Mastering life changes

The latest newsletter from Stanford’s Longevity project has an article on mastering life transitions at any age.

I pulled this quote from the article because it spoke to me on so many of the the levels of what I’ve been reading and thinking about:

a well-balanced life has three ingredients, which he calls the ABCs of meaning.

A is Agency — what we do, make, build or create; often that’s through work.

B is Belonging — your relationships, family, colleagues and friends.

C is a Cause — a calling, purpose or something higher than yourself.

It’s a short article, but it gives you some deep material to ponder. If you read it, let me know what you think.

A year of reflecting the past

The summer is winding down which makes the year on the downhill side now. The last quarter. What a year it’s been. What a summer it’s been.

This was the year I celebrated 73 years of life, 50 years of marriage, and 45 years of living in this house. It’s been 55 years since I graduated from high school, 51 years since college graduation. It’s even been 25 years since our daughter graduated from college! Our granddaughter turned 16. I’ve been retired for 15 years.

Time…it has all passed so fast, so I thought a lot about these accomplishments as the months were flying past, trying to make some sense of this life we have lived.

Terry and I have joked about celebrating our anniversary all year, and even my birthday celebration has stretched through the summer. It’s taking time to grasp the enormity of the numbers, the lifetime poured into relationships, careers, child rearing, even home ownership. As I wrote at another blog where the writer is also celebrating 50 years of marriage, I hardly knew any 50 year-old people when I got married, much less someone who had been married for that long.

I am amazed at the life we have lived. The accomplishments. Yes, I’ve pondered the past, but now, as summer wanes, and the final quarter arrives, my thoughts are turning to the future. Will it be as amazing?

We are making plans to spend two weeks with our grandchildren, keeping them alive like we did when they were tiny and left in our care. We have to feed them. Keep them on track with school and other activities. Not something we’ve actually had to do for over a decade. It’s different now because I don’t think I’ll have to worry about them running in the street or falling down. But, do they have clean underwear?

I’ve written before that one reason I’ve stepped away from storytelling is so we can be available for our grandchildren, and here we are. It starts with this fall quarter. Filling in for parents. Attending performances, cheering at track meets, and finally, next spring, seeing our grandson graduate from middle school. Only the beginning, though. We have a 5-year plan for the future. I’ll keep you apprised.

Do we know just how much the world has changed?

The world of work changed while I was toiling away in the classroom.  I wonder how many other teachers know this. Are the educational institutions preparing people for the new world or are we still using the same methods and techniques that worked a quarter century ago?

For the past few weeks I have been taking the BART train downtown, walking a couple of blocks, to a building that for over 100 years has been home to the venerable San Francisco Chronicle. As newspapers lost readership to the Internet, the Chronicle was not spared, and with losses growing, it cut staff, and in cutting staff, it didn’t need all that space in the big building at Mission and 5th. Creative genius to rejigger the street level into a new use–The Hub SoMa.

This is where I am working for a couple of days a week for a microfinance startup. They have an office in the Hub, and as I walk through the open space each day to the office, I marvel at all the young (and some not-so-young) people working at their computers, talking amongst themselves, gathered into meetings. I have begun to realize that this looks much like my classroom for the seniors and the yearbook class. No one is lecturing, no one is wandering around asking, “what are you doing?” No one is policing the work that is being (or not being) done. The Hub occupants are responsible for themselves. Just as I wanted my students to be. In school, just as here, there must be an assessment: how well have you done your job and what have you produced? No one is handing out scantrons for multiple choice answers.

Paper-pencil tasks no longer exist in this work environment. Everyone has a laptop and when they want to show someone something, they just pick up their computer and go show them. They carry the laptops to meetings, not pads and pens. I am the only one in the office who is using a notepad and a pen. My old style of thinking on paper is a hard habit to break. Give me time, though, I may shake it. I believe you can teach an old dog new tricks, it just takes a little longer.

It’s only been a few weeks since I have been out of the classroom and taking on this new challenge of going back into the workforce, but I can already see things I would do differently if I was in the classroom. There would be many more collaborative projects. I would break students into groups immediately and start giving them tasks for which they must find a solution. There would be a lot more online research; even though I had integrated that into my lessons, I see now that it was not enough. Students need to think in a different, less linear way than I see us using in education.

It’s a different world out there. How are we training our students to work in it?

Thank you, dear Reader

Yes, my blogoversary came and went yesterday. It has been two years and just over 400 posts. About 100 of you come by here and I appreciate your kind words when you stop long enough to write.

When I set up this blog, I had no idea of what I was doing or getting myself into. I had been told I should do this, and knowing I would be leaving teaching in a couple of years, I wanted to venture out beyond my four classroom walls. It has been a great experiment and now is a part of my life. I have made many new friends and learned a lot.  And, I have fun doing it.

My writing is my voice.  If you know me, then you would say you hear me when I write.  If we’ve never met in person, trust me, I sound just like this when I talk.  As I am transparent here on this page, I am in my 3D life also.  I am often loud and passionate about my subject.

Thank you, dear Reader, for stopping by, for sticking with me.  I appreciate all of you.  You have made this successful for me, and I hope you are informed, entertained, and that you leave feeling like you’ve spent time with a friend.  I know that is how I feel after reading many of your blogs.