CHLL Podcast

In the final episode of the CHLL podcast series 3: Intergenerational Dinner Reflections, Cally, Heather, Lois, and Louise reflect on the week they have just shared together in Utah.  They look back on the successful intergenerational dinner for 40 guests at the beginning of the week, their trip to the Aspen Pando in the middle of the week, and what they learned from the five guests that participated in the earlier episodes in this series.Lois shares that her big takeaway from the week was that it is really as simple as having conversations.  Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General has said that loneliness is a public health issue in this country, and that community is the solution.  Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise discuss what they think made the June 27 intergenerational dinner such a success for the 40 people that attended, and what they see as some next steps.  The CHLL podcast hosts are students of Margaret Wheatley who says that “whatever the problem, community is the solution.”  The group reflects on what may evolve of the rich learning experiences they and others had in Utah during this week in June of 2023. MistakesThe group reflects on how important it is to be willing to make and admit to mistakes for real learning to take place.   Community can provide the conditions to have the courage to act, make mistakes and learn from them.  Cally shares about how the Native American curriculum initiative, developed with her team and partners at Brigham Young University, was founded on the guiding principle that individuals would have to accept that they would inevitably make mistakes, and that the importance of the initiative took precedence over individual ego.  She shares how the group learned to give each other the grace to teach each other and learn. LeadershipIn this episode the CHLL hosts gain clarity that the role of leadership is to create the community necessary for people to do the hard work they need to do. Leadership is about creating the spaces where each and every person feels comfortable sharing and listening.  They reflect on their individual and shared responsibility to continue to invite people into well designed conversations, and to encourage others to do the same.  The stakes are too high to simply lament the divisions among individuals and groups.  It is the role of leadership to understand that we need each other, we need community, we need conversation, we need understanding, we need a collective purpose, and leadership must bring people together to create the community that will serve the collective purpose. Learning From NatureThe day following the intergenerational dinner, Cally Heather, Lois and Louise traveled to southern Oregon to visit the Aspen Pando.  The Aspen Pando is 106 acres of a single male Aspen tree that sends out underground stems from which trunks go up. The Pando is a single  organism that presents itself as 106 acres of individual aspen trees.  The Pando is the largest, and possibly the oldest living organism on the planet. Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise share what they learned from the Pando about the interdependence and connectedness of all living things.In this episode the group recommits to continuing intergenerational conversations to improve education, and to building spaces for communities to better prepare to manage together the very hard questions of our time. Resources: Aspen Pando

In this episode Cally talks with two people, from different generations who attended the June 27, 2023 dinner in Heber Utah, who are both personal friends and mentors to Cally.  Cally, at 60 years old, is a baby boomer and she talks with Kay who, at 81 years, is from the silent generation and Heather who is a millennial at 32 years of age. They share experiences, such as learning to cook, garden, do home repairs or sew clothes or costumes, that have, across the decades, instilled in them a sense of resourcefulness and self confidence.  They describe watching a parent can fruit, or repair an appliance as a kind of early mentoring experience, that they feel lucky to continue to practice in their current relationships: Cally to Heather, Heather to Cally, Cally to Kay and Kay to Cally.  The mentoring is by no means one way.  It is not necessarily older woman to younger woman, but rather reciprocal.  Cally instantly recognized Kay’s wisdom and experience, and Kay marveled at Cally’s ability to develop programs and networks which were made successful by Heather’s keen skills at project management and systems development.They wonder and reflect on whether well-intentioned risk management for children today, interferes with young people’s ability to develop the kind of self-reliance that these women are grateful for in their own lives.  They wonder about how social media, and social distancing, have impacted young people’s opportunities to meet and connect with others in ways that these women have benefited greatly from.  They discuss that too much emphasis is put on curriculum and assessment in education, and not enough emphasis on relationships and connection.Kay says, “There is real power that comes from helping your peers and sharing information. In the end, it's the connectedness that matters.  There are many kids that haven't had role models or the resources that we were lucky to grow up with.  But I have observed, and I have a sacred belief in, the resilience of human beings to find what they need and become the best they are. There are so many potential detours, but the resilience of human beings is always there.”Cally agrees.  “Yes, all learning happens within relationships.  It is the teacher that establishes that culture. And when that happens, the role of teaching can be from student to student, student to teacher, teacher to student, and everyone learns from each other.”They discuss how important mentoring for teachers is, and that too often the most important professional development is overlooked by practices that keep teachers isolated from each other.  They discuss how important it is to continue to work for improving public education because it is the one institution that will always be intergenerational. At 81 years of age, Kay is in the process of creating a new women's organization that lifts up the experience of older women and connects it with the vitality and new ideas of younger women.  The group discusses how their various projects intersect and inform each other.

Mark Borchelt, a boomer, and Christine Baird, a millennial, were both table hosts at the June 27 intergenerational dinner in Heber, Utah on June 27.  In the second episode in this series, they bring reflections on how the individuals representing the six generations interfaced with each other.  While both Mark and Christine shared that everyone enjoyed the opportunity to be in conversation with five to six other people from different generations, they also did not necessarily appreciate the generational designations or stereotypes.  This was specifically true for members of the so-called Silent Generation, who did not experience themselves, or their peers, as silent.  It was explained that the misnomer “silent” generation came from the fact that this generation experienced the McCarthy era: a time of communist baiting and persecution for political beliefs, when it was not safe to speak.  Many people lost their jobs, their livelihoods and their reputations as part of this oppressive era.Mark and Christine discuss with Lois how influential the logistics of the dinner were to its success.  The beautiful out of doors setting, the mountains in the backdrop, the delicious food, the luxurious timing, the thoughtful reflective conversation prompts, and the very fact that everyone needed to travel some little distance to be in Heber, getting away from it all, contributed to comfort and success of the evening.Mark said, “I love the fact that we had to drive to get to the Merrill's house, because it was like this coming together required various groups and ages to make an effort to arrive at this opportunity. It was like passing through a threshold to speak to one another. And it was great walking around and saying, Wow, they did a fantastic job of getting a nice cross section of ages. And there was this lovely representation of humanity, I guess is the best way I'd like to describe it. The facilitation of the conversation was incredibly easy for me, because people were not shy about speaking or sharing their experiences. The environment was outstanding, the food was delicious, and everything just congealed to allow people to feel comfortable in productive ways.”Christine concurred, “I didn't understand why we were driving all the way to Heber to do this dinner, which I think for everyone was a long drive. But once I arrived, and was in an environment that was very separate from the middle of a city, it absolutely helped us focus on what we were there for. I think one of my favorite parts about being a facilitator was that no one at the table knew each other and it was an absolute clean slate. It was this beautiful opportunity that I've never had before, to sit at a table where I purposefully was different from everyone else, and no one knew each other. We were there for a common purpose that was away from our normal lives created for listening. It was just the coolest that everyone got to answer the same question because there was time for everyone. We all were overjoyed to hear everyone's response to every question. I'm qualified, just because I have lived the amount of years I've been alive. So cool.” Mark adds, “Yeah, I noticed some of that too, because I was trying to make sure everyone felt comfortable. Everyone was impacted by the example set by the person who spoke before them. It was unspoken, but very powerful. We were inspired by each other to open up. I had the sense that people immediately bonded at each table.  This was made possible, I think, by the opening mingling activity, and then I appreciated the movement activity at the conclusion that brought everyone back together as a larger group.”Christine learned new things.  “A member at our table of Generation X, shared that she was born in 1970 and thought it was the most idyllic time to have ever been born. She had the most wonderful childhood. Growing up in the 70s and the 80s was so cool. There was all this fun life and art and culture and socialization.” Christine had never heard that from someone her age, now in her 50s. She realized that she knew so little about growing up in the 70s and 80s. “I had mostly heard about the 70s and 80s being a kind of hot mess, and that everyone was freaking out and having an identity crisis. It made me so happy to hear what had happened from her perspective because it was before my time. I didn't get here till 1987.”Mark adds, “Our silent generation, our octogenarian, was talking about how you get to a certain age and you feel that you're being silenced.  People don't see you. She was talking about a recent health scare and people in the medical industry were looking at her and doing tests and she felt basically being cheated.  Their attitude seemed to be, ‘You've already had a great life.’ But this person felt, ‘Wait, I have a lot more living that I would like to do.’  She felt that she was being placed on a shelf and didn’t know where she fit in or how to interact. And the  millennial at our table said, ‘Oh my gosh, I'd never made that connection. I think my generation, especially in our 20s, that's exactly how we felt. I didn't have my voice yet.  It’s interesting to see that spiral, that it comes back around.’”And Christine continues, “That reminds me of one other of my favorite moments. When we were discussing whether individuals have friends who are 10, 20, 30 years older or younger than you, Karma, who is 91 years old said in the most beautiful, crystal clear, confident way, ‘If you were a friend, you were a friend.’ It had never occurred to her for a moment in her 91 years that there would be a qualification that you needed to be somewhere in the same age range to be a friend.  She had such a beautiful perspective on life.”Mark, Christine and Lois continue to share what they are realizing about the specific and special qualities unique to interacting with people from different generations.  Lois reflects on how so much in our culture is designed for us to stay in our own generational cohorts, and she wonders what we can do to make intergenerational interactions more possible.Christine offers some ideas and observes that arts experiences that are open to the community, whether they're ticketed or not, are some of the best ways to mix with multiple generations.  She suggests investing in our local communities and supporting music concerts, plays, art exhibitions and farmers markets as great places to naturally interact with young and old and in  between. The group recognized that they often felt more competitive with people their own age, and less of that kind of self judgment with people who are much older or younger. The design of the dinner offered the opportunity to listen to someone else's experience from another generation that unlocked connections and self-processing, and opened up a space of possibility for talking across other identity differences such as gender, racial, faith and ideological differences.

In the first episode of Season 3, titled, How the Times Change Perspective, Heather meets with Dan and Erik, Baby Boomers who both attended the Intergenerational Dinner hosted by the CHLL team in Heber, Utah on June 27, 2023.  They share their experiences as members of the Baby Boomer generation, their reflections on intergenerational families, and the generational experiences of Baby Boomers that have shaped and influenced their lives.Erik shares about growing up in an intergenerational jewish family in Los Angeles.  The group discusses how expectations for a linear life path of education, job and growing a family have  changed and shifted over decades.Dan reflects on social changes that occurred during the Baby Boomers formative years:“Divorce  became much more common in our generation because of the economic changes. It's   an incredible stress to think of surviving on your own even if it's a time of prosperity. But I think part of why divorce became more common is because the survival of the individual was no longer threatened as much, with the war and the depression over.”The group reflects on what they consider to be major generational shifts.  The so-called Silent Generation was the “we” generation.  Women went to work in the factories, while men went off to war in a fight against fascism.  Everyone was expected to pitch in. Baby Boomers were the “me” generation, enjoying an affluent period where individuals carved new social and moral norms, resisted the draft, and engaged in public protests.  They told their children, the millennials, that they could have anything they wanted and be whatever they wanted to be.  But the millennials have grown into a time of economic and environmental uncertainty, limiting the opportunities their parents enjoyed.Resources: Generations Over Dinner

