Thinking out loud
One of the items on my initial 2025 actions list - helping produce a newsletter for the complex I live in - came to life this past week. I also crossed a (small) Rubicon by submitting a letter-to-the-editor to the local Evanston newspaper. The letter (unpublished as of today
Thinking out loud
One of the things I am motivated to help all of us get better at is moving away from hurling opinions and ideas at each other and moving toward more reflective inquiry. And I mean "inquiry" as more than just a question, but instead a process that leads
Community listening
My interest is in helping develop or improve ways of community listening: * How a group listens to the community members it serves. * How a group makes sense of what it is hearing from community members. The above three lines are what I wrote as my profile description on a volunteer
Community listening
I see the world as a set of overlapping communities with leaky boundaries. The physical communities in which I reside (neighborhood, city). Professional and personal communities that are anchored in the workplace (Northwestern University is one for me) or through shared activities (like working out at the local YMCA). Everyone
Community listening
I asked this question at a meet-the-candidate event yesterday for someone running for my Ward's city council seat in Evanston. The candidate is really solid. An empathetic, self-proclaimed policy wonk whose career includes a rich mix of community roles and work. At this point, he
Community listening
I am spending time in 2025 working on two things. Exploring ways my experience might contribute to community, learning and progress at a very local level outside of formal organizations. Think: City, neighborhood, apartment communities. Digging into my ancestry and family history, I didn't start out with this
Archive - Foundations
[This is a thinking-out-loud piece. No answers, just exploring.] Dr. Shirin Vossoughi, Associate Professor of Learning Sciences at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, shared her work on inclusive teaching at a recent faculty meeting for instructors in the Master's Program in
Archive - Foundations
Let me tease out two ideas. Design is - must be - a communal practice. And many more of us are designers than we might believe. Together, these two ideas might change the way many of use view the work we do and our role in addressing issues of equity and justice.
Archive - Foundations
I am working out loud this academic quarter, a bit, in conjunction with two courses I co-teach with some amazing colleagues. What's coming together is some inspiration on the intersection of work we do in using and applying design practices - design thinking - and the work we do
Archive - Foundations
It's the start of 2021 and I bring with me this lesson about being an educator: The job is, with care, to create moments for people to think. I've contemplated this lesson for several years teaching graduate students. The professionals who come to our masters degree
Archive - Foundations
I've been back in the classroom this fall and winter, co-teaching MSLOC 430 Creating and Sharing Knowledge. Two things are new. Our program moved to a new community platform - from Jive to SAP Jam. The platform provides the space for both formal and informal engagement with students,
Archive - Foundations
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak at the annual conference of the Association of Change Management Professionals Midwest Chapter. I shared my thoughts on what is an on-going work-in-progress: The learning journey required to move beyond being empathetic and to actively practice co-creation when we