Iterations....

Greetings All,

Got busy/lazy for the last two weekends and missed my window of writing, so I’m sitting down on a Wednesday evening  (after a little gentle love from my wife and someone in her orbit pointing out the first part of this sentence).

I’m at an Educational Technology conference in Grand Rapids for the next few days (#MACUL18), and why I mention that will become evident later...

The post I had originally in mind was one to talk about Postsecret, and Postsecret: The Show we got to see two weekends ago.  It was a dramatization, both sad and hilarious, of the website, its mission, the secrets, the community, and all sorts of things around that lens.  It was, like Postsecret itself, a great experience.  

Shelley and I have been reading Postsecret each Sunday since it was created in 2005, as far as we can figure.  For those of you who don’t really know what it is, it’s a community art project borne from the mind of Frank Warren.  He asked people all over the DC area to send him their secrets, anonymously.  He took those secrets, scanned them (most likely on one of those ancient flatbed scanners), and then posted a selection of them each weekend.  They were a mix of the sad, the silly, the horrendous, the profane, and the profound….they were a cross section of the human experience.

As you became a regular on the site, however, you’d see the through-lines of the secrets….about what might happen if someone finds out about their secret, about what the future might look like if they lost someone specific, if they never found love, or if anyone ever saw the real “them”.  

The site really connects with me, and with the books that he’s published, I’ve been able to share the idea of Postsecret with many students over the years (Disclaimer:  Students who were in 11th or 12th grade, and very, very mature.  The site has some very raw content inappropriate for middle/early HS students).  It connects with me most because in each of our secrets, we feel so alone.  We feel, often irrationally, that the things we fear people finding out will irreparably change people’s perception of us, and that our lives will be irrevocably changed if that happens.  The website shows with humor and gravitas and love and caring that we all share the same fears, and many of the same secrets.  (It also shows you just how different some people are as well, but let’s not go there…) 

In a professional development session at the conference today, we dove deep into design thinking, and just how important it is to create moments of “making” in the classroom.  The session was amazing, and really connected to me, as I hoped when I signed up for AJ Juliani’s session.  However, it connected with me in ways I didn’t expect.

The main focus of the session was the process of learning, as examined through the process of making things:

1. Look, listen, and learn.  Empathize with those that are having the problems.

2. Ask questions.  Tons of questions.

3. Define and understand the problem, as it exists, and not how you think it exists.  

                (Seek first to understand anyone?)

4. Brainstorm ideas with the people experiencing them.

5. Create a prototype and test it out.

6. Highlight the problems that exist in the process.

7. Launch

As I was listening to the process and his views, I was ruminating on just how useful all of that is in so many areas of my life.  What makes good lesson design and teaching is also what makes a good spouse/partner.  It’s also what makes me a good parent (when I do it right).  It’s what I’m learning to do daily in my new job as an instructional technology coach.  Same with pretty much every other area in which I have personal relationships.

How often have I launched into a rant about what I knew the problems to be, as though I have all the answers?  How often have I interrupted someone to tell them what I think, when I needed to spend way, way, way more time empathizing with them?  How often have I not worked with a person, but distanced myself from them due to constraints, either from outside, or my own selfishness?

I think back to the times when Amie was sick that we were the most upset, and it was almost always when someone violated those basic rules I just listed.  When people would tell us how Amie would be healed if only we did X, Y, and Z.  As though there was some miracle that we’d decided to ignore.  They sometimes tried to make us feel better by urging us that everything happened for a reason, and that it was always part of a greater plan.  These things were not helpful, and only made us feel more alone.

We are all guilty of it, at times.  But I sat there today thinking what it would be like if our lives, and the lives of our students / friends / partners / family / peers, if this was the lens that we decided to adopt?

The other thing Mr. Juliani said that struck me was the value of iterations.  It’s the small changes, the microscopic refinements that we do in the process of learning something / getting better at things that are most important.  When we do the hard work of learning something, it makes us who we are through failure.  It builds our grit, our determination.  Our ability to withstand the hard things that we will face over time.

I look into myself and see all the places I’ve spent so much time on improvement (writing, reading, technology skills, D&D, etc), and the benefits that it has given me.  I can also eloquently point out all the places that I haven’t spent anywhere near the amount of time where I could on improvement (treating my body well through what I put in it, working out more, being more considerate to others).  

