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Sunday, December 30, 2012

Learning from Mick Wilz « Cooperative Catalyst

Learning from Mick Wilz « Cooperative Catalyst:


Learning from Mick Wilz

“Don’t just talk about change. Show it.”
Mick Wilz’s post in The New York Times is a simple, but rich and complex, narrative that sense-makes the teaching and learning process from an alternative point of view. I’d like to think that any professional educator who takes the time to read his story would find both reinforcement for – and cause to question what s/he does each day.
“I WAS born in 1956. I should have been reading in grade school, but I’m dyslexic — I have trouble reading, writing and spelling — and few people knew much about the condition in those days. My mother realized that something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. She advocated for me at school and told my teachers not to give up on me. I attended five grammar schools because my mother was constantly looking for something to help me. It was a lonely childhood, and I hate to think how I might have ended up if she hadn’t been so supportive.”
I really appreciate Wilz’s efforts to create a visual workplace, a kind of Ira Socol “toolbelt” space, framed through