Rhizomatic Learning with Catherine Bornhorst, Jon Stapleton, and Katie Henry
In this panel discussion with Catherine Bornhorst, Jon Stapleton, and Katie Henry, we discuss what rhizomatic learning is and looks like in formalized educational spaces, affordances and constraints of rhizomatic learning, how to support individual students within a group setting, standards and rhizomatic learning, why few people know and use rhizomatic learning approaches, how to advocate for and learn more about rhizomatic learning, and much more.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast alternates
between an unpacking scholarship episode
where i talk about some research in
relation to cs education
and an interview however this week
instead of an interview we're doing a
panel session on rhizomatic learning
on the panel we have catherine bornhurst
john stapleton
and katie henry which by the way if two
of those names sound familiar both john
and katie have been interviewed on this
podcast and if you haven't listened to
those episodes yet i'll include a link
in the show notes because they are
definitely worth listening to
all right so if you're wondering well
what is rhizomatic learning
a quick way to describe it is instead of
going through sequential learning where
like everybody goes on to step one and
then the group goes to step two and then
you go to step three like
from one sequence to the next instead of
that approach rhizomatic learning is
more
like a network of nodes so if you think
of like this
network that has like a thousand
different nodes on it all connected to
each other in different ways
instead of everybody starting on the
same note and going to the next node
kids can start on any node and head in
any direction they want to
so if each node is a standard a concept
a practice whatever
kids could start on any one of those
concepts practices standards and then
head in any direction
so if you have 30 kids in the class they
could be working on 30 different
projects
i know this approach is very different
than what most people are used to in
k12 and even higher ed context however
i hope this panel discussion sparked
some interest in learning more about
this particular poach because it can
work really well
with a variety of age groups i've done
this with kindergartens all the way up
through graduate students at
universities
all right well enough of me talking so
let's now get into an introduction by
each of the panelists
hi my name is katie henry and i'm the
head of partner engagement for the
microbit educational foundation
i'm a former classroom and steam teacher
and really passionate about rhizomatic
teaching and learning and excited to be
here
hi my name is catherine will bornhorst
my pronouns are she
and hers i'm currently the executive
director of the national network for
educational renewals we have 13 settings
across the country that are experts in
school university partnerships
and i came into rhizomatics
and rhizomatic learning and rhizome
analysis actually through a dear friend
and colleague of mine
which made me realize in like even my
preparation for today that i think i
have more of an intuition
and a feel for rhizomatics almost than
like an intellectual understanding
of this too but i'm excited to blend and
learn more
and i have to say too my entry into
being executive director was
through classroom teaching so when i
think about this it's really through the
eyes of kids through the classroom
dynamic
hi i'm john stapleton i teach computer
science
and coding at a high school in the
shenandoah valley in virginia
i'm a former slash recovering music
teacher and my training is in music
education
i am passionate about using coding and
computer science as a creative
field and a place for
kids to be empowered to shape the world
around them
i come to computer science from like a
creativity lens from an arts-based lens
primarily and i was introduced to
rhizomes through research and my
master's degree and
research with my mentors and colleagues
throughout my music education background
so
it's also like my rhizomes thing is
definitely
colored by my music education
experiences
as well as my computer science teaching
experience in the classroom so
what exactly is rhizomatic learning what
does it mean to
each of you i'll start but won't finish
and
it is that resomatic learning is
recognizing at any given point you're
just in a connection to other points
like there's no
start and finish there's connections and
rhizomatic teaching and learning
recognizes
that anyone who names a linear path is
really just claiming their implicit bias
and making it visible to all that you
know teaching and learning is inherently
personal unique and mysterious
and when people come together to share
and learn many different things are
happening beneath the surface
that can't be seen but are very
important and so
that's my start and i can jump off that
for sure when i explain rasmatic
learning to other people i usually
start with the term like naturalistic
learning or organic learning
that we are recognizing that people
learn things about themselves and about
the world and about other
people in a unique way that's based on
their background
and other confounding factors that we
can't really know about other people so
as we're teaching
and learning with each other we're kind
of tracing these individual paths we're
mapping
our world in unique ways and discovering
different things through different paths
compared to other people it's a dense
kind of network and figuring out what
paths people are going to take as they
learn one thing and then the next thing
is interesting and challenging and
unique for everyone it's all kind of an
interconnected
web where we cross each other and meet
each other at different places based on
our
unique paths i would certainly say
everything that
john and katie just said which is more
kudos to you jared for pulling us all
together
i typically avoid ever saying that i
even am familiar with this
like strange squirrely body of knowledge
for fear of not
giving it the justice it's so compelling
to me
like i said before it's more intuition
almost and an
intellectual understanding which i think
is by design
too but for me rhizomatics or like
nomadic thought rhys analysis is seeing
everything with fresh eyes
and not beholden to your certain ways of
knowing
and knowledge right and like it's
giving permission to entirely be in the
moment to take the work at hand
and like katie was saying and
referencing this like linear path
towards something
you know you're not it and you know john
i appreciate you bringing up maps as
like kind of a metaphor for this too
like mapping a new trajectory
mapping a new line as opposed to tracing
right or some sort of really you know if
you think about the tree as like the
orbalic
metaphor not having this linear way of
getting to a destination i really
appreciate you bringing up the tree
in the literature for those who are not
familiar with this concept like we
compare a rhizome
which is this dense interconnected
network with multiple nodes and multiple
paths between different locations to a
tree where you start at one place
and you kind of branch out it's just
sort of almost deterministic
model versus this undeterministic model
and as teachers i think
a lot of our training is based around
this idea of a deterministic model where
we have a sequence
it's a very linear path and we're trying
to keep kids
between guardrails in that sequence and
rhizomatic learning rejects the sequence
the linear sequence at least and it
embraces the personal sequence
it's kind of vamp on that i was just
thinking about how like backwards design
model
is kind of like the opposite of this in
terms of
it's almost like the eiffel tower where
you can start from many different
positions but then it builds up to one
culminating thing like one unique
experience that
that's the only option because that's
what you're designing everything around
whereas rhizomatic is
i don't know where we're gonna start i
don't know where we're going to end
but i'm curious because this approach is
very different from what is done in i'd
say the majority of
education in the u.s so how did each of
you learn
about this particular approach i like
got
pulled into it from she was a professor
of mine in undergrad
her name is dr sherry leafgren the way
that
she characterized teaching was very much
in this essence of a nomad
that you're looking to smooth you're
looking to complicate you're looking to
contest
these really standardized ways of seeing
schools and classrooms and
primarily her entryway was around
obedience or disobedience
better how you are pending to look at
that right
and she gave me an opportunity to share
my early experiences in schools
because i think that's the role of
rhizomatics is to look at the unexamined
like what's happening between these
spaces of linear thought or trajectories
like
how can you complicate and find out more
about what's going on in there
and so again my natural way of seeing
kids my natural way of wanting to be in
the classroom
was examining these typically unexamined
spaces
so she and her research pulled me in and
soon katie
