Leading from the Emerging Future!

I'm excited to participate in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) from MIT entitled Leading from the Emerging Future. The one they did last year had an impressive 70,000 participants worldwide, all seeking to make the world better through a process of deep listening. Today I'm posting my intention: To help birth a new racial awareness that will pervade the new educational paradigms.

Here is my video intention and research questions:

I'm feeling pulled toward connecting the advocacy I do around Reggio-inspired and other child-centered education that connects the head-heart-hand with the work I do educating people to talk about race. Ever since reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, I've been struck by his metaphor of the dream in which white people live our lives. I've thought of it as a bubble as well, one that seems protective but is really a fragile construction with a curved wall that distorts our view of the world outside it. Last fall, while marching in a #Justice4Jamar demonstration here in Minneapolis, I took this photo that to me sums up the idea of the bubble. Take a look at the people in the skyway, watching at a safe distance from the messy protest below, with their lattes and packages in hand. I used to be up there. But it feels good to be in the crowd, messy as it may be down here, with comrades from all races. How do I pull that energy and urgency into the beauty and calm of progressive education? 

I'll be listening for my emerging answer, along with people from around the world who want to focus on similar issues.

PS - if you want to participate in the MOOC, you'll need to start with the 90-minute introductory course, 

Awareness-Based Systems Change with u.lab - How to Sense and Actualize the Future

available here.