Postsecret and design thinking smash into me in one more way...the technology that surrounds us in such helpful and destructive ways.  Postsecret: The Show’s main takeaway is that we are not alone.  We are surrounded by so many caring and loving people, yet we don’t know it.  

Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Snapchat urges us to tell our stories, but in so many ways, it’s like the parallel play that you see two toddlers doing on a carpet….playing near each other, but not communicating at all.  We see all these people, but don’t really communicate with them, even a little.

AJ Juliani charged us with doing an action item as we left the session today.  So, this blog post is the first step of my action item, and what I’m asking you to do is the second part.  Today (within 10 minutes of you reading this), reach out to someone and connect.  

Connect in a real way, through words that are carefully woven.  Do it through some authentic way.  Write a letter, or make a phone call.  Send a text to someone who needs it.  Reach out and make a lunch date.  Do it now.  Make that small change, and strengthen the community you belong to in this small way.  See what kind of ripples you might cause in our community pond.

Have a good week all.  I’ll do my best to follow my own advice.

...that might be a felony, again!

Greetings All,

I had something prepared to write about for this week, but going to punt to next week for that one.

A whole bunch of things kind of collided in my head this week, and I think that’s when you know you’ve got a good thing to write about.

I’ll also give you this mild disclaimer as I exercise my Elder Sage status <insert sarcasm here>, I might be a bit challenging in this post, and I look forward to reading the feedback on it. Please push back if you feel called to do that, as I think that hearing a well-thought out (kind) response to one’s thoughts is critical to really knowing what you think.

The core of what has been bouncing around my head is the idea of trauma, how one deals with it, recovers from it, and the community that forms (hopefully) around those that are suffering from that trauma. Of course, part of this is the shooting that happened in Florida. Horrible, too close to home, and just damned awful.

But too, way more close to home is the ongoing trauma that a good friend of mine at work is going through with her daughter, as well as with a student at one of our elementaries who was diagnosed with a pretty aggressive cancer. Each of these cases is just damned awful, and in ways that you just don’t think about at first blush.

Each of these cases creates trauma….pain, damage, and loss that is incredibly hard to even fathom from someone on the outside of the bubble. Those on the inside of the trauma are doing their absolute best to first get through the day, and do it in a way that causes no harm. Their lives, like ours was in the last months of 2012, are just holding on to the rollercoaster that keeps going round and round, with no apparent rhyme or reason, and without your consent. It is not fun. After they get through the day-to-day, they just hope to have a life left to put back together when it’s all done.

But a community sprung up quickly around us, and in most cases I hope always does to some extent. People’s suffering connects with us on a visceral level, and most people want to help take some of that away.

Being optimistic, I think people want to try to take away some of the suffering that they see in the world, especially when it’s part of a community that they are invested in. On a slightly more cynical note, I think people want to at least put some chips in the pot lest they find themselves in a similar situation at some point in their lives, and want to have a community spring up around them.

My sister married into a Mexican family in 1997, and I got to experience what it meant to see an entire community surround a couple to provide for their needs. The community might not have had fat stacks of cash to dish out, but their small sacrifice, multiplied by the size of the community, enabled the her new family to have pretty much everything they needed. They showed up again for their first born too. That wrapping around and providing just stuck with me, as I’m still thinking and talking about it a full 21 years later. They saw the need, and they filled it, with the expectation that if they were in need, the rest of the community would do so without being asked.

Here’s where I start being “poky”, as Shelley and Anya would say (think porcupine). Social media helps us connect, but I think in some ways it also makes it far easier to do something, but not really anything. When we like a post, or even share/retweet it to our bubbles, it gives us the feeling that we “did something”. Yes, it does amplify the message, but on some level, it’s just wind.

I know it’s considered incredibly harsh to talk about religion in this way (Religion and Politics are both landmines!), but simply put, giving someone your thoughts and prayers is not helpful. What helps people who are in trauma? Actions. People being physically present, and doing things that will help them in the immediate future make their lives a tiny bit easier.