too because of our similar ways of
seeing
ourselves as future teachers it's kind
of interesting as i was thinking about
this
panel today like my early entryway
into rhizomatics was a tracing it was
like this is something
important to somebody who i love and
adore so it was almost like a
replication of even though i was part of
that work
and it's taken some of that distance and
even my own tinkering with it to realize
that even your own relationship to this
work is different than
you know people who've brought you in
too
i would not know the word rhizome in the
context of teaching and learning if it
were not
for dr sherry leafgren and as catherine
mentioned
being invited to join some work that she
was doing
and really i was the classroom teacher
at the time that
i was really invested and learning
kind of in the classroom through
practice what this could be something
that was just said is this idea of
not knowing where you're going there's a
lot of not knowing involved with
rhizomatic teaching and learning but
there is a lot of knowing too
and it's just it's just a question of
who's doing the knowing
and when and how is the knowing being
validated
and seen and who is in the power
to make those seeing moments to see
what's being done
and with sherry there was always dr
leafgren
there was always this ability to speak
to her and with catherine about things
that weren't
seen we could have very fluid
conversations about
the invisible world the unseen world
and honestly i would still tell you i'm
still learning what this
approach to life means every day i
recently met
a person who from a very tiny a very
very tiny country in africa
compared to many other countries in
africa eritrea east of ethiopia
and he possesses this incredible peace i
have never experienced the type of peace
that he carries within him i thought i
knew how to achieve a state of
just semi i got something to aspire to i
want to feel that peaceful again
his way of knowing and being in the
world is altogether different and
i am left astounded again and again and
this is just life it's just like letting
go and not knowing
but not giving up there's a fear factor
of tell me where i'm going and how to
get there
you can take your water bottle you can
take your compass
you can have goals of joy and love and
productivity but if you already have it
all planned out before you get started
i would say you're not really creating
something new and you're just
controlling
and probably controlling to your
implicit bias and power structure
i love the mapping metaphor that keeps
coming out my introduction to rhizomes
was through
reading delusion guateri with two
philosophers who wrote about rhizomes
and
this like philosophical concept and
applying it to teaching through my
collaboration with jesse rathger who's
my mentor in my master's degree
and also conversations with jared and
other music education folks
thinking about how the rhizome is a
heuristic for understanding how we can
think of our relationship to teaching
and learning with other people
i like how you talked about how there's
lots of knowing and lots of not knowing
at the same time
as a teacher we're used to trying to
know everything there is to know about
the situation in the classroom we're
trying to know what our students
know we're trying to know what our
students used to know and how we can
help them
know more things and we know what they
have to know and we also know how
they're going to get from
what they know now to what they should
know later and i think teaching
with rhizomes in mind gives us
permission
to say i don't actually know what's
important for you
to know but you might and you can
discover that on your own
and we are mapping out your journey
together you will come to know
yourself and your knowledge by learning
and you will have your map and you'll be
able to
record those things in your memory and
your experiences
but everyone else's map might be
different and while we're together we're
also a part in these sort of very
personal
journeys i hope that i'm getting out
what you all are getting at i feel like
i agree with everything you all are
saying
so what are some of the affordances of
rhizomatic learning what does it allow
you or encourage kids to be able to do
that they couldn't do with other
approaches like sequential learning i
think
for me one of the reasons why i fell in
love with
this way of thinking of being part of it
is the metaphor like falling in love
with the metaphor that is this way of
thinking and seeing and knowing
right but for me it affirmed too
if we're doing some background on you
know rhizomatics
you have the metaphor of the rhizome but
you also have the nomad
right who's opposed to the state and
they're
reliant upon the other right so for the
nomad to be non-hierarchical and to
smooth the spaces
and to complicate things and push back
on the state tries to striate
and give these lines of these boundaries
these
ways of existing these linear paths
right
and so for me when i think about this
work it actually softens and makes me
understand that
some things that the state offers are
necessary for me to do
disruptive contested work
right and it gives me more leverage more
opportunity
to think about how i want to complicate
these really standardized ways of seeing
the world or
these linear things that were these
deterministic spaces that we're in
every time you say the word
deterministic i know this isn't
what you mean it's one of the thoughts
that it gives into my brain though
is i picture a person who who buys their
milk the same way every time
i've always wondered if you could
disrupt the way a teacher grocery shops
could you disrupt their teaching because
the approach to routines in life comes
from
how you move through the world like
parker palmer who says i teach who i am
isn't so far off the mark like the way
you approach your life and your
relationships and the way
a person loves and sees their future
oftentimes gets
oppressed impressed depressed onto
the learners in the classroom and what
i'm trying to say is
when you take an approach to rhizomatic
learning it's
actually not usually something you do in
a one-off it actually will flow from the
way you live
in the way you work with colleagues it's
not as if you can't buy your milk
every saturday at 10 a.m at the same
place and then put it in your cart in
the same way
but if your happiness depends on that
then just recognize that your students
happiness might depend on the very
opposite the very thing that makes you
unhappy
could be quite pleasing to your child to
your students in your classroom
and that's where that letting go part
gets really scary because
when i do the thing that comforts me i
might be doing something that's causing
discomfort to someone else and so
learning to be uncomfortable and knowing
that your discomfort
isn't reflective of you being a bad
teacher not being prepared
not being able to provide something for
your students you can be
really uncomfortable and doing
incredible work with and for your
students
that's hard to learn i don't like to be
uncomfortable
i completely understand what you're
saying i think some of the other
affordances i think of when i think of
rhizomatic learning
are like i can improvise i have freedom
to improvise
i can follow students where they want to
go instead of me setting out the tracing
for them to follow
instead of them tracing the lines that
i'm giving them conceptually as they
learn things
they can create their own paths
and i can help them i can walk with them
i'm not helping them get to
a predetermined location i'm helping
them discover
this uncharted territory of the things
that they're interested in their lives
and
i also really agree with what catherine
was saying about the relationship
of the state to the nomad as someone
who's embracing rhizomatic learning in
my classroom i'm putting myself in the
role of the nomad and trying to
break down these linear striated
structures for students i'm
existing in opposition to the state
literally the state i am a public school
teacher so
the state is handing down these linear
categories
of what we need to learn what we need to
cover and i'm putting myself in direct
opposition to that
and trying to break down the arborescent
understanding of learning from the state
and trying to break out of that so if
you are frustrated by the fact that in a
classroom
we have so many opportunities to follow
different things and discover
different topics every year and you're
frustrated by the fact that the
structure you're within
is expecting you to do the same thing
every year to the same students and
reproduce this stuff i think rhizomatic
learning
its main affordance is that it is a way
of understanding
a different strategy a different way of
being in the classroom that doesn't
follow
those norms that are imposed by the
state both figuratively
like the metaphor of the state and also
literally if you're a public school
teacher by the state
i have to jump in there because between
katie's visualization of like going to
get milk a certain way and put it in
your cart at the same time
every weekend and john the way that you
talked about you know like the actual
