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<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“Mommy. I don\u2019t ever want to die,\u201d our three year-old said to me as we were eating a picnic lunch in our backyard today.<\/p>\n
This may seem like a heavy topic for a Monday afternoon, especially for one so young. I understood the context of her question, though. The night before, she had been as close to death as she ever had been, in her short life.<\/p>\n
Last night, we were finishing dinner and our son had found the glow stick bracelets that Dave had bought for the Fourth of July a couple years ago. When our son went out into our atrium to see the brightest possible glow, a small bird flew into the house. The bird flew all around our downstairs, as we frantically opened all the doors and attempted to shoo it out to freedom.<\/p>\n
During our scurrying about (as the bird eventually made it up to the third story of the house: my loft home office), I kept coming up with a list of people who probably would know how to get a bird out of a house:<\/p>\n
I wanted to call them (or, in Maha\u2019s<\/a> case, send a Twitter DM), but it seemed a ridiculous thing to do in the middle of the chaos.<\/p>\n Thinking back now, I wish I would have consulted at least the internet, as it would appear that maybe the fate of the bird could have been different<\/a>. I don\u2019t want to say exactly what happened in the flurry, lest I share parts of the story that others would rather I not share.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s just say that my office is now covered in tiny bird feathers and our kids are asking a lot of questions about death.<\/p>\n The whole experience reminded me a lot of one of my favorite books from my childhood: About Dying, by Sara Bonnett Stein<\/a>. Our kids got to share how they felt about the bird dying in their own unique ways, including our son\u2019s deep desire to reincarnate the bird and both kids\u2019 description of what they think it is like when people (and animals) die.<\/p>\n Because I keep going back to my conversation with Robin DeRosa<\/a> and my experience writing an open textbook with a class for the first time. Talking with Robin<\/a>, I was sharing how often I still wrestle with wanting teaching and learning to be more predictable, even though I no longer believe that to be possible in my intellectual mind.<\/p>\n Robin<\/a> spoke about not thinking that learning is ever happening until things get messy (my word; not hers). She celebrated the sense of agency that comes when students begin to advocate for their own needs and go against what may be prescribed for them within a given learning context. Robin said, \u201cPush back against a teacher is a win for open [education].\u201d Later on, she emphasized that all of this unlearning of the traditional means of \u201clearning\u201d helps students become:<\/p>\n …shapers of knowledge, not consumers of it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This past weekend, I just finished my doctoral class in which we \u201cthrew away\u201d the traditional textbook for a class like this and wrote our own. I cannot tell you that it wasn\u2019t anything but messy throughout the eight weeks of collaboration. Miscommunication happened. Mistakes happened. Misalignment of strengths happened. I invested more time in this class\/project than I ever have in all the times I have taught it before, sometimes to my detriment.<\/p>\n I plan on writing more about the specific learning I am taking away (What tools we used? Suggestions for others who want to attempt this, etc.).<\/p>\n In the meantime, I hope you will mourn with our family that sometimes things happen that you really wish wouldn\u2019t have occurred. But, also celebrate that they give us opportunities to talk about hard topics and be open to what we can learn from our children\u2019s perspectives.<\/p>\n I also hope you will celebrate with a group of doctoral students who gave so much of their time and talents to create a resource for preservice and new teachers, looking to use technology in their teaching. I am especially grateful to the project lead for the book: Matt Rhoads<\/a>. He was such a gift to me – as well as to the entire cohort.<\/p>\n I will share links to the book in future posts, so you can check it out online, as well as on its own Amazon listing for buying hard copies or Kindle editions. I want to give the What unexpected things happened for you this term\/semester that you are celebrating now, or mourning over and learning through?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Mommy. I don\u2019t ever want to die,\u201d our three year-old said to me as we were eating a picnic lunch in our backyard today. This may seem like a heavy topic for a Monday afternoon, especially for one so young. I understood the context of her question, though. The night before, she had been as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"coauthors":[195],"class_list":{"0":"post-4803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-teaching","8":"entry","9":"gs-1","10":"gs-odd","11":"gs-even","12":"gs-featured-content-entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4803"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.coachingforleaders.com\/cb:ztCJ~31fd5\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/f:best\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/2017-12-18_16-35-12.png\")
<\/p>\nWhy am I writing about this experience on a blog about teaching?<\/h3>\n
Open Textbook – Beginnings and Endings<\/h2>\n
You know what else happened?<\/h3>\n
\n
students<\/del>\u00a0authors a chance to go check it out and share it with their friends, first, and will pass it on to you soon, too. If you want to read more about others' experiences writing open textbooks, Robin's post: My Open Textbook – Pedagogy and Practice<\/a> is the best resource I have found.<\/p>\nYour Turn<\/h3>\n