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.

  • 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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