state
as being a teacher like and also katie
the way that you're talking about not
wanting to be uncomfortable what i'm
understanding in this work and
rhizomatics is that
you can have arbolescent knots in a
rhizome right so you can live very
nomadically
you can live like the rhizome but have
parts of you
that appreciate and are compelled to be
barbalescent right like or
linear or like i just really want my
milk at 10 o'clock every day on a
weekend
right you know because that's just it
brings me unreasonable joy
or you can be you know with the metaphor
of the tree or
you can have off one of the leaves a
more rhizomatic or nomatic way
of that portion of what is a linear you
know
existence to be complicated and
contested too so
i think that's where i've grown in my
appreciation of this too
is that it's not one or the other and
for me
being in the position of an executive
director it's like looking
for those moments where you can't
necessarily complicate and throw it all
away and start anew
from a more organic and rhizomatic way
it's like where do i want to attach
myself
on this tree per se to
make this more rhizomatic in this
specific space
i don't remember if i'm quoting this
correctly but in a thousand plateaus
julius guateriu are writing about the
rhizome and they're saying that
this whole body without organs this like
absolutely decentralized
network is a horizon not a goal because
and they say like the only people who
might actually get to this point are
like people who destroy themselves by
fully embracing
this decentralized essence if we're kind
of talking about that in the context of
teaching that might be a little bit too
like out there but i do agree that we're
existing in a social structure that is
very arborescent in a lot of ways and it
is a horizon for teachers and you're
gonna have
moments of linearity regardless and so a
lot of teachers are like well you're
just not gonna you're not like throw
away everything and you're just gonna
start from scratch and
well no no no i still have to take
attendance like
i still have to do different things that
are within the structure but it's more
of like can we inject a little bit of
of a nomadic way of navigating these
arborescent structures and maybe we can
even break it down a little bit and
destroy some of these arbors and
structure and give way to a rhizome if
it's appropriate okay so you've all got
me
convinced now this is a cool approach
maybe i'll try this someday but
what are some of the constraints that
you see with this approach
so having done rhizomatic learning like
i know it affords you to be able to do
some things and enables you to do some
things but in what ways might it
constrain you
in other ways sometimes you work
really late really really really late
and you sometimes are tired
you're tired a lot it's a good tired
especially in the beginning if you're
just starting out
it's hard to know how to
engage your students in ways that let
them
co-create with you in the classroom in
real time
and you don't often know where that's
going to be so if you had
a month's worth of activities planned
for
a math unit you now probably don't have
a month planned ahead
you might have the next 48 hours kind of
figured
out and i'll be honest you know
i had the luxury of being a single first
year teacher
i didn't have the family
responsibilities that a lot of
educators do i didn't have other
responsibilities
that took my time away from in the
evenings i had the luxury of time
and that's not a luxury a lot of people
have my
i spilled out into my evenings a lot
probably more than others would want to
yeah there's a lot of
having to find resources to support
learning and whatnot and like
help guiding and whatnot that is
involved with this much more so than
just
well here's the curriculum that's in my
hand and me now i just go through line
by line how to do this it's
if you have 30 kids in the class they
might be learning 30 different things
at least so how do you find ways to
support them as individuals and a
collective it can be exhausting
looking out for the rhizome in the wild
we can find people people compare the
internet to a rhizomes interconnected
mass of data and relationships
and we know that these rhizomatic
structures can
reinforce existing problems with our
society
like you think of misogyny and online
learning spaces we are in a rhizome
because everyone's forging their own
path through things
they're not necessarily being challenged
to take other people's paths
in mind and so one of the things i was
thinking about in preparing for this
conversation
is we're approaching the rhizome as this
purely free
freeing scare quotes for those who are
not watching me on camera
what we're doing is we might be giving
people who are in positions of power
permission
to abuse that freedom and to kind of
become a
conqueror instead of a discoverer of
learning given that we are kind of all
participating in this
larger system that individuals don't
necessarily have a whole lot of agency
over
in the opposite position if you're
someone who doesn't have privilege
coming into the space then you may not
be empowered to participate
in the rhizome in the rhizomatic
learning experience you may not have the
skills
to collaborate with your teacher because
of past experiences
that make you put up walls like
rhizomatic learning is
predicated on conversation and on
collaboration but i have students who
don't trust me
and they shouldn't right they've been
participating in an educational
structure where white men like me have
really
abused their trust and i have to forge
that relationship
first that work is ongoing it's forever
and so the the constraint of the rhizome
is that because we're doing that work at
the same time as learning in a really
intentional way and trying to forge
collaboration and make sure that the
community
is healthy we are not necessarily
efficiently heading towards these
learning outcomes
we're taking care of a lot of things at
once and we're all sort of
it's almost more diffuse in a way when
i'm
teaching based on rhizomatic learning
framework a lot of my days
are hectic and me making a lot of
resources and kids are moving a bunch of
different directions
and so when i'm trying to communicate to
the kids where we're headed
uh they're asking me what are we gonna
learn is there a final project for this
class
because i am again i'm participating in
a structure that is arborescent at its
core
they're expected they have carried those
expectations into my classroom i have to
tell them like
no we're not gonna do that this is a
different situation and we have to build
skills for them to help navigate that
and feel empowered to navigate that
otherwise they're gonna rely on tracing
other people's paths
which sort of defeats the purpose and it
becomes less responsive
if one person sort of decides that or
one teacher decides
that this rhizomatic learning thing is
bs and we're not going to commit to it
and they choose a path that pulls kids
in towards this one
thing a lot of kids will actually enjoy
a lack of
uncertainty they will enjoy being
comfortable and enjoy having
clear expectations and a clear metro for
success instead of problematizing the
clear metric of success
we're going to rely on that clear metric
of success to scaffold us
and breaking out of that can be very
challenging it's a huge constraint i
think
john what you said made me think of like
two things one is
rhizomatics is emancipatory as a teacher
to the point of like employability
right or even as a leader like feeling
like you
people can make sense of who you are and
what you know because they're trying to
place you and their territories and
their bounded spaces right so you don't
want to be too
overtly i guess nomadic that they're
like she's not going to contribute to
what we're trying to offer
as a teacher or a leader whoever however
you find this work and then
also what i'm hearing is that it's
emancipatory
learning and teaching but with an
unintended
what feels like oppressiveness to
students or those around you
who don't view that as emancipatory too
these structures and this like you know
connection and
need for these bounded spaces to feel
successful
and i've over the last six years have
been an instructor at miami university
in their teacher education
program too so the same thing that
you're sharing with your students
like where are we going with this or how
many pages should it be or how many
words like
those things drive me absolutely bonkers
but i have to remember
that that's the state right that's being
schooled
so my work then in being a nomad
is like unveiling some of that right
and i guess in some ways too still
supporting them in those boundaries
that they need to feel initially
successful too
we've talked about the linear paths that
are kind of forced upon educators
students etc i'm curious where do you
see standards
fitting or not fitting within resomatic
approach what should we do
with national standards or things like
that is there a place for them
in a rhizomatic approach to learning or
no
i think yes there can be and there is
there already is if you're a rhizomatic
teacher today there's a really good
