our successes...don't forget them!

One of the things that we noticed during our last faculty collaboration meeting of the quarter was that we are intolerant of talking about our successes. We will spend hours on "problem solving" but after 10 minutes of reviewing what "went right," we were saying, "Okay, what is the point of this meeting?  Why are we talking about this?"


I also noticed my tendency to document my complaints, and not the celebrations. 


Here is a record of some of both. 


SUSTAIN Winter 2012 After Action Review

The good news/success of what we captured this quarter

it's all too much

miraculously, we have made it through the first quarter. to hear me talk, you'd think that we were in some sort of collective "donner pass"-hell scenario, when in fact we are simply learning together.

SUSTAINing each other

Our colleague and friend (and vilified teacher of Physics) had a terrible life threatening health crisis on Thursday. It was horrific and wonderful all in the same moment. It looks like he will be fine, but is in the ICU about an hour away.

relinquishing control

Each Friday, during the last hour, we have a "check-out." The faculty often design something: a sticky wall, a team building exercise, or a discussion about Spring quarter. This last Friday we thought of a lot of things we could do, fish bowl or debrief on the emotional upheaval of physics, but Linda had a brilliant idea of asking the students what they wanted as a gesture of our co-ownership of SUSTAIN. It was so fun. Linda talked for a few minutes about jointly creating something, then we (the faculty) sat down.

what if.....

....it fails?

....I will most definitely blame Physics.

the hidden cost of change - week 6

it's been nearly a month since my last entry here.

i've been reflecting a great deal on all that is happening, but not here...not in the open. there is a way in which i don't want my thoughts to be known.  in terms of the students in SUSTAIN, in some ways, they are thriving. their relationships with one another are strong and they are deeply engaged in their community projects. they have all said that they have never worked this much in their (short) college career, but it is meanful work, in contrast to the meaningless work that they see their non-SUSTAIN peers doing.

but there is a great and terrible thing that is happening...

Starting something

I know that the reason I am

Day 9-Profoundly grateful

i am profoundly grateful for my colleagues. today, while the students were checking-in in their project teams, the faculty rounded up to also check in.  this is always a sweet time for me because i have such feelings of warmth toward all my colleagues.  by the way, it is true that not all of us were there and i do miss those who weren't.

pete and i recreated a conflict that we allegedly "had" during the day. it turned out that it was a live conflict, rather than one that we were "over."  in the end, i found myself crying quitely to myself, really for the poignant beautfy of the acts of love and kindness that were so subtley ocurring.

Faculty collaboration - The only hope

We, the faculty teaching in SUSTAIN, have been meeting for almost a year each week for two hours. Right now the meetings are on Friday from 9 to 11. So here we are. Roger reminded us that we did this because we wanted to confront and consider how to live sustainably. We are now inside of this thing we call SUSTAIN and are confronted in a direct way with the ways we are, the system is, unsustainable.

When students are given a choice, they take it

We, the faculty, have been talking with the students about treating them as co-learners. We have been talking about treating them as people, with values, interests, motivations of their own.

Among the first thing that we discovered is that they want to exercise their human rights:  During the times that they don't have assigned classes, they asked if they have to "be there."