Earth, Art and Life: Young Artist’s PerspectivesSo much of what has been shared and discussed in this series on classrooms and climate change, has been focused on what adults think, say, do or do not do.  In this final episode of the series, “Is Climate Change Changing Classrooms” the CHLL group (Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise) reflect on what young people have to say through their artistic expressions.  The Brigham Young University Arts Education Partnership hosts an annual art competition for all grade levels, in all art forms.  It’s part of an initiative called Arts for Life, Utah. The purpose is to highlight the impact of the arts on students' lives, particularly their social and emotional well being. The initiative is a collaboration between the BYU Arts Partnership where Cally and Heather work, and the four professional arts education organizations in Utah. The competition is called M(arts)ch Madness, and includes a bracket style competition inspired by the athletics March Madness. Students submit their work showing the impact of the arts in their life and their schooling experience. Usually the theme is Arts for Life. But this year students were asked to submit work on the theme of Earth, Arts and Life, in an effort to surface students' perspectives on the environment, as well. Examples of the student artwork and their artist statements are here in the show notes.  The CHLL team reflected on what they noticed about the interface of the Earth, Arts and Life in student work, and what they could learn from student perspectives.Cally I would love to start with one of the paintings that's very memorable for me. There's so many artworks that I love, but I want to start with one, a high school 11th grader. This is his artist statement, “The name of my art piece is progress. It depicts a crow looking up at the clouded sky, knowing that he is not able to fly high without harming himself.  I created my own paint out of smoke, which allowed me to paint the piece purely with smoke paint. I decided to use a crow, as crows are black and highly intelligent, which allowed for the use of monochrome colors. The piece is titled ‘Progress’.  It shows an industrialized city filled with factories and buildings shooting pollution up into the air. I use smoke to represent how we as humans are affecting the Earth. …The crow is representing a human perspective looking down this long road at the pollution.”  The student has used perspective to draw our attention to the factory that's releasing the smoke into the air. And the crow seems reflective. Gazing, watching, and wondering how this impacts him. I really liked the contrast of nature, and the concrete breaks and the strong lines of the image around it. I thought this was a powerful piece, and showed a lot of commitment to the theme. He chose smoke to do this monochromatic piece with shades, everything from white to very dark blacks, and mostly shades of gray.Develop Craft and TechniqueLois I think one of the things that interests me is the way this kid used material. One of the Studio Habits of Mind is to develop craft, and he really used the technique of perspective. It's like that crow is on the line of the perspective aiming right for the smokestacks. This crow is in the foreground and is dark and is facing away. It's really interesting how this kid was able to use technique to express something very personal. I think a really powerful thing about the arts is that, however much technique the kids have, students can use it to say what they want to say. Some students don't have very much technique yet, but still the expression is very, very rich. LouiseIn this series we've been talking a lot about curriculum development, and how who decides and who decides what is being taught and learned.  In this one piece, it seems to me, there's so much curriculum opportunity on the topic of progress.  What is progress? When I was a child, General Electric had a logo, ‘Progress is our Business”. It's a real question, what is progress as we are going forward? When we have exhibitions of student work, often it is a culminating event. But it's also the beginning.  That’s the case with Lois’s Sea Rise Mural event at Umana elementary school in Boston to celebrate the completed mural. These events are opportunities to ask young people about the impact of artmaking and art viewing on their lives going forward. It is an opportunity for curriculum development because there are so many generative next places to go.Supporting Students’ Where They Truly Need Adult SupportLois There's this one piece, by a 10th grader in Timpanogos High School, of a cherry tree on a little island reflected in the water. The artist says, “You know, cherry blossoms connect me with me by reminding me that there's always a chance to start over and do better than the last time.” This makes me sad, because I do think that that's true, and that's something we really want kids to know. It's a very important piece about making art. At the same time, there is a chance that if we don't pay attention to what's going on with climate change, if we don't get this conversation out there and get everybody talking about it, that we may be, for the first time at a place where human beings don't have a chance to start over and do better. And there's a piece by an anonymous student in eighth grade. This is one where the technique is crude.  It's gradations of color, pinks, and purples and reds in the top, and the bottom is sort of a greenish yellow. It's called ‘Gold Sand Sunset’. The artist writes, “The beauty of the sand and loneliness, the world coming undone. The beauty of acceptance and broken things. I know what it's like to be broken. So do you. If you don't, you will soon because that's life. You can love and laugh too.” I look at these kids trying to make sense, and trying to live their lives trying to move through adolescence in the way that they need to. I'm reading a book by Elena Ferrante called The Lying Lives of Adults. It's from the perspective of an adolescent. Her family is a mess. They're really trying, and she's really trying to make sense of who she's going to become in the midst of all this broken stuff. I think we shy away sometimes from letting kids talk about the hard stuff because we want them to be beautiful and wise and there's a lot of hard stuff.  I think we have to be courageous about meeting young people where they are and sometimes they are in very deep, dark, hard places.Cally We want them to be unburdened. The children are burdened with the task of growing up, and the emotional lessons are hard and family relationships are hard, and friends are hard, and all those things you have to learn are hard. Some people have supportive environments and others have more challenging environments. I wonder how we choose which burdens are for their growth and what we want to unburden them with. So often, we protect young people from things that that they don't need protection from, while they are dealing with things that they definitely need protection from.  That idea of burdened and unburdened, I find interesting.Lois Trena talked about going to the kids and asking them where they are, what they know, what they think, what they care about.  I think that's the answer. We don't have to unburden them, we just have to go and be present to them where they are.Social and Emotional Resilience and Well BeingHeather Cally and I attended an instructional leadership conference last week and one of the speakers spoke about the importance of adults in helping children with social emotional resilience and well being. The speaker encouraged adults to model the way that we sometimes have to express emotions and sometimes we have to tame them. Both are important. The role of adults in helping model that coregulation is so important. One of the entries in this competition was submitted by one of my dear friends who has been that adult for her son his entire life.  I saw her post something on social media and I said, you have to share this with the world. It is so beautiful. In her post, she said they knew her son was different from a young age.  He has needed support at school for various learning struggles. He has known he's not like the other students. They gave him the lead role of Horton, the elephant, in Seussical, the musical. His mother recorded him sitting on the box on stage singing Horton's song, which is so beautiful. It's all about being alone in the universe, and how Horton feels so alone and so different. This child probably really, really feels that way. But you would have no idea the struggles that this child has endured by the beautiful musical performance that he gives. He didn't submit it himself. His mom submitted it, and his mom is honoring and sharing his work. She's out there making sure everybody's voting for him today.I would probably say this about so many of the contributing artists. But it's so amazing the way his mother and his father and his family and his teachers have been there for this boy. They really know him. They know where he shines when singing; he's alone in the universe, but he is the star of the stage.Lois Beautiful. What does adding earth to the competition title bring out? I don't know what proportion of the kids just still did the impact of the arts in their lives. For many it was still straight social emotional learning. I found that I really wanted to look at the ones about earth. There were some that were about earth like, “I like to fish and so I made a fish.” There were some that were really digging into like the centipede one.  So this is by an 11th grader at the Cedar Valley School. It's a vertical canvas with this statement by the artist:”The world is screaming and we don't even hear it. I created this painting as a way to make people open their eyes and see the world burning and life dying right in front of us. The meaning behind this artwork is a centipede symbolizing the world, earth, nature etc. As you can see, it is being stitched together with pins on the legs taped down, symbolizing how more and more buildings are being put on top of the earth and eventually the earth is covered in concrete, one building after another, to the point where we have fake grass. How do I use my art to make the earth a better place? Well, there's a difference between telling a person and showing them.  Showing a person through art gives it a very emotional point of view, and is different from telling a person that the world's dying. My process of creating this work was by starting to gesso my board and let that dry. Then I started sketching my design with the centipede pin cushion sewing needles. Next, I taped down the areas I didn't want to paint on, so it would be easier to paint on. Then I spray painted, trying to make it look like a spray painted table.  Then I started throwing paint on: mixing, blending and shading, etc.  I finished it with a layer of blue glitter on just the centipede, and then made some rearrangement, adding a few things here and there.”Wow. This statement of how that kid was using art to make an impact with his personal feelings, knowledge, and intention was pretty stunning.Learning From Each OtherLouiseI’m not sure it matters how many children artists are making works about the earth, when everyone has the opportunity to benefit from what individuals choose to make work about: the earth, art, or life. I think a beautiful thing about this exhibition is that it isn't a performance just for the purpose of culminating your project, but it is seeing all of the children's interests and concerns in deeper ways.  This exhibition is building community knowledge and understanding. It's individual social and emotional learning and it's community, social and emotional learning as well.Lois The inclusion is what's so easy to do with the arts if you allow it, like this one by Ruben Weeks. He is a second grader who says, “I drew this for my cousin Madeline's birthday.  She's turning 12. She loves bunnies.  Through my pictures I can show that I know her and love her. And it's a bunny with all of this scrawled green around it. That is the grass that the bunny lives in.”This is Ruben’s true heart and deep thinking. It's about love.It’s About Love Between Each Other and the Love of NatureHeatherThat's his wisdom for sure. Let’s summarize what we've learned in this series. Something that I see in this competition, that I've seen through all of our conversations in this series, is this need to help students and children connect with nature.  I think the challenge that we've addressed in this series is how do we help children maintain their love for the earth as they go into adulthood.  So many of us are sitting at desks, working in business, working in education, working in any discipline, and it often requires keeping us from nature.  Some jobs really get us  into nature, and that’s great. But how do we help children continue to want to make connections to art and the earth because they love it so much into adulthood?Lois These children are so lucky because they live in Utah, which is some of the most beautiful country in the entire world. They can walk out their door and be in a heavenly environment. There are a lot of kids who are not anywhere near a heavenly environment. They are in urban jungles. There's still nature there, but you really have to look for it. It's not as easy as going out and wandering through the grass to find the animals and the beautiful natural world.Louise Yes. I think one of the things that I've been learning from this series is something that the IDEAL facilitators and the Our Changing Planet project eloquently spoke to. Begin wherever you are, with whatever you have. Remember that they talked about when COVID hit, and everyone had to work online and be in their homes?  They thought their professional development was doomed. But then they discovered that when teachers were in their living room, they could look out their window. Children’s bodies are part of nature.  There are many ways to connect children to what they have, and what they don't have. Also, we're lucky to have the space of the internet and videos, where we can connect children to each other and to the world. LoisYes, and we're unlucky because we have this barrier, which is that many schools are using scripted curriculum and minimizing the teacher and the student relationship. How does the teacher go to where a student is when they're mandated to be on page 11, paragraph three, today, and tomorrow, they're mandated to be on page 12, paragraph four?  The barriers of schooling are really huge, and the behemoth of this system of schooling and how it has coalesced around tightening down with rules and steps and limitations and constraints is daunting. Let the people be people. Let them be who they are. Let them come together and find what they're curious about and start figuring that out. It's a human made problem that made the schools like this, and we can remake them. How Do We Act Together? The Time is NowLouiseAs we're wrapping this up, I’m thinking about the episode about Our Changing Planet. We were all remarking on how important that project is and how it really seems to be working well, and we were asking, “What is it that makes this so special?”  I've been thinking about it and I think it really is that idea of frameworks. Lois, you brought those frameworks to us in Alameda County that have resulted in the IDEAL and Our Changing Planet project, that you've brought to people all over the world. Those frameworks are a foundation base. Those frameworks are learning from the experience of teachers who are really doing a good job of meeting young people where they are, using experts, using disciplinary resources, and making it relevant to children who are either in nature rich places or in concrete jungles. I think that that's such an important thing. The other thing that really stands out to me is Paul Hawken's book, Regeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.  It is a hope and a challenge that  has a lot of wisdom in it.  I think its greatest wisdom is that this is about everybody. This isn't about just teachers, this isn't just about politicians, this isn't just about administrators. It's about everyone.It's about every career. When young people grow up, and they go into jobs, where they are tied to desks… every single position needs to be asking themselves, “How is what I'm doing every day, in school, in my job, either contributing to the current suicidal path that we're on with our environment, or really rethinking and contributing to how we need to do things differently?”To me, those are the two biggest things. I think educators need those frameworks.  I think we need to accept that this is everybody's issue. We need everyone, the indigenous wisdom, the experts, the children's new knowledge, all of it!Lois And we, as examples, just need to keep talking about it. We need to talk about it to everybody. It needs to be a pyramid scheme. It needs to be a cascade.The only way to get everybody involved is to keep the conversation going.  I do think that art does that. Figuring out how to keep everybody in the conversation, regardless of where they're starting from.CallyOne of our ninth grade artists in the contest summarized it this way, “I painted an hourglass, with trash in the top and the earth in the bottom. I wondered, how can the arts heal the earth? I think that the arts heal the earth by spreading awareness to others about what is happening and what can be done to save our planet. People always say it is a problem for the next generation, but the truth is that the time is now.”HeatherBeautiful.LoisThere’s some child wisdom.Links and Resources Mentioned: Arts for Life Utah M’art’ch Madness Student Art Competition: Earth, Art, LifeFollow Us:CHLLpodcast.comCHLL on InstagramCHLL on FacebookSubscribe on apple, spotify, pandora, amazon, google

The Mural Project at Umana School in BostonThe Sea Level Rise Mural Project at Umana School in Boston is an offshoot of another research project on extreme weather that Lois has been involved with.  It has been funded by the National Science Foundation for the past four years. This school year Lois has been working in a Spanish bilingual public school in Boston, called Umana elementary school. It's built on land that is 10 inches above the current mean high high tide.  The main high high tide is what we usually call sea level. The school is right on Boston Harbor but the kids don't have any access to the harbor because it's fenced away, and there's weeds and industrial garbage beyond the fence. Lois worked with the art teacher and the fifth through eighth grade students to make a clay tile mural about sea level rise.  Many of them are recent immigrants to Boston with varied documentation status.  Many are Spanish only speakers. The playgrounds at Umana have already flooded at 10 inches, and they're going to continue flooding.  By 2030 it's going to be 14 inches, by 2050 It's going to be 33 inches, and by 2070 it’s supposed to be 55 inches.  These might be low estimates.  The purpose of the project is to raise community awareness about the impact of sea level rise on this community, and help them to understand nature based solutions to sea level rise.  We are making murals that show the animal habitat in the area, and potential adaptations to address the flooding.  For example, structures can be elevated, or structures can be built to block the wave action. Or marshes can be created to absorb water. The  hope is that these murals will educate and motivate community planning. Lois describes her state of disequilibrium as she embarks on a project out of her expertise as a teacher and a researcher.  Lois had to learn from others how to design and site a mural.  She had to work with new materials and collaborate with others that could fire the 900 discreet tiles painted by students, and then install them on interior walls at the school.   Lois was challenged to learn a lot quickly about what constitutes or threatens healthy sea life in Boston Harbor, and what is predicted to happen to sea life with sea level rise. Lois worried about what students were actually learning as they painted their individual tiles, and how her arts education values of student choice, revision, joy, personal expression, problem solving, engagement, connection, commitment, imagination, reflection, playfulness, and close observation were, or were not, being attended to in this project.Lois describes how she has enjoyed the collaboration with the art teacher, and getting to know the East Boston community.  She appreciates the public visual permanence of the information that is expressed in the mural, which can be a platform for future learning. But what worries her about the project is whether the kids learned enough about sea level rise and the importance of biodiversity. . I don't know if they did. I don't know if they know why biodiversity matters. Were the students engaged enough and do they see the personal relevance? Lois asks, what makes a good enough project in climate education?Ask The Students For Their IdeasLouiseI applaud you and your colleagues for jumping in, Lois. I think about Trena and Constance in our last episode, who surveyed the students of the teachers they were working with, and found out that kids were thinking about climate change all the time. They were wondering why adults aren't doing more. I can't imagine that that's so different for the children in Boston at Umana Elementary School. It is so great that they are having the opportunity to paint tiles with the local sea life, and that their learning is right there surrounding their school. These students see adults, you and your colleagues, as you put the panels together, and they see that you are doing something.  I imagine they see that this is helping them and their families to understand how climate change is going to change their local environment.  I imagine the kids must be really grateful that that's happening. I just can't imagine that it isn't very reassuring for children to see this project happening. I can't imagine that, because it will be a permanent piece at the school site, that it won’t inspire more collaborations and new curriculum about climate change in East Boston and the world.  What a gift! Heather  Amazing educators, artists, like yourself, Lois, do good enough projects.  What makes a good enough project is having an excellent art educator in a system of schooling that is not conducive to the kind of artmaking that they're used to. When I was in second grade my whole extended family took several vacations to Yellowstone National Park. I was so enthusiastic about what I experienced that my second grade teacher gave me an opportunity to lead an art project for my classmates. This is a story of Heather's character as a curriculum designer from a very young age! I really wanted all the students in my classroom to feel and know what I knew about mud pots from Yellowstone National Park, because I remember standing by these muddy sulfur gray, gooey pots that would bubble up, and it felt like something from the Jurassic period. My imagination was just exploding. I got the idea to provide my classmates with coffee filters that they could paint gray, to simulate the mud pots. Then I told the whole class everything I had learned about mud pots in my Junior Ranger program. It was a profoundly meaningful experience for me. Made possible with coffee filters, gray paint, and a second grade teacher who was willing to take a risk on a t year old’s idea.  For me, it was a rich  experience that connected me to a love of the land and the Earth.Lois Hetland You had a powerful experience and you wanted to share it and you were allowed to come up with a way to share it with other people. Your story demonstrates how important the idea of student choice and agency is in schooling. I worry that in this project there might not have been enough choice.  So much of it was designed by adults. What’s The Meaning of Life?Louise Music   But it's just the beginning, Lois. When listening to Heather, I am reminded of a video on You Tube where Neil deGrasse Tyson is talking to a six year old about the meaning of life. It’s a must see.  Neil de Grasse Tyson explains to the child that the meaning of life is always revealing itself to us. Herecommends to the child that the most important thing to do is to go out into nature. He recommends the child pull things up out of the ground, smell them, take them apart, and look at how they're connected to each other. Basically, his best advice to this six year old is to do some version of what Heather was doing with her second grade classroom.  The advice from the astro-physicist is experiment!  Look at things that you've experienced, and think about what they're like and do something with it. Don't be afraid to explore. And maybe that's good advice for teachers.  Maybe what we need to be saying to teachers is, explore!  Do what Lois did.  Come up with an idea and do it even if you are not sure how it will turn out.  Then think about how well it went. Ask your students, “how did that go? What was confusing?” And then, with their input, begin again.Process Over Product?Cally Flox I think it's important to remember that we're educators.  We want to assess what the kids do. We want to check our success. But a project like this isn't about our success. And the most important things we learn in life can't be assessed or measured in these ways. So Louise just made it really simple. Ask the kids, what did you think? How did that feel, and then begin again. If you put your heart and soul into something, and you do something really wonderful, and then you reflect on it, and you begin again, that's good enough. Lois Hetland  I think what still worries me is that this project was too product focused.  It was about making a mural, and that maybe a lot of the process of making the mural got lost. Cally Flox   The beauty of your project, Lois, is that it has a permanence that is going to be there over time.  The students have time to engage their families, their friends, and for more conversations.  There's a new process being born because the product is in place. The students have the opportunity to go to that wall every day.  They will say, “I made this tile. What do I remember about making this tile? What do I want to tell somebody about this tile?”  Your project, Lois, is just beginning.“Let’s Give Them Something To Talk About!”Louise Music Yes, Cally. I don't think we can underestimate the power of conversation. That's why we do this podcast. Good conversations need to start in our classrooms. We need to listen to children. I think we all know and have experienced the great promise of arts in our classrooms and schools. The arts products provide so many multiple ways for us to see what's going on in students’ hearts and minds.HeatherI want to talk about the studio structures, because you haven't got into the exhibition part of this project yet, right Lois? The gallery showcase of student work, or the dance or music performance, at the end of a learning experience are rich opportunities to launch next steps.Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Arts EducationCally Flox  Let's clarify studio structures, because that's an important teaching pedagogy from Lois’ book Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Arts Education. Lois and her colleagues analyzed visual arts classrooms and found four structures that work in a studio setting, that we have found also work across the performing arts. One is a lecture demonstration: you give the kids the information and the background and the skills they need to do the project. The next one is: students at work. That's where students spend most of their time in great classrooms learning and applying skills and technique. Then critique and reflection. Then the last studio structure is performance or exhibition: where student work is shared in a culminating way.Heather  I have seen what one night on stage for two hours does for the learning of my students. In the weeks after their performance students are best friends.  They want to talk to me and show me dance videos just because of this performance experience we have had together. I would anticipate some more satisfaction from your project Lois as a result of the community coming together to view and reflect upon the final murals. Lois Hetland  I do hope that it catalyzes something good for the future of these students and their community. Let's say that I don't think I did everything that I wish I'd been able to do in this project. But it really is important. And there really will be some big things that come out of it. So everything didn't go perfectly or work out the way I wanted it to. That's the nature of first things and collaborations. I hope other teachers understand that it's worth taking a risk.  Even if you really don't know how to do it, just dive in there and start figuring it out. There are lots of resources out there . There are people who will help you.  The kids will help you figure it out.Links Mentioned: Photos of the Umana Sea Level Rise MuralArticle about the Umana Sea Level Rise MuralStudio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Arts EducationNeil de Grasse Tyson Talks With a Six-Year Old About the Meaning of LifeFollow Us:CHLLpodcast.comCHLL on InstagramCHLL on FacebookSubscribe on apple, spotify, pandora, amazon, google