chance you're being a rhizomatic teacher
with standards
so how do you view them my simple answer
is i see them
as stepping stones there's no prescribed
method of
how to step across the stones and how
long to jump and twist and flip and turn
and where you go and when you come back
what i would do to problematize
standards in my classroom
i would take key language like let's
just take decimals for example and i
would say
myself first and then to my students
when are decimals a problem in your life
that's a really provocative question for
whether decimals a problem in your life
what does she even mean by that question
there's so much brainstorming around
decimals being a problem in your life
that right away you're in a real deep
math conversation
on the very thing you're hoping they'll
get creative about without imposing on
them some
timeline that's artificial and only
makes sense for your grade book
now you've got kids thinking about
decimals in their life
this is the beginning of a rhizomatic
mathematical conversation that
might go into spelling it might go on to
the playground
it might bring in the cafeteria it might
involve redecorating your classroom
and so asking good questions is
something anybody can do
with the standards we have and really
good rhizomatic learning can happen
with standards and with good questions
catherine how do you feel about that
i want to argue with somebody about
something do you want to argue right now
let's
what are you thinking no i think
everything that you said
is absolutely embodied in what
rhizomatics is hoping of all of us even
beyond being an educator right
like what i said at the beginning you
can't have the nomad without the state
so if you're considering standards as
like a way to striate
or bound a certain way if you're
thinking like a tree then that's like an
impediment to your growth like i have to
go through these standards to continue
down this linear path
what katie just so like visualized for
us is that the standards exist in these
multitudes of ways that she sees herself
in a classroom right a standard is
something that she can look with fresh
eyes
for moments of possibility that she asks
her kids about
how do decimals like toy with your mind
or ruin your life or do
like however you want to frame that
right offers these like
multiple trajectories that allow you to
you know teach and learn in this way and
again the contested thing is like yeah
but this is where
the pragmatism i guess comes into this
is like well for me to defend and
continue doing this teaching then my
kids have to do well on the tests
and i think that's like one of the
biggest binaries that you have
in rhizomatics is that while this is a
way of teaching and learning
and it's intuitive and it's you know
john you mentioned at the beginning
ecologically or naturalistically this is
the way
that we operate as like living beings
the survival value or like the
survivability of doing this in some ways
is baked into these test scores
right so i think that's like kind of the
difficulty
in a lot of this too because we need to
defend
like defend that this is what's good for
kids is good for teachers
so i'll argue with you another time
katie i guess
i've actually got a thing to argue with
that one of the things that i was
thinking of when you were both talking
is
but aren't standards still a form of a
well-worn path to wander down
rather than just like uncharted
territory and isn't
standards still a form of oppression in
terms of it's saying this is what is
considered to be valuable to know
and the things that are not standards
are not valuable even though
you can approach standards risomatically
isn't that still
preventing the nature of rhizomatic
learning in terms of heading in whatever
direction
yes
i thought you wanted to argue katie and
then you just hit it with the yes
oh god the roots are deep
yes jared but john please go ahead
i like when people bring up standards
when we talk about this topic because
there's so many ways to think about
standards they can be
our well-worn path of learning a thing
they're also a political statement about
what it means to know
something that statement is up for
argument we don't have to believe the
state when they say that this is what it
means to know something
but asking kids to think about that is
really fun
i think and we learn a lot from that
conversation here's what the state says
a programmer is you know how to code
some things we've done this all year
what do you think about that and i also
if we're going to stick with the map
metaphor standards can also be beacons
they can be these tall structures we can
see from great distances on our map as
we're kind of exploring our territory
and we can head towards them because
they seem interesting or we can ignore
them because they seem scary or
oppressive
the last thing i want to say about
standards is this whole can of worms
but who is the state in the relationship
between the teacher and the standards
is it the actual state is it the public
is it your community
is it a corporation that's decided what
these standards are supposed to be
what are their interests those are also
political statements and i think
that not all standards are created the
same and we shouldn't regard them as the
same
we shouldn't take them as seriously
depending on their sources
i'm actually a teacher like i'm not
saying ignore the standards i know you
can't do that without getting fired
trust me
no one's listening to us i'll tell you
it's okay to not like them it's okay to
think they suck
i'm more interested in if we do have
standards but the standards are written
are not the only standards
that are out there we have standards
from other places that are unwritten
and we can still incorporate all those
things into our rhizomatic learning
framework so why not the written
standards why can't we treat those the
same
and ultimately if people ask me like
well do you think we should get rid of
standards i'm like well yeah kinda i
kind of do think that
maybe i don't feel that fully and i
don't have the power to make that happen
but i'll say it you know i
think that we'd be better off with a
different metric for success
i don't know that i'm alone in that
feeling in this company but i know that
other people may disagree with me i'm
okay to have that argument at me on
twitter
[Laughter]
learning standards and state standards
are
in its essence but we just standardize
ways of knowing right it's like these
ways that we exist in the world so i
think this has happened as
we say that education has become more
progressive and inclusive
these standardized ways of knowing have
just like shape-shifted another really
still oppressive and narrowed way of
seeing the teaching and learning
endeavor and i think for me rhizomatics
and its intersections
with the state with the standards is
really just saying just it's just a
narrow way of existing
and seeing the world and actually when
i'm employing this perspective
as a teacher or when i'm thinking of my
students as learners
the standards become almost trivial to
the things that we're
pursuing collectively so if i'm thinking
about maybe a standard of experience
like lillian katz talks about standards
of experience that we're offering our
students
and then if you're thinking about these
enduring understandings or these larger
ways like when katie was referencing
like what pisses you off about decimals
right i don't think you actually said
that but
those kinds of like provocative
questions you
go on that pers that trajectory or if
you know if we're speaking like i don't
even know how to say the other
guitar what is it john guterie atari is
fine yeah
i don't i don't know him i don't think
he cares it's like when you read harry
potter the first time and you have the
names of characters in your mind and
then they say it on the video and you're
like i've been saying
this wrong for seven years game of
thrones yeah
lord the rings all of these big names
yes yep
but no what happens is you realize that
you're hitting i don't know 75
of your standards just by asking kids
what pisses you off about decimals
you know so it's like sure i can talk
about standards but
i'm way beyond my understanding of what
that is yeah like how high is that bar
really you know
like if we actually look at it is it
really that hard to do this and also hit
the standards
i mean my experience the answer is no
i'm open to being refuted on that
you know if you think about the rhizome
we're not immune to rupture
or being severed or injury right
but that idea of like you still have the
same kind of you know
assault the same kind of infliction this
is
i guess like in a lot of ways probably
the way we're narrating
doing rhizomatics is like this glorified
easy way
of moving through the world because
every shoot
like all of these ways it just makes
sense and it's super fluid
but no like i've been in tears i've felt
in isolation
you know actually one of the reasons why
when we did this original
yarn rhizome actually what we did in a
presentation
at aara with like all the champagne
toasts and fancy salads so
there are some conferences for educators
that have fancy salads
