Learning Chaos

Leaders, including teachers as well as supervisors, either rely on imposing leadership - making others compliant, or exposing leadership - giving people a place for commitment, space to show up with their own unique leadership voice.

The second Learning Chaos newsletter focuses on making something in the class room and in adult training. Sitting people in rows and talking at them is not learning, it's punishment. "Build it and they will learn"!

After nine years of research and revisions, Learning Chaos: How Disorder Can Save Education, is finally available in print and as an ebook (Amazon inc. Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo).

I'm proud that, with the help of my amazing editor Beth Rubin, I can offer a method to transform the classroon. The book is for parents, teachers, students, administrators, anyone who thinks we need to make learning the priority rather than mere attendance. You can find out more, and read the inrtoduction, at www.learningchaos.net.

Thanks,

MacBeth

Customer Service is really about relatinships, not just about goods and services. In schools, especially, we need to align the idea of service to include everyone in decisions at every level, especially schools' primary customers: students.

Lateral Listening is a technique that enables us to listen toward uderstanding rather than merely judgment. It's not hard to learn and practice, and its payoff is very powerful, especially for teachers and leaders.

Time Management. It's a popular concept, with lots and lots of books, slide presentations, and seminars. The idea arrived with the industrial revolution, along with the assembly line, org charts, and sweatshops. It's past time (as it were) to shift our focus to energy management - how we drain and charge our work "batteries."

I’ve loved (and played) music all my life. I also grew up in a time that generated lots of musical dissonance, from John Cage to Frank Zappa. In music, the tension between dissonance and melody benefits both. In my work, and in the organizations I serve, dissonance is increasing as more diversity—of generations, values, and expectations—creates conflict. We can see this as a threat or as a source of creative energy. Why not choose the latter?

I have just finished a book. I needed some promotional expertise. A friend recommended Marsha Friedman, so I called her. I knew nothing of her company, but was struck by her no - BS approach: “Don’t count on your book for a living.” was one of the first things she said. I’ve been in contact with other PR operations, and the very hazy quality of their service rang warning bells. EMSI, Marsha’s firm, is well-established and a bit of a maverick. They deliver rather than suggest. Her story is interesting, her staff smart and enthusiastic, and her brand (like mine) is a bit off-center. Marsha embraces relationships as the core of her business.

Seeing ourselves without judgment takes some reprogramming. Learning to see myself more clearly, without framing my preferences (shyness, introversion, stuttering) as deficits, has been a bonus in my work and life. The best part is I no longer tend to frame other’s “stuff” as deficits, but just who they are.

Like Episodes One, Three, and Six, this podcast accompanies an AzaLearning newsletter on the same topic. Get in touch at [email protected] if you’re interested in subscribing to my newsletter.

I met Ken Green when I almost ran into his boat. I was struggling to sail up a narrow creek with an engine that wouldn’t start. Since then, we’ve discovered a common passion for learning, a childhood on Barnegat Bay, NJ, and two lives transformed by recovery. We both have trod an interesting career path and started our own companies in the past twenty years. Ken is passionate about his life, the environment, and renewal. His home is Greennest—I’ve been there, and the name is perfect—and his company is SusDev Tech. I’m still grateful for a bad starter switch.