“Are you with me now” A J Ryder
“Things ain’t what they used to be” – Mercer Ellington
Last week I wrote about how after 30 years our work has gone largely unrecognized by the mainstream but at the SxSW conference things were different. We were the talk of the town. It seems like people of all ilk’s are catching on to how we’ve been doing what we do. All the BPL people I spoke to who attended felt this way as well. For me, I got this feedback through 1:1’s both scheduled and serendipitous throughout the entire conference. These meetings happened right up to the time I got to the airport when Jenny Anderson, NY Times journalist and author of The Disengaged Teen tapped me on the shoulder and we walked and talked for about an hour with follow-up talks getting scheduled.
My only official conference event was going to a packed house of over 500 where we were all taken on the incredible Leadership Journeys of three amazing educators - Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Shameka Gerald and Christian Martinez. This LJ seemed even more special because of its connections to the times we are all living through. Somehow the stories of these leaders took on even more meaning with their personal tales of resilience and hope reflecting an almost up to the minute account of the presenters’ lives. ‘Nuff said, because you just have to be there. What happens at Leadership Journeys stays at Leadership Journeys. It’s a personal not personalized experience. Special thanks to Chris, Karla, Los, David, Loren, Katrina, Cynthia and of course, Timothy and Mickey Breeze for making this a great event.
Two continuous threads at my SxSW meetings involved iterations of the work around the IBPLC and B-Unbound Learning Centers. After 1:1’s with Shameka Gerald and Emily Liebtag we arranged a follow-up Zoom with Ann McColl, the Executive Director of Jeanes Fellows, Ann discussed the history of Jeanes Fellows and we also discussed the intersections of their work and ours. A good way to sum it up is coming off of Black History Month and moving into Women’s History Month, Jeanes Fellows were Black women educators from their communities who did a flip on the question: What are communities doing for schools to what are schools doing for communities. This was done by actually doing the work and not talking about it. Jeanes Fellows have been around since 1908 and were the coaches for teachers in Rosenwald schools not just to train teachers in practice but to train teachers to have schools uplift their communities. I saw this process in action when I went with Carrie Duff to Edgecombe School District. Gone are Rosenwald Schools but not Jeanes Fellows.
This coming week we have our big Harbor Freight Fellows gathering in Greenville South Carolina, Led by Crishell and supported by Charlie, the planning has been on-going for months. Last year’s conference was just amazing with lots of folks getting a taste for a different way of doing both a conference and how to DO the work of elevating the skilled trades through a practice that happens beyond the walls of schools. En plein air is where our Harbor Freight Fellows are learning the tricks of the trades.
At the conference I’ll have time with the entire group to discuss how to elevate the skilled trades and crafts re: what we’ve been doing for decades; how we do it; and where we are going. That said, here’s two issues I’ll bring up around elevating the skilled trades and crafts. The first is learning that goes from concrete to abstract – from learned experience to the spoken and written word and then, how grasping precedes language. Just take a read of an excerpt from Ingrained by Callum Robinson -
“All the creative thinking, fortitude, skill and muscle in the world isn’t enough to make something remarkable,” he concludes in the book’s epilogue. “You must know, deep inside, that what you are doing is important, meaningful—vital. That someone somewhere needs it to be special, that you have thought about them, and that you care.” That might not amount to a structural analysis of labor, but it is a beautiful aspiration for laboring, a call for all of us, whatever we do all day, to do it with passion and care.”
Callum’s work as a craftsman is well worth a read. Once again, his hands SPEAK and then, when he does talk, his words are worth a listen.
The other point is how we can create a pathway that starts from the skilled trades that then leads to a college degree. More and more we are seeing people with 4-year college degrees enroll in certification courses at community colleges. These students have high graduation rates, are older and know what they want. Last time I looked 27% of students at community colleges fit this category but the other way around i.e. going from a journeyman to a four-year degree should be a pathway as well. In Ireland this is an actual program filling a need for more electrical engineers from the ranks of electricians and also filling a need in the electrician who sees this as meaningful work. Guess what happens in this pathway? No debt and way more feel for the work. Once again going from concrete to abstract.
Bachelor of Engineering in Industrial Electrical Engineering (Apprenticeship) Level 7 Programme, we are looking qualified electricians who wish to upskill and to acquire advanced knowledge to move into engineering roles in Industry. The course is a 2 year employer-led apprenticeship with 70% of the learners time spent on the job.
Back to Mercer…
A few weeks ago when Quincy Jones passed away I wrote about my experience at a jazz club in Providence and how the horn player without saying a word played one of Q’s originals from wayback. You could only know that he was paying homage if you knew what he knew. This time, I was a the Parker Jazz Club in Austin with Aaron Frumin. Aaron founded a sister organization to Harbor Freight Fellows called unCommon Construction in New Orleans. I usually go to these haunts alone but this time for some reason Aaron joined me and guess what?, the first two tunes the horn player played was one for Fat Tuesday – Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans and the other a Mercer Ellington song - “Things ain’t what they used to be.” Some may think jazz musicians don’t say much while performing but others understand what comes out of their horn says it all to those who know and listen.
Be Well!
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