aera being one of them but i don't know
what 2020 has done to fancy salads
and conferences so we'll see one of the
ways that we
were able to articulate and talk about
our relationship to rhizomatics as
teachers
was to create a yarn rhizome where we
tied all of these different
like textured and different colors and
shapes and sizes of yarn together
and then like had some sort of totem is
that like or like some sort of
like thing that characterized a story
that when
you overlaid the rhizome and you picked
up your story that
speaks to your rhizomatic teaching
everything else came along with it
right and like that's a big component to
rhizomatics is that
everywhere you start is connected to
some other part of it
eventually and each part of it tells
literally a different story
and then what happened on the flip side
of that though is in our
discussion of what a rhizome is and
telling our stories as teachers
it was also a safety net it was this
like we've
found ourselves similar to the people on
this call
in this like actual feeling of a safety
net like an embrace
of understanding that this is something
that you are held
in to so yeah kitty good
advice there that this is really hard
work but we do have the internet
and someday we will have fancy salads
mark my words
i've got a fancy blended salad i really
hope that doesn't turn into something
[Laughter]
we've talked about how rhizomatic
learning is this awesome cool thing that
you can do
so if this is such a great thing why is
it that we think that so few
people actually know about it and most
people instead focus on like a backwards
design for learning
one of the constraints is that
rhizomatic learning is a little bit hard
to
really nail it down yeah an
understanding by design or like
backwards design or
some of these other more like popular
sequencing heuristics are really
easy to describe and to say like this is
a good version this is a bad version
here's how you do it it's kind of easy
to teach i guess
i think part of it is that rhizomatic
pedagogy
or rhizomatic learning is more
experiential i don't know that there's
that many shortcuts
to implementing it like if you spend an
hour in a professional development
learning about rhizomatic learning
you're probably not going to come out of
that
with like a level of mastery and comfort
you're going to have a lot of questions
and that isn't a really good business
model if you're trying to like get
people to sign up for your pds like
you're going to sign up for this thing
and you're going to come away
with tons of questions about yourself
and your teaching and that might not be
immediately useful to you unless you
have that particular kind of way of
looking at things
that's a good point i'm smiling and
laughing at katie to see
if she will continue with her single
response there
knowing that you're bursting i was going
to unmute and say
i understand you completely
i feel like this is like blackout poetry
i've never participated in it but that
sounds that sounds right
john do you want to explain what it is
your response was so like
short and well articulated compared to
mine that i felt like
it had meaning beyond like i i was only
seeing a part of it and there was like
an iceberg of meaning below
but i appreciate it thank you i'm kind
of making a joke and it's not very oh
you are
and i think though but you did say
something really important
which is it has to do with who defines
success
in a model like understanding by design
or backwards design
largely you start by defining success
and whoever's at the table when that
measure of success is defined
implicitly imparts their bias and
expectations into the whole experience
when you then begin to work backwards
and come for that starting line
you bring in a lot of times that's when
the so-called students get involved
the game's actually kind of already lost
a little bit it's a little bit over
the experience has been shaped by
whoever had a seat at the table at the
beginning
whereas with a rhizomatic pedagogy
who has a seat at the table is changing
moment by moment to define success
and that's why i think it's a more
inclusive approach
and it's harder to define because it
literally is being defined moment by
moment
and that is an uncomfortable place to be
in if you like to have that
comfort comfort for you comes from
really clear expectations
and having that road map that here i am
today and there i'll be tomorrow
not to say that that comfort isn't part
of rhizomatic learning
it's just not the whole story you know
what you said there too place a lot of
trust on
in yourself a lot of confidence in
taking and understanding what's
happening in that moment
there's an intuitive sense that's
required in rhizomatic pedagogy or even
just like
living rhizomatically to where i think
by virtue of cooling or like the nature
of it is
in essence to quiet that intuition it's
that this
expertise lives outside of you you know
you go to a training or you look at
things like udl
because that's where the trust lies and
if rhizomatics is based on creating
uncertainty
just like you said john that's a really
bad business model like
nor is it how we've been schooled to
think about
you know expertise or even being an
academic
or teaching and education in general
isn't necessarily being open to
what you don't know it's about having
this fixed and determined way
of seeing that space and i think
people view uncertainty with
stress and that's like part of it too
versus uncertainty being a place of
possibility and multitudes
and excitement and it takes a lot of
time
to be more inclined to thinking about
this of multitudes of possibility
versus oh my gosh i'm gonna do this
wrong or wonder if they don't like me or
whatever
i kind of wanted to bring up a point in
opposition to jared's framing of the
question
that i don't think that rhizomatic
learning is a rare
approach i think a lot of people come to
a rhizomatic approach
naturally in their lives because it's
sort of like
how a lot of parts of people's lives
work where you
stumble upon discoveries and you learn
about yourself through experience
this is the fight i promised and i think
naming that experience
for me it clicked really nicely where i
was like oh this is the name for the
thing that i'm trying to
bring to the classroom that's based on
my experiences in online community
learning things
or when people are living in not all my
community but any kind of community
where you have this like
network of connections and you're
learning things in sort of an
unstructured way and discovering as you
go
instead of coming in with set goals i
think that's
common human experience but it does go
in direct opposition to many of the
values of our education
system which values replicability a lot
of times it values predictability
i would say maybe it doesn't value
teachers
following rather than leading and
rhizomatic
learning and pedagogy does value those
things it brings me back to
what catherine was saying about nomads
like sort of an oppositional stance
inherently because you're trying to
de-territorialize
the territory of the state and these
like set goals and these set
structures of curriculum or sequences or
the school day
the schedule the subject areas all these
different arbitrary
categorizations resomatics is about
breaking those open
which is hard because you know the state
might bite back
a little bit there's like so much
paradox in that too like i'm thinking of
udl
being used so frequently in the like the
worlds of accessibility right how do we
make sure that this is an accessible
design and lesson plan and in a lot of
ways what we discuss is accessibility is
like a narrowed watered-down
really striated way of explaining and
talking about the learning process
that we think is making it more
accessible because then
the other side of that the assumption of
that is that students who might need
or even adults right any of us who might
need additional accessibility
considerations
can't participate in this intuitive
space
where what they're offering is what we
build upon
so we have to build the structure we
assume to be
accessible but is removed from
this like embodied space of who people
are and like katie i love what you said
about
you know people in the seats are
predetermined versus the other way
around
too and how you structure this it's i
guess this is the other thing too when
you're thinking rhizomatically you learn
that you like hate everything
like everything is not good enough ever
right like you're just disgusted
like i never looked at udl with such
hate before until right now
where it's like you have to burn
everything down you know it's i don't
know
i was going to say john i appreciate you
challenging and reframing
the question i wholeheartedly
acknowledge
that the informal learning that occurs
outside of
spaces generally speaking is rhizomatic
in nature like
if i want to learn a new thing like i'm
learning japanese
i don't go and look at what are the
standards for japanese language course
in high school like
that is the last thing i'm going to look
at i'm going to start looking at like
maybe a book or an app or like
all these other things youtubers etc and
the approach is
