hello I’m thrilled to be here tonight to
talk to you about this theme of
breakthrough moments I loved the
narrative of breakthrough moments they
speak to me they inspire me this process
where people encounter challenges that
seem insurmountable obstacles they don’t
know how they will overcome and somehow
in that process they tap into some
hidden reserves of enthusiasm of belief
of endurance of passion and in doing
that they have these phenomenal
breakthrough moments
I love the breakthrough story it speaks
to me it resonates with me and I think
it resonates with all of us doesn’t it
there’s something about the breakthrough
story that’s uniquely American this
defying the odds being the underdog but
coming out on top being able to tap into
this grit and the passion that we share
to come to new solutions and new ideas
the innovativeness and the ingenuity
that are very much a part of our
American spirit are why the breakthrough
stories resonate with us
I love breakthrough stories because they
inspire aspire me as a person but I also
have to say that I do the work of
breakthrough stories as a career in a
sense my work as an academic and an
activist and a researcher and a
professor is about social transformation
about facilitating breakthrough moments
for my students and in community
engagement and work so breakthrough
moments aren’t something that is that
are just personally important for very
professionally relevant to me as well I
study how schools can help transform
societies to become more just more
equitable more democratic places places
that radically embrace the kind of
inclusion and voice that we know are
really important to the democratic
process so it makes sense that I’m
excited to speak to you about
breakthrough moments and what I could
lead with what it would make sense to
lead with is to begin to tell you about
I have created a school that’s really
intended to cultivate these breakthrough
moments to free learners to tap into
their own innovation and ingenuity to
facilitate those breakthrough processes
as a part of learning and transformation
but as someone who studies these moments
as someone who studies transformation
and breakthrough moments I also know
they don’t happen in a vacuum
breakthrough moments are deeply
contextual and there are conditions that
give rise to those breakthrough moments
and it’s important that we recognize
what those moments are the truth is
breakthrough moments are actually very
closely related to break down moments
now we don’t usually want to tell the
break down moment stories they’re not
what we lead with they’re not the cells
we wish everybody would identify us with
but there’s so much to glean in the
break down moments the break down
moments have embedded in them this deep
wisdom about opportunities to grow and
to evolve so I’m going to begin by
talking to you about break down moments
that doesn’t mean I’m going to give you
the low light reel of all the mishaps
and missteps that happen in the process
of creating a school I’m saving all of
that material for a book I’m writing
called so you think you want to start a
school and it will feature stories like
shoveling dead possum off the playground
of carefully trying to pry a very old
and dirty press-on nail from the
floorboards of a classroom so a child
doesn’t scratch himself again on it or
spending a lot of time one morning
trying to comfort a hysterical child
who’s very distraught because one of her
classmates licked her glasses
we know these breakdown moments that are
every day in episodic they’re the stuff
we deal with on a daily basis of course
but I’m not speaking about those kinds
of break down moments I’m speaking about
the kinds of break down moments that
shake us to our core that profoundly
reconfigure our understandings of the
world the kind of break down moments
where there is a collapse of what we
used to know and believe and in its
place nothing the breakdown moments that
bring us to the play
is that Joyce rough poet says we find
ourselves in where the old maps no
longer work and we’re trying to navigate
a new terrain with no real sense of
where we’re going or how to get there
those breakdown moments are profound and
sacred if we can learn to trust them and
so tonight I’m going to start talking to
you about breakdown moments before we
get to the shiny breakthrough moments
and my particular breakdown moment is
going to be about Election Day 2016
where my personal breakdown moment is
set against a broader landscape of an
entire country grappling in this new
terrain of breakdown and making sense of
the social transformation we saw take
place after election day I was reeling
because as someone who’s deeply invested
in social change and social growth in
social justice and progress I had no
idea of what this transformation meant
for that work I knew that the old maps I
had been working from a theory and
practice no longer seemed relevant in
this terrain I was grief-stricken and
uncertain and in that state I found
myself at a not in our town rally in
downtown Bloomington among many other
people who were experiencing their own
breakdown moments there we congregated
around the sacred wound of not knowing
how to take the next step in this
unknown territory there we shared the
grief and the uncertainty about what
would happen in this new terrain this
new social transformation we had
experienced I listened that evening as
