching-learning and presenting than I will ever be able to fully describe.

I wasn’t at all hopeful that I would be able to reach her; the only contact information I had for her was her Facebook account, and I wasn’t sure, given the level of grief she must have been feeling at that moment, that she would even be checking her Facebook account yesterday. But in a way that seems to be an integral part of the T is for Training experience and the sort of miracle that George would have fully supported, Joan responded 15 minutes before the recording began yesterday evening, which set us up for a timely, unique, intimate opportunity to capture at a very personal level what George had meant to so many of us (through the eyes of people who knew him extremely well).

The T is for Training magic continued as we logged onto TalkShoe and began the recording. Responding to the hastily-distributed email message notifying T is for Training regulars who knew George that he would be the topic of discussion that evening, two other long-time friends of the show (Peter Bromberg and Janie Hermann) joined us after having been away for quite a while. Rounding out the conversation were a few of us who are part of the recording sessions as often as we can be there—all of which produced a wonderful combination of capturing bits and pieces of George for those who would appreciate hearing the stories we shared; a reunion of sorts that reminded all of us how valuable the T is for Training community is for us in pleasurable as well as difficult times; an example of how online communities of practice continue to be a valuable part of our onsite-online lives; and how podcasts like this create moments that, when shared, ripple out with positive effects into the extended community of teacher-trainer-learners we serve. You simply won’t find conversations like this accessible at exactly the moment you need them.

Looking back over the sessions we have recorded this year produces a list of wonderfully diverse topics and a review of the opportunities we had to spend virtual time with cherished colleagues. We began the year with a discussion of things that had changed our approach to training-teaching-learning in 2022; among the usual suspects in attendance were Widerstand Consulting Executive Director Jill Hurst-Wahl, whose work on diversity-inclusion-equity-justice always brings a stimulating perspective to T, and Tom Haymes, a writer-educator-technologist whose work continually inspires me. The themes covered included our increasing use of storytelling in learning; mind-mapping in learning; and (inspired by Priya Parker’s work, documented in her book The Art of Gathering) finding ways to make our gatherings compelling, engaging, and productive.

February 2023 recordings included one with UCLA Daily Bruin Alumni Network colleague Glenn Seki at the center of a spirited discussion about what trainer-teacher-learners can absorb from his book How to Become the Best at Anything—the quick answer being “they can absorb quite a bit!” That was followed later in the month with an exploration of how, in the best of circumstances, a long-lasting (10-years-and-still-thriving) learning community can form out of the shared experience of being part of a highly engaging massive open online course (in this case #etmooc, the Educational Technology & Media MOOC that initially was offered in winter/spring 2013 and was in early 2023, reconvening to design and offer a new massive open online course exploring artificial intelligence in learning).

A session-by-session recap would, of course, quickly become tedious. It’s enough to know that the discussions throughout the year ranged from what trainer-teacher-learners need to know about copyright (drawing from usual suspect Jill Hurst-Wahl’s expertise) and how reversing our assumptions produces magnificent results for us and our co-conspirators in learning (aka, our learners) to “top challenges facing trainers in 2023,” featuring usual suspect Sardek Love, who will be rejoining us on Thursday, December 14, 2023 for a discussion about transferring learning from one format (e.g., onsite) to another (e.g., online).

It’s hard to believe that Maurice, as founder and host, has been nurturing this particular community of learning for more than 15 years now (the pilot episode was recorded in August 2008), but the ample show notes (often prepared by Jill Hurst-Wahl) on the podcast website/blog and numerous recordings prove that we are about to celebrate the longevity and continuing value of T is for Training with the recording of Episode 350, when Sardek  rejoins us. And I, for one, am hoping to be around for at least another 350, grateful for all that Maurice fosters through this magnificent labor of love.

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

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.