Discouraged from Dreaming
I spent much of the past week in a dream-like place: a spectacularly beautiful setting in the rain-forested mountains of central Puerto Rico, on the Matrullus river. I was there for IDEA Camp, hosted by the Institute for Democratic Education in America. I was surrounded by hopeful and reflective people, most of whom were as blissed out as I was by the raw beauty and power of the place.
Accommodations were very rustic, which pushed us out of our standard, rational, limited 
ways of presenting ourselves to the outside world--and into sharing deeper personal visions of what the world could be. What schools could be. Who we all could be, as change-makers.
As I said, dream-like.
Having spent 30 years in the classroom, mostly with middle schoolers, I'm about as grounded as they come. I know, from deep personal experience, what fatuous, air-puffed educational crapola sounds like. I know there are