people spoke behind the megaphone about
their deep fears and concerns about the
social transformation about this new
place with no Maps they spoke of feeling
exiled from the communities they had
been a part of they spoke of a deep
uncertainty about their place of
belonging in our society without really
meaning to I found myself on the step
with a baby on my hip and flanked on
either side by my two young children
speaking about the work I do speaking
about social justice speaking about
social transformation
speaking about breakdown I didn’t have
answers and the professor in me is
deeply uncomfortable with that place but
I spoke about the recognition that
they’re together that night it was our
responsibility to devise a new map that
would help navigate us through this
space and at the end of the conversation
I shared a little bit about what I
believe to be true which is that
learning is the vehicle for progress and
transformation that learning is the way
we get to the place and the people in
the society we hope to be and become
after that night I began to participate
more of these experiences where
communities of belonging were growing up
alongside these feelings of disjunct er
of being exiled from other communities
and there was a kind of deep belonging
that was growing in those spaces I went
to marches and protests and used my
voice on behalf of those who had felt
voiceless in the wake of this moment I
used my feet to march in places where
others were not allowed to tread and the
extraordinary thing about really
claiming and sinking into the breakdown
moments although they are scary and
isolating is that profound
transformative things happen in that
place communities and tribes grow up
within those breakdown moments and
that’s what I found a group of people
deeply invested in insisting on our
shared democratic life that whomever you
are you belong here we belong to you and
you belong to us in that time of
participating in this breakdown
belonging exercise that was bewildering
and confusing I connected with this
phenomenal tribe of women who had come
to help me articulate the vision for
bloom community school these were women
who were activists and allies they were
mothers
and they were professionals and together
we started talking about how we could
reinvent and resuscitate the promise of
schooling to transform society how
classrooms could come to nourish
communities we started talking and the
conversations went on over weeks and
months and then spilled out into the
community they involved public forums
and public launch parties but more than
that it was kitchen table conversations
and even more than that it was dozens
and dozens and dozens of cups of coffees
with community leaders and community
organizers trying to understand what at
this moment does our community need to
insist on a kind of radical belonging
and participation that could heal the
rifts that we had experienced so
profoundly in the wake of the election I
was very well caffeinated between
January and May of 2017 but in that time
what crystallized for us was a vision
for bloom community school right there
in the middle of the name community the
focal point and the gravitational pull
for this vision of how we can do the
transformative work of schooling was
community it was this belonging Parker
Palmer says that community is not
something we can manufacture community
can’t be produced community as a gift we
receive what we were learning to do in
this space of bloom community school was
to open our doors to the community so we
could receive the generous gifts of all
of the people here and then extend the
gifts of our families and our learners
back out into the community now the
radical proposition that students belong
to their learning means you actually
have to change the nature of learning
rather than being a top-down
standardised conformist curriculum we
had to create a grassroots student
driven inquiry based curriculum where
students became the architects of their
own learning where they helped to
facilitate the questions that would
eventually guide the inquiry and study
that would help them acquire
the necessary skills to become highly
educated and deeply involved community
members it also meant that this learning
had to be put into action in the service
of something bigger than learning for
learnings sake it had to be connected to
the community this often looked like
project-based learning where students
were engaging and in projects and
mobilizing their knowledge in ways that
would help them nourish and enrich the
community of learners in the classroom
and the broader community of
bloomington-normal in our first six
months of launching Blum Community
School we have been profoundly moved by
the enormous Lea generous outpouring of
community support people who have no
reason to care about us have cared
deeply about us they’ve shown up on our
behalf
they’ve shoveled and raked for us
they’ve delivered plants they’ve put
nails into our foundations of our
buildings they have served us in so many
ways but we are particularly grateful
for the way they have created a really
enriching educational experience for our
students we have local artists and
musicians business people and
politicians gardeners and chefs come to
our school and share that generous
spirit of the community in the learning
process of our students when you are on
the receiving end of that kind of
