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.
