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Welcome to Arts and Ideas in the Air, online and around Baltimore.
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This is Talk About Tuesday, where I talk about something relevant to the school.
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So last night we had an assembly meeting, and it was a really good assembly meeting.
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Lots of good stuff, there should be an email about it.
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Some of the parents who showed up were extremely supportive of the school and where we're at.
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We had some good honest discussions about what to do in this current situation.
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But one thing that struck me as an idea, I'm not sure where it came from in the meeting,
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but just kind of floating out there was, you know, the notion that a lot of what our school
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is is about students, you know, seeing this is what is around me, and now, you know, what
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can I do with it, right?
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It's very similar to the role-playing game that I've been running where I'll describe
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some situation and just be like, what do you do?
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What do you do?
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Right?
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That's what it is.
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It's finding yourself in this environment and saying, what do I do, you know?
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Do I, in person, it'd be like, oh, do I go out and play with sticks, do I go play on
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the computer, do I go chat with those people over there, do I run around, do we play some
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lava game?
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You know, it's just finding ways of interacting with that environment for whatever reason,
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for whatever purpose.
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And so, you know, I think that's the transition to online is very similar.
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Here's this environment, here are these things that one can do, what can you do with it?
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So fundamentally, the same elements, you know, are there.
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Now, it's not as easy to be physical and socially connected as in person.
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It's much harder to observe what other people are doing, which is, I think, a critical component
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because we inspire one another.
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But it's still the case that our students are able to actively engage in an environment
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that supports them, trying to figure out what to do with where they found themselves.
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It's very different than conventional school, which says, you know, in this online environment,
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sit in this chair and watch this person speak at you for like half an hour or an hour or
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whatever.
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You know, it's just, there's no engagement with the environment or life in that model.
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It's all about being part of someone else's narrative and story.
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But that's not what, well, it's really not what any life form is or ought to be.
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But it's certainly not something that humans who, you know, grow up in an environment where
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people say that they're free, it's just totally inappropriate, whereas our environment is
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exactly what it is.
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It's like, yeah, you are free.
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You're free to decide.
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You're free to choose.
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You're free to shut down.
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You're free to expand.
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You're free to explore.
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You're free to propose your activities, you know, you're free to do whatever you want
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to do.
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You know, as long as you don't break the rules of the community.
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And so, you know, it's just such a vastly different thing.
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And so there is an opportunity here to really learn something valuable.
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It's not the same as in person.
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There's a lot of things that are just really wonderful about being in person with other
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members of one's community.
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But it's still not hopeless.
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It's not nothing.
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And you know, I hope everyone is trying to figure out how they can participate in one
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way or another with the community, with their life as it is.
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You know, there is this narrative being said, you know, across the nation that students
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not being able to be in person, in school, that they're being damaged long-term.
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And while that, you know, may or may not be true, I think the narrative itself is such
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a bad narrative.
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It's one of sort of helplessness and it's one of, you know, almost self-fulfilling.
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If you tell someone that they are damaged, then they will very likely come to believe
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that because it's pretty easy to view yourself as damaged.
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It, you know, doesn't require that much effort to be, "Yeah, I can't do this."
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That's pretty much it, right, versus trying to do something where it's a lot of active
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inaction.
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And then, of course, it kind of feeds on itself.
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So you know, I'm always very skeptical of negative narratives, whether they be true
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or not, I think it's very important to ask, "Well, why are we saying this narrative?
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What are we trying to accomplish?"
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And you know, so I think you can argue that in person is a really great thing to have
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and we should fight for it, but I think the narrative of, "Oh, it's all hopeless, y'all
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are getting hurt," is a bad one and should go away.
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Instead it should be a narrative of, "Okay, here is this environment, what can you make
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of it?
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What can you do?
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Try to figure something out, try to do something.
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Just do.
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Just do."
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All right, well, I think that's about enough for today.
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You know, like, I guess one example is just this podcast itself.
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I wasn't thinking about doing things like this, but here I am and I'm doing it.
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Why?
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You know, that just seemed like a nice way of asynchronously connecting with people.
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So I tried it and I'm doing it.
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Figure out stuff to do.
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That's how it goes.
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All right, well, you all have a good one.
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Until next time.