A response/comment to a blog post from Kevin Hodgson’s blog.
The crush of time on teachers often prevents collaboration, sharing and, ultimately, connection. Take as an example Ethical ELA. I am not a known quantity there as Kevin is, and I don’t seem to get much commentary there. Lots of writing is an inside game. More importantly, as Steven Pressfield has remarked: nobody wants to read my shit.
This is what he meant by that profane by wise statement.
“When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit, you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable to all artists and entrepreneurs—the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer/painter/seller to the point of view of your reader/gallery-goer/customer. You learn to ask yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is this interesting? Is it fun or challenging or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?”
People (and I mean me, too) do not make blogs and blogging as part of the regular. I think it can be said, more strongly, that nobody wants to read much of anything anymore. We have had our Gutenberg Parenthesis, now back to images and sound and the rest…except for text. Nor am I in any clear way following Pressfield’s dictates. I would be writing a lot more and publishing way less if I was.
Even people who know how important it is to connect, do not. I am talking NWP here. And I don’t blame them. Finding a way to connect is like winning on a slot machine. Tough luck, Simpson.
Some might argue that I am a hypocrite, that I should respond more if I want more. I can tell you right now, except for someone like dogtrax or tutormentor or inspirepassion, I get almost no one’s close reading scrutiny. Hence, my adoption of AI as a writing partner. I can press that reader into service anytime I want. A captive reader.
What Pressfield is arguing for needs to be noted well: we need to practice the kind of writing empathy where we, as Elmore Leonard remarked in his ten rules for good writing: Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
Lord knows if you don’t omit like hell, they will.
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Over the past few weeks I’ve digitized hundreds of pages of notes that I took between 2011 and 2020 from meetings and conversations I had with people in Chicago and in my on-line community. These I’ve added to digital files of conversations since 19990s and to records of who attended tutor/mentor conferences I organized, or volunteer-recruitment campaigns I organized.
What humbles me is the wide range of people and organizations I’ve connected with. I’m still connected to many of these people via LinkdedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but not in the ways I had hoped for, or the way I feel from reading your blog post.
We are connected. We’re not interacting. We’re not sharing ideas, or listening to each other, with a shared purpose of doing more to help kids grow up to be functioning, productive adults.
What I’ve learned is that “It takes two to tangle.” I can keep lists and reach out, but unless the other person makes an effort to reach back, their is little happening.
You mentioned me, dogtrax, inspirepassion and I’d add a few others from #Clmooc, as people who do engage. I point to them often, as an example of what could be, as I reach out to my lists and non-school ecosystem (including donors).
In the end, if I stop reach out, engagement is certain not to happen.
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Smaller circles of more intentional connections seems to be the way forward (as opposed to the days of the large MOOCs). I am OK with that. The problem is that ruts occur, and the circle contracts too much. Are we there yet?
Kevin
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Soon. Soon. Soon.