Teachers Preparing Students As Changemakers of Our Changing PlanetLois shares a video created by the directors of Our Changing Planet, a professional development program that supports teachers' understanding of the environment in the San Francisco Bay Area in California.  The video features the voices of teachers who have participated in Our Changing Planet and tell how it has impacted them in their personal and professional practice.  Our Changing Plant is a project of IDEAL (Integrated Design for Education, the Arts and Leadership) that  introduces teachers to artists and scientists currently working on environmental projects.  The project provides the teachers with time to collaborate with artists, scientists and each other. This is a cohort of 40 teachers who have been teaching and learning through arts integration, exploring the climate crisis across the whole curriculum for four years. The CHLL group had listened to an interview, prior to this episode, that Louise had with two of the founders and facilitators for the Our Changing Planet.  Constance Moore and Trena Noval shared how this project honors teacher professionalism and experience, while opening their practice to new dimensions that map onto student interest and needs.  The past three years have just been so demoralizing for teachers who are expected to always do everything and educate everybody, and had to emergency learn zoom and teach online. But these teachers actually found their passion during the pandemic and relied on this professional development experience to keep them going - even as it required extra time and work on their parts. The facilitators of Our Changing Planet were surprised by the commitment and enthusiasm of teachers to continue the work during the  pandemic lockdown when they were already online so much of the day.  According to Constance and Trena, the teachers locked hands and said to themselves, “We are in a crisis. This work is about facing this crisis, and our climate crisis, together.”  The facilitators met teachers exactly where they were at.  They asked teachers who were sitting at their laptops, in their houses, to look out their windows and observe their environment. Whether it's the birds in the backyard, or the trees along the front street, teachers were encouraged to get curious.  The opportunity to learn about what is in each teacher’s world, and to consider and situate learning around what's important to teachers and their students has been a foundational aspect of what has made this program successful. Teachers are clear about the basic skills kids need to learn.  By teaching literacy and math skills through the lens of researching the natural world around them, students are motivated to write more and practice more.  When students are developing history and science knowledge in a concerted effort to understand present day problems in local communities, they engage more deeply.  When the content is really important to the teachers and the students at the time, it becomes the driver to read, to write, and to apply knowledge in math, science and history. Teachers and students want to build their skills, because the content is of interest and relevance.Relationships are Key to LearningHeatherI was impressed that the topic of conversation and exploration was always connected to what teachers were interested in.  The facilitators were not there to execute a curriculum that was designed as the guide for the teacher experience. Instead the facilitators paid close attention so that they could pivot to what teachers are interested in, and to what's going on in the world.LoisThey also drew on scientists and artists, who are working on climate change in all sorts of amazing ways. Teachers watched videos of these experts talking about their work, and the  teachers would watch and weep because it was so moving and poignant. And so moving. CallyThis project is an important reminder that learning happens inside of relationships. Relationships are the key to any kind of learning. These teachers come together in a crisis. They teach on zoom all day and then they come to a zoom meeting at night just to be with their own colleagues to feel some inspiration, and to belong somewhere. It actually reduces their stress they're dealing with at the time instead of increasing it. They bond together. Then they take the information out to their students. It's created in relationship, therefore it's disseminated in relationship. Then the relationships grew, and someone knew somebody at Alcatraz island  and ideas for the program got bigger. These incredible connections are built. Now the students are going on a field trip to Alcatraz to look at the birds that migrate there. I listened to them describe the authentic growth of the people who got involved. It grew from the ground up. That's one of the most important things in education is that we allow the human aspect of who people are and how they learn to emerge through relationships with natural connections and authentic learning, as opposed to here's a program and the system.I think this is how all education should be, because it's people centered, and it's expressive. Every learner connects authentically. Every teacher connects authentically. LoisMany people are left with scripted curriculum, and it's done in the name of equity which is just amazing to me. In this project, they started out by talking to the students and asking what they think and know and feel about climate change.  The kids had all sorts of ideas and questions. One of the big questions was, why aren't adults doing anything about this?  They would share an idea and wonder why adults don’t do that? I think it was this beautiful amalgamation of relationships over a long period of time between the county office of education’s arts initiative, the leadership of these various districts, and teachers getting involved and involving their students. And anyway, it was a really nice coming together and our changing planet has really built on all of that. So Cally, I think you're exactly right. It's really fundamentally about relationships. Because otherwise, how does one gain entry? How do you progress if your principal is thinking  you're supposed to be working on the standards and preparing for the high stakes tests in reading and math. The teachers interact with each other and find resources for the students to interact with each other.  When they spoke to the kids, they discovered climate change was on their minds.I think the notion that these kids are too little, or it's too scary, or it's too frightening is false. We need to talk more to kids, meet them where they are, and get them to be good observers.  The center of inquiry is observing. Discovering Connections to Grow Good IdeasLouiseOur Changing Planet is spreading. The Alameda County Office of Education, serving 18 school districts, has contracted with IDEAL to do more professional development for more people. In California, there is a statewide Environmental Literacy Initiative that IDEAL is connecting with. It’s important to follow these relationships as well: from the city of Alameda, to 18 more school districts across Alameda County, to a statewide Environmental Education Initiative, to other projects that are happening all across the country.  It's really person to person, talking about what matters. The teachers and the facilitators were so surprised to see how much climate change was already on children's minds. Of course! Children drive around in their parents cars, and they're hearing about extreme weather and reports on climate change on the news.  They're looking out their windows and seeing flooding and scary weather and hearing adults talking about things. Our children need the chance to learn what climate change is about and that actually they can have a role. That's providing a sense of purpose and agency to not only the students, but the teachers as well. Links and Resources Mentioned: Integrated Design for Education, the Arts and Leadership - IDEALOur Changing PlanetCalifornia Environmental Education InitiativeFollow Us:CHLLpodcast.comCHLL on InstagramCHLL on FacebookSubscribe on apple, spotify, pandora, amazon, google

Tapping Intergenerational Creativity and Wisdom Through Native American LeadershipIn our culture, talking about the weather is considered small talk and unimportant. And yet, it's so much a part of our lives. Maybe the weather isn't small talk. Maybe it needs to become central to our conversations because it is central to our lives. One of the things we may need to do is integrate our schooling with our lives. The BYU Arts Partnership’s Native American curriculum initiative is one place where this is really happening.  It was started in 2017 in an effort to improve teacher professional learning curriculum by removing culturally insensitive or stereotypical content. The initiative began with a question to the eight sovereign nations in Utah, “What do you want the children of Utah to know about your tribe?” Resoundingly, all of the tribes said that they wanted the children of Utah to know, “We are still here.”  The native tribes feel invisible.  Lesson plans were created in collaboration with the tribes, and bear the tribal seal of approval on them.  Working with sovereign nations is all about relationships, and honoring the timeframe. One of the common threads in these lesson plans is that Native Americans have a kinship with the earth. They see everything is connected. and this kinship worldview says that what happens to the trees happens to us, and how we respect the animals and how we live in harmony. We're all connected. We're connected to the weather. There's a reason and purpose in that web of life. At last summer’s conference, Native artists told the story of their life. As they shared their stories, everyone became more aware and sensitive and human together. Everyone's stories emerged as relevant and powerful. After the conference, a group of teachers went to Capitol Reef National Park to learn about how to bring the environment to children. Ben Abbott, a professor at BYU of ecosystem ecology took the teachers out into the wilderness to look at the artifacts from indigenous people hundreds of years ago. Going into the desert with this environmental scientist who studies global issues and permafrost and how the world operates brought such hope for this planet, and helped teachers fall in love with the planet again. Teachers can't teach the Native American lesson plans, until they understand sustainable living and fall in love with the planet. How do we help children fall in love with nature and the outside world as part of schooling? We must bridge the gap between what's happening in schools and what's happening in life.  Learning from Native American tribes and spending time in nature provides teachers the experiences to connect the curriculum and science to make it more relevant for kids. There are many examples of this happening that are ready to be shared more broadly.We Are Here.  We Each Have A Story.LouiseI love this description of what teachers are doing.  They're taking children out into nature and using the arts to help them, look, see, express and connect. But what must happen first is what the tribes said:  an acknowledgement that we are here.  Children need that too. I am here and I have a story. And I think that's a big missing piece in school. We get so focused on the curriculum, and the curriculum will emerge when the teachers and the children show up authentically.  When we are present, there is the opportunity for potential to manifest. But when we are not present, the opportunity for potential and possibilities to manifest actually collapses. Lois Four Arrows is a 76 year old Native American thinker and writer who says that he is optimistic  because he thinks optimism is about living in the present, and letting go of outcomes. I think it's fascinating to look at the lineage of Native Americans thinking which has been so diminished in our contemporary consciousness, to the point of it almost being non-existent, or if it does exist, it's like magical thinking or New Age. The truth is, this is human thinking. I keep thinking of Joanna Macy saying that this is the third turning, with agriculture being the first and the Industrial Revolution being the second, and then this being the third. If human beings get this one figured out it's going to be a real change in human consciousness. Indigenous Wisdom Is An Essential Resource to the PresentHeatherOne of the things that Ben Abbott, scientist and professor at BYU tells us is that scientists will describe research on water and say, water research is young. We've only had two or 300 years to really research what we know about water.  They are talking about the Anthropocene or this contemporary time as the only time that we have presently studied water and what we know about water.  But Ben Abbott reminds us indigenous people have studied, worked with, understood, and been in relationship with water for way longer than present research or empirical study in the way that we've adopted in this contemporary age. We have so much more information if we turn to the experience of indigenous people.CallyThe teachers who work with us in our programs are often describing how they're healed through bringing the arts into their life. Truly, if we're not healing each other, as we live together on the planet, if we're not creating systems that sustain us and sustain each other, we're not going to sustain humanity on this planet. At the BYU Arts Partnership we have made a conscious effort to be present and responsive and to serve with love and distinction.  The 1000s of years worth of information that we can gather from our indigenous people is so valuable. The people who show up to be with us come with their background knowledge, their information, their history, and we have to honor and be present with all of it. LoisI've just started the book, The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. David Graber was an anthropologist at the London School of Economics and Wengrow is a comparative archaeologist who studied Africa and the Middle East at University College London, and is also a visiting professor at NYU.  The Dawn of Everything is a reinterpretation of the historical timeline. The point they're making is that the story that hunter gatherers were small roving bands, and people settled and developed agriculture and civilization  is such a simplistic story. We need to move beyond it to see the whole potential of human possibilities. The first part I'm reading is about the indigenous critique. It's fascinating to me, because I've known that Benjamin Franklin went to the Iroquois Confederacy, and got ideas about democracy that influenced our Constitution, for 30 years. But I did not know that there was this thing that's called the indigenous critique.  Indigenous people organize their communities through conversation, and everyone has a voice in a non-hierarchical conversation. They were critical of the Europeans, the French, the English and the Spanish, because they had money. Because money led to power. Because nobody was free. Everybody was beholden to the hierarchy of power and money. These powerful monarchs in the Native American critique claimed that they were free because they can all sit and talk to each other.  Nobody can be compelled to do anything. They didn't have prisons, or judges. What they had was conversation. This guy, LeHaunt, recorded the conversations with this one indigenous diplomat, who was regarded by everybody as an amazing interlocutor.  This guy could talk his way in and out of anything. Even though the native people did not valorize individuals, this guy rose in European minds. He lived in Paris for six years and this guy, LeHaunt, wrote a book about conversations with this fellow. It was in the 1600s, in the 17th century, and the book was widely read all across Europe. And it influenced the Enlightenment philosophers like Locke, and Rousseau. So all of these ideas that we think of as Enlightenment ideas about equity and equality, and democracy and human nature, can be tied directly to these Native American ideas. And yet again, we eclipsed them.  Who knows about that? I'm so glad for this book. CallyWhen we made our agreement with the Paiute Tribe, to create their lesson plans, one of the things they requested was to see the lesson plans taught in a classroom before they approved them. So we traveled down to Cedar City where many of the Paiute children attend school.  Probably 20 to 25 of the leadership of the Paiute nation came to observe and watch. They were so inspired to watch these lesson plans unfold. Many of the children who were Native American had not been taught about their culture, because their parents and grandparents came through the boarding school era, when you kept secret that you are a Native American. So in their own culture, they don't know when to celebrate their Native American culture, and when it's a shameful thing, because that's what historical trauma does. Some of the Caucasian students did not realize that their friends were Native American, and some Native American children who were learning about their culture for the first time.  It was remarkably healing because it was so relevant to that community.Catastrophe, Culture and ResilienceHeatherI think that indigenous people, and certainly native communities in our area, have great wisdom on how to deal with overwhelmingly difficult challenges. We have a partnership with the northwestern band of the Shoshone, and they've shared with us about the massacre of all their people with only 30 to 40 people of their community left.  But they are still here today. What lessons can we learn from them to have only 30 to 40 people of your population left, but to continue to exist and be resilient, moving forward?CallyThe Shoshone massacre was the largest massacre of Native American lives in US history. Every year they have a commemoration ceremony on the land. They now own the land where that massacre happened for the very first time in history. We were able to film their ceremony. They tell the story. They drum and pray and honor the ancestors and the tragedy that happened. One man stood at the end of the ceremony and sang his song, we must all forgive but we cannot forget. The spirits of our dead are here with us today. And as he sang that song, the healing that happens was just palpable: the resilience that we can survive. One of the lessons we learned from them is how to survive. The first thing the Shoshone are going to do with the land is to restore it to its original ecosystem. This is a $2 million project funded by a grant they obtained to restore the land. They will put an interpretive center on that land so that passersby can visit the interpretive center and tell their story that demonstrates resilience and helps people understand the history of the United States. We've learned in the BYU Arts Partnership that the arts can tell hard stories. Links Mentioned: BYU ARTS Partnership Native American Curriculum InitiativeOn Indigenous Voices and Restoring the Kinship Worldview - A Conversation with Four Arrows and Darcia NarvaezThe Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David WengrowFollow Us:CHLLpodcast.comCHLL on InstagramCHLL on FacebookSubscribe on apple, spotify, pandora, amazon, google

Paradise Intermediate School: After the WildfireLouise interviewed her cousin Michael, a PE teacher at Paradise Intermediate School about the lasting impact of the November 2018 Camp Fire that devastated their community. Paradise is a rural town of 10,000 people in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, that along with many more communities up and down this state, have been ravaged by wildfires due to a 20 year drought.On the evening of November 7, Michael was driving to his home in Chico from his long day of teaching in Paradise, he listened to the news on the radio predicting very high winds, under dry and hot weather conditions. The news warned that the gas and electric company, PG&E, might be forced to turn the power off to customers, and that the community should expect rolling black outs.  But, unfortunately, PG&E did not make the decision to turn off the electricity in a timely way, and so the next morning, as Michael got in his truck and returned from his home in Chico back to the town of Paradise where he teaches, he was looking at a huge plume of smokein front of him and thought, “This is not good.” As he made the twenty minute drive, he got a call from his teaching partner saying, “Well, we might have to do PE in the gymnasium today because of the smoke.” Michael, who had the perspective of the ever-growing plume of black smoke before him, thinks,”We're not going to be teaching PE in the gym. We're going to have to close school for the day!”When Michael arrives at school he tells his colleagues that school needs to be canceled for the day, and that they need to send everybody home. But at the same time, busloads of students from other schools are being dropped off, because they are already evacuating hundreds of children from other schools to come to Paradise Intermediate School as an evacuation center. Michael and his colleagues decide to direct all students to the gymnasium where they are occupied with basketballs and various activities to keep them occupied while the teachers figure  out what to do next. Michael stood at the doors to the gymnasium to direct anxious parents coming to collect their kids. He described to Louise how he learned the enormity of what was going on outside the gymnasium walls.  There were the explosive noises and the sounds of pelting rain.  Parents reported driving through bumper traffic, as propane tanks exploded at homes along the road, and black embers pelted the roofs of cars and houses.  It was now 9:00 in the morning but it was pitch black outside due to the blanket of thick smoke that was choking the area.  While the news of the severity and danger of what was going on outside of the gymnasium was clear, teachers were not getting information on what they should do. As they began to have discussion about making a next steps plan, a police officer from nearby Oroville City strode into the gymnasium and announced, “Everyone needs to get out. Now! Get into any car.  Forget about seat belts.  Just jam into cars and leave now.  There is no time.” People immediately began to comply.  There are just three, maybe four routes, out of the town, which was one of the big problems. So people got stuck in congested traffic, just sitting there with six or more children in the car and fires raging on either side of the road.  It was terrifying, and Michael, just like everyone else in the town of Paradise, most likely, that day wondered,“Is this the day I will die?”  85 people did lose their lives that day, and 19,000 homes, businesses and structures were destroyed.  In the days and weeks that followed, Michael and the teachers of the town of Paradise made calls to find out where families were staying and to connect them to resources.  After the winter holidays, school was reopened for students still in the area at an abandoned Orchard Supply Hardware store. They relocated to the previous site of Paradise high school in the fall of 2019, and then in spring of 2020, the COVID pandemic hit, and they were forced to pivot to a hybrid of teaching from home and online. It was two full years before they were able to return with their students to the Paradise Intermediate School.  Many of the teachers also live in the town of Paradise, and lost their homes. People have had to deal with so much in terms of loss and trauma and death, and then, rebuilding their lives and rebuilding their school. The attention to relationships has been a really strong part.  Michael described that everyone: from the principal, to the superintendent, to his colleagues, to the parents, were generous and compassionate and caring.  The school culture has changed due to daily attention to the social, emotional and academic needs of the students.When Louise asked if this natural disaster, brought on by a warming climate as a result of human actions, had influenced, shaped or changed their curriculum, Michael said it had not.   Michael’s seventh and eighth graders now were third graders when the Camp Fire occurred. He and his colleagues are concerned about the learning loss of the basic reading and math skills that they needed at that time. So Michael, a PE teacher, makes sure to incorporate math and literacy skill building into his PE classes and his social and emotional advisory times.When Louise pushed a little further on whether the Camp Fire had been any kind of a teacher to Michael, his colleagues and his students, he said that they haven't incorporated it into the curriculum.  He also said that he wonders about the value of raising old fears. And so while it seemed to Louise that Michael was interested, or possibly thinking about how this experience could be a teaching tool for these young people who are growing into a world where these kinds of things happen, and increasingly happen, it isn't part of their curriculum now.So Louise UPS’d a copy of the book Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation, a young adult novel titled Two Degrees, about middle school children who are dealing with wildfires and floods, and a children’s book titled Wild Child written by a father for his daughter about losing their home to wildfire to her cousin, Michael, to keep the conversation going.Barriers to Teaching About Climate ChangeLois Hetland   You know, as I hear this, and the same with the teachers Heather and Cally talked to, I keep thinking about the disconnect between what I see as an entry point to talk about this really, catastrophically important thing that's happening to all of us in the world. And then the reality of educators who are directly under threat.  I deeply appreciate how they take care of each other and themselves. But I continue to wonder, how do we catalyze people's interest in the bigger issue? And also, what is it we want people to understand?Cally Flox   I think that the timing really matters. What's that old saying…. “When the student is ready, the teacher appears?” I love that. I'm reflecting on what Michael said about wondering about the value of raising old fears. Why would we teach about this?When is information damaging because it's reactivating fears that you're not ready to process? When is information helpful? You almost can't teach something until the children are asking.  How much time will go by before these people in this community can ask, what led to this problem? What contributed to this? Is there anything we can do to make this better in the future? It might be years, and it might be only months for some people. But the information can't be taught until the learners are ready.Lois Hetland We don't know if the learners are ready if we're not asking them.  It's the educators responsibility to open the conversation up and then to go and meet the kids where they are.  If they're at a place of trauma, or overwhelm, or fear, then you meet them there. You can meet them at an information place.  You can meet them at an emotional place. You can meet them at a practical place. There are lots of different ways. It requires the educators to keep on opening the opportunities.Cally Flox  I want to clarify one thing.  Yes, educators have an opportunity to ask those questions. But these are also traumatized educators. And I'm curious if Michael mentioned, if they have school counselors.  Sometimes we expect more of teachers than they can do.  I'm not certain if I just lost my home in that community that I would be ready to lead those kinds of conversations very well. I think there is a professional role here.  After a school shooting or other trauma, we bring in professionals from the outside, who can read and regulate some of these emotions. These are big issues. Did they have any counseling for the students? Louise Music   Unfortunately I did not ask that question and Michael didn’t specifically talk about that.  He talked about  their social and emotional learning programs. But that's not to say that there weren't counselors.  I imagine that there were. In my mind the big problem here is that we don't teach teachers to teach in constructivist classrooms. We don't teach teachers how to reveal or uncover what is going on with kids:what they're worried about, what they're excited about and what their interests are. Instead, we give teachers a curriculum to give to kids, and that's what teachers know how to do. We've talked before about how teachers need more deeper disciplinary knowledge.  I think it's great when they do, but I don't believe it's the most important thing.  I believe that there are so many disciplinary resources that teachers can draw upon and bring into their classroom. I think what teachers really need to be able to do is to set up classrooms where children have multiple ways to talk about what's going on with them, to make connections with literature, or math content, and to keep surfacing their ideas so that the teacher can see it and respond. That's the biggest thing that we don't teach teachers to do. How can a teacher respond to children at the right time, if they don't have multiple opportunities every day to see where kids are at given that they're all going to be in different places.Surfacing Feelings and Fears Through the ArtsHeather  That's what I loved about being a dance teacher. I felt that I got that opportunity every day because I created an environment where the children were making choices and their choices revealed to me what was important to them. So if they got to choose to make a dance, what were they making a dance about? Their uncle who didn't make it across the border, or their sister who had a miscarriage. And that was hard for me as a teacher because I didn't know anything about these topics myself. I was only 24 years old. I think that arts integrated constructivist classrooms provide a way for student experience to be expressed. In fact, one of the students from Paradise ended up in one of our school districts here in Utah.  The Granite School District had a visual art exhibit that I did some reporting on with my mom, who is a photographer. The student from Paradise had done a visual art piece on the forest on fire, and the art teacher was providing this student with processing and learning time. Lois Hetland  I think that's a really interesting point, because it's about choice. When you set up your curriculum in a way that allows kids to make choices about their expressions, then you're going to find out what's on their minds.Louise Music  I think that's right, Lois. And I think that teachers are afraid that they won't have the answers, or they won't know what to do in an emotional or triggering situation. I think that that's where dealing with trauma and problems is something that kids need to be learning in school. I wonder how you would talk about that, Cally, because I think it goes to why Paul Hawken, in his book, has that whole section on agency.  What do you think?Creative AgencyCally Flox  Thank you for asking. I was talking to an ethnomusicologist in our fine arts college. At the University where I work we were talking about “what's the most important outcome?” He came up with the words creative agency. For the last number of years, I've participated in the trauma sensitive schools conference. This is a movement that has taken off. Their conference doubles in size every year, and people are really hungry for information about what we can do for traumatized children. There is no policy or practice that should be ever implemented as one size fits all.  We need to start creating cultures where talking about our mental health is welcome, embraced, appreciated, valued, supported, and not stigmatized. Until we embody learning with our full physical self with multi sensory experiences, our body doesn't have a way to process the trauma and move it through our nervous system. Teaching children to embrace their bodies, love their bodies, acknowledge their bodies and notice, reflect and respond to the feedback from our bodies is, I think, one of the first places we need to start in our education system. The way you describe constructivism just inspires my heart. And along with that, I think one of the second essential things is to teach people to embrace their physicality, and to self regulate through their entire brain and body connection.Intergenerational Connections for Strength and HealingLois Hetland  I'm thinking about this idea of multi generational conversations, which has been the big idea that we have been talking about. A school faculty is a multi generational group. You’ve got people in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, their 50s, their 60s. If you get that group of people together, if somebody organizes that, you can do all sorts of things in those groups.  You can brainstorm, “what would it make sense to teach? What opportunities does the wildfire give us?” Well, it gives us opportunities to think about trauma, gives us opportunities to think about forests, gives us opportunities to think about weather, gives us opportunities to think about community, and networks of support gives us opportunities to think about resilience. I think to make faculties into those communities, we need to learn from everyone on a faculty.Cally FloxYes, imagine a faculty where the experienced teachers share freely and liberally with the new teachers and the new teachers share freely, and that intergenerational piece, the connection from embodying our own selves and then embodying that community in that intergenerational way. That's why we started these conversations. You summarized the vision we had our first summer together when we went, “Oh, man, intergenerational communications, look what we're learning from each other.” Really well said, Lois.When we started recording today, we had a slow start.  We discussed whether we were really ready to record today or not, and how emotionally the distractions in the world were making us late for this very session and distracting us in big ways in the world. And from this conversation, my hope is restored. I started the conversation discouraged and kind of worried about the world. And you have restored to me some hope. And I say thank you for that.Heather FrancisI think we're doing the embodied processing that we just discussed. We  get to be in conversation on Zoom.  I get to see your bodies when you are talking about intergenerational connections.  Cally,in my mind I am Cally,  I embody Lois, I embody Louise.  We are a community and there are pieces of my like cellular being that I feel I've come from you because of the time we've spent online and in person. I'm grateful. Links Mentioned: Fire In Paradise Documentary (40 Minutes) - NetflixFire in Paradise - Frontline You TubeGranite School District Student reflecting on Paradise wildfire experience - HEATHERFollow Us:CHLLpodcast.comCHLL on InstagramCHLL on FacebookSubscribe on apple, spotify, pandora, amazon, google

