Defy Gravity!

This past week I listened to Dr. Gene Carter, Executive Director of ASCD, deliver his opening remarks at our Leader to Leader conference in a crowded ballroom of eager ASCD leaders from around the world. He addressed many important themes for the conference, but one phrase jumped out of me in its startling simplicity: “Defy gravity!” I tweeted it out right away, and then let it sit with me the next few days of the conference to appreciate its full impact.

Gravity…that force that pulls us down and makes us feel our weight…is such a constant in our lives we assume we have to operate under its impact all the time…not just our physical weight…but the weight of our experiences, too. If we believe we are weighed down with our lot in life, that we cannot will change to happen…it constrains us in everything we do…limiting our future.

I started my career in education in 1985 fresh out of the Ohio State University (Go Buckeyes!) and I saw limitless possibilities for making a difference. Why not? I had no track record to define who I was or how I could succeed. But over the years, I honed my skills and found ways to make a difference. My creative tools were vertical files full of snail-mailed resources, acetate sheets on overhead projectors, filmstrips, carousel slide shows, VCRs, display cases, paper-and-scissors clip-art and dry transfer lettering. I made learning come alive for my students through every industrial-aged tool at my disposal. I loved my work.

Then came computers and school networks and the Internet into our classrooms. It was new and different and required us to think of different ways to be successful. I felt the weight of my past experiences making me worry about using these new tools and the different ways of thinking I would need to use them. But gravity acts on mass, and I had only been teaching a few short years...so I shook off my anxiety, jumped in, and before I knew it I was leading online student projects, collaborating online with other teachers, and finding new ways to make learning come alive. I defied gravity...even though it wasn't that difficult in hindsight.

Then came social media. I had an award-winning static website http://surfaquarium.com that I put endless hours into maintaining, several well-respected email distribution lists I had developed into thriving online communities, and ongoing invitations to present at major conferences about my work, but nothing had prepared me for this. Web 2.0? The Read-Write web? Blogs? Wikis? MySpace? I was so busy doing my thing I hadn’t seen this coming! Again I felt the gravity of my experiences pulling at me, and this was much harder because I was that much deeper into my career. It made me question if I was up for more change when I already was established and successful. Why were the rules changing? What about all the work I had already done on my website and mailing lists? But I knew deep-down change had to happen, and I began migrating my online projects from YahooGroups to wikis and I found myself Tweeting and Facebooking. I even archived the Surfaquarium and made my blogging the only current content I keep updated. I defied gravity again.

What I realized each time is that my success isn’t defined by what I am comfortable and confident doing; it is defined by those people I impact positively through their preferred tools and modes of learning. If I don’t change, I can keep myself happy but the world will move ahead without me. It made sense within my whole multiple intelligences orientation: I can make it about my comfort zone and my past paths to success, but to those I seek to serve, I need to meet them at their needs and interests. My future needs to break free of my past… my future depends on theirs.

In 2010 I performed another act of defying gravity, walking away from my assistant superintendency to join the highly-respected folks at ASCD. I shed the weight of my success as a public school educator in order to serve the greater good through the world’s premier education association. I still get to work with educators at all levels, and the work is very rewarding. Yet the theme of gravity continues to make itself known, because all of us as educators continue to struggle with the world changing around us. We have been successful over the last half-century using traditional forms of communication and professional development, but these things simply aren’t serving our colleagues and students effectively any more.

So Dr. Carter’s challenge is very real…and as easy or as difficult as we want to make it: “Defy gravity!” Free yourself from your past life and ask yourself what you need to do to choose your future. Need to learn to reach out through concise tweets instead of lengthy newsletters? Learn to do it! Need to learn how to virtual-conference instead of waiting months to attend a face-to-face event? Let’s do it! Want to connect with like-minded educators from around the world to help you take your work to the next level? They’re waiting for you…online!

Defy gravity! Because if you allow your perceptions and apprehensions to weigh you down, your life and career will never be more than the sum of your past experiences. Are you willing to accept that? I didn’t think so. Me neither!