like 100 up to me i don't have somebody
guiding me step by step through
something necessarily i can go in any
direction i want to like
i want to learn a subset of the language
compared to another like if i want to
learn about words about cooking versus
words about direction versus words about
anime etc like
there are many directions i can go into
it but when it comes to formalized
spaces
i would going back to the question say
that it is still a backwards design
approach and what's interesting is i
think as catherine that said it like
academia is not necessarily designed
this way but it wasn't until the
doctorate when
finally it became like rhizomatic like
up until then it was largely sequential
like everybody needs to learn the same
thing be tested on the same thing etc
and in my master's like started to
branch out like what do you want to
learn but then in the doctor it's okay
what don't we know and what can you
study and what do you want to learn more
about et cetera
so it's interesting that it waits that
long until we actually get into this
more rhizomatic approach like you have
to suffer through like 20 some odd years
of schooling
until it actually starts to model more
of the informal learning that occurs
outside of that this actually takes you
to a great
point and yes uh i think it is a vast
oversimplification to say that everyone
already knows how to deal with medical
learning because it's not exactly
quite that simple but you're right that
we do wait until
the highest possible level of education
to
fully commit to this rhizomatic model 99
of people who receive public education
never end up getting there
that's a made-up stat i don't actually
know what the percentage of people who
have gish phds are but it's a vast vast
minority of people getting phds versus
who participate in public education and
i would say also i'm a high school
teacher
at my district i'm sure in other
districts around the country
if you're going to try to find
rhizomatic learning in your school
you're a lot more likely to find it in
like an ap bio class
or an ap english class or an ap
government class where students are
being asked to
look think about the world what's
interesting about government what can
you learn about government how can you
apply
these concepts to your life like that's
more rhizomatic than something you might
find in a remedial math class
where there's this tight sequence we're
trying to get kids through this tunnel
so that they can get to the other side
right
one of my like passions as a teacher is
asking
why do we reserve rhizomatic learning
for students who are bearing privilege
and we use these highly sequenced models
for students
who are by the standards of our system
needing more help more support
and really what ends up happening we
have all these side effects of like okay
if i want to tightly sequence model
where i have homework and strict
attendance and i have to do all these
different kinds of like really tight
requirements and
if i mess it up i might fail the class
and that's policing that's policing
students behavior
and the system is set up to police
students who are marginalized across all
of these different demographic strata
and teachers that's policing teachers
that's not yeah there's no interesting
teachers or investing in teachers
how do we help teachers through this
discomfort though so like
there has been decades if not centuries
of well the kind of learning that occurs
outside of school is not
real learning it is not the important
learning what occurs in this building is
the learning that you should focus on
and pay attention to
so how do we help teachers apply these
more informal or
natural learning processes in a context
where it has kind of been beaten out of
teachers i think so much of that is
helping teachers realize that they've
been schooled really hard
sometimes in the certain ways that they
feel like they have to behave
in the classroom and what that looks
like like i'm you know staring at my
window right now this little say speedy
and phoebes are funny they're like kind
of they're not the smallest of birds
they're kind of medium-sized
they find i would not choose this twig
if i had the body weight like i know
what kind of twigs i would choose to
land on
in my certain state here and i feel like
that bird does not know how big it is
for the twigs that it
sits on right which sounds like crazy to
bring this in
but like as a teacher why wouldn't you
want your
student to like look out the window and
be like that's a big bird choosing a not
a big twig
you know what goes into that and like
think about you know the math and
dynamics and perception and bodily
like these expectations that we have how
big an object is you read the room you
think about
all of these things could be brought in
by being like man that's
really i'm really distracted by i'm
compelled by it you know and it makes me
ask all these questions about the world
and like
if i was a teacher and i feel like
compelled to be in a certain way
in a classroom space i would feel shamed
about like looking out my window and
being distracted by a save
phoebe choosing a twig that does not
support its bird weight
you know you know risomatics talks about
these points of rupture
right and especially me being in teacher
ed and speaking to pre-service teachers
it's how do you have that point of
rupture where new growth
occurs or the rhizome is rerouted in
ways because you've
interrogated and challenged these
traditional ways of being in school
to the point where that's now kind of
something you interrogate with your kids
too
like can you believe the standard they
want you to do this how narrow is this
like what are all these other things
that you so you like bring them into
that fun joyful spontaneous space
as well i love that description so much
another thing is the idea that you have
to
remake your whole community around this
when teachers hear someone talk about
this they're like oh my gosh you're
telling me to reinvent the wheel
i can't do that i'm just one person and
that's not at all
the idea it's a pedagogical approach and
your whole school could commit to it
or you can commit to it in your
classroom and the beauty of the metaphor
of the rhizome for this like
the rhizome is just a metaphor for what
we're talking about if you think about
rhizomes in the world
they are this like growing encroaching
almost
structure that like goes everywhere no
center no
organizing principle just grow out
rupture out of the space you're in
and i think that's a really beautiful
way of thinking about teaching
rhizomatically too
you can start in this small space and
maybe one year it's just like okay
i'm comfortable with project-based
learning what would project-based
learning be like if i try to
think about it as rhizomatic and
decentralized rather than this like
tight standards-oriented thing what
would that be like
and you just do it once you're like hmm
i learned a lot from that maybe next
year i do like two projects and it like
grows a little bit
and year to year you kind of figure out
how to fill the space you're in
and eventually hopefully what happens is
you start to rupture out of that space
because it's just the nature of being a
nomadic learner
when you reach those boundaries you're
like i gotta get past that i can go
beyond that these boundaries are not
gonna hold back my learning
hopefully that's where you get that
would be my advice for someone who's
like oh my gosh
this sounds like a big ask you know well
speaking of investing in teachers
to as these rhizomatic
support people i think that educators
should get
big wild interesting sabbaticals that
are many months long
and each district can figure out a plan
that works well for the community
but you know i'd like to see you know
teachers would get to choose
i want to spend a year in southern
california
i want to spend a year in mumbai india i
want to spend
two years traveling to four schools and
four forests
i want there to be some teacher agency
and time to go explore the world and
then come back to the classroom
what i wish i could have had i was a
person that you know
went to become a teacher and went to
undergrad
became early childhood a major started
teaching did a master's degree in school
leadership
kept teaching and along the way was
starting to learn how big the world
is and i wanted to reach more kids and
more teachers
in a way that being in my current my
local school
wasn't helping me to grow in the ways i
felt i could grow
and help more kids so i actually left
the classroom for a position
that would allow me to work with kids
and teachers all over the world
and it wasn't easy in the 11th hour of
making this decision i was negotiating
with my superintendent and my future
boss to say
can i work 50 of the time here and 50 of
the time there
i was torn and i wanted to be in both
places and i know i'm not alone
i know there are many teachers that want
these range of experiences
this isn't about professional
development yes and just as important as
mental health
to have these experiences to step away
from the day-to-day
see something new experience something
new and come back into the so-called
classroom with
