Every weekend for most of this year so far I have been practicing once or twice with Christina and some other long-time practitioners. It is a high point in my week no doubt. It is all of the connection and enjoyment of the long and drawn-out small group practices without any of the driving or negotiating of time or duty. In fact, I have a good napper for the time being - touch wood - and the whole long stretch of it falls neatly into that window. Such a nice fit.
Anyhoo, there is chatting, as ever. And on this day Christina was reflecting on something that she had read or heard regarding the projection of online activity having blasted into it’s 10-year forecast during Covid. When pressed for reconfiguring our regular activities, we went online. But not as we had before. Before it was per our convenience and on-demand. During Covid, it became Live and Face to Face, in real Time as a way of making Connections through Space. And it shifted how we do things. From school, to meetings, to teaching, to telemedicine, to grocery shopping, to practicing with friends. In real-time and with (mostly) minimal delays. And we realized that we could have been doing this all along but we weren’t. We are now. And while this has some very real drawbacks which I do not want to underplay and which I very much think should and can be well addressed, I think that it is mostly full of advantage and opportunity. As coverage and access improve in the coming years I think we will continue to see all sorts of growth and possibility in socially and ecologically healthy and conscious ways.
A week or so ago I was chatting with the local middle school’s principal and he shared with me how much they learned this past year about how big and sweeping changes are actually possible because they were pressed into making them this past year, in many instances before being ‘ready’. One thing that he said was that while he understands that the administrators need to be in the building 5 days a week and some kids need to be there 5 days a week as well, many however do not. That thriving academically and socially has a much more varied appearance for children and when given the opportunity to work in a customized hybrid, and he was seeing the potential of that thrive.
And not just that. A varied schedule with broad stretches of academically unscheduled space, gives kids not only a chance to pursue in greater detail their personal interests, it also affords them a chance to REST. In the last two years, I have watched Maple through every iteration of schooling. From home education, to full-time middle schooler, to virtual high school (which, btw, was a complete flop for her. Why? Because it was not in real-time. The Vermont Virtual Academy for the most part hasn’t caught up with the future of online learning which is NOW and is Live and in Real-Time. No longer per your convenience and on-demand. But I digress…), to a hybrid model of high school where the kids are in 2 cohorts that meet in person 2 days per week and all together virtually for several meetings on a third day. It is in this last expression that Maple is doing her best. And I could see it working for Eider too. Shit, I could see it working for me as a tween or teen. I can certainly see it working for me now. There is so much more I can say on this and I imagine that it may be a slow drip of consideration into this space over time.
It really feels good to hopefully be moving in a direction where we can conceive of a very real reality in which we meet the needs of the individual as well as the collective. Where we teach our children as well as ourselves that we have the power and the agency to craft our lives in ways that work for us from the very beginning. And create a world in which we can curate our time from the get-go and maybe bypass or grow beyond the standardized and the fixation of average. Seems like if there was ever a time in which we were primed to make some broad and sweeping changes, now is it.
Anyhow. Thoughts from the mat on a Sunday. And so it goes.