Time for a Cool Change

Nine years we have been evolving. Where will we go next?

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Well, like the last year. Some of the more factual elements of our work have prompted this and some related challenges around my work in general. Maybe I am just getting antsy. I have an itch to discover something better. To try to dream bigger.

I can’t help but think of my beautiful hero Chauncey Gardner reflecting on the state of the garden. He shares that, “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well, and all will be well…”

Yes, and we have roots. But seasons come and go. We grow. We fade. There are some things we cannot ignore in our garden.

Here are a few of the bulleted list items:

• We only created one post all the last academic last year. It was Gardner Campbell in October.
• Last year was the only time we ever had no one show up to a meeting. It was our April meeting with Amanda Coolidge.
• Participation in our monthly Zoom meetings has waned.
• Todd is not really feeling Zoom anymore…

So, do we try to recover or just let the garden, I mean community, go? Perhaps some rewilding would yield more fruit?

Well, I will offer my suggestion here.

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We try to share what we wonder about, what we hope for, or what concerns us. But we do that in writing (or video) in posts to our nice website. We can use those topics as starting points in quarterly face-to-face meetings.

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That is my current bigger dream. That is my idea.

Many of you already have access to the website as editors. If you don’t, I can fix that. If you want to write something and send it too me, I’ll post it.

Perhaps we can take some inspiration from the good work of Jane and make finding the time to write about teaching and learning a priority? “Finding Time” I know. And then there is the question of value. Is writing about teaching and learning even valued here? For you?

I’ll see you out there. If you have ideas about the shape of this community and how we can move forward, please share them with us. You now, like if there was one thing missing, what would it be, and how might we find it?

“There’s lots of those friendly people
They’re showing me ways to go
But I never want to lose their inspiration”
– Cool Change by Little River Band

Addendum

Lest you think I am not interested in Zoom, or our ability to magically transport our voice and likeness across time and space, I offer some background.

I have been inside the magic of video conferencing for a while. I have played with the tools and learned.

Not too long ago I found my way to one of our old postings. It was from 2022 and we were sharing time with Terry Greene. You might recall, Terry created the Faculty Patchbook and created the “Getting Air” podcast. Both of those things involved gathering people together to create something that was then shared online. And like my work with the 9x9x25, creating content is important to me. Probably because I do love a good project that I can share.

Anyway, if you look at our post you can see that there were eight of us in attendance and five of us wrote a bit about the experience. That was nice. We used links to other useful things, and we write more than just a sentence or three. Yay us! I also have been wandering down a road about faculty burnout and Zoom Fatigue. Both real things. I have wandered so much in that place that I get to share some of the exploration at a conference in October. Should be interesting.

I am interested in connections. But I need more than monthly Zoom meetings.