Elliot Washor's TGIF 10.03.2025

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder

“I don't need the belt. I don't need the roar of a crowd.

I just want to eat good fruit, tell the truth, and die knowing I broke the cycle.

If you want to know what greatness is — it's not dominance. It's healing.” Mike Tyson

Last week, I ended my TGIF with a note by Mike Tyson about what constitutes a currency exchange. The note ended with the above three lines. In his case, Mike’s fists were his currency exchanged for healing.  You might say that pain that is not transformed is transmitted and we certainly do see a lot of that in this world but Mike certainly came to terms with his.

My TGIF’s go out to a broad audience of friends. Many are not involved in education and because of this I get different responses about what I write. Although Chris Reynolds is an educator, he is also a dad whose son is a tournament fisherman. Here’s his response to keeping secrets and currency exchange around mattering, meaning and healing.

“For decades tournament fishermen and fishing guides guarded their secrets with reticence, aloofness, misdirection, and outright lies. 

In the last ten years recreational fishermen have discovered a way to make money through YouTube and social media by showing the how, the where, and the when.  And to sell a lot of fishing products. A few pros have joined in too (if you can’t beat em join ‘em) but most hate the fact that the hard-earned tacit knowledge earned by the “do, think revise” cycle and thousands of hours of experience gained on the water (OTW) can be transferred to a partial degree in a free YouTube video. Not the full tacit knowledge but enough to dramatically shrink the learning curve.  This is shortening the time to high level competitiveness for a fair number of anglers, but as Mike Tyson might say, it produces no healing.  The time spent learning the lakes and rivers in real time can be a flow state where existence, learning, and healing merge. I’ve had glimpses of this and it’s wonderful. YouTube doesn’t do that but it does alter the competitive balance.  There are few secrets anymore, even in fishing.” 

“What would Bucky think?” Charles Eames

I’m a muddler, a noodler and a grappler. I muddle, noodle and grapple making music, cooking, drawing, writing and with just about everything else. The joy in it never seems to stop or come to an end. Now more than ever in the world in and beyond schools, ideas have gained their own new currency and influencers are the prime example. I still can’t get myself to buy into this kind of influencing but Deb Meier’s book, The Power of Their Ideas is something a bit more tangible. Here we find students grappling with the power of their ideas. Without the time spent muddling, noodling and grappling will flow, meaning and healing emerge?

“We was just reminiscing about tomorrow’s game” Casey Stengel

I’m looking forward to our upcoming Weaving meeting about the Impact Campaign and this is a part of how I’m getting ready.

I’ve always looked to gain understanding and grow our work by spending lots of time with people doing work in other fields. So many people in education cast their net within the domain of education networks. Just look at the conference’s educators go to and who attends. This circle is really small and for me that is not a good thing. But over many decades, the convenings I/we’ve designed have almost always involved a diversity of groups and communities from different fields and parts of the world to get us to make BPL something more meaningful and engaging.

Here's two graphics from people whose work I’m familiar with. Regarding the Charles and Ray Eames one, I didn’t know them but did hangout with Ralph Caplan who knew them well. Ralph wrote extensively about their work. This Eames graphic puts innovation in an environmental framework. We mostly have talks around language but not diagrams or environments like we did when we do our Leaving to Learns. The other is by Clay Christenson. I did know Clay and had many talks with him. In 2007, Clay received the first "Disruption Award" from Big Picture Learning, which was a large, five-foot-tall hammer, in recognition of his work in disruptive innovation and similar to The Eames’ work it explains how simpler, more affordable products and services can displace established market-leading firms. Our friends Julia Freeland Fisher and Michael Horn are now part of the Christensen Institute and Clay and I were on Andrew’s dissertation committee. Muddling, grappling and noodling with these seemingly different two diagrams at the same time can yield a great deal.

I saw a wonderfully intense one person play this weekend called Small. Robert Montano is not just the actor but also the actual person who through intense physical, emotional and mental trials and tribulations became first jockey and then a dancer. It is an amazing performance. As a young Puerto Rican growing up in Hempstead, Long Island, Robert was picked on because of his height so he gravitated to jockeys who looked like him and were big and powerful in the saddle. The problem is he grew and still maintained his passion for being a jockey. I can’t imagine how he performs night after night but isn’t that what we all do?

And, talking small, here I am with my 3 year old buddy King Kong whom I’ve known since he was a pup at an International Dog Show in Portugal. Talk about a shit show. This is the real deal.

Be well and Plenty, plenty, bye, bye