Elliot Washor's TGIF 04.17.2026

Are you with me now? AJ Ryder

I got into San Diego on Saturday from Winnipeg and immediately had to get into ASU GSV conference mode. This is the last conference on the docket, and it started at our home on Sunday evening with about 50 guests. Yes, I cooked a bit and yes, it rained a bit but this only added to what was another memorable night. What a way to start a conference at someone’s home. Fifty people juxtaposed against a conference with a cast of thousands. People loved it.

Some other highlights at the ASU GSV conference were:

A great Leadership Journeys with Dena Simmons, Javier Guzman and LaShawn Routé

Chatmon. There’s a 30-year history with BPL and LaShawn’s work at the National Equity Project (NEP). It was really nice to see many of the NEP staff and Leadership Journeys.

Carlos and Andrew hosting a breakfast along with Karla getting interviewed by Kaya Henderson about how her experience as student at the San Diego Met plays out in her life now and then, Karla interviewing Kaya about the importance of BPL

The visit to the San Diego Met where students demonstrated their chops to 60 attendees. The attendees were blown away both by individual student interest explorations and their time in advisory. Twenty-two years later, the San Diego Met is still kicking. AMAZING! 

There were loads of meetings that occurred by happenstance – close encounters of the best kind. Running into people meeting by happenstance is wonderful; I saw people I hadn’t seen in years and made some great new acquaintances. All will lead to next steps.

After participating in the ASU GSV conference, I headed off to Edison, NJ to kick off our Skilled Trades work with 50 or so people who will be involved, many of them in the day-to-day of this amazing and long overdue opportunity. I keep learning the importance of partnerships in what we do. Way too often the conversations are with educators doing similar work. This tends to silo us rather than broaden how we work. I feel grateful and fortunate that we have the partners we now have in NJ who can move things and do things in arenas where, as educators we have little clout. Our meeting today instantiated my feelings and more.

“You’re wasting your time playing those games” – The Teacher

In 2008 P. W. Singer served on Barak Obama’s defense policy task force and wrote Wired for War, a book I read about a high school dropout who enlisted in the military and became the best drone pilot because of his ability to play video games. At that time, the military was already piggy backing on game controllers for their drones and the young people who had incredible skills using them not only became the best drone pilots but were beating our top gun pilots in targeted missions while they were thousands of miles from the war zones. That was then and now the use of drones in the military is normal. Presently, there is a shortage of air traffic controllers and the F.A.A. is also recruiting video gamers to fill these positions. It turns out that only 25% of air traffic controllers have a college degree and what they do in their spare time is play video games like Fall Out and Call of Duty. Now, the F.A.A. is recruiting gamers over going to college fairs. They are being recruited for “their hand-eye coordination, quick decision-making in complex environments and ability to remain focused on screens for hours on end.” So much for Durable Skills and blaming ADHD on playing video games. These are the sensory motor and other skills that schools don’t pay much attention to. We need to remember that reason tends to distort anything that isn’t purely rational—and unfortunately, schools often tip the scale by favoring reason over tacit knowledge.

"The Count don't do much, but he does it better than anyone else." Freddie Green the Basie Band's Guitarist, and The Count's “Lefthand.”

I’m a big fan of Count Basie and the Basie Band. No one can play like them. In large part it was because of Count Basie’s leadership and the mysteries behind his minimalist style. The Count was a Leaver-Outer. He barely played a note and left out more than he put in leaving room for soloists and his incredible rhythm section led by his guitarist Freddie Green – the human metronome.  If The Count played at all it was just to lay down a riff to set the timing and the feel at the beginning of a song. Basie relied on what is called “head arrangements where the music was not written down. It was embodied through practice and jamming and jamming and practice. Nothing was memorized. His music is feeling over technicality. It is personal. A slight nuance of the hand was all that was needed to communicate. There’s a lot I take away from Basie about how to lead and it comes back to me especially when I get near to Red Bank, New Jersey where Basie was born. My connection to Red Bank is through the place where my family went to see fireworks on the 4^th of July. In a few weeks’ time, I’ll be in Red Bank to do a podcast in the Carpenter’s Union studios.

Next week, I’m in San Diego doing work with Andrea and Co. around the IBPLC.

Be well.