I regard it as the foremost task of education to insure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self denial, and above all, compassion. –Kurt Hahn

see also Kurt Hahn writings.

Nineteen years ago this week, I graduated from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, having studied Finance and Healthcare Administration. After two years of working long weekdays to crunch financial projections for huge hospital projects and working long weekends training for and leading Chicago Center Outward Bound programs for high school kids, I quit my “day job” and went north to Ely, Minnesota, and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, to lead wilderness trips for the summer.

The plan was to return to Chicago and run corporate programs to support the youth programs, but the Chicago Center closed a month after I returned from Ely. With only two years of “real” work experience, I dared to be self-employed rather than unemployed — and that’s what I’ve been ever since. After corporate programs work, with New York City Outward Bound and Chicago Center founder Steve Proudman, I eventually lost any formal ties to Outward Bound.

That said, the picture atop this post is from the first Michael Herman Associates homepage, in 1998. When Katrina hit, I sketched out a community preparedness curriculum/plan under the heading of “Ready for Anything.” It’s still here in my draft blogposts, never posted because I realized that I was essentially recreating Outward Bound. Another time, as we stood reading HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s explanation of Outward Bound on the wall of an OB school in Scotland a few years ago, my wife, Jill, exclaimed “That’s what you do!”

And so it was an Outward Bound homecoming of sorts, as I worked with other alums this past weekend, to build raised beds for the students of Polaris Charter Academy to grow food this Spring. Polaris is one of 160 “expeditionary learning” schools that are grounding in neighborhood elementary and high schools the experiential learning principles of Kurt Hahn, refined through more than 60 years of Outward Bound wilderness practice. Polaris students, grades k-2 (so far), learn by doing. By getting out and exploring, finding out for themselves where food comes from, and where garbage goes. Learning to read and write and count and present in the process of exploring the World.

In many ways, from personal backcountry tripping and seventeen years of sole proprietorship, to my frequent framing of Open Space as a sort of wilderness expedition inside of organization, I really have been Outward Bound all along. To see my OpenSpaceTech and OpenSpaceWorld sites, I’ve certainly been educator. But I’m Outward Bound all over again these days — coming home from the wilderness, coming home to the wilderness, and wilderness coming home to Chicago, all at once. Confidence and Community. Ground touching ground. Breaking new trail in rugged old boots.

There is talk of two more expeditionary learning schools coming in Chicago. And of restarting the Chicago Center. I’m looking forward to an organizing meeting next month.

I woke up this morning thinking about public schools, career path, and teaching… specifically, brain rolled around with the possibility of getting certified to teach school, while body rolled around with the possibility of breakfast. (This isn’t exactly new, I’ve been an educator at heart since my Outward Bound days, nearly two decades ago.) But then this comes in the morning emails:

Dear Friends,

I’ve decided to offer myself as a candidate for the Waters LSC as a community representative. I have been at Waters since 1991 when I enrolled my son Jamal here. I was elected as President of the first LSC and held that position for 5 years. I went back to school (NEIU) and received a interdisciplinary degree in Education, Ecology and Neighborhood Studies.

We partnered with the Center for City Schools at National Louis University and began an intense and well supported period of professional development for our teachers. That first LSC learned that education could be an amazing, rich, challenging, and joyous experience for children. It all depends on how a school teaches and what its philosophy of education is.

Parents were invited to workshops to let them experience what this educational vision was about: collaboration, sharing, valuing each voice, going beyond text books to original works and sources, opening the doors of our school and its classrooms to allow the community in, and the students out into the world.

We learned that the arts, real work, and world experiences, could be combined with the core disciplines of literacy, math and science, to give kids a rich, multifaceted education. We were a local, poor, low-scoring, no-special programs school that decided that our kids were an amazing gift, capable of great achievement.

The 1990s were an amazing time of partnering, support, experimentation and growth. Our scores rose steadily. But our school paid more attention to other more meaningfull assessments: student writing, problem solving, ability to work with others, recognition of “other intelligences”, and projects, projects, projects.

Since 2000 our schools have been under a barage of mandates to test, to teach to the test, to reduce student assessment to a series of data points. We need, as a community, to educate our selves about what is “best practice” in education, and support it in our school. We have to produce a countervailing pressure in order to protect our kids, teachers and administrators.

I am known at Waters mostly for my work in ecology. But, the ecology program was an outgrowth, a sprout and flowering of the ideas planted in 1991. It is what every parent wants for their child: the best, most rich learning experiences in a caring and safe community.

Let us hold on to this vision and learn together.

Mr. Lucky
(Pete Leki)

I’m inspired and wondering again, fully awake and a little bit hungry, for something other than breakfast. Maybe I should have been more specific last week in updating Inviting Leadership. Inviting Community might should have been Inviting Education.

An old client recently shared some thoughts on their progress since we ran an executive leadership summit together, in open space:

…we have indeed leveraged open space a couple of times since and most recently with the 120 odd manufacturing managers to great successes… Our journey has been interesting… although we are grappling with the same issues we have taken many of the principles to heart… Our learning is that the solutions are time consuming and need to be debated and internalised. We have kicked off numerous such discussion with integrated solutions… but the work is still nascent… not everyone is yet at the same stage…

Time consuming, yes. Need to be debated, ongoing. Integrated solutions AND still just getting started. This, to me, is the great learning in Open Space: Organization as Conversation. So many people simply talking to each other is the real lifeblood of all those org charts, spreadsheets and plans. So Open Space works because it lets us invite new focus and energy in the big conversation that already is the organization.

more at www.manudelago.com and been listening here while i work today.

