I’ve had a couple of people comment that they’ve clicked into my blog because of the titles, just seeing how in the world I’d tie things together with a goofy title like that!  I’d guess this would be no different! 🙂

Last night, I was hanging out with the awesome people of #moedchat, talking about how we can transform how we communicate in education. If you’d not participated in #moedchat (9:00 CST) or #arkedchat (8:00 CST), that’s a two hour block that I set aside weekly.  Passionate, fun, good natured people just talking the great things of education!  I digress! 🙂  Anyway, talking communication, and this SPIN article titled “Watch 1000 Artists Play Foo Fighters’ ‘Learn to Fly’ at the Same Time”.  Apparently, the Foo Fighters haven’t been to Romagna, Italy since 2007, so an event was organized where 1,000 people got together and played the song “Learning To Fly” in hopes of getting the band to come back for a concert.

Oh. My. Goodness.

First, I’m an aging rocker myself from back in the day, so I cannot resist clicking.  As I move classrooms this fall, back towards my old teaching partner and other teaching friends who’ve moved into the middle school, I look forward to propping my room door open and letting the rock flow again!  That being said, this was a tremendous event!  The passion, the excitement, the joy in the faces of the people involved just gave me goosebumps (I’m listening to it again as I write). Then, to listen to the mastermind behind it all speak after it was all done, and his own passion spilling over into this project, Wow.

As we were talking communication in #moedchat, I quickly shared that out, but I just couldn’t get it out of my head.  This is what we should be doing in education, rocking out! No, not with the bands, though that would be pretty sweet.  No, we need to be going big, setting ourselves up for some tremendous results.  We need to start seeing what would happen if we step way outside that comfort zone, get out of the box (any more cliches I can put in here??), and really dig into it with our students.  Allow our passions to come in, but do the same with theirs!

I’ve been on a kick about our state and the lack of funding we’ve experienced over the last several years.  As a group, we teachers need to start thinking bigger than the “that’s not fair” stomping our foot reaction we get.  We need to organize, we need to see the bigger picture and go get it.  We need to really start watching our legislators and paying attention to their words.  Are they using talking points to get elected, then walking away from promises? If so, we need to let them know, in numbers, that’s not how we do things in Iowa.

In both instances, what’s the absolute worst thing that can happen: we fail.  If we fail, we’ve still made an impact, we still show our students it’s ok to step out and step up.  If we fail to make headway with our legislature, it’s a start point to move forward.  Success or failure, our students are watching our reaction in all this, it’s the teachable moment in teachable moments.  If failure happens, we still have that place in time to do good.

So, watch the video, even if you don’t like rock music.  Enjoy it for the gleem in the eyes of so many people there playing their hearts out.  Then, think to yourself, if they can step out like this, why can’t I?

It’s the what if game. See what happens! 🙂