Hurricanes of Increasing Frequency and IntensityHeather and Cally spoke with educators in Louisiana and Florida about hurricanes in the regions which are more frequent and more intense because of climate change.  They learned new things about experiencing hurricanes. For example, all the teachers have a hurricane closet and in April they stock it up with canned goods and toilet paper and flashlights and weather monitors. Then at Thanksgiving, they donate everything that wasn't used during the hurricane season, and then they stock up for the next year because it's just part of their lived experience. When asked about the impact on students, they were told that students get frustrated with missing school days because of hurricanes. They have to make the days up at the end of the school year.  Students are used to the hurricanes and complain that it’s, “...just hard rain! Why won't they let us go to school?” It's just not that big a deal, except for the fact that they evacuate their classrooms, because schools on the coasts that get hit the hardest are damaged and there are people who need shelter because their homes are gone. The students of teachers that Heather and Cally spoke with do not endure loss of property or life, but their school is now a shelter for the Red Cross. And that's really disruptive for teaching and learning.Here's a news report about hurricane Ian that struck Florida in September 2022 resulting in 160 fatalities and the loss of power and homes, and 113 billion dollars in damages.News Report: Hurricane Ian September 2022Hello, DeSoto. County residents, students, parents, employees.  It’s sad to be at DeSoto County High School this morning observing the damage that we're going to see today. Our high school is going to be closed for approximately two months. And we're coming up with an emergency plan to make sure that we continue the education for our high school students, or other schools we're trying to get online. As soon as we can safely do that. We're going to have an industrial hygienist that will go to each school to make sure they're safe. And they're free from the mold that they're going to be good learning environments for students, safe places for employees to work in as soon as we can get them online. We're gonna change from a monthly update to a weekly update. Please look at the district Facebook site, the district website, we will use robocalls to communicate with you. We're gonna send some drone footage up for you to look at. So you can see the damage. At the high school we've got extensive water damage within the building, and to the roofs. We've got a crew that's on site right now that's been working. We had the Industrial Hygienist look at the schools in Charlotte County and DeSoto County. We've got a full time job ahead of us, and we ask you to be with us. We will keep you informed, and we're gonna work hard to get our schools open. We're gonna save this high school. And we look forward to getting our students back in school. Thank you so much for your patience. God bless each and every one of you in DeSoto. County and in the state of Florida. Thank you.Teaching Hurricanes and Climate Science in Louisiana - or not? Teachers told Cally and Heather that the expectations for learning are to cover the curriculum. Weather may be a necessary disruption, but teachers are responsible to cover all the material and to get it done even with extreme climate disruptions. So Cally and Heather asked both teachers in Florida and Louisiana if they knew of any curriculum teaching about the climate crisis or human impact on the environment. They both said, “No, not that they are aware of. This is not a big topic in our area.” The science teacher that Cally and Heather  spoke with teaches a district mandated curriculum called amplify science, that she supplements with, what she believes to be, good science. So it's obvious from the news stories, from these interviews, that extreme weather and climate change are impacting learning. However, from these interviews, these teachers are not adapting the curriculum in their classrooms.Lois Hetland  I am thinking about teachers saying climate change is not a big topic in their area. Florida and Louisiana, are two places where the predictions from the scientists are that they are going to be underwater in a very few years, by 2050.  If we would face this and have a plan to retreat, we could get people out of these areas and resettled in areas where they could thrive. But it's not going to happen, because we're turning away from it. My friend, Bob Chen says, “Weather is the clothes you have and that you're wearing today. Climate is the clothes you have in your closet.” So basically, weather is daily-ness and climate is the-over-time.  It sounds like these teachers  are responding to the weather, but they're not responding to the-over-time. The fact is that looking at climate means more frequent storms, more heavier storms, more events, and more impact. And they're acting as if that doesn't exist. This idea of the scripted or mandated curriculum drives me crazy, because what I've heard is that people do it in the name of equity. Sure - let's make sure that nobody learns anything, because we're just going to parrot things back and forth. Cally Flox    The science teacher we spoke with described the scripted curriculum, and then two supplemental curriculums.  Not one of them introduces climate change in any way in these three science curriculums. I asked the question about climate change in the curriculum, and her answer was, “Well, we must have different points of view on that topic.” I was stunned to realize that she did not accept climate change, and she is the science teacher. I love that her students are achieving really high on the standards, and that her colleagues are not bothering her about bringing in her own teaching ideas because her students are so high achieving.  She's in an area where there's a lot of pressure on achievement and the score the school gets.  But one thing she pointed out is her school doesn't get any credit for her work, because only math and reading count in the school's grade. That's what they're focused on. That's what they're looking at. That's what the parents value. So the relevance of what's happening to these students is not even part of their learning. Louise Music  What we're talking about here is the teacher and the curriculum. We are talking about what the teacher cares about and what the teacher is doing. We are talking about the curriculum and how teachers decide, and what parents and school administrators value.  But what about the students? If their homes get flooded, if there's mud in their living rooms, this makes an impact on children's lives.  There's a lot of stress on families.  Children are not in a bubble.  If they’re not experiencing extreme weather directly in their own homes, they're  hearing about how the hurricanes and the dramatic rains in their cities aren't isolated events.  They're hearing about places where people are dying and losing their homes. It has to cause anxiety in our young people. If they're not having a chance to bring the concerns and questions that they have inside them to the fore, then they're not learning what they really need. Students can be learning things that they can regurgitate onto a standardized test, but the trauma to children and all human beings is what gets hidden.Lois Hetland  We have data from NASA with statistics that 97% or 100% of scientists who work on climatology understand that climate change is caused by human beings, the data is so clear. I think there are wonderful teachers out there who have been constrained by the information sources that  have the opinions of people they respect, who are not informed.Is Climate Science Standards Based, or Student Centered?Cally Flox  I think we have to think about when and how people are teachable. Lois, one time you and I were talking about how to get teachers to be more connected to the world around them today. And your answer was to expose teachers to more contemporary artists to help them be more relevant, more empathetic and understanding of human nature and differences of opinions. The first thing that came to my mind is that these teachers are not using contemporary scientists. They are instead relying on standard curriculum written and scripted and handed to them, and not reading what contemporary scientists are warning us about. What a disconnect! So I went on our state website after the conversation and reviewed where Utah is on this issue. Utah has had climate change in the core standards in science for a very long time. Now, recently, there was a whole article on outrageous quotes of school board members talking about evolution and climate change. They absolutely were advocating that children never be taught that climate change is caused by people. Science educators said that there is too much evidence to the contrary and the climate science standards have been retained. But I wonder if in my own state, if I could find science teachers who choose not to present climate science in alignment with our own standards.Heather Francis That's what's so interesting.  I went to Louisiana's website to see the standards, and I found on the Louisiana State Education website, an entire environmental literacy program. They have a commission for environmental literacy. And then I went and looked at the fifth grade science standards and there are two big key ideas about climate change and human impact on the environment. So the science teacher we spoke with has the standards, and she is making choices not to teach those things. The closest she got was telling us that her class talked about Katrina and how the levees broke, and that they do an activity to save their town from flooding. But it's just an exercise, rather than a deeper understanding of causes or implication for the future. Cally and I only spoke with this teacher for a half hour, and truly we would need to have more conversation to really understand.  There were a lot of things shared that Cally and I were in complete agreement with.  We have many shared values. One of them was this teacher’s wish that elementary school teachers be taken more seriously as people who understand content. Now we were having doubts, because well, you're a science teacher and you’re not teaching about climate change. She felt very strongly that elementary education is where you set the foundation for your life. And we believe that too. And there just would need to be a lot more conversations to really understand this teacher.Lois HetlandYeah, I think one of the problems that I've experienced as an elementary teacher, and as you know, working with lots of elementary teachers, is the lack of disciplinary expertise. So many elementary teachers were never experts in any discipline. You know, they weren't science experts. They weren't literature experts. They weren't mathematics experts. We were generalists and so we relied on translations from the experts, through educationists, to us. I think that's a problem with our professional development and our college level teacher preparation. It's not the teachers who dropped the ball. It's the system that dropped the ball in educating those teachers. I think teachers have got to understand what expertise is. They really have to become disciplinary experts in something so that they understand what that is. And then it's like, then you would start to read real science or read real mathematicians. Louise Music  Except that everything is changing so quickly, all the time. It's about disciplinary knowledge, but also connecting to experts. This is where the internet can be so important as a resource for young people to be researchers.  And children, themselves, are resources for knowledge. I think that as we worry about children's learning loss from COVID, we are missing out on mining children's experience to find out what they have experienced through living through a global pandemic.  From children at the ages of four and five and six, there is so much important knowledge for all of us. I don't think we can be surprised that people are using scripted curriculum, because I experience it as I volunteer in a second grade classroom here in Oakland, California. I'm shocked by it. But I am also impressed by the dedication, the stability, the love, and the well meaningness that this teacher brings to their students. I think it's about finding better ways to use the internet, I think it's about open education resources. And it's about teachers learning from each other and opening up their classrooms, and also learning from the students.Climate Change Trauma Cally Flox How many researchers in education have shown that the more relevant something is, the better the students learn it, and what's more relevant than the world around you? And certainly, we're missing an educational opportunity when we stick to scripted curriculum that doesn't allow us to follow the news and track what's happening and relevant in the world and in fact, protecting our homes and families? We also must acknowledge the impacts of trauma on learning.  There is an important trauma sensitive schools movement, and their conferences are growing every year because teachers need some place to turn to support the shared traumas that everyone is enduring. One of the things we know is that anything learned with stress is recalled with that same stress, because of the way the neural pathways are laid down, and the emotions you attach to information as it's formed. Those same neural pathways are activated when you access that information. We all shared COVID, and we all learned stressful things. People talk about learning loss, but we fail to learn what children experienced during the pandemic shut down while their families endured stress, trying to make ends meet and maintain their jobs.  There are many things that happened and ways that people responded, including racial reckonings and extreme climate events.  I really wonder what would happen if we interviewed people ten years from now about how all of this has impacted them. Today’s students might be performing well on tests, but can they describe what happened to them in the world as they were growing up?Lois Hetland   I think it must have to do with fear when people don't want to face climate change, and describe it as just another day at school, or it's not in my science curriculum. Heather Francis   Fear or desensitization. My friend in Florida said that overtime extreme weather becomes an everyday thing. It's every year, and people become desensitized to it. She likened it to an abusive relationship.  It just is what it is.  I think that goes to one of the climate myths that the climate has always been changing. True enough but the rate of change is unlike anything in the past. Cally Flox   How will the children tell the stories of these hurricanes, and make meaning of them for the future, if we don't let them talk about these hurricanes while they're experiencing them?Links Mentioned: Do Scientists Agree on Climate Change? Yes - The Vast Majority 97%Childhood Trauma Due to Climate ChangeWith A Changing Climate, Students are Facing a Mental Health CrisisEco- Anxiety is Harming Young People’s Mental Health - But it Doesn’t Have ToFollow Us:CHLLpodcast.comCHLL on InstagramCHLL on FacebookSubscribe on apple, spotify, pandora, amazon, google