radical ostentatious generosity it’s
very hard not to feel inspired to give
back and so a part of our mission at
bloom Community School has also been
about equipping our students to become
active participants and not giving and
receiving the gift of community when for
example other schools are celebrating
Thanksgiving by sharing a meal our
students were having a food drive so
they could stock a local food pantry
there’s something radically
transformative about insisting upon your
own belonging in a community and knowing
that generosity is right there for you
to access and that anything you have to
offer is so wildly appreciated by the
recipients now here’s the thing about
breakdowns and breakthroughs here’s the
thing about social transformation the
breakthrough moments are phenomenal
they’re galvanizing we need to hang on
to those moment for the energy that they
give to us but the reality is it’s the
break down moment that catalyzes the
process of transformation and it’s a
long process it’s an arduous process it
looks a lot lot less like balloons and
confetti and a lot more like mopping on
your hands and knees like painting walls
occasionally scooping up a dead possum
sometimes it’s about intentionally and
consistently nourishing the community
relationships that you know are so
important to you one of the parents of
bloom Community School recently said
something magical is happening inside
those classrooms and not only in my son
but in all of our children they are
learning independence responsibility
accountability cooperation and
collaboration they learn it in their
projects their field trips and most
importantly on the playground bloom
Community School is a success because we
all care so much about what we are
growing and creating here in this
community my son wakes up every morning
excited to go to class and returns home
every afternoon happy and healthy
our children are changing in new and
positive ways and I hope this continues
for years to come
bloom community school is still in its
infancy
we hope it continues for years to come
too but we know that if it does it will
only be because we continue to embrace
those moments of breakdown that we
recognize that within them if we press
our ears closely to it are the
instructions for the next step for the
new path that actually the breakdown
moments themselves contain in them the
new map to help us navigate the terrain
that’s ahead tonight the breakdown
moments and the breakthrough moments are
something we must understand to claim
for our own they belong to us and we
to them and when we start from that
recognition that belonging is the space
from which transformation can happen
then we can do truly remarkable things
thank you
talk to you about this theme of
breakthrough moments I loved the
narrative of breakthrough moments they
speak to me they inspire me this process
where people encounter challenges that
seem insurmountable obstacles they don’t
know how they will overcome and somehow
in that process they tap into some
hidden reserves of enthusiasm of belief
of endurance of passion and in doing
that they have these phenomenal
breakthrough moments
I love the breakthrough story it speaks
to me it resonates with me and I think
it resonates with all of us doesn’t it
there’s something about the breakthrough
story that’s uniquely American this
defying the odds being the underdog but
coming out on top being able to tap into
this grit and the passion that we share
to come to new solutions and new ideas
the innovativeness and the ingenuity
that are very much a part of our
American spirit are why the breakthrough
stories resonate with us
I love breakthrough stories because they
inspire aspire me as a person but I also
have to say that I do the work of
breakthrough stories as a career in a
sense my work as an academic and an
activist and a researcher and a
professor is about social transformation
about facilitating breakthrough moments
for my students and in community
engagement and work so breakthrough
moments aren’t something that is that
are just personally important for very
professionally relevant to me as well I
study how schools can help transform
societies to become more just more
equitable more democratic places places
that radically embrace the kind of
inclusion and voice that we know are
really important to the democratic
process so it makes sense that I’m
excited to speak to you about
breakthrough moments and what I could
lead with what it would make sense to
lead with is to begin to tell you about
I have created a school that’s really
intended to cultivate these breakthrough
moments to free learners to tap into
their own innovation and ingenuity to
facilitate those breakthrough processes
as a part of learning and transformation
but as someone who studies these moments
as someone who studies transformation
and breakthrough moments I also know
they don’t happen in a vacuum
breakthrough moments are deeply
contextual and there are conditions that
give rise to those breakthrough moments
and it’s important that we recognize
what those moments are the truth is
breakthrough moments are actually very
closely related to break down moments
now we don’t usually want to tell the
break down moment stories they’re not
what we lead with they’re not the cells
we wish everybody would identify us with
but there’s so much to glean in the
break down moments the break down
moments have embedded in them this deep
