What If Potential Follows Encouragement?
What if encouragement doesn’t simply follow evidence of potential? What if, sometimes, evidence of potential follows encouragement? Drawing connections between research on teacher expectations and leader-member relationships, I’m thinking through how the patience, trust, challenge, attention, and opportunities we give people may help shape the potential we later believe we simply recognized.
I Wish You Knew Me Now
I’ve spent almost four decades being known in fragments. My family knew the overwhelmed child. Friends knew me inside particular seasons. Colleagues got to see me in my element. Some people stayed. Some left. Some I disappeared from, and some I chose to leave behind. Every one of those versions of me was real. None was the whole person. I think I’m finally ready to let you know me now.
There Had to Be More Gentleness in the World
A fifth-grade message about fidget toys brought me back to the teacher I once was, the child I once was, and the questions I learned to ask through Paulo Freire. This is a reflection on attention, behavior, self-regulation, and why I’ve come to believe there has to be more gentleness in how we design education.
Proof Work
What happens when the systems meant to support us become another burden to carry? A summer of displacement, doctoral study, and building The Open Practice Academy taught me something I thought I already knew: resolution is not repair, relationships are load-bearing, and sometimes we build the map while we’re already walking the terrain.
Did I Write This? Rethinking Authorship, AI, and What Counts as Thinking
Did I write this? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself—and I think it’s the wrong one. Here’s why I believe the future of authorship depends less on who typed the words and more on who takes responsibility for their meaning.