If you have a person who is in trauma in their lives, make a tray of lasagna (divide and store in individual ziplock containers!), go clean their house (with permission people, if not, that’s a felony!), buy them some gift cards to some easy restaurants, steal their cars to get their oil changed or tired rotated (with permission people, if not, that’s a felony...again!), or any other list of similar things. Think of what you keep putting off because you just “don’t have enough time!”, and then realize how much less time they have to deal with the normal little things in life.

When I was working in television, I had to go out and interview people from a community in the Thumb where a farmer was killed in an accident on his farm, in the middle of the sugar beet harvest. The next day, when I arrived with my camera to get comments, the fields were filled with people who had brought their own tractors (is that the right word for the house sized machines that they use?) to bring in that family’s sugar beets, before they had finished their own. Tables of food, coffee, and desserts were overflowing for those that arrived. They did not use words to convey their desire to help. Instead, they showed up and did the things that needed to be done.

What am I saying? In my incredibly preachy, standing on my stack of milk crates style of speaking….If you know someone in trauma: Do something. Do it now. Do it often.

If you hear about someone in need that you feel is pulling your heart, do something small. Do something big. Do something outrageous that people will talk about for years (with permission people, if not, that might be a felony, again), and make a difference in their lives. Now.

Going to sign off now and head home. Does anyone else have a hard time composing one’s thoughts at home? I can’t write a lick when I have all my creature comforts so close to me, let alone my distractions.

I'll end this with a pic of Anya doing what she loves doing the most, reading.  She's read more books than most people, in their entire lifetime.  I love this girl, and she's amazing.  Woo!

<Note the handmade knitted slippers.  Hmmmm...where'd she get those from?>

Have a good week everyone!

State of the Strzalkowski's - 2018

Greetings greater blog-reading community!

Firstly, for anyone still interested in reading this, thank you.

I’ve written 3-4 blog posts over the last 18 months, and each time decided, after a lot of internal conflict not to post them. Ultimately, each time, I keep coming back to the idea that me sitting around pondering the ideas of healing, grief, struggle, success, and a whole lot more isn’t really the “purpose” of the blog, as it was written.

But, over the last 6 months, for reasons I’ll probably write about here in the next little bit on this super sunny, unexpected snow day, I’ve gotten several really decent nudges from life. Ignoring those nudges, or whatever you want to call them, seems just...wrong. So, here we go. As someone said to me recently, if someone doesn’t want to read this, they aren’t going to click through.

For those of you with good memories, or with properly set up calendars, you’ll notice that tomorrow is the three year anniversary of Amie’s death. I choose the word death due to a conversation I had with Shelley a while back, in regards to the use of words to decrease the power of death, and how that sometimes makes things less true, less honest. Seeking always to be honest (and kind), I will use death, because she did not pass, she did not collect $200, and did not go straight to jail. She died. So there.

Back to it, Amie died 3 years ago, and since the annual State of the State was a few weeks ago (or a few years ago in TrumpNewsCycleTime), I thought it might be appropriate to do a State of the Strzalkowski’s to start.

Anya: Anya is now in 5th grade, and still at her wonderful little school she’s been in since Kindergarten. She’s grown a TON in the last year, and is every bit the reader she’s ever been. She’s also really, really gotten into Scratch, which is a computer programming platform developed by MIT (yes, that MIT) to help urge more kids to follow the design mindset STEM fields that we so desperately need for the next generation. She has done tons of swim lessons in the last 2 years, and is now a really confident swimmer, has taken up piano lessons, and done a few recitals. She’s doing just great.

Shelley: Shelley went back to work at the beginning of 2017, into the same agency, but a new division. She works mainly with clients who are much lower levels of need, and seems to really be enjoying her new position. She’s knitting, crafting, and creating as much as ever.

Jason: I still work for the same school district, but was hired into a new position at the beginning of this school year. I am now an Instructional Technology Coach for the district. (I teach teachers and students how to bring more technology into their practice to elevate their teaching, and increase learning) For anyone who knows me well, this is the stuff I’ve been doing for years on the side, and now I’ve gotten the opportunity to do it full time. I really miss the day-to-day with the kids, and need to work in some ways to consistently do more of that. But I really do enjoy the ability to get into classrooms (‘specially the elementary levels!) and work with teachers there.