Cognitive Science, Climate Science, and the ApocalypseOur question for this series, Is Climate Change Changing Classrooms? puts the problem and the issue of improving classrooms directly in conversation with the climate crisis.  These two crises can actually, when put together, inform the solutions to each other.  They are both about humanity’s existential future. If we don't educate our young people, they will not have the skills, the agency and the confidence to transform unsustainable systems to move humanity forward. And if we don't address our climate crisis there's not going to be a healthy or livable environment for humans to continue. So these two issues are really interconnected with the future of humanity.There are an abundance of cognitive scientists, education researchers and practitioners, who have much to tell us about what works for kids in schools.  They tell us things such as, students need to be involved in learning that is active, that's of importance to them, and that's of importance to their teachers. And yet, teachers are too often handed mandated curriculum that is peddled by publishers to district and state administrators.  The curriculum has little meaning because it is decontextualized from children's lives, interests and communities.There are an abundance of climate scientists with consensus on what we need to do in order to address our climate crisis.  But just as in education, that knowledge continues  largely unheeded.  We continue with systemic dysfunctions in education and, really in all aspects of society, that reinforce a status quo that, if not addressed, will spell certain disaster for humanity.Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One GenerationRegeneration, Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation is a book by Paul Hawken with many resources from people who are taking positive action on the climate crisis.  Dr. Jewry Rugeley is the lead author of the sixth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  In 2020 Dr. Jewry delivered findings that if we bring carbon dioxide emissions down to net zero, global warming will level off and the climate will stabilize within a decade or two. There will be very little to no additional warming.  The current best estimate is zero.For decades, scientists shared the mistaken idea that it would take a long, long time for the climate to re regulate itself. But now scientists tell us nature will regenerate itself very quickly if human beings take the necessary actions needed.Classrooms and Climate Change are Connected!Paul Hawken connects classrooms to the climate in the opening chapter, saying our planet and youth are telling us the same story. ‘Vital connections have been severed between human beings and nature, within nature itself and between people, religions, governments and commerce. This disconnection is the origin of the climate crisis. It is the very root. And it is where we would discover solutions and actions that can engage all people regardless of income, race, gender, or belief. And so he goes on to say that what we need to do is to engage the majority of humanity.’Paul Hawken tells us that we are either stealing the future or healing the future, depending on whether or not we take action. Regeneration is not only about bringing the world back to life, it is about bringing each of us back to life. It has meaning and scope. It expresses faith and kindness. It involves imagination and creativity. This is a watershed moment in history.  The heating planet is our commons, and it holds us all to address and reverse the climate crisis.   We have created an astonishing moment of truth.  The climate crisis is not a science problem. It is a human problem.To Address and Reverse the Climate Crisis Requires Connection and ReciprocityWhat if the K 12 curriculum for all young people engaged them in a new relationship of kinship with the natural world, and provided the historical, social, economic and environmental context to understand where we are on our planet, what the potential adaptations and solutions are, and that this is a collective effort for their generation to lead? Imagine young people, in their writing classes imagining what the solutions for the future would look like. Imagine, right from kindergarten, children researching and expressing their ideas about how to protect animals in their watershed, or improve the quality of our water and assure access to clean water for everyone.This is a curricular throughline that can connect to issues and understanding of the natural world and human impact on healthy communities in their own neighborhoods and lives.  Questions of interest and importance in children's local communities have the potential to actually engage them, offer them a sense of agency, and help them to see the careers of interest and importance that they can grow into.A K-12 Curriculum That Can Restore Our Environment and Hope to the FutureA curriculum that involves children with the beauty, the miracle, and the regenerative capacity of the natural world, is one where skills, knowledge and techniques in the physical and earth sciences, historical and social sciences, math, technology, engineering, music, dance drama and the visual, literary and media arts can be taught, explored, developed and deepened.  But this is not just the work of educators or scientists.  Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation will necessarily need to be an international and intergenerational cross-sector, cross-industry effort involving artists, health workers, food providers, urban planners, engineers -all of us.   It will require a coming-together for common cause.   Designed with respect for the knowledge and interests of students, teachers and their communities, it can be an exciting, motivating and hopeful challenge!Lois HetlandWow, I thought so many things. I thought about the video on Restoring the Kinship Worldview that Mark Borchelt sent us from Four Arrows talking about the indigenous perspective, and being relational.  I thought about the Earth Shot Awards organized by Princess Kate and Prince William which I'm going to attend here in Boston.  15 winners will get $1.2 million each to advance their idea around the categories of building a waste free world, reviving our oceans, cleaning our air, fixing our climate. The whole idea is that the Earth Shot is like this idea of curing cancer, but it's based on the moonshot. President Kennedy said we can go to the moon and he set out to organize our resources to do it in 10 years. This is also organized to be done by 2030, which is just so incredible.Louise MusicAnd there's an essential role for everyone. I think that if we were teaching our children through the social, economic and environmental issues of our time, we could also eliminate racism in one generation, and possibly poverty, and even war.  We have the opportunity to make a huge pivot, because our children are such natural learners.  Margaret Wheatley tells us that we don't need to teach people to collaborate. Human beings naturally want to collaborate. But we live in a system where our schools teach through, and about, individual achievement, That's not naturally how children come to school. They come with a  love to work together and hear each other's ideas.  They just don't get enough opportunities to cultivate collaborative practices, and they soon learn that connecting to the work of others is cheating, and they are conditioned to ‘race to the top.’Intergenerational Tensions and ConnectionsHeather FrancisI think sometimes, intergenerationally, it doesn't feel like collaboration.  I remember being in school, learning about climate change, learning about my environment, and being told about the crisis. I felt like  older people are telling me and other young people, ‘Here is your problem to solve.  We're not going to be here for it.’ That doesn't feel like collaboration. It feels like passing down the problem, and not thinking about future generations. But I love the title of that book, because it gives me hope. It says in one generation!  So rather than passing down to younger people, it is collaborations, both directions, right? It's elders concerned for those who are following them. And then as young people and people younger than me, we can have that same concern for those who will follow us. I do think sometimes it doesn't feel that way because it feels so scary. And I know I have wondered, if I take action, is everybody else gonna do it? Because I feel it's only going to make an impact if everybody does so.Lois HetlandYou know, Heather, I think I told you guys that I've started re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Nozick.  This is a book that was written in 1974 and I must have read it in 1975, or something like that. It was really close to the time when Rachel Carson had written Silent Spring.  It was the first Earth Day, and I was young, and very idealistic, and trying to save the world.  My whole generation had experienced the assassinations of the Kennedys, and Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, and it was just such a mess.  There was the Vietnam War and we were so angry.  And we felt we couldn’t trust anybody over 30! And there was this huge motivation to fix the climate and to stop polluting, and to stop the wars and stop the industrial, military, industrial complex. And this is what we grew up on, in addition to having to line up and go out for nuclear bomb drills in first grade.  Line up in the hall and sit down and put our heads down and put our arms over our heads. And I remember thinking, I don't think they've thought this through really well, because my neck is exposed, and I think the glass could cut it, when I didn't really need to worry about that because we were all going to be vaporized. Our sense of being desperate and needing to do something was so huge. And Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a book that so many people in my generation read.  Millions and millions and millions of copies sold all over the world. Going back to it and reading the naive idealism of that time, and that generation, gives me pause.  Contrasting that with the idea that we're the generation that passed down the climate problem, and that the millennials, and the generation Z, and the A's are all thinking of us as the super bad guys who messed it all up. I really think the disconnect between those two truths is just so hard. It's really hard.Louise MusicPeter Senge is a systems thinking guy from MIT who wrote The Fifth Discipline.  He talks about the creative tension between our current reality and our vision. He says that we are often  not honest about our current reality, and how bad it really is. And then we're not as ambitious as we need to be about the vision of where we really want to go.  I think that's the question we need to be posing to our children and schools. What should the world really look like? We shouldn’t resign ourselves to people who are in poverty forever, and an elite group of billionaires forever. We need the boldness of our real vision, regardless of how idealistic or naive it might seem.  In Paul Hawken’s  book, Heather, he's got a whole section on agency. He talks about how natural it is to worry that it matters little if individuals are taking action, if others are not. But he says, from the planet's point of view, there is no difference between a climate denier and someone who understands the problem, but does nothing. The number one cause of human change is when people around us change. It is about somebody else making change, but it is also about each and every one of us. It's a both/and.Solutions for the FutureCally FloxSometimes, in our powerlessness, we feel we are being asked to do things that aren't super effective. And so we do things just to do things. So I want to think of how and when we are being effective. One of the places where I found great hope was in the idea that if we take the steps to bring the carbon emissions down to net zero, we can end global warming in a decade or two!  A decade is measurable. And that feels doable. One of my best friends is a water engineer, and she's been very clear.  The planet is resilient.  Humans are the ones who can't adapt this fast.  Katharine Hayhoe was a keynote speaker at our teacher’s conference this week.  She said that if all the people did what they could do, it would only solve  25% of the problem.  The rest of the 75% is up to the actions of businesses and corporations and policymakers.  We have to change in effective, reasonable ways. We have to have support from those operating at systemic levels. She said one of the most important things we have to do is have this conversation. If we don't all go home from her talk that day, and communicate the problem and solutions with everybody around us, nothing's going to change.How do we talk to some of the biggest violators of the pollution regulations?  I think one of the problems is, it's not personal. The big polluters and extractors go for money, and they don't care if they hurt humanity. Was anyone trying to hurt each of us as individuals? No, they don't know us. And there's an ability to make invisible all of the individuals on the planet and just focus on the profitt. I really like the ideas that have been shared so far about it all comes down to being connected to the whole world, connected to each other, connected to the earth.  That we survive together, or not at all. And we can only do it together.Lois HetlandI’m thinking of the book by Kim Stanley Robinson that Louise and I just read, called The Ministry for the Future.  It starts in 2023 with a heatwave in India that kills 20 million people. And that catalyzes a whole bunch of actions but it had to get bad enough. This is what physical therapists always say, that people don't do their exercises because there is not enough pain.  If you have enough pain, then you do your exercises. I think this event, this fictional event of 20 million people dying in India, was enough pain. And it catalyzed all sorts of responses, including the development of the ministry of the future by the United Nations. For the next 40 years there are so many efforts going on, not unlike the Earth Shot lifting up projects and giving them a big chunk of money to move their climate positive idea into reality. The Ministry for the Future was doing things like that, too.  Cally FloxLois was talking about how many people are making a difference. And there are so many teachers making a difference. And so many places in education where great learning is happening. I'm most excited about talking with teachers who have survived some of these climate weird experiences and what they've done with their students. I look forward to hearing more about Lois's mural project where students are participating in educating themselves and their community about the tide rising right there in their own neighborhood and what the can do to mitigate the dangers, or adapt..Heather FrancisI'm excited because in the introduction we talked about curriculum that comes from publishers that is not connected to children's lives at all. But experiencing extreme weather is part of the textbook of life, that everyone is experiencing. It's not abstract. It's a real thing. And I like thinking about these life experiences as the curriculum in our schools.Lois HetlandPaul Hetland was the one who was sharing with us, in our Series 1 podcasts, that it is more important to talk about the climate crisis than it is to actually do things on the person by person level. He talked about Al Gore getting criticized for flying all over the world, to talk about his film The Inconvenient Truth. And his personal airline travel was fairly inconsequential. It was just a way to  make him out to be not as important as he really is. What's important is that he got people educated and talking about this topic.  Paul was saying something that Louise was saying to Heather, which is, that people who acknowledge that the human caused heating that's going on in the world, are as likely to be flying all over the place on airplanes, and not recycling.  In other words, you don't have to be a climate denier to be doing damage to the world. And we're all probably doing a lot of damage to the world. And so the idea of talking about it, and keeping bringing the conversation forward, is just so important.Links and Resources Mentioned:Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation Restoring the Kinship Worldview by Four Arrows and Darcia NarvaezKatherine Hayhoe - A New Way to Talk About the Climate CrisisZen and the Art of Motorcycle MaintenanceThe Ministry for the FutureFollow Us:CHLLpodcast.comCHLL on InstagramCHLL on FacebookSubscribe on apple, spotify, pandora, amazon, google

Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise (CHLL) reflect on what has been so compelling about their CHLL conversations. They share what structures and strategies have made their time together valuable, what they learned from the cross-generational conversation they had with people from across the country, and what they believe is possible for CHLL in the future. LINKS FROM THIS EPISODECheck-ins for getting ready to be fully present and participate. There are lots of ways to approach it. The CHLL approach is constrained by time (2-5 minutes) and monitored by individual comfort and need.Use the Creativity Diamond Protocol to generate better ideas. Heather Francis: Welcome to the fourth and last episode of the first series in the CHLL podcast. Today we are going to have an open and honest conversation about our project: where we are now, how we feel, and where we want to go next. We have met twice a month for conversation for the past two years. As we've met, we've developed a structure and habit, a protocol for talking with each other. We're going to use that protocol for this episode. We're inviting our listeners to hear what it's like to really be a part of a CHLL conversation. Our protocol always begins with check-ins. And before we start, let's tell our listeners what check-ins are and why they're important to us.GETTING READY FOR CONVERSATION WITH CHECK-INS Cally Flox: For me, the check-in is getting ready to begin. Sometimes we expect ourselves to start without acknowledging that we're human beings first. Check-ins offer the invitation for everybody to say what needs to be said, to release whatever's occupying their mental space in order to be present for the task at hand. That's what a check-in is for me.Louise Music: I think check-ins are all about presence. It's the opportunity to do whatever it takes to settle into myself. A check-in allows me to have that gift of being available for what comes next and not worrying about if I am going to do it right. Or feeling my body and myself and bringing my whole self completely. Checking-in is a really necessary part that I've come to appreciate that we always take the time for. Cally Flox: Yesterday I recalled the research that says schools have to be organized around relationships. That means that every meeting and everything we do should also be organized around relationships. If we don't put relationships first, the quality of the rest of the work goes down. Check-ins say—right up front—‘I care about you. I care. Thank you for inviting my whole self in.’Heather Francis: The question we're exploring is: What does CHLL mean to me? Cally Flox:   When I was a child, I remember calling my best friend and saying, ‘What do I say when I just want to go for a walk and talk?’ We created a code phrase: ‘We're gonna have a Coke,’ because we can't drink coffee. We're going for Coke. That was our code word for ‘I just need a conversation.’ I always valued it. I concretely set time for conversation even as a child. As I grew, I found a practice of choosing people I wanted to have conversations with. And I chose my neighbor across the street, and a junior-high counselor, and a high-school teacher and different people. I chose my friends based on ‘Who's interesting?’ ‘Who do I want to have conversations with?’GOING FORWARD TOGETHER: WHY CONVERSATION IS IMPORTANT FOR EVERYONE AND EDUCATION Heather Francis: Can I read something from my journaling earlier? I actually drew a picture of a car, a vehicle, and I wrote “conversation is the vehicle where people are carried from where they are to where they want to be.”Louise Music: What CHLL is for me…I love that car metaphor. There's the car and you turn on the headlights to see where you're going, but you need a direction—where are you going? And before CHLL actually became CHLL, there was that phone call to Cally. I had just left my role at the Alameda County Office of Education. I'd gone on a trip with my partner, I came back, and everything in California was shut down. All the schools were shut down. I called Cally to say, “Cally, what are we going to do now?” “How do we figure out what's next?” That was a really important question. In our first conversations, we came up with that question: “What is the best use of our relationships, of our experience, of our privilege, at this time, when people are suffering, when people are sick, when people are dying, when there is a racial reckoning, when there is war, when there are mass migrations? What do we do?” CHLL is intentional. We have a sense, like a North Star, about where are we going. Cally Flox: Our invitation is to jump in this space with us and build your own space, in your own sphere, wherever you are.Heather Francis: We hope to have lots of listeners join our conversations and get on Zoom with us, and record with us. Cally Flox: Start your own conversations with your own family members, friends—where you can hear your own voice and practice listening to others.Lois Hetland: Moving from podcast conversation into the sphere of action: I think it was Dewey, who talked about conversation as a twilight space. Twilight is this magical time in the day where you think, ‘There must be fairies…’ It's enchanted somehow. Conversations are like that, because you can be going down one direction, and then the conversation turns on a dime, and then it's going somewhere else, and then you can come back or go somewhere else. Conversation is so responsive. I think that really makes it really powerful. Heather Francis: There have been times when we have started with check-ins and the check-ins never stopped, right? We actually didn't get to an agenda item. We talked for two hours. We did the whole weaving conversation thing. And at the end, I would think, well, what was the purpose of that? Did we get anything done? And then I think, “Oh, yeah, I'm different now.” Even if we didn't follow an agenda, even if there was no end goal, even if a decision wasn't made, I existed in the twilight zone of conversation, and I was changed. That is enough for me. CHLL is like a transformational shower of knowledge and love and opportunity and mentoring. I really reflected about mentoring and how each one of you has been a mentor to me. Lois Hetland: I love the framework that Kimble and Stables made. It's a really simple one that you start somewhere, and then you do something with this thing you've started with your hands. Then, you go back into your head and do something with it in your head. You keep doing that back and forth. It expands each time you're going further. You have this sort of Christmas tree shape. At the bottom, you've got a more realized idea and a better product. You're going back and forth between your hand and your head, and I feel like we've been doing that in this group. It really fills me up.Heather Francis: Remember, it was only two weeks ago you reminded us about the design from the diamond creativity framework where you diverge and then converge. That was illuminating. Cally’s eyes are lighting up.Cally Flox: Yes, I took that right back to the team meeting that week. When people went into the divergent place and got scared, I explained the diamond: that you start with an idea at the top, then you go wide to the sides, and then you converge… everyone had the safety to trust the process. We applied that theory right away. You have to let go of things. Then, to converge—now, we're letting go of all the creative, divergent brainstorming. We're going to narrow in on the solution and what we're going to do.Heather Francis: Yes, when you're diverging, you're saying, “High productivity, high brainstorming, no judgment.” To converge again at the bottom of the diamond, you do a complete 180 and say. “Judge, value, make meaning.” That can be painful. LOOKING AHEAD TO MORE INTERGENERATIONAL CONVERSATIONS ON EDUCATION Heather Francis: Where are we going?  We've given quite a bit of thought in this conversation about where we're going. I will conclude with what we believe is going to be happening in the next year. We are looking at producing the CHLL podcast series in groups of about four episodes. CHLL will meet and discuss a topic, probably one of the issues in education and in the world where they intersect. We'll talk about it together. We'll have an episode where we bring in a guest or expert on one of these topics to discuss with us. We'll host another episode with a multigenerational focus group to discuss the topic. And then we'll conclude with a fourth episode where CHLL reflects on what we've learned with our guest expert and our multigenerational focus group. Louise Music:  We'd love to hear from our listeners what topics matter to them. We are really grateful for the 24 people who have taken their time to be in conversation with us over the last year. We're going to continue to be in dialogue with them and to rely on them, but we're inviting others in as well. We will be producing a newsletter and our website is going to be a dynamic place for people to come and see what connections they can make through the people that we're able to bring together in CHLL, and how they can influence what we do going forward.Heather Francis: The CHLL podcast is produced by the BYU Arts Partnership. Special thanks to James Huston for editing, Tavin Borrowman for the artwork, and Scott Flox for the music. If you like what you've heard, please leave a review. This helps tremendously as we work to bring more people to our CHLL conversations. You can find the show notes and more about CHLL at the chllpodcast.com or on social media. Our handle is @chllpodcast. And that's CHLL for Cally, Heather, Lois, and Louise. We can't wait to chill with you next time.