with something new which is unexpected
and please
don't police this i don't want reports
and essays and quarterly this that and
the other on these sabbaticals this is
truly free time
you have a date you leave and a date you
come back that's it so if somebody
were hypothetically to go on some kind
of a sabbatical
or just spend some time wanting to learn
more about resomatic learning because
this
podcast as interesting as is it won't be
enough to convince
a community like john was saying of
educators so
what are some resources or theories or
philosophies
or whatever that people could learn more
through
that we could potentially guide them
toward that you could convince other
people because if somebody's listening
to this and they're like yeah
this is great i'm totally on board but
my colleagues in department a b and c
probably not on board so how can we help
them out
i have one answer and then i'm done and
it is the best thing you can possibly
one of the easiest and best and simplest
most powerful things
is to find a mentor outside of your
field
and piggybacking on that if you want to
commit to a rhizomatic
pedagogy or like grow this part of your
teaching
the best thing you can do is to nourish
your creative self and connect that
creative self with other educators and
then bring that
into the classroom because what's
happening there is you are
letting something that you may be
previously regarded as outside of your
job
to invade the classroom and grow in that
space
that is like full commitment in my mind
to this rhizomatic
way of being at least a small scale
and then hopefully what you're showing
there is i am
a creative person and this is how i
learn
and you can create a space for students
to be like what's the creative part of
you that you want to pull in here
i don't know that it has to be
necessarily a convincing thing you don't
have to convince everyone
and then go it can be a small iterative
change
that grows over time and pulls people in
one of my favorite ideas
is this idea of like arts integration
across computer science that's what the
thing i'm
very like passionate about and pulling
arts teachers into
a computer science space has so many
opportunities for students to explore
these connections in different ways
and i'm not going to reduce that down to
well you know we're going to do some if
statements and then we're going to talk
about
song structure and like like that seems
like so reductive because i am a
musician and i am a programmer and i
know how deep and broad these things are
so can we set up a environment for
students to discover that broadness in
their own way
i hope that made sense i don't know if
it fully answered your question
resources though
concrete resources look for rhizomatic
stuff in your life
if i'm going to plug like curricular
stuff this seems a little bit
antithetical to the idea of rhizomatics
but
looking at jared's boot up stuff that's
designed
and explicitly constructed such that
students are
traveling across all these resources and
videos and projects
in an unstructured self-directed way
that's huge that's an amazing
environment or like the google
cs first curriculum where the students
can travel across these different
projects discovering different things
and
and making creative choices like those
are some great resources to start if you
look at them as if it was a rhizomatic
field and not look at it for a sequence
if you pull up those resources and
you're like hmm this is great i can have
our students do this then this then this
then this and then we will learn
everything we need to know
you're kind of missing the boat a little
bit you have to look at this
as a holistic piece of like an
environment an ecosystem and say
what can my students discover about this
that i don't already know that i don't
have planned
how can i help them scaffold that kind
of similar to what
john and katie just said a lot of that
is being open to resources that
seemingly don't have anything to do with
your task at hand i think some of my
early
entry into all of this thinking were
books like daniel quinn's
ishmael and my ishmael pretty much all
of margaret wheatley's work
i think adrian marie brown and like a
lot of her work and how she sees
emergence alan watts i mean anything
that he's
written this way of
abandoning these old concepts that don't
offer us
resources at this new task at hand so i
think i've furthered my rhizomatic
thinking by
being open to bodies of scholarship
so i was like watching batman begins the
christopher nolan one
in the league of shadows and i'm gonna
forget all of the the names of this
now but he's like about to graduate and
he has to kill
a prisoner the head guy is like you have
to kill him
like your compassion is what's going to
like essentially be your demise
and he's like my compassion is what
separates me from
this other body of like bad guys as you
call it and i'm watching that and it's
like that's
teacher education it's like being in
that moment
of saying like i have to do these dumb
tests or
curriculum that is symbolically violent
to black and brown children because they
don't see themselves in it and i'm gonna
have to choose between
killing this bad guy and being part of
this elite league
of shadows group i'm doing a terrible
job of painting the parallel here
but i think the rhizomatics in this is
being so
open to the way that all of this is
interconnected and mutually dependent
i think in the actual body of
scholarship and and rhizo analysis
the folding refolding unfolding like
this idea that all of this
is just at some point again connected to
the way that you're seeing the world
you read a tupac lyric too we're talking
about
in his he's a gold book of all of his
not all of his but a lot of his
lyrics and poetry and you know he's
talking about being a criminal and what
it means to be a criminal and i think
looking at his perspective you begin to
understand
what we usually just take at firsthand
value like oh he's a gangster and
he's violent and he's misogynistic which
is fair
it's just to say that like you can look
out the window you can be on a phone
call here you can step outside and
it's being open to and attuned that
everything is super connected and it's
constantly influencing who you are and
the decisions that you're making
so even a question of like oh i want to
practice rhizomatics where should i go
to
that and of itself is it almost a dead
end question because it's like where are
you calling like your
idea of having an artistic nourishing
hobby
is filling that space as well so anyway
so hypothetically if we're in a school
and we get everybody
all the teachers on board what are you
afraid that people are going to
misunderstand about rhizomatic learning
and to kind of throw out some different
stakeholders to think through
like other teachers or even students who
did not start with rhizomatic learning
from day one
or what about admin who are like new to
this and who are used to more
formalized sequence to learning or even
what about parents
who are like well that's not how i
learned i think the best we can ever do
if we have an idea that we want to help
someone to think about differently
is just share their space and
not leading not even guiding so and then
for example
you know parent this isn't how i learned
administrator how will i measure this
co-teacher they're going to make me look
bad
it's about humility it's about grace
it's about
you know you're not riding around with a
trumpet trying to shout
rhizome rhizome rhizome it's actually
just about showing and not telling
is part of the mystery you're not trying
to present this path
you're just living it and i think people
are attracted to
humility they're attracted to
authenticity and they feel when
something's different
and when they begin to themselves ask
the question
then you will have an answer to that
question
if the power dynamics in your mind or
how will i convince how will i
change with something like this there's
no such thing as an overnight change
first of all the danger with overnight
changes is they can often change
back and so quick changes can quickly
change in either direction
this really is an ecosystem model of
living together sharing space
together meeting people where they are
and knowing that
even in your own practice it takes lots
and lots of time and to give other
people lots and lots of time to
get to a place where they are asking
questions that's the real
art here i think one of the biggest
misconceptions that i hear from teachers
when i talk about this stuff
is oh you're saying that i don't help
students
they have to do everything on their own
because it's rhizomatic and they have to
find their path
some teachers will say that sort of
sarcastically like you're just they're
in the room and they're you're they're
doing whatever they want and i'm like
well you know
that's a little bit of a disingenuous
way of describing what's going on
it's not as if in the classroom you have
to say
well you know it's rhizomatic learning
so you gotta figure it out you know like
this is your path and you're gonna chart
your own path and i can't help you
because then that would be oppressing
you