The Federal Reserve’s rescue has failed. So says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor, at Telegraph.co.uk:

The verdict is in. The Fed’s emergency rate cuts in January have failed to halt the downward spiral towards a full-blown debt deflation. Much more drastic action will be needed.

Big news from Theresa Williamson in Rio…

Catalytic Communities’ (CatComm) five-year experiment of launching and running the “Casa” community technology hub for leaders in downtown Rio has accomplished its mission!

…Community leaders from Rio de Janeiro and beyond found in the Casa the possibility to articulate themselves as a network and strengthen their local projects using digital tools.

Over the past 5 years, the Casa has served 1050 community leaders from 215 neighborhoods across the city of Rio de Janeiro. An additional 400 journalists, university professors and students, NGO activists and others have also shared in the space. And people from 23 of Brazil’s 26 states have attended events, not to mention 22 nations.

AND NOW… in 2009 CatComm will launch a new version of our CatComm.org website, where, in addition to searching for local projects from the four corners of the globe to serve as inspiration… community organizers will be able to participate in the likes of a “virtual Casa” - an online space for sharing experiences, capacity-building, fundraising opportunities, and dialogue with other leaders and volunteers the world over.

Go! Go! Go!

UPDATE: Theresa just pointed me to these pictures from OpenSpace1, OpenSpace2, and OpenSpace3. I did some coaching with her some time ago to get them started in Open Space. It does indeed make me a happy camper to see these results!

i woke up the other morning thinking about “those special interests.” pretty scary, eh? specifically, thinking that obama’s frequent promises to do something about “those special interests” should be traded in for promises he can actually keep: he should be promising to “turn up the volume” of ordinary voices in Washington.

this he can prove. this he has demonstrated. in stadium rallies. literally, a million donors. an active community blogosphere. person-to-person phonebanking and door-to-door campaigning instead of robo-calling. the marvel of his campaign is that he’s got so many people involved. his “solution” doesn’t need to be invented… it needs only to be repeated.

he doesn’t need to change the system, he needs only to keep inviting more and more ordinary american voices into the system — and we will change that system. it’s an additive process, an inviting leader inviting more and more leadership, that addresses problems without attacking them directly.

this is how inviting leadership works. it adds and invites more and more of what is good and working, brings more and more people into the conversation. that is enough. their new energy, new ideas, and new connections immediately move the system in ways that naturally (even if slowly) replace and resolve the old ways and problems.

“turning up the volume” on what’s good and working seems a stronger position than “battling the special interests” and “changing the system” — in this election, and in every organization and leadership situation i can remember. they say people resist change, but who doesn’t like to be invited? this is, i think, why this campaign is working.

Terra Brockman, founder of The Land Connection to save Illinois farmland, sends out one of the first signs of spring around here: an invitation to RampFest.

Ramps are the first edible greens to appear in our Midwestern forests each spring. They are in the allium family (along with onions, garlic, and leeks), and were called chicagoua by the native Miami and Illinois peoples. This was also the Indian name for the Chicago River, along which ramps grew abundantly. In the late 17th Century, French explorers began referring to the area at the mouth of the Chicago River as “Chicago.”

The foliage, stems, and bulbs can be used raw or cooked — in salads, soups, on pizza, or in sandwiches. They are especially good in omelets and quiches. Many chefs say that ramps are the best-tasting member of the entire onion family.

We live six houses from the River, on land once held by the Miami people. My guess is that it’s probably not a great idea to go foraging for this sort of food along the cleaner-than-it-used-to-be, but not as clean as it should be, Chicago River.

Even so, it’s good to be thinking about fresh food, garden and growing. We’ve got several inches of snow that might just disappear this weekend and a bungalow landscaping workshop tonight.

earlier this evening i saw an army veteran named cheryl, in tacoma, washington, post on the obama community blogsite a request for help in writing her own iraq story, in support of the story senator obama told in the debate last week.

i was impressed that she posted her phone number, and challenged by her obvious determination to get her story into writing. i paused… and then called this perfect stranger. i left a message, hung up, and wondered what would happen next.

in the meantime, i wondered who she was. clicked on her profile page. noticed that i didn’t have a profile, so started to fill that in. some minutes later, the phone rang.

we’ve had a bit of a chat now, and she’s got a bit of a line on the start of her story. we’re looking forward to chatting again tomorrow or the next day about what she comes up with — because she’s determined to get her story out.

THIS is what i think is so remarkable about this campaign, that people can connect in these simple ways. that people are so determined to give to this movement, willing to ask for help, and willing to offer to strangers.

this is why i think the deepest structure of this campaign is different. it is already supporting the way so many of us wish our government could be: of the people, by the people, and for each other.

i don’t think of it as supporting a candidate as much as being a member of a community, same as i am an active member in other LARGE communities. this one just happens to have as its purpose the future of the united states government.

We are now spending $9 billion per month in Iraq.

Not having much experience with billions, I wondered: How does that compare to something like what the City of Chicago spends to run all city services and functions for a year?

The City of Chicago spent $5.7 to run itself for the twelve months of 2007.

Other ways to understand how much $9 billion is?