My pathway to open source teaching By Art Fuller, Founder & Chair
My pathway to open source teaching dates back to my experience as a child, specifically, annual summer visits to the birthplace of my parents, Montgomery, Alabama. As a child, I fondly remember visiting at least 10 male cousins, around my age. We used to play sports all day and enjoy childhood games all night. My parents were one of the few from the family to move away from Montgomery.
Little did I know this simple act provided me with an opportunity to experience an array of social networks and educational expectations which none of my male cousins imagined. It is true that both of my parents earned Bachelors degrees from Alabama A & M University, but so did the parents of a number of my cousins. Today, at the age of 34, my trips to Montgomery are filled with remorse, as I am the only one remaining who is not deceased, incarcerated, or strung out on the addiction of alcohol, drugs, and/or low expectations. I am the only male from this group who has a college degree or owns his own house. I am convinced my access to a different set of social networks and educational norms is the primary reason.
This belief was solidified during my three years with a comprehensive school reform organization in which I visited nearly two hundred urban schools throughout the nation, particularly the Southeastern United States. Within many schools, I saw the same faces of my male cousins. This experience convinced me that I had to find a way for these same faces to become exposed to the same type of social and academic networks which I benefited.
My parents have always encouraged me to explore everything and it is through this exploration that I personally found motivating topics that required me to learn and develop new skills. I envision Open Source Teaching is such a platform, where all learners can find any area of interest and explore it deeply guided by on-demand and engaging new media that provides open access to the expert applied knowledge of the world's experts, within all areas of commerce.
It is my hope that exposure to the language, descriptions, stories, and applied knowledge of such people (in a format beyond traditional text) can create a spark in individuals to acquire the necessary skills to excel in wherever their interest resides. This is the fundamental premise of open source teaching and the reason I am committed to institutionalizing this work so that learners throughout the world are empowered. Open Source Teaching is and will continue to be my life's work.
I welcome your support of the new form of public service for a knowledge economy, open source teaching.
My pathway to open source teaching By David Sevier, Ed.D., Founder
As a child growing up on the Highland Rim in Tennessee my summers were spent working in my grandfather’s tobacco fields. Tobacco is a labor intensive crop well-suited to the Tennessee soil. Tobacco requires many hands at every step in the process; it must be seeded in beds, transplanted to the fields, topped at the bloom stage, harvested onto stakes, and cured by hanging in barns.
During these times I worked with people from every stage of life and economic tier. In the spring, I stood beside landowners pulling small plants from seedling beds; in late summer, poor day laborers and I climbed barn rafters hanging mature tobacco leaves to start the curing process. It was hard, hot, work which culminated at the tobacco auction held in December, just in time to start preparing the fields for next year’s crop.
Many events during that time stand out, but one event surpasses the others. I was a teenager carrying seedling plants to the field in wet burlap bags with a day laborer. He was grizzled, had gnarled hands, a crooked grin, and was the product of a lifetime of personal neglect. I guessed him to be about 60 years old. He was 35. He had gone to school but the system had passed him by on many occasions. He was not unintelligent; in fact, he had obtained a level of informal education few of us could ever expect to obtain. What he was missing was not education, it was knowledge.
Looking back, I now realize the impression that experience had on me. It made me realize that going to school was not the single key to unlocking the doors in life, it is schooling coupled with access to knowledge that makes things in life possible. Schooling without knowledge is hollow; knowledge without application is pointless.
I have spent the vast majority of my professional life in school buildings either as a teacher or as an administrator. Even after leaving K-12 public education I have continued to work in the area of state-level education public policy. At each stop along the way I have become increasingly convinced that students can only come to a full understanding of their life choices if they have an opportunity to hear from those who have their devoted their lives to similar endeavors. The time-honored tradition of sitting at the feet of the master is still the best way to learn about an area of interest. In short, water tastes sweetest when it comes directly from the well.
The Open Source Teaching Project brings learners to the source, it makes knowledge real for learners, it allows those who have achieved great things to inspire others, it is where sharing becomes learning.
My pathway to open source teaching By Rich Haglund, J.D., Founder, Athademic
When
I was eight or nine years old, my parents gave me a book with suggested
questions to ask when visiting museums, power plants, hospitals and
other places that might be of interest.
A few years later, a
friend's mother told me that if I became a doctor, I could marry her
daughter. So, I volunteered at a children's hospital and spent time in
a sports medicine clinic, talking to doctors and therapists. After high
school chemistry and physics, I decided writing for Sports Illustrated
was a better career goal (I'm not sure the daughter liked me, anyway).
So, I took AP English and, when I was in college, talked to former
writers for Sports Illustrated.
I
eventually realized that my ultimate goal was to become commissioner of
major league baseball. I learned that one commissioner, the late A.
Bartlett Giamatti, had been a university president before being named
commissioner, so I secured a part-time job working in the president's
office of the university I was attending. Working there I discovered
that university presidents spend a lot of time soliciting donations.
In
law school, I decided I wanted to work in education law. So, I talked
with the university's general counsel about his work. That conversation
led to a summer job and my participation on a committee auditing the
university's athletic program. Talking to a fellow student about his
writing for an education law publication helped me secure a writing job
during school and, eventually, my current job with the State Board of
Education.
Unfortunately, most children do not have access to
expert knowledge through their social or educational networks. Nor do
they have parents or other mentors who will help them see immediate
relevance of what they are studying by exploring their interests in
real-world applications.
Open source learning - in its
pre-Internet, "analog" form - has taught me what I need to study and
why. Informational interviews with experts in various fields have
enabled me to make a living doing things that I am passionate about.
Open source teaching can be the means for students - particularly those
who might not be part of social and educational networks like mine - to
find out what interests them and to understand what they need to do to
pursue those interests.
Open source teaching can be the means to
help some student decide she wants to pursue existential philosophy or
to tinker with the designated hitter rule. Or both. Open source
teaching can help more students be able to act for themselves, rather
than to be acted upon by the flattening of the world and other
circumstances which they cannot control.
And it may give me the opportunity to have (or at least hear) an informational interview with the Commissioner.
My pathway to open source teaching By Mary Catherine Sevier, J.D., President
Not until I became a mother did I realize the disparity of the educational offerings available to children within a single town, much less within the world. Thirty five years ago, when I began formal schooling, the world was in many ways a larger place than it is now. One's education was circumscribed by one's location. Many students did not expect or frankly need to attend higher education programs. Attaining a high school degree equipped many to accomplish the American dream of a house, a yard and 2.5 children.
Times have changed. Rare is the individual who can rise above minimum wage positions with less than an associate's degree; rare also is the area of the country where minimum wage provides a living standard above the poverty level. The world is rapidly shrinking with the constant advent of technology which links us in an ever tighter web. In spite of the plethora of information and opportunities afforded society in today's technological world, we are stuck in proverbial ruts.
I believe Open Source Teaching can be the major force in accelerating the standard for learning and living. Through simple inspiration from others, the world's teenagers can find their horizons expanding beyond their backyards, street corners, and even classrooms. Most of our children will make their living in fields which either do not exist right now or will be unrecognizably changed. OST is the ultimate example of paying it forward – with a minimal investment of our time today, we can impact our children's world for the better tomorrow.
We at Open Source Teaching are meeting the future headlong. I hope you will join us.