In this episode, Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise (CHLL) dig deeper into the big ideas that surfaced within each generational cohort group: listening, climate change, interconnectedness and hope. Learn what the number one common concern was for people in each of the distinct conversations. LINKS FROM THIS EPISODEMark Borchalt suggests models such as the Integrated Learning Specialist Program that Cally and Scott Flox visited and that was highly influenced by Lois Hetland and colleagues at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Project Zero.The CHLL podcast shares and spreads transformational practices such as Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and resources suggested by Derek Fenner as strategies to sustain the life weight of communities that have been damaged and erased through schooling.Arzu Mistry recommends David Sobel’s Place-Based Education to fully utilize the resources of local community and environment as the starting place for curriculum development, strengthening community bonds, appreciation for the natural world, and a commitment to citizen engagement. We are CHLL: Cally, Heather, Lois, and Louise. In our last episode, we shared what happened in the six generational focus groups that we met with last year, including members of Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, boomers, and the greatest generation. We listened to some of their clips and introduced listeners to their ideas and the issues that arose in the focus groups when we were talking about the opportunities facing the world and education today, and how they intersect. In this episode, we go deeper. We look at the big themes that surfaced from all the focus group conversations as a whole. We examine the nuances that distinguish them from each other.  We pored over the recordings from these conversations, and it's provoked new ideas for each of us. We share themes from the conversations that resonated with each of us individually.WE NEED MORE LISTENING IN THE WORLD AND TO REDUCE CONFLICT IN OUR CONVERSATIONS Cally Flox: An overarching problem discussed by everyone is that there's not enough listening in the world. There's so much conflict in our conversations. I know we mentioned this briefly in the first two episodes, but it's really remarkable that every group raised the importance of being able to listen to people with different perspectives. Across generational cohort groups, the inability to listen and be curious about differing viewpoints was a problem that participants felt affects our ability to seriously work together towards better outcomes on any of the other difficult issues. In our high-school group, Grace was the first one to name that she thought listening was the biggest problem in society:Grace Blumell: “That's an issue that’s common where I live. We're so quick to discredit other people and tell them that the experiences they're having is not really what they're having. I think really listening and understanding people as best as we can, and not telling people that they're experiencing something when they're not experiencing something. I think that's an issue that's throughout the world. We don't really listen.” Maia Monahan: “I agree, I think it's just being curious without being judgmental, and being open and not immediately jumping to conclusions. It's curiosity without judgment that I think is missing.”Cally Flox: Grace describes feeling dismissed by older, more experienced people:Grace Blumell: “My grandparents cannot listen to me. It's once again putting yourself in somebody's perspective. They can't validate my experiences or the experiences of others. And I think it's causing an extreme divide in families and within relationships, because they're just not willing to think about things as if you were another person, or you identified differently, or you came from a different background. I think it's really hard to have talks with people from different generations, when you think oppositely.”Cally Flox: To improve listening, Mark, from our beta group, reflects inward:Mark Borchalt:  “Am I fully valuing who I am inside the circumstance? Conversely, am I also honoring the person that I'm working with? More importantly, are we constantly reviewing the context of our circumstance, so we're finding the grand truth around that, so that we can honor all three simultaneously? When there's conflict, we recognize, ‘Oh, it's because I'm not honoring myself, I'm not speaking up, or because I'm shouting over the other people and I'm not allowing them to speak, or that we've totally gotten off track here.’” Cally Flox: Paul Hetland, from the boomer group, and Angelo from the Gen Z group, offer additional strategies for listening:Paul Hetland: “When I look at polarization, I'm trying to get a sense of what it is the polarized sides agree on. I think that's where the problem lies. My view, our society has become increasingly vertical. The conversation is up and down. It needs to be much, much more horizontal and across boundaries that you're suggesting. Working to create that—I don't know how we do it—but focusing on common ground as the key aim in education is important.”Angelo Gallegos: “Rather than just believing in what you think is true, I think both sides should try to understand each other rather than believing what you think is true. Just try to understand them, and let them try to understand you.”Cally Flox: The art of listening really requires that we self-regulate deeply so that we can respond instead of react. During COVID, I think there was a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety. I think we lost our ability to regulate our own emotions, and we became reactive. Because we weren't able to monitor and regulate our own emotional and mental health, communication broke down. Listening is dependent on the ‘power of the pause’—stopping, breathing, and choosing to respond instead of react. When we can master our internal space, that's when we can be good listeners. This is particularly true with information that scares us, like climate change.CONCERNS ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, WARFARE, AND POWER Heather Francis: Climate change was an urgent issue that people talked about in our focus groups. There was broad agreement across all of the cohorts that climate change is a most pressing issue of our time. Here are Matt, Mark, and Paul from three different focus groups:Matthew Teitter: “I was worried about the utilization of nuclear weapons. Very concrete, kind of like the idea of using low-yield or tactical nuclear weapons. Whenever something like this happens with a war going on with a superpower that has nuclear capability, I'm concerned about the survival of the species. A longitudinal effect of that is ecological collapse related to and/or directly influenced by anthropogenic climate change. These are the long-term issues we have to face. I think the questions about how to tackle those issues—which are so huge—dovetail with the idea of, ‘Do you even touch those third rails?’ because they don't have easy answers.” Mark Borchalt: “Because if we no longer have an environment that is healthy to live in, where are we going? How are we going to fix that? It seems like the world’sview is that we want things to get bad enough before we really respond and act.”Paul Hetland: “To me, the overriding and most important issue is climate catastrophe.”Lois Hetland: The groups had a lot to say about the issue. Here's my niece, Maia, and my brother Paul. Maia Monahan: “Because the COP26 summit is going on right now, climate change is at the forefront of my mind. Climate change is something that is going to affect everybody at some point in time. While other issues definitely affect a lot of people, they affect fewer numbers. But climate change is going to somehow do something to all of us at some point. It seems like a really big issue that we're facing.”Paul Hetland: “I think the failure is the failure of humans to understand their place in the natural world. And that, I think, has been exacerbated by the institutions that we have created and that we now have allowed to govern us.”Lois Hetland:  Marco, a millennial, and Rafael, from the greatest generation, both in California, added:Marco Alberto: “It feels like there's a big disconnect with the land. This disconnect relates to the idea of dominance over another person. People want to dominate, have power over somebody, power over land. These colonial forms of thought need to wither away.”Rafael Jesús González: “Climate change, warfare, and capitalism. They are all intertwined and self-supporting. They all are causes and effects that are intimately wedded together.”Heather Francis: One more clip from Paul:Paul Hetland: “Somebody in a class in Tucson, AZ, was asking Noam Chomsky if there is a potential solution or way through climate change under capitalism. His response: ‘You better hope so, because there's nothing, nothing else on the horizon right now that has that kind of scale.’” Heather Francis: I remember Paul saying that and feeling, “Yeah, we have to do something.” Lois Hetland: We have to change our own minds and those of others, and we have to do it fast. We can't even be tempted to believe there's nothing we can do. Heather Francis: Paul’s words really stood out to me: we just have to do something. We need conversations about it. We can't just talk about it with scientists. We’ve got to talk with artists, with educators, with policymakers, with construction workers, with transportation workers, with business. These need to be interdisciplinary conversations.INTEGRATED THINKING AND LEARNING: EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED Louise Music: A consistent thread from all these conversations is that none of these problems are standalone. Everything is interconnected, including our divisive public discourse. The inability to listen to people or work with people who have different beliefs and ideas relates to these urgent issues like climate change that result in huge population migrations and lack of access to food and water for huge populations of people. In turn, those migrations connect to the racial, economic, and ethnic inequities, poverty and war that we're facing—all are intimately tied together. These global issues intersect with the issues in education, and the artificial way that we compartmentalize children's experiences in classrooms, where there's 50 minutes in science and 50 minutes in history, and you're lucky if you get any art at all.Lois Hetland: This model doesn't teach students to think the way they have to think to address these global issues in a holistic way.Heather Francis: It teaches students that everything is siloed, and that is not how the world works.Louise Music: It simply perpetuates an inability for people to appreciate the systemic intersections of the problems that are facing society. We stay in the same holding pattern.Mark, a boomer and dance educator, describes a school he worked in where the faculty had actually worked hard to develop strategies that integrated the curriculum so that students could see how the issues they were studying fit together, and how they themselves fit in. Mark Borchalt: “There are very simple platforms. I was a teaching artist at an elementary school. Every year the faculty met to decide on an overall theme for that year. All of the teachers and all the faculty would gear their curriculum towards that one subject. There was a cross- reading across the curriculum. The teachers all respected one another immensely. They would say to the students: ‘In math class, you're doing this. Do you see how that affects what you're doing in science and language arts?’ Because they respected the multigenerational aspects of where the kids were in their learning, it all fit together. The children all felt like they were a valuable part of the school, that they were valuable contributors to their education, and not passive participants in a system foisted upon them.”Heather Francis: That was the conversation, Louise, where you shared about the way your work at the Center for Integrated Learning had really tried to make connections and a web of knowledge with different ages, disciplines, and partners. Louise Music: We were able to bring people who were looking for more than the test and deliver situations that you're talking about, Alyssa. These people were interested in doing more. We brought Lois and researchers and artists and teachers across the curriculum together to do great work, make connections, and make the work visible. We built a real community by connecting artists, arts teachers, math teachers, high-school people, parents, universities, and we realized that it was an ecosystem. We realized that everyone's knowledge really mattered.Alyssa Dixon:  “I love that word ‘ecosystem.’ That makes so much sense to me. I appreciate your emphasis on intergenerational respect, because I think that's a source of great division: I remember at my school sometimes feeling like some of the older generation teachers when they talked to me, they were implying: ‘You think you know what you're doing, but you really know nothing, because you're young.’ But those were the same people who were asking me to come down and help them with reading an email, because they didn't know how to do really basic things. That attitude immediately caused an emotional divide. I'm sure I did things too, unintentionally, that added to the division. I love the concepts and the image of working together as an ecosystem, knowing that all of the different parts rely on each other. I teach my students about ecosystems: that when you take out one thing—even if it’s really small—it affects all of the other parts of the ecosystem because they are dependent on one another. I really love helping professionals see that, so that they really can thrive in the way that I think a healthy ecosystem would.”Louise Music:  Arzu Mistry, a member of Gen X, community artIst, and social practice scholar spoke about how important it is for educators to think locally, and to ground study and curriculum in a foundation of place. Arzu Mistry: “To me, one of the reasons that we are so inept at engaging with the dynamics of a floundering ecology is that we have really detached education from its context and people's relationship with place. People’s relationship with place is definitely the ecological world around us, the physical world around us, our cities, our oceans, our rivers, our mangroves, and also the communities of the other species, the beyond human species that exist within those dynamics.  We do talk about science, and I think there is more and more connection to teaching science within a context. When we detach science from the humanities, I think we lose that relationship of place, and how everything ultimately comes back to people's relationship with place. Looking at mass migration across the world, so much of that migration is actually induced by climate change, even though it is subsequently layered with political, social, and religious rationales.   It's because crops have failed. Economy is broken because supply chains don't work. All of this comes back to people's relationships with place. To me, it is a huge chasm in education. The fact that we teach the same things in India as we teach in a US classroom really confounds me.  What are the contextual dynamics that we are engaging with? How do we validate community learning? Are we able to give credits for community learning versus just in school learning or institutional learning? How do we do that?” Louise Music: I was really impressed with the clear lines people drew from how we teach content areas in classrooms and how we specialize and separate issues in the world, and the impact that those attitudes and behaviors have on how we actually treat each other and the resulting divisiveness that we're encountering right now in our country. Steven Baugh, a retired school superintendent from the greatest generations group, made the connection between how human beings are treating the natural resources on our planet, and how we treat ourselves and other human beings. Steven Baugh: “I suppose we have an opportunity to learn to deal with one another, to value one another and respect one another. I also wanted to comment on the increased women's movement, the ‘Me Too’ opportunities, that means women coming forth with their creativity, with their intelligence, and being accepted, and so forth and so on. Also, the Black Lives Matter movement is an effort that has real promise in bringing those who are marginalized more to the forefront.”Louise Music: Matthew Teitter, a millennial and public school principal, had further ideas about our systems of power that perpetuate inequities, and the need for systems that are inclusive of everyone.Matthew Teitter: “I gravitate towards universal design for learning–UDL. UDL drew its inspiration from universal design that really started in architecture back in the 60’s. When you design a building, you design the building for everybody: it’s accessible–you put ramps in so that Stephen Hawking in an electric wheelchair, or Usain Bolt, the fastest human ever walked the face of the earth, can both come into the building without any barriers. I think that philosophy has multiple applications across all industries and sectors. I was even taught to focus on the middle, find the ‘barometer kid,’ and just use that student, or maybe a small group of students, to dictate how fast you go. I feel like universal design, or UDL, is founded on the idea of focusing on the people in the margins, in all various aspects, and being inclusive in that way. Include people that struggle the most and the people that flourish the most; hopefully, in that swath of humanity, you will also reach people in the middle, but it won't be just the people that are in the middle. I think it'd be interesting to vary things along the lines of educational attainment, wealth and income, and systems of power, making sure you're talking about different identities, gender, race, sexual orientation, all those things.”Louise Music: Listening to these conversations really deepened what was an initial premise of our CHLL group, that by addressing the issues in education, we really have a chance—maybe our only chance—at addressing these complex and terrifying issues that we're facing as human beings on this planet. Also, these conversations reinforced our idea that the two are intimately tied together. That's where we really can make an impact and where we need to address the knowledge that's out there.WHERE TO FIND HOPE FOR EDUCATION AND THE WORLD Lois Hetland: I am most impacted by the unwavering hope for the future in every single conversation. Personally, I can feel overwhelmed and discouraged; it's easy enough to believe we can't make a difference or that things won't change. There's certainly plenty of evidence of that—but we heard so many determined voices. They said clearly that thinking this way really isn't a viable option; they offered suggestions for how to hold on to hope: first, they told us that in complexity there's good and bad, and they said we need to pull out the good. Second, our guests remind us to work with what we've got. Here's Alyssa, talking about the good technology can bring.Alyssa Dixon: “You bring up the point that before people wanted to feel connected because they were more individual, and now people feel so connected that maybe they want to feel more individual. I feel like the internet has made it so that we're so connected everywhere that it almost has an opposite effect—where people perhaps find themselves separated into echo chambers. That feeling can add to that divisiveness. Simultaneously, with things like climate change, the internet allows us to see other parts of the world that we maybe weren't aware of before. We're seeing these impacts: ‘Yeah, maybe my neighborhood looks fine, but look at the ocean, look at these other countries, look at areas of the world that I wasn't aware of.’ It’s interesting that the internet can be such a blessing that raises our awareness, and that also can make us be able to connect so intensely that it—in a way—divides us as well.”Lois Hetland: Mark addresses the shadow side of social media:Mark Borchalt: “So often, social media especially is used as a bully pulpit: peopletrying to boost themselves up by putting someone else down. That's a terrible and tragic thing that's occurred in the world.”Lois Hetland: But Mark also says there are wonderful things:Mark Borchalt: “In the past 20 years, documentaries have been made that offer glimpses and windows into the worlds that people couldn't have imagined before. I think that helps breed empathy.” Lois Hetland: Here's Paul, urging us to work with the systems we've got, and Steve Baugh, specifically addressing the system of public education.Paul Hetland: “We have to aim, it seems to me, at something other than perfection being the enemy of the good problem. We have to aim at something that's going to work, more or less, through present systems.”Steven Baugh: “Since we have a public school system that has the responsibility for the majority of children in our country, we need to find a way to truly educate teachers, prospective teachers, to have a a philosophy and a practice of what it means to provide access to knowledge for all children, to provide a nurturing pedagogy, to accept a stewardship responsibility for helping the young to become their best selves.”NEW EDUCATION PRIORITIES Lois Hetland: Speaking of education people had plenty to say about what we need to do about that, to use it, and to change it. Paul here is talking about education, focusing more on community and ecology. Paul Hetland: “How can education be more oriented towards community and ecology and the place of people in the world? Regardless of the kind of education you are able to offer your children, they may not survive a full lifetime under the current conditions unless something happens much more broadly.” Lois Hetland: Mark's talking about focusing education on using our minds fully:Mark Borchalt: “What I've always seen is that there's a huge potential in regards to not only how we think and learn, but this idea of a rational mind and intuitive mind that requires both sides of our being to see and understand and live in the world.” Lois Hetland: Raphael is talking about centering love in education:Rafael Jesús González: “We have to make a revolution. We have to make that revolution a revolution of consciousness and bring heart to it. The only thing that is going to save us is love.  That's the thing that you have to learn to do first and primarily. Learn to love and teach love. No matter what you teach, no matter what curriculum you have, if it is not rooted in love, it is not only useless, it is dangerous.”Lois Hetland: Arzu continues in that line. Arzu Mistry: “Some of the things that came up right through the conversation is this dynamic of love and fear. You began the conversation with the question, ‘What are the urgent issues that we're dealing with?’ Automatically, that brings up fear. We're scared of climate change. We're scared of this war on differences. We’re scared of homogenizing everything. We’re scared of the capitalist agenda and how overpowering it is. I think that this whole dynamic of love and falling in love—like how the things that we're scared of—who's engaging with those things in love and through love? I've been talking with Lois a lot about David Sobel's work. He talks about kids' relationship with place. He says that if you teach a kid about the rainforests dying, or the polar bears going extinct, all you're doing is getting them into a space of helplessness. They have no way to act. Instead, if they develop a love for plants, then they have some way to relate to the rainforest; or if they develop a love for animals, then they have some way to relate to that polar bear. So the dynamic of how do you foreground love and love as the basis of connection versus on fear as the basis of disconnection? Find out who is engaging with these urgent issues through love, and not fear, not imposition, but emergence.” Lois Hetland: Hope is the responsibility of every one of us. We don't have the choice to give up.  Jerry Kelly: “You can't say we're doomed. You know, the longest journey starts with the first step. And it's going to be a long journey, but you have to do it.”Lois Hetland: I learned so much from that. I mean, it was really remarkable to me to have it be so obvious to people that I might drop out with despair. Also, I think the thing that really, really hit me as I've been learning more about BIPOC kids and education, especially black kids and education, is that love must be at the center of education for all kids. This idea is antithetical to what has happened in our schools. That gives me fire in the belly to change that as much as I can. Louise Music: The message I got from these conversations is that just like kids need love, we all do. Hope comes when we understand that we can't do it by ourselves, we can only do it when we really connect with each other.Cally Flox: Neurophysiologist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang poignantly announced that all schools need to be organized around relationships. That simple principle is born out in neurophysiology and in education research. Relationships are everything.Louise Music: Cally, I want to know more about how we can build on those relationships that need to be the heart of every child's experience in school, and where it's happening. How do we build on that to make meaningful relationships more of a real lived experience for everyone?CATALYSTS FOR POSITIVE CHANGE IN EDUCATION AND THE WORLD Cally Flox: We know that relationships happen one person and one story at a time. We have lots of people talking about how to reach across the aisles and engage in conversations and get to know people and shine a light on what works. Finding the highlighted pieces, and the things that are really making a difference. Here's Mark talking about that. Mark Borchalt: “Well, just for example, in some of the brief conversations that I've had with Louise, and I've had some really in-depth conversations with Lois, and some really good conversations with Cally and it's not like we don't have the templates. I mean, looking at what Louise was able to accomplish in Oakland—under some challenging circumstances—I think, ‘Well, why aren't we looking at it as a model and saying, ‘How do we  transfer that? How do we translate it?’’” Cally Flox: People in our focus groups spoke to the many great examples everywhere where people are finding new and powerful ways to educate our children. Our goal is to surface ideas that shift the focus away from status quo thinking that doesn't support a healthy future, forward to ideas where people are working together, and often locally, toward human and life-affirming solutions. Derek Fenner points out that we all have so much to learn from our local communities.Derek Fenner: “There are plenty of global examples out there. We can look to the Zapatistas, we can look at models across the east, all over the world, of autonomous communities that are doing this and that have done it. We can look at Italy, Reggio Emilia. You know, you can look at all these things and all these places and have models. Two important people I think to bring into the conversation, as you move forward in this, is the work that Django Paris and H. Samy Alim are doing around culturally-sustaining pedagogies. They posit that culturally-sustaining pedagogy is whenever education sustains the life weight of a community that has been, and continues to be, damaged and erased through schooling. They wrote a book of research on this with a lot of different people that are showing these models across the country and in the world. The work of Matt Hearn, D Schooling Society, was a global model of the unschooling movement, but it had lots of great case studies of these things that are happening. There are places where it is successful. There's just not a lot of light shining on it.”Cally Flox: Mickey points out that there's a lot of wisdom in examining what doesn't work. Sometimes we're illuminating our failures. Mickey Zibello: “Referencing a prior statement from Derek about institutions not wanting to let in things that might threaten them. Generally speaking, you said, ‘Shining a light on some of these examples of where these things are working, and working better.’ To see what’s working, you have to help people see the current system isn't working. People say, ‘Why do we need an alternative system?’ I think it's doubly true of conservative communities. I think perhaps all of us, to some degree—or many of us—just follow the path. The status quo is the path that exists and you don't really question it, yet voices are questioning our silence. A big part of this with education, I think, is shining a light on what's not working and how it could be better instead of just doing the same old way just because that's what we do.”Cally Flox: The wisdom of our octogenarians focused on global themes of love and truth. Here's Stephanie.Stephanie Tolan: “One human being can make a massive difference—even a child, as we know, with Greta Thunberg, and others. Even one child can make a difference. I really think it's critical to help us focus on the one here, and the one there, and the tiny idea over here, and then try to blow on those flames a little bit and share it with somebody else that may not have heard about it yet.” Cally Flox: Stephanie's vision of elevating individuals and fanning the flame can be applied to finding excellence in not just people but in the community and in schools, one story at a time.  Whether we look at non-examples, or positive examples, we can identify indicators of transformational education. That's what we plan to highlight on future episodes of this podcast. We want to shine the light on people, ideas, and stories that model hope and possibility and to blow on those flames, so they can ignite and spread.LOOKING AHEAD: TURNING IDEAS INTO ACTION AND LEARNING FROM WHAT IS WORKING IN SCHOOLS NOW Lois Hetland: One thing that surprised me was when Derek talked about the importance of making sure that we give back to the people who share their stories with us. He made it very clear. He emphasized particularly how important that is for marginalized people. He talked about making sure that they gain resources from sharing with us. It is our job that when others share these stories, these gifts with us, that we really need to think about how we're using them to create action, to solve the challenges they're facing. Louise Music: We came together because we knew that each of us were connected to communities of practice that were doing very powerful work. We were holding a big hope at a really dark time of isolation and pandemic. And we said, ‘How can we stay connected in that?’ Everyone we talked are all connected to communities. One of the things I'm excited about as we move forward is creating a website or other places where we can help people find each other, and look at and learn from the action that people are already taking. Implementing that idea from Stephanie to take what's already there and blow on the flame so that these communities collaborate to make a bigger, warmer future. Cally Flox: Rafael described the power of finding new, creative ways to be in touch: because of the pandemic, we're all out of touch—like staying in touch through eye contact, because we don't hug or shake hands as much as we used to. Or, staying in touch through digital mediums: podcast conversations and website conversations.Louise Music: A silver lining from the pandemic is that we've really learned how to use technology to have really productive close relationships and conversations. Lois Hetland: Another thing Rafael said was he really wanted us not to be timid. He said, ‘Go out there and love. We've got to learn how to love and go out there and blast out with it.’ That was very compelling to me. Heather Francis: Talking about learning in the pandemic, learning to use Zoom, and the way we've come to podcasting as a technology to help us blow on the flame to have and share conversations: I want to think about podcasting as an expression of love. Because as Rafael said, we need to focus on love. I feel love in this group of CHLL, because we've spent two years online; people doubt that online technologies help people find group flow, or love—but we have found it. We have to blow on our own flame, we have found love online. We have found love in a group of like-minded people, in conversation. We've used technology to facilitate those conversations. I'm really looking forward to more conversation in the future. Future conversations will go deeper into climate change, race, violence, and will focus on the relationships we are building. We're not going to have generational cohorts anymore. We're going to have mixed multi-generational conversations: high-school students talking with octogenarians and millennials being the conductor between the older and younger, the horizontal line of the lifespan. Lois Hetland: There's one more huge challenge.People talked about the idea of echo chambers; the blue bubble—we're in it, where we are. It's critically important that we reach out to people who we don't normally speak with. It’s critically important to try and figure out how we can start to hear more voices than the voices of our friends. I want to make friends with people I don't usually speak with. Louise Music: We're going to open our hearts to others. Cally Flox: The first thing we do is turn towards one another, and create islands where we feel safe and secure. The second thing we do is to build bridges to different islands. It's time for some bridge building. Heather Francis: I'm really excited for our multi-generational conversations in the future. Plans are currently being made. When they're ready, you can find all the details here on the CHLL podcast, or on our website. Up next in our last episode of this introductory series, we are each going to take a turn to reflect on what it means for each of us personally to be a part of this group and project. The CHLL podcast is produced by the BYU ARTS Partnership. Special thanks to James Huston for editing Tavin Borrowman for the artwork, and Scott Flox for the music. If you like what you've heard, please leave a review. This helps tremendously as we work to bring more people to our CHLL conversations. You can find the show notes and more about CHLL at the chllpodcast.com or on social media. Our handle is @chllpodcast. That's CHLL for Cally, Heather, Lois, and Louise. We can't wait to chill with you next time.