wisdom about opportunities to grow and
to evolve so I’m going to begin by
talking to you about break down moments
that doesn’t mean I’m going to give you
the low light reel of all the mishaps
and missteps that happen in the process
of creating a school I’m saving all of
that material for a book I’m writing
called so you think you want to start a
school and it will feature stories like
shoveling dead possum off the playground
of carefully trying to pry a very old
and dirty press-on nail from the
floorboards of a classroom so a child
doesn’t scratch himself again on it or
spending a lot of time one morning
trying to comfort a hysterical child
who’s very distraught because one of her
classmates licked her glasses
we know these breakdown moments that are
every day in episodic they’re the stuff
we deal with on a daily basis of course
but I’m not speaking about those kinds
of break down moments I’m speaking about
the kinds of break down moments that
shake us to our core that profoundly
reconfigure our understandings of the
world the kind of break down moments
where there is a collapse of what we
used to know and believe and in its
place nothing the breakdown moments that
bring us to the play
is that Joyce rough poet says we find
ourselves in where the old maps no
longer work and we’re trying to navigate
a new terrain with no real sense of
where we’re going or how to get there
those breakdown moments are profound and
sacred if we can learn to trust them and
so tonight I’m going to start talking to
you about breakdown moments before we
get to the shiny breakthrough moments
and my particular breakdown moment is
going to be about Election Day 2016
where my personal breakdown moment is
set against a broader landscape of an
entire country grappling in this new
terrain of breakdown and making sense of
the social transformation we saw take
place after election day I was reeling
because as someone who’s deeply invested
in social change and social growth in
social justice and progress I had no
idea of what this transformation meant
for that work I knew that the old maps I
had been working from a theory and
practice no longer seemed relevant in
this terrain I was grief-stricken and
uncertain and in that state I found
myself at a not in our town rally in
downtown Bloomington among many other
people who were experiencing their own
breakdown moments there we congregated
around the sacred wound of not knowing
how to take the next step in this
unknown territory there we shared the
grief and the uncertainty about what
would happen in this new terrain this
new social transformation we had
experienced I listened that evening as
people spoke behind the megaphone about
their deep fears and concerns about the
social transformation about this new
place with no Maps they spoke of feeling
exiled from the communities they had
been a part of they spoke of a deep
uncertainty about their place of
belonging in our society without really
meaning to I found myself on the step
with a baby on my hip and flanked on
either side by my two young children
speaking about the work I do speaking
about social justice speaking about
social transformation
speaking about breakdown I didn’t have
answers and the professor in me is
deeply uncomfortable with that place but
I spoke about the recognition that
they’re together that night it was our
responsibility to devise a new map that
would help navigate us through this
space and at the end of the conversation
I shared a little bit about what I
believe to be true which is that
learning is the vehicle for progress and
transformation that learning is the way
we get to the place and the people in
the society we hope to be and become
after that night I began to participate
more of these experiences where
communities of belonging were growing up
alongside these feelings of disjunct er
of being exiled from other communities
and there was a kind of deep belonging
that was growing in those spaces I went
to marches and protests and used my
voice on behalf of those who had felt
voiceless in the wake of this moment I
used my feet to march in places where
others were not allowed to tread and the
extraordinary thing about really
claiming and sinking into the breakdown
moments although they are scary and
isolating is that profound
transformative things happen in that
place communities and tribes grow up
within those breakdown moments and
that’s what I found a group of people
deeply invested in insisting on our
shared democratic life that whomever you
are you belong here we belong to you and
you belong to us in that time of
participating in this breakdown
belonging exercise that was bewildering
and confusing I connected with this
phenomenal tribe of women who had come
to help me articulate the vision for
bloom community school these were women
who were activists and allies they were
mothers
and they were professionals and together
we started talking about how we could
reinvent and resuscitate the promise of
schooling to transform society how
classrooms could come to nourish
communities we started talking and the
conversations went on over weeks and
months and then spilled out into the
community they involved public forums
and public launch parties but more than
that it was kitchen table conversations
and even more than that it was dozens
and dozens and dozens of cups of coffees
with community leaders and community
organizers trying to understand what at
