{"id":30,"date":"2014-11-10T13:39:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T13:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/?p=30"},"modified":"2014-11-10T17:23:34","modified_gmt":"2014-11-10T17:23:34","slug":"cohort-21-what-have-i-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/2014\/11\/10\/cohort-21-what-have-i-done\/","title":{"rendered":"Cohort 21? What Have I done?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"WIN_20141109_085957\"<\/a>
Moving from crazy to crazier.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is my first Cohort 21 face to face meeting, and I am mesmerized… and inspired, intimidated, overwhelmed, exhilarated and terrified. I don\u2019t really know what I am. We\u2019ve moved on to the next discussion\/idea\/innovation and I\u2019m still whirling to resolve ten minutes ago, two hours ago, the morning introductions with all of the energy and enthusiasm that popcorned about the room with the pace and style of a hip, made-for-the-digital-aged-newsroom. I can tell by my relative silence that I\u2019m caught. I am back at any given moment of acting school, standing on the outside of some exercise or meditation, looking in. I know for sure I\u2019ve been challenged and I don\u2019t know yet how I\u2019ll react, how I should react.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the context of my life, it\u2019s difficult to make sense of this decision to become a part of the Cohort 21 community. I have a wife and a two year old to whom I often feel I would happily devote all of my attention and energy always. We have another child on the way. I am still relatively new in a\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>job at Rothesay Netherwood School \u2013 a place that is so positively alive with innovation, possibility, and overall excitement to an extent that my understanding of learning and teaching is often overwhelmingly pushed. We\u2019ve been in New Brunswick for more than a year now and unpacked boxes are still creeping from the corners of the dining room. I am a graduate student, chasing a degree too often characterised by mad scrambles at the edge of academic Armageddon and desperate, late night, last minute pleas to professors as I search for a sympathetic (pathetic?) reprieve. In all that I do (I am often reminded by my all-too-supportive wife), I am hard on myself. It is, too often, a feeling of being spread so thin that all responsibilities are compromised. No one thing, it seems, represents the very best of me. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And now, here I sit, challenged by this room to become even less comfortable in my profession. To treat all that I do as an experiment at best \u2013 to implement, adjust, readjust, revamp, reflect, fail… to never be comfortable. Cohort 21? What have I done?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This, however, is the reality when a path is driven by a kind of fire or passion. Logistically, certain decisions confound and confuse. In the context of my life, the decision to join Cohort 21 makes little sense. In so many ways, Cohort 21 flies in the face of my nature (Twitter, for instance, is so immediate and I don\u2019t often just jump in a pool. More likely I step back, and analyze and contextualize the pool, discover its metaphorical significance in a long life, discuss it endlessly with my wife, write an \u2018express and reflect\u2019 essay about it and then jump in… maybe). But while Cohort 21 makes little sense for me logistically, here is what I know for sure about my complicated relationship with education: I am deeply driven, if even for the most unhealthy of reasons – driven by the horrors of adolescence that still haunt my dreams (seriously!), driven to constantly ensure that the experiences of my students in no way resemble my own experiences as a student in, say, a high school English Class. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, of course, I am not here to resolve logistics, to make life easy. Quite the opposite. I am here to make a mess of things. To make unfamiliar all things that convention and tradition have made all too familiar. Like with the hymn from morning chapel that repeats itself in my head throughout a day, sometimes testing my level of sanity, I am here to disrupt the rhythm of my life, of students\u2019 lives. I am here because life (you know, if you\u2019re truly living) is messy. <\/span><\/span>Necessarily messy. At least as messy as the one hundred students who rely on me each day and the infinite complications characterising their lives. I am here because I know what it would mean if my life and my teaching ever became clean. I am here because I sense I share all of this with many people in this room. I am her to be both pushed and supported.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

O.K., that\u2019s my express and reflect essay. Now I\u2019m ready to jump in. How\u2019s the water?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is my first Cohort 21 face to face meeting, and I am mesmerized… and inspired, intimidated, overwhelmed, exhilarated and terrified. I don\u2019t really know what I am. We\u2019ve moved on to the next discussion\/idea\/innovation and I\u2019m still whirling to resolve ten minutes ago, two hours ago, the morning introductions with all of the energy … Continue reading “Cohort 21? What Have I done?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classroom-reflections","category-face-2-face-sessions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/grahamvogt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}