CHLL – Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise – reminisce about the open-hearted conversations they had with five generational focus groups during the 2021-2022 school year. Gen Z, millennials, GenX, baby boomers, and members of the greatest generations discussed with CHLL how the problems of education and the world intersect and reinforce each other, and how the solutions for education and the world can be successfully leveraged.   LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE New York Times article on how Generation Z activists take an empowered stance for addressing the climate crisis: OK Doomer and the Climate Advocates Who say It’s Not Too LateEncore.org brings older and younger changemakers together to solve problems, bridge divides, and co-create the future. INTRODUCING OUR FRIENDS: FROM GEN Z TO THE GREATEST GENERATIONHeather Francis: C H L L stands for Cally, Heather, Lois, and Louise. We are CHLL and we are ready for another chill conversation. In this second episode, we're excited to tell you more about the generational focus groups that we hosted this past year. Lois Hetland: These focus groups were our friends. To create cohorts for each of the generational groups, we chose participants based on the year they were born. We had a Gen Z group where we met with four high school students; we met with four millennials (our friends ages 25 to 40); four Gen X’s; four baby boomers; and we met with four members of the greatest generation, people over 80, sometimes known as the silent generation or the post-war generation.WHAT WE WANTED TO LEARN FROM GENERATIONAL FOCUS GROUPSLouise Music: We wanted to know what these different groups thought about the challenges and opportunities facing education and the world at large, and how their perspectives were similar or different from ours. We wanted to see if the conversations we were having as CHLL, just the four of us, even mattered to other people. We also wanted to practice and improve our skills for facilitating good conversations. We'd become so used to how the four of us talk to each other every two weeks, and we needed time and experience in exploring what these conversations look and feel like with others. The questions that we asked each group were:What are issues or opportunities facing the world today?What are issues and opportunities in education today?How do issues in education and the world intersect?How can people from different generations benefit from each other's wisdom and creativity?What suggestions do you have for our podcast?Cally Flox: In September 2021, we started with a mixed generational beta group. We had one millennial, one boomer and a self described ‘Xenial’: GenX and millennial named James: James Huston: “I'm technically a millennial, but I kind of feel like I fit more in that microgeneration between millennial and Generation X because I was almost an adult when 9/11 happened. I grew up without the internet, stuff like that, that doesn't quite fit a normal millennial.”Cally Flox: James is a member of our team at the BYU Arts Partnership, and so is Alyssa. She's an elementary educator and arts administrator and she resonated with our attention to intergenerational connection and communication.Alyssa Dixon:  “Every generation thinks that they're just so much more progressive and so much better than the next, without relying on all of these, you know, amazing skills and a wealth of experience that they have. I think a lot of times, they tend to feel that way because there's a feeling of the previous generation looking down on the next generation. If we were able to get rid of those negative, resentful feelings towards one another and make that bridge like your student represented, I feel like we just would be able to accomplish so much more. Because they do both have very different perspectives. I think they're both so valuable and it does feel like there's a frequent lack of opportunity to connect.”Cally Flox: Mark, the boomer in the group, a retired professor of dance in Utah, confirmed the idea that education is an essential way to impact issues in the world:Mark Borchalt: “I can't think of a single issue…. If you look at health care, if you look at climate change, if you look at, you know I don't think there's anything that you can't address through education. What if children grow up being more facile in their ability to look at the world, their ability to problem solve, and identify what issues are, rather than answering questions—to be able to form good questions and say, ‘What does this mean?’ ‘Where do I fit inside of that?’”Cally Flox: This group also confirmed how complex the issues in the world and in education are. Here's a bit where James starts weaving home life and family issues with school issues.James Huston: “One of the big problems that I'm seeing is that families and parents and siblings are not helping each other out as much. They're expecting teachers to not only teach the education side of things, but also teach all these life skills and basically raise them. I realize there's a lot of circumstances where kids don't have a stable home life to come up with. But in general terms, I would just say, in my lifetime, I've seen less and less parent involvement, and they put everything on the teachers and expect them to do everything.”GENERATION Z SPEAK TO THEIR SCHOOLING EXPERIENCE (AGES 10-25)Heather Francis: The empathy that James expressed for teachers is something we found in a lot of our focus groups, but especially in our Gen Z focus group. This group had a lot to say about being a student in school, because that is their current lived experience. Each high-school student who participated with us touched on mental health and stress and the expectations made on students and teachers in schools. Noah is a high-school student from Utah sharing his concerns about mental health.Noah Flurer: “I also have a ginormous issue with mental health problems in general. And in public school, it is really a massive issue. You go to school, and you can't operate at all. You see the counselors and they just tell you that you can walk through—just go through the motions—, although you literally can't. It's an issue of more or less: they want you to be within the school, and just go through the motions, rather than actually taking care of your mental health. So I've often had to pretend to be sick, just so I can get a mental health day, just so I can rejuvenate, so I can go back to the very exhausting experience that is school.”Heather Francis: Angelo, a high-school student in Fremont, California, empathized with teachers and the toll that schooling takes on the mental health of students and teachers alike: Angelo Gallegos: “Teachers, they have to go through a bunch of stuff, six different periods, they have to grade—almost over 200 papers—they have to make up their assignments, they have to do so much. I don't think it's their job. But rather, maybe more counselors’ jobs, more therapist jobs, because teachers already have a lot on their plate.”MILLENNIALS ADDRESS LABELS AND AGEISM (AGES 26-41) Heather Francis: After we met with the Gen Z group in mid-February 2022, we met with millennials. We joked around about what it means to be a millennial.Marco Alberto: “I think 'just a 90’s baby’ has always felt like the correct term for me. Just like ‘95, so I’m right in the middle.”Amy Crowe: “I’m 39, but I feel like, I remember in college people would say things like, Oh, you don't seem like a millennial. I'm thinking, ‘Is that a compliment? Or an insult?’ I'm not quite sure.  I always joked that I was the last generation to grow up without technology, but the first to really have it as a high schooler. For example, I got my pager in ninth grade.”Matthew Teitter: “Yeah, I’m a Zennial because I know how to change a tire and I know how to convert a Word document to a portable document format PDF. So that makes me able to operate between both digital and analog comfortably. So I’m from 1982. What am I?”Heather Francis: This group really rallied around the need for intergenerational conversations and talked a lot about their current experiences, working with students and teachers inside and outside of schools. These were busy professionals that we got to speak with one evening, so here's a few clips. We're going to start with Marco Alberto. He's an after-school teacher and community activist in California.Marco Alberto: “Being in the middle is so important and kind of being able to translate things in ways that you know, the elders might express something, but it needs to be translated and made accessible for younger folks to hear. And likewise, young folks who express things there, we have to take back up to the elders. So many examples of decisions being made on young people's behalf—but they're not at these meetings, they're in school. Even if the best intentions are there, it's like their voice isn't being heard. I think the responsibility of, ‘I need to properly listen and really hear out the elders and hear out the young folks.’ But also to represent those youth when they're not at the table.”Heather Francis: Here’s Amy Lynn Crowe, an instructional coach and secondary educator from Arizona:Amy Crowe: “I have a 12-year-old son, and he asks tons of questions all the time. But in my high school, the students are so afraid of critical race theory and SEL, and what's acceptable to ask and understand, and what's not. I think there are such gray areas there—between what some people feel is acceptable versus others. I see these gray areas within our school district and our school and our teenagers, and it reflects how we grew up. In a nutshell: a lack of understanding of perspectives, and then possible fear of asking those questions.”Heather Francis:  Here's Charity Hall, financial advisor in California:Charity Hall: “Yes, absolutely the intergenerational flow is vital. I think, historically, we can look at history throughout all time, we can look at successful civilizations, and it's because that generational construct is there. But what does that collaboration look like? What do push-pull interactions look like? Are we listening to our students? Are we listening in the classroom from every age, whether that's master's programs, whether it's kindergarten, whether it's after-school programs? If we are listening, how are we applying the information that we're learning? How are we collaborating and allowing students to teach us as educators?”Heather Francis:  Our last millennial (or maybe ‘Xennial’), Matthew Teitter— a principal from Utah—discusses ageism: Matthew Teitter: “I wonder if we treated ages like we do racism and sexism, if we would get a lot farther. Because I know that it's a real ‘-ism.’ Whether people are biased against children or biased against older adults, or somewhere in between, the ‘-isms’ are real. Stereotyping, the discrimination, is real. Just understand that ageism is a real issue. As hard as most of us work on getting rid of any kind of racism or sexism or other things like homophobia, any of those things, we need to get rid of our agist tendencies. But for whatever reason, ageist attitudes are more socially acceptable; for example, using the cliche ‘boomer,’—that's not okay. I think those are some important things to interrogate. The importance of finding meaningful information that tends to be held maybe in a particular age span, I think is important to discover, appreciate, and look on with wondering curiosity.”GENERATION X DISCUSSES CONNECTIONS WITH EACH OTHER AND THE  ENVIRONMENT (AGES 42-57) Louise Music: The Gen X focus group jumped right into the urgent and complex issues in the world that most concerned them. They were really going deep into big ideas. Keely Song, a choreographer and dance professor from Utah, spoke about the dramatic transitions that need to be made:Keely Song: “I think an urgent pressing issue of our time really is the environment. How do we help us move along as a society for a radical ecological conversion within ourselves and within our hearts? For me, the process and the journey has been a little slow. I know sometimes I'm not the best at things. But I'm trying to speak out. There is this battle between trying to work with the expanding population. How do we make enough room so housing is affordable? At the same time, though, what resources are we using up? I think that's a critical juncture point that can only really be solved with art and with science coming together.”Louise Music: Arzu Mistry, a community-based artist from Bangalore, India, who is currently studying for her doctorate at Columbia University, built on Keely's ideas:Arzu Mistry: “I agree that we really have to look at the dynamics of climate change and ecological collapse. That's definitely one of the big issues. I think the other one is the need to engage deeply with difference and the tensions around diversity and inclusion of all kinds that are across the world. I think connected to both are a challenge to the Western extractive capitalist mode of rigid thought ‘this is the only way the world works’ and instead looking at alternatives. I really struggle with how we've severed the connections between nature and culture, between ecology and sociology, between science and the humanities. I think that that split, and the lack of the interconnection, has really led us to this point: a framework for education that does not make interconnections visible.”Louise Music: Derek Fenner, an artist and scholar in the juvenile and racial incarceration system from South Carolina, spoke to the systemic issues of white supremacy:Derek Fenner: “I think white racial literacy is something that is holding this country back, because we do not have white racial literacy. And it is really the root of many of the things that we've been dealing with since before this nation even began, as the diaspora brought what has happened here. I think we've got to start creating shared stories across these intergenerational lines. Not only that—because that's transformative—but we also have to create action around those shared stories. Action makes revolutions happen. For me, it's all possible. It might be too late. But there's no reason not to push forward with radically changing the way we're doing things because it's clearly not working and hasn't been working for a long time.”Louise Music: Mickey Zibello, a musician and a contractor from Boston, spoke to the divisive nature of our public discourse, and how that further complicates our ability to agree on what any of the important issues actually are:Mickey Zibello: “It feels to me harder than ever, in my lifetime, to even agree on what the facts are anymore because of the way that the internet and social media are being used as propaganda. I know this has been with humankind forever, but it feels like it's at a whole other level now.”BOOMERS (Ages 58-76) Lois Hetland: Boomers were really concerned with social equity in schools, and with listening across all sorts of boundaries. Here's what Jerry Kelly, a retired financial executive from Boston, had to say:Jerry Kelly: “I was fortunate enough to have a very successful career in finance. My children were fortunate enough to attend high-quality independent schools. It's a very different experience than somebody who lives in Fort Smith, Arkansas, or eastern Montana, or inner city Boston. How do we deliver quality across the spectrum? How do we provide funding that's self-perpetuating? If you live in Wellesley, Massachusetts, the funding is going to be much higher because it's at the local level, than it will be in Adams, Massachusetts. If the real estate tax revenue is so much higher, they're going to be able to invest much more into their schools and deliver a better product to those who are motivated to take it. That's not the case in Fort Smith, Arkansas. It's not the case in rural Mississippi or Alabama. My concern is, how do we provide equal opportunity to all students without regard to their economic status?”Lois Hetland: Boomers were also concerned with how stressful schools are. Here's Jim Reese, who leads a network for public school educators in Washington, D.C.: Jim Reese: “The burnout rate is very real. The exhaustion. I've talked to a number of really wonderful principals who run highly-functioning schools in inner city D.C., and they said it's the toughest year, much tougher than 2021. Much tougher than 1920. This year is the toughest they've experienced yet. Every day brings in huge mental health crises on the part of the kids, the families they're coming from, and the teachers. And then there's the physical health crises that are multiplying. Every day they're putting out fires, and they can't get to any really substantive teaching and learning. That is really, really sad for our country.”Lois Hetland:  Boomers were boldly realistic about how dire our challenges are. Here's my brother, Paul Hetland, a retired teacher, lawyer and union leader:Paul Hetland: “The overriding important issue is climate catastrophe. It seems to me that everything right now pales to that. If humanity survives it, it'll be something of a miracle. So if that is to be done, and it has to be done, we have to find a way that's different from what we're doing now.”Lois Hetland: But they also pushed to keep hope alive.Ellen Winner: “Don't say we're doomed. It's too depressing.”Lois Hetland: That was Ellen Winner, a retired developmental psychologist from Boston College:THE GREATEST GENERATIONS PROMOTE HOPE AND LOVE (AGES 76-100+)Cally Flox: I'd like to talk about the focus group from the greatest generations. So much experience and wisdom was found in that group. They focus on supporting and guiding the generations who are now doing the heavy lifting, and they emphasize gentleness, love and hope. Heather Francis: That group was so bright. I felt like the Zoom room was daylight.Cally Flox: Yes. It was almost overwhelming. The amount of wisdom shared collectively and the authenticity of how they shared it. Now, let's hear from Stephanie Tolan, a children's book author and expert in gifted education, and Rafael Jesús González, a poet and university professor in Oakland, California:Stephanie Tolan: “Right now what we need more than anything is to find a way to have hope. Instead of focusing always on the problems, and the awfulness, and the terror, and the destructiveness—we need to find and focus on those moments of hope and say, ‘Okay, it's like a little teeny flame,’ so you blow on it a little bit, and you try to increase a little bit. That's what I'd like to see, is looking for the people that say, ‘Here's something that's working right here, it's really small, but it could maybe get a little better.’”Rafael Jesús González: “Always, always there has been the influence of generations into generations, grandmothers spending time with their grandchildren, mothers spending time with their children. The thing, again, is capitalism: we say women don't spend time with their children anymore. They're ‘liberated’ to go work. A lot of that is not liberation of the people that I know. The women are forced to go to work just to pay the rent. If they didn’t have to go to work, they would spend time with their children. Men want to spend time with the children as fathers. We don't have parental leave. We talk about family values but the family is not valued.”Cally Flox: This group also includes Steve Baugh, retired university professor and superintendent of schools in Utah County, and Nina Serrano, radio host, filmmaker, and author living in Vallejo, California:Steven Baugh: “We have, I think, considerable impact with administrators, with principals, with superintendents, with university professors that have a great deal to do with what happens in public education—those math professors, science professors, art professors and so forth. If we could help the university professors, the public school administrators, and teachers to provide a nurturing pedagogy and access to knowledge, stewardship responsibility could go a long way towards changing a system.”Nina Serrano: “I think that we have to have kindness, loving kindness, as the basis of our education, so that we can have nurturing classrooms. The arts, the training in the arts, is one of the best ways for creating nurturing classrooms because it gives people the freedom to explore their creativity. There's a lot of joy in creativity, and a lot of collectivity in creativity.”Heather Francis:  Given these glimpses into the many hours of conversations we have had over the past year, what are the similarities and differences that we did experience among the conversations in these groups?SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES ACROSS GENERATIONAL CONVERSATIONSLois Hetland: All the groups shared similar topics of concern. But their approach is different, depending on where they are in their lives. Gen Z members seemed really direct about what was happening to them. Millennials were in the thick of doing work and things and they seemed more action-oriented and practical. Gen X members seemed to think more systematically about the issues, and they use a lot of theoretical perspectives. Boomers seemed pretty philosophical. The greatest generation focused with a deep sense of compassion, on the basics of hope, and love, and kindness. The same concerns showed up in different flavors depending on where each group is in their life experience. Heather Francis: Yes, and we are not saying, “All millennials feel this way,” or “Oh, boomers are philosophical.” We're not making generalizations. We're attending to what we experienced this past year with these individual people. We are making meaning together about these individual voices.Cally Flox: They all responded to the same questions. Louise Music: Everyone spoke so sincerely. High-school kids were really ready to share their ideas in very open and honest ways. Millennials and members of Gen X who are working so hard had much to say about everyday life and what it feels like living and working in the world. Boomers had that perspective where they were being much more philosophical as Lois was saying. The beautiful generosity of the octogenarians and the greatest generation who created such a spacious, simple, honest, accessible place for everyone. Lois Hetland: What I loved about the Generation Z individuals was how they sat up straighter and really grew a foot because we'd asked them their opinion. They shared openly and they seemed so proud of being listened to seriously. I think that's a real problem.Cally Flox: I agree with Lois. Generation Z students were almost surprised to be asked their opinion. They're so used to being in school and being told things. They couldn't believe we asked their opinion and their insights. It was fun to watch. Louise Music: Our next episode centers on what we've learned from these conversations, not just what topics surfaced. We synthesize all the conversations and how they have come together for more understanding. Heather Francis: The CHLL podcast is produced by the BYU Arts Partnership. Special thanks to James Huston for editing, Tavin Borrowman for the artwork and Scott Flox for the music. If you like what you've heard, please leave a review. This helps tremendously as we work to bring more people to our chill conversations. You can find the show notes and more about CHLL at the chllpodcast.com Find us on social media, our handle is @chllpodcast.