this moment does our community need to
insist on a kind of radical belonging
and participation that could heal the
rifts that we had experienced so
profoundly in the wake of the election I
was very well caffeinated between
January and May of 2017 but in that time
what crystallized for us was a vision
for bloom community school right there
in the middle of the name community the
focal point and the gravitational pull
for this vision of how we can do the
transformative work of schooling was
community it was this belonging Parker
Palmer says that community is not
something we can manufacture community
can’t be produced community as a gift we
receive what we were learning to do in
this space of bloom community school was
to open our doors to the community so we
could receive the generous gifts of all
of the people here and then extend the
gifts of our families and our learners
back out into the community now the
radical proposition that students belong
to their learning means you actually
have to change the nature of learning
rather than being a top-down
standardised conformist curriculum we
had to create a grassroots student
driven inquiry based curriculum where
students became the architects of their
own learning where they helped to
facilitate the questions that would
eventually guide the inquiry and study
that would help them acquire
the necessary skills to become highly
educated and deeply involved community
members it also meant that this learning
had to be put into action in the service
of something bigger than learning for
learnings sake it had to be connected to
the community this often looked like
project-based learning where students
were engaging and in projects and
mobilizing their knowledge in ways that
would help them nourish and enrich the
community of learners in the classroom
and the broader community of
bloomington-normal in our first six
months of launching Blum Community
School we have been profoundly moved by
the enormous Lea generous outpouring of
community support people who have no
reason to care about us have cared
deeply about us they’ve shown up on our
behalf
they’ve shoveled and raked for us
they’ve delivered plants they’ve put
nails into our foundations of our
buildings they have served us in so many
ways but we are particularly grateful
for the way they have created a really
enriching educational experience for our
students we have local artists and
musicians business people and
politicians gardeners and chefs come to
our school and share that generous
spirit of the community in the learning
process of our students when you are on
the receiving end of that kind of
radical ostentatious generosity it’s
very hard not to feel inspired to give
back and so a part of our mission at
bloom Community School has also been
about equipping our students to become
active participants and not giving and
receiving the gift of community when for
example other schools are celebrating
Thanksgiving by sharing a meal our
students were having a food drive so
they could stock a local food pantry
there’s something radically
transformative about insisting upon your
own belonging in a community and knowing
that generosity is right there for you
to access and that anything you have to
offer is so wildly appreciated by the
recipients now here’s the thing about
breakdowns and breakthroughs here’s the
thing about social transformation the
breakthrough moments are phenomenal
they’re galvanizing we need to hang on
to those moment for the energy that they
give to us but the reality is it’s the
break down moment that catalyzes the
process of transformation and it’s a
long process it’s an arduous process it
looks a lot lot less like balloons and
confetti and a lot more like mopping on
your hands and knees like painting walls
occasionally scooping up a dead possum
sometimes it’s about intentionally and
consistently nourishing the community
relationships that you know are so
important to you one of the parents of
bloom Community School recently said
something magical is happening inside
those classrooms and not only in my son
but in all of our children they are
learning independence responsibility
accountability cooperation and
collaboration they learn it in their
projects their field trips and most
importantly on the playground bloom
Community School is a success because we
all care so much about what we are
growing and creating here in this
community my son wakes up every morning
excited to go to class and returns home
every afternoon happy and healthy
our children are changing in new and
positive ways and I hope this continues
for years to come
bloom community school is still in its
infancy
we hope it continues for years to come
too but we know that if it does it will
only be because we continue to embrace
those moments of breakdown that we
recognize that within them if we press
our ears closely to it are the
instructions for the next step for the
new path that actually the breakdown
moments themselves contain in them the
new map to help us navigate the terrain
that’s ahead tonight the breakdown
moments and the breakthrough moments are
something we must understand to claim
for our own they belong to us and we
to them and when we start from that
recognition that belonging is the space
from which transformation can happen
then we can do truly remarkable things
thank you
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