so like here i'm just gonna step back
struggle
and that's not how i feel about it and i
really feel like
rhizomatic pedagogy is partially about
embracing
a collage a mosaic of tools at your
disposal
and opening yourself up to pedagogical
de-centeredness and trying to avoid an
ideological commitment
to sequence or to inquiry or to any of
these things
it's about like let's our learning is
situated in the classroom
student what do you need right now to
achieve your goals
and i'm going to use my best knowledge
as a teacher to help lead them to
further success based on what i know
and they're going to do their best to
help communicate and
support the learning community it's not
as if we're just
like like katie said we're not naked
running around in the woods you know
i mean i really think that when you have
embraced rhizomatic learning you offer
the scaffold
if the scaffold is useful there's this
metaphor that we haven't touched too
much yet but that i really love is
the idea of mapping a rhizome a map of a
rhizome is not rhizomatic
because you've set in stone what you
observed so a map
can be like a sequence right you take
this body of learning and knowledge and
all these things and then you map it out
and you provide the sequence and you've
traced one possible path through this
territory
and there doesn't need to be a
commitment to that you can find a
different path
but there also doesn't need to be a lack
of
well-worn beautiful trails for students
to walk themselves down
a scaffold that i provide for students
in my classroom is a literal
map of concepts and resources and
examples and all sorts of things
and they can trace my path through it
like hey here's a bunch of resources
that were really useful to me when i was
building a synthesizer and
if i'm teaching kids how to code like
they might be building synthesizers and
they can trace my path
that's great and honestly that feels
pretty safe to me
because i know that at least they're
going to get somewhere but then what i'm
always
asking students is like what's not
mapped here what do you not see on this
map yet what territories can we explore
is there empty space between these
things that we know about
that i know about that we can show is
there anything in your life that doesn't
appear on my map that we can add
we put it in context where do you think
things are i don't think that that's an
ideologically pure rhizomatic
approach but i also think that delusion
guateri's
text about rhizomes they are careful to
say that the rhizome isn't
purely decentralized and if you commit
to that and you live that fully
there's a chance you'll lose your mind
and you will you're not going to be able
to come back from that
and i sort of think that it's easy to
find yourself at sea
if you aren't using all the tools that
you have as students teachers in a
learning community i hope that makes
sense
feel free to challenge me on that katie
and catherine but
a few things came to mind one was the
quote the map is not the territory
i have no idea who said that quote but
you have these concepts you have these
tools that you utilize to understand the
reality that you're existing in
and rhizomatically you're thinking and
understanding are these concepts are
these tools
situated for the task at hand and if
they're not you find a new one if they
are you're running with it until it
doesn't
it's not useful for you anymore you
can't just be a full-on
nomad right you can't just only think in
the rhizome
metaphor as you way more eloquently
described it
the nomad relies on the state right this
idea that
there has to be these two roles and it's
not even just being purely the nomad or
purely the state the negotiation is how
the state and the nomad
interact that becomes the work that
becomes like this more
obvious way of engaging in
this different way of thinking which i
continue to feel
it's this intuitive way of thinking it's
very much your heart mind-centered
way of being in a shared space with
students or colleagues or whomever
and it's encouraging your students to be
in a similar space
too and i loved your questions john
about that all kind of center around
like
what's the not knowing that's going on
and who is doing the knowing in the
space
and so for colleagues who are saying oh
you're just a body in the room while
your kids
flounder but that's also not true either
they're engaged in spontaneity and joy
and all of these things as well you just
don't feel like you have to know
in front of kids for eight hours a day
which is exhausting
which we can get back to teachers also
needing a sabbatical
to have to like smooth over
the effort and the stress and all of
that that goes into having to be
the authoritarian knower in front of
kids so
there's freedom there for both students
and teachers
i think it does it returns to this
intuitive more ecological
more adaptive flexible way that we were
designed originally to move through this
world but
you forgot you were talking about how
the territory of rhizomatic learning the
map of rhizomatic learning how the map
isn't
necessarily representative of the
territory so i'm curious
what has not been mapped so far in this
discussion what have we not chatted
about
that you think is important for other
people to know about i can definitely
say that one of the things that i think
is sort of lacking
in this field the field of arizona
learning the territory rhizomatic
learning
are just a bunch of examples of teachers
trying to do it
in public and naming it as such because
we have a lot of academic perspectives
on this stuff
and i know a lot of teachers personally
who are doing this kind of thing but
we're not really that good at naming
what this is and giving people examples
of how to embody
or how other people embody these things
not as a
as a model to replicate but as a map
that people can trace
or explore beyond same sorts of
scaffolds i provide for my students
i think teachers need that same sort of
thing there are examples of that out
there but i think
the more the better i just want to say a
tiny thing about the word tracing
because it's come up many times
throughout this conversation and i wish
i would have brought my tracing pad with
me because
i've recently been sewing a lot of
little animals and dolls
and the reason i'm learning how to
sculpt felt is because i trace
other people's patterns and build really
complex felt
doll things from other people's patterns
and
from that process of tracing and
building that path
i'm able to think about construction of
with felt in a new way
and start to create my own felt dolls
and so i definitely support tracing
as a step on the path and in many ways
it's a great metaphor i'd say that it
seems like there might be a big barrier
to entry
in thinking rhizomatically or
participating in rhizo analysis because
of the nature of what
seems to be big burly words and i'm sure
we've utilized some of them today
don't write this off as like as you
speak or being just
up in the academic stratosphere without
any kind of understanding of what this
looks like in reality
i guess it's also a product of the
tracing right the more that you wrestle
with the scholarly aspects of this and
think about it the more
ease that you begin to discuss it as
such but
for me it's the only space that you
really just have to bring your thoughts
your own intuition the way that you
want to see the world and currently see
the world and then that always becomes
the starting place there's no
i have to work up to get to this certain
you know checkpoint and then i can
really learn about it
it's being attuned to and open to this
type of learning so where might people
go to connect with you in the
organizations that you work with
i'm john stapleton you can find me at
jstapes
on twitter that is my primary social
media thing i do not use facebook but
i'm still on twitter
i work in virginia and i've also done
work with
code virginia which is the cs
professional development arm of the
virginia department of education you can
find
some stuff there hit me up on twitter
follow me if you like
tabletop roleplaying games and
rhizomatics and
computer science education i want you to
say hi you can follow me on twitter
at bournecast b-o-r-n-c-a-t-h
and you can visit born ingenuity.com to
learn about
me and some of my work my twitter handle
is
at katie henry days d-a-y-s
and you can find me online at
katydays.com
and with that that concludes this week's
panel discussion of the cska podcast
i really hope you enjoyed listening to
this panel session as each of the guests
had a lot of wonderful content that i
really enjoyed listening to as the
moderator
again if you're interested in learning
more about rhizomatic learning after
having listened to this panel
check out the show notes by clicking the
link in the app you're listening to this
on or go to jaredlery.com
and consider sharing the free resources
with others stay tuned next week for
another unpacking scholarship episode
and two weeks from now for another
interview
i hope you're having a wonderful week
and are staying safe
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Resources mentioned in this episode
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