In this episode CHLL – Cally, Heather Lois and Louise – describe their plan to host intergenerational conversations with educators, artists, activists, community members, and youth to surface the wisdom needed to understand, adapt to, and solve the urgent issues facing humanity.LINKS FROM THIS EPISODEMargaret Wheatley’s book, Turning to One Another, Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future.BYU ARTS Partnership Website - advancingartsleadership.com and education.byu.edu/arts WHO IS CHLL? Heather Francis: I am so excited to be launching our first series of the CHLL podcast, and introducing ourselves to our listeners. CHLL is an acronym for the four of us, Cally, Heather, Lois, and Louise.  We are all here, behind four microphones, in Cally’s basement in Salt Lake City. Being a part of CHLL has been such a powerful experience. I like to consider myself as the “millennial-being-mentored,” as I’ve learned so much from being in relationship with these three beautiful, wise women. We aren’t just CHLL because it’s a cute acronym for our names, but because it’s truly a chill group where meaningful and curious conversations happen.We are four white women. Collectively, we share over 125 years of professional experience and history in the field of arts and education. At our core we are educators, researchers, and administrators dedicated to integrated and culturally-responsive approaches to teaching and learning. We live in three parts of the country: Oakland, California; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Salt Lake City, Utah. Over the last two years we have had honest, vulnerable, and courageous dialogue with each other every two weeks.Cally invited me into this amazing experience. Cally Flox is the Founding Director of the BYU ARTS Partnership, where we both work, in the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University. She is the author of “A Teacher’s Guide to Resiliency through the Arts” and an expert in arts education and brain compatible learning for children and adults.HOW DID CHLL START?Cally Flox: I met Lois Hetland in 2017, when we brought her in to be a keynote speaker for our Learning Edge Conference for administrators. Lois’s research about the arts as a way of thinking was critical for my understanding in making a case with educators and administrators about the essential role of the arts in a complete and well-rounded education. In the third edition of Lois’s book Studio Thinking 3: The real benefits of visual arts education, she and her coauthors identify eight Studio Habits of Mind and four Studio Structures. Originally developed at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, it gave arts educators a language for the critical and creative thinking that is uniquely cultivated in arts classrooms and supports deeper learning across the curriculum. Lois’s work has made a huge contribution across the country and the globe. Lois has inspired networks of mathematics, history, liberal arts, and science educators in every state in this country and as far away as Europe, India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South America, to collaborate with arts educators working to integrate the arts across the curriculum and engage students in thinking more deeply. It applies from pre-kindergarten through all levels of higher education. Once I met Lois, she began introducing me to colleagues across the country. One such colleague was Louise Music. She lives in Oakland, California, and leads one of those networks of educators. My husband, Scott, and I attended Inventing Our Future, an annual Institute that Louise’s team organized every summer. Louise arranged for Scott and me to visit schools in Oakland the next fall, which was a remarkable experience. I had never seen such a direct correlation of what happened at an institute come alive in schools and classrooms. I saw quality artwork and culminating projects on the walls that were evidence of deep learning as described at the institute. There are few administrators who can honestly say that their programs change people and practice like I observed in school after school that I visited. I came home with a new vision of systemic change that continues to inform our work in the BYU ARTS Partnership.When the pandemic hit and school districts and everything else had to shut down, Louise called me with an idea. She wanted to connect with Margaret Wheatley who lives here in Utah; Margaret writes about what people can do as the formal institutions and bureaucracies that are meant to support our communities are failing— in education, health, environmental, business, and civic sectors. Louise was looking for ways to keep our hopes up during those early days of isolation. She wanted me to contact Margaret Wheatley but I said, “Louise, you have Margaret Wheatley’s ideas and teachings within you already. I think you just want a group of people to make meaning with.” So we called Lois and began meeting every other week on Zoom, having these very intimate and honest two-hour conversations. Together, we read Margaret Wheatley’s book, Turning to One Another, Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future. The three of us had deep, thought-provoking, and fascinating conversations. To propel our conversations forward, I needed my right arm, Heather, to join us. Heather brought technology and organizational skills that helped us gel, as well as a younger, fresher perspective that made us click. CHLL was born!CHLL’S DRIVING QUESTION Lois: I remember once you came into the group, Heather, I was mesmerized by what you brought to our back and forth discourse, like Padlet, Marco Polo, and Quirkos…  I was like, “Ooh, how can I use these technologies?” I started mixing them into the courses I was teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. It became clear to all of us that the act of conversation itself was intrinsically nurturing and generative, and we had lots of flexible tools for documenting our ideas and continuing our open-ended thinking.  Once the summer of 2020 exploded, with people marching in the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd, and when the long overdue racial reckoning began to spread across the country, we realized that while we had all been working for decades on issues of equity to transform public education, we had so much more to learn and do. And especially for Louise and myself, who were in the midst of exiting our institutional roles in administration and teaching, this question emerged, “What is the best use of our privilege, experience, and time to meet this moment of existential reckoning and to support the transition to sustainable, life affirming systems, nationally and globally?”We all shared the belief that addressing the problems in education—which were all too familiar to us throughout our professional careers, experience, and study—was necessary to help people consider, adapt to, and solve urgent issues facing humanity, now and in the future.Heather, you were a catalyst. You pushed us to move beyond the conversation among the four of us and to think about what we were actually going to do. You helped us get excited about podcasting as a form of artistic social practice. I saw how podcasts could support expansive, imaginative, open-ended spaces for multiple voices and perspectives. You really helped me see that younger people and older people bring complementary strengths that make our efforts to create a better world stronger. We need to be in close relationship with each other.  CREATING A COMMUNITY THROUGH GENERATIONAL FOCUS GROUPS Louise: I agree with you, Lois. Heather suggested we need a community of support, almost like a think tank, to move forward responsibly. We decided to share our ideas with a set of generational cohort groups to see if what was important to us held value with others. We made a list of friends and colleagues, and over the last year, we have had new conversations in cohort groups with 24 people that include members of the Gen Z, millennial, Gen X, baby boomer, and greatest generations. The conversations have been fascinating! I remember how we would turn off the recording and just look at each other on the screen in silence. Everyone was so generous with their time and ideas. They really seemed to enjoy the conversation, and they expressed deep appreciation for the opportunity. Meeting with the folks in these focus groups turned out to be a really terrific strategy to slow down and take the time to check out our intentions and our reasoning.  My friends, one thing that made a big impression on me was that whether it was high school students, millennials, or octogenarians, each group recognized and named as one of the most urgent issues in the world the inability to really listen to one another and tolerate differing perspectives.Let’s listen to Grace Blumell, a high school student in Utah who was in our Gen Z focus group: Grace Blumell: “We're so quick to discredit other people and tell them that the experiences they're having are not really what they're having. I think really listening and understanding people as best as we can, and not telling people that they're experiencing something when they're not experiencing something, I think that's an issue…we don't really listen and try to empathize with people as much as we should.”Lois: To empathize with one another, we have to listen. This was a topic of conversation in every focus group when we asked about the challenges and opportunities in today’s world. From the boomers group, here’s my friend, Jim Reese, an educator from Washington, DC, who runs a network for public school educators:                                             Jim Reese: “You know, echo chambers and that kind of thing is a common thread here, and I think that finding ways to commit ourselves to to try to understand what other people think and why, and to have reasonable conversations around topics that we can engage in. Those kinds of things have just got to happen for us to ever get to some kind of shared societal communitarian kind of purpose that can make our lives worthwhile.” Louise: All focus group members agreed that tapping intergenerational wisdom and creativity was essential for finding pathways to a more socially just and healthy world. Here’s my friend Rafael Jesús González, a poet and activist from our greatest generation focus group:Rafael Jesús González: “We have to listen to our youth and have our youth listen to our old. We have a myth: that age brings wisdom. That's a myth, it does not—we've been governed by old fools for so long. It’s not age that brings wisdom. There are some young people who are much, much wiser than some Presidents.”Lois: Jerry Kelly, a retired financial executive from the boomer group, sums up the impact of our failure to communicate on so many issues:Jerry Kelly: “The fundamental issue that we have in the world is a failure to communicate. It can be within the classroom, within the Congress, within the church, within the neighborhood. Then, that feeds the dissent that we have on other important topics that are out there—the wealth gap—that has to change and that feeds right into education and the funding of education.”Louise: And we have so much more to share from these amazing people’s voices, insights, and wisdom! In our next episode, we will dive deeper into the concerns and hopes discussed in our focus groups.