I ran my first half-marathon in October, and then pretty much fell off the exercise bandwagon immediately. Shelley (I believe it was her…) once said that goals are really problematic when it comes to many things, because once you meet them, the brain often sees that as a thing that’s done (CHECK!), and you go back to learned behaviors. Habits, however, are learned behaviors that you follow through on because that’s what you always do. I need to do better in developing the physical fitness stuff into habits in 2018 (once the world thaws), and less on the goal side of things.

All-in-all, things are going really well for us, minus the whole “your kid died”, which is both overwhelmingly awful, and shockingly small, depending on the day (I am speaking entirely from my perspective, and the external stuff I see from Shel. I have not yet developed the ability to read people’s minds, and I’m altogether sure that I would never really want to have that ability anyway...specially working mostly in a middle school). On a day to day basis, you’d never know that we’re any different than most other families. We have this scar on our souls, and it heals a bit more each day/week/month. It’s just when something presses hard on it that you really see its effects.

One of the things that “nudged” me was a conversation that I had with someone a few weeks back. They were talking about a friend of theirs who was struggling really hard with something personal. They made the comment that they’d picked up their phone so many times to call or text them, but each time they had not done it because they really didn’t want to say the wrong thing, or interrupt them in a time of pain.

Hearing this REALLY hit a tender place, as it’s something that Shel and I have talked about many times, which is the overwhelming loneliness that accompanies the apocalypse of a diagnosis such as Amie’s. (This is not specific to cancer, but any life-changing event/diagnosis that creates an immediate before/after)

So when this person said she didn’t want to call and interrupt, I took a few beats, and then kindly and firmly said that there was no bad time, as all times were "bad", in the sense that there was never a time that they weren't living with the reality of their new lives, post apocalypse. If they wanted to connect with the person, they should always call, always connect, always reach out (assuming it was in kindness and desire to help, and not dump in). The hesitation, the lack of calling, the ghosting (to use modern internet parlance) is a wound all in itself.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and here’s my “Assuming best intent” way I’ve come to terms with our social interactions with others since Amie’s diagnosis. Social relationships are like really extensive spiderwebs. We weave the strands between each other in our relationships when we do things together, almost always in person. We sit in our quiet moments and spend time with each other. Sometimes it’s watching kids play, others in doing a communal activity. We help each other move to a new house, babysit, listen to a break-up story, or go on a wild adventure. We lash ourselves to each other, knowing that we’re in motion due to life and aging, and kids aging, and it’s those lashes that stabilize us in times of need.

Once those webs are created and tied off, they don’t require a ton of reinforcement, but they do need some. A text, an email, or a call will usually suffice under normal circumstances. But when something happens that causes one person to stop motion, it sometimes tears those webs apart, because the other group moves along down life’s path, completely out of their control, while the other person has to stop and deal with their own event/tragedy. When you go through one of those situations, for some, the webs can rip away, and you’re left with the tatters of the relationships that are no longer there, in addition to the tragedy.

Adding on top of this is the normalcy of self-imposed social isolation. (Shelley shared this great article to me last week, and has me reflecting hard on it). Inside my own head, I never know how much to share, and when to share it. I’ve talked about Amie in times I thought appropriate and saw looks of abject horror on the other person’s face due to how blunt I talked about it, and how little they were prepared to have that conversation. At times I’ve even used her death as a weapon, smacking someone upside the head with it, as a means to put in context just how insignificant (to me) their problem they were railing about really was in the big picture of things.

However, there are loads more times I avoid the conversation, and just breeze past things. I choose to eat in my office, instead of with co-workers. I go do the things by myself, instead of inviting others. I put the headphones on and play my video games, instead of connecting with Shelley when she’s reaching out.

I know that this is easier, that it’s better for me to do things with others, to plan events, to act in ways like I’d like others to act...but it’s just so much easier to float down the river of the easy path, and not do the work involved in filling the bucket.

So. Make the phone call, send the text, and do the thing to connect with those people who are struggling. Conversely, if you’re the person struggling...be open to the person who reaches out, sends the text, and wants to help lift that burden a little bit.

I’m at 3 pages now, and have 5 more topics that I had noted that I wanted to write about. I think that’s a good thing, yes? So. I’m going to sign off now, and then post another blog post next week...Really.

Hope everyone is doing well, and think of Amie tomorrow (Feb. 13th). 

Tell a silly joke to someone if you can, and if nothing else, draw a rainbow somewhere and smile.