What is your Ecology?
TheCo, as part of Jackson Tenesse, ecology is cooperation. “It cannot be about profits” (I hear Lisa, CEO mentioning in the larger context of mapping engagement with the community served, which is a continuous process and at the core of the everyday work organization.
This infrastructure (physical, human, and social) makes “cooperation almost impossible to “avoid”, making it so easy to shift the mindset from an individual to a collective approach to development and making it visible in the space surrounding us every day. I will give the example of the walls, in each working space or meeting room the walls are just boards waiting for people to stand up and write or draw their ideas (collective scribing).
It cannot be about profits.
Lisa Garner, CEO
Making cooperation visible
In what we might fail individually, we can reimagine together, and the lesson learned is the opportunity to rethink, and the joy of community (re)building. I would say once more that with most of the work I do, “joy” is a state of pleasure, a well-being source yet it is very much “the acceleration of our work, stretching our capacities”. That joy of “learning” is possible when we work, stretch capacity and yet have a sense of community of practice.
In what we might fail individually, we can reimagine together.
Lizzie Emmons, Community & Projects Manager & OJH Program Director
Ecology as entrepreneurship
As I listen to Austin, touring and giving us a sense of what maker space with theCO is, I hear a lot the word entrepreneurship. Here is a definition for entrepreneurship, one we can take with us as we teach with 21st-century skills and with care for the planet: as the creativity quality of us doing something NEW outside of our comfort zone.
In many of the blog articles I have been bringing up the Proximal Learning Zone of L Vygotsky and in this context I highly recommend Pema Chodron’s explaining the concept.
Teaching and approaching ecology having in mind entrepreneurial skills implies the availability of shared makers’ infrastructure, autonomous learning space of practice, by which I mean willingness and opportunities within learning schedules and pedagogies to try out hands-on skills/crafts, as well as a sense of community (Lonka, 2018) to connect with others interested in the same craft as well as a sense of support and scaffolding in other areas of the learner’s life. I would say from makers space to making sense of the world around us, and that builds some kind of self-awareness and self-confidence. Austin with easiness showed how someone working with wood might be supporting someone working on a pottery project. With makerspace technologies of today, entrepreneurship is an eco perspective, Austin points out that it is embedded in the process of creating itself to, leave no unused wood material. This is what I would call transformative technologies, that allow and foster the maker’s image/perspective that the material they are using to create is part of a larger system, and this value or message is passed on to the end user of that product. The setting of the makerspace was clear: it is about the process not about the end result, we are just trying different things and someone sees somehow what you are working on and it becomes an end result. What in education (Lonka,2018) we call “holding (focus on) the process” once it is the focus on the end result we miss the learning opportunity.
Last but not least, the imaginative sense and mindset as I hear Austin saying “you can DO anything here”. For me this is what in the classroom when teaching with multiliteracy, students have the opportunity to try many different skills, jobs, crafts, to… Do. This will create, and theCO showed how we build resilient communities, a lifelong learning mindset, that we, teachers and learners together create and make sense of the world in many different ways (multiliteracy) and we become curious and interested in viewing, sharing and understanding many modalities.
The makerspace in theCo made me think of Finnish schools we have been during the 7 years of teachers’ training activities, and all of them kept the “tradition” of having the craft space as equipped as they come and encouraged all students, at different stages of their life starting to always try out hands-on wood, soft materials making.
Entrepreneuship as the creativity quality of us doing something NEW outside of our comfort zone.
Austin Thompson, Makerspace Manager
Integrative leadership ”in the classroom”
As I listened to Lizzie, Community manager, showing the case of high school students moving through 1-year community leadership program organized in TheCO. The program is addressed to students who do not necessarily “shine” with A grades, in their studies, to be part of a leadership program, where together with local representatives as equal partners in finding solutions to community problems that hold relevance and value for the students. Here is Otto Scharmer defining leadership as a learning skill “I use the word ‘leader’ I refer to all people who engage in creating change or shaping their future, regardless of their formal positions in institutional structures.” Leadership skills practiced by high school students within the community, the human-led setting, and the physical space, as we walk around the conference space give this sense of how natural and almost easy feels to connect school/ classroom learning to the outside world.
Ecology as rethinking “trash”
As we explore the space and get to hold objects made by Austin, in the maker, I hear him saying: “see this plate, I did it because I was learning to use scrap wood from another project, then someone else another maker in the community saw it and now it became a product, and someone with a restaurant ordered them”.
The concept of rethinking “trash” I encountered first during Design Week Helsinki, with Best practices Benchmarking groups of teachers meeting local artists.
As I listen then, and now to Austin, it shows how when we approach teaching with ecology as rethinking what is trash, it is the invitation for teachers and students to focus on the process, and also it creates a true sense of community, of belonging, as “we shine a light” on each other higher perspective on what our work and selves could be. Just like any artist needs the clarity on her work brought by the viewer’s eyes, so do students need and have a right to clarify their ideas in the learning process and relation including in the assessment process.
“To change a system you have to have the courage to step into the unknown”
Otto Scharmer
Future Anticipation
As data shows, students of today will be holding many different jobs, according to the Finnish agency future jobs trends, the ones today in highschool would change at least 5 jobs in the future. With theCO and the amazing people we met, it was such a case of one person being able to move through everyday working life from holding 2-3 different “hats”(roles). Take Lisa for example as CEO, or as owner of a local studio (a platform for local artists and producers to bring their products), or Austin from maker (artist), MakerSpace manager, web/social media creator, or Lizzie artist, community manager just to mention few. In the words of Lisa and her shared wisdom, “if COVID taught us something was to diversify”. As I recall, the work with teachers during COVID-19 learning and teaching, most of them when sharing back from that time you hear “ the things I have tried during that period, I never imagined I could or would do…”
The practical invitation we extended with teachers’ training program, post COVID wisdom or lessons learned was: how can one create more space in the lessons, to bring their own passions/hobbies and integrate them with the subject they teach.
That would be modeling diversifying for students, as well as a source of well-being for teachers.
Teachers model for students as part of the 21st century transversal competence of “future job skills” to adapt and cultivate openness and curiosity. I remember seeing with our group of Coaching Strategies for teachers and educational leaders, as we were working in the space of the Design Museum in Helsinki, in October 2022, a POSTER of this future scenario: in the future we will work for belonging and wellbeing”
The New Innovation is art
When it started with 4 friends coming together and imagining theCO, the innovation, and by that, I hear it meant to get as many people to know and have access and (re)imagine their work, was around technology, now theCO sense is technology is everywhere, so now the innovation which again making it as close (vicinity) and as easily reachable by as many people in the city and not only the East Tennessee region, is artful/ art.
What got me to Jackson, TN?
Meeting Dan Drogosh in makerspace and innovation space Wond’ry, part of Vanderbilt University, he introduced the project called Tennessee Drive for Innovation, which immediately captured my attention, a best practice for maker and innovation space (on wheels) to reach rural communities.
Many thanks to Dan, Lisa, Lizzie, and Austin for their time, attention, and heartful sharing of their work, which easily shine a light on the future(s) we want to see out there with the work we do in education, around innovation and transformative technologies.
Note: this resource article, is my own decoding of theCO story and how their work around cooperation, innovation, and community ecology can hold as good practices for teaching with 21st-century skills, it is by no means representing theCo or the amazing people that we’ve met official standpoints, opinions.
Resources
On Multiliteracy and Multiculturality, Phenomenal Learning from Finland (2018) Kirsti Lonka
On Proximal Learning Zone ( L. Vygotky) wonderful demonstration by Pema Chödrön
