Meeting the Moment
If you haven’t yet accepted that young people can learn beyond the walls of the school, you’re truly falling behind on — not the future of education, but — the NOW of education.
Over the last three decades of our work, Big Picture Learning has stressed that an essential piece of helping young people live lives of their own design is through the pursuit of their interests and passions. And — let’s be honest here — sometimes the only places to learn and chase those interests fall beyond the school walls. So we stress the importance of Leaving to Learn — a phrase coined by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski in their 2013 book of the same name.
It should come as no surprise (but does for many) that if we believe Leaving to Learn is important for young people, it’s just as important for adult learners. Still, we all have attended conferences, convenings, thought groups and more that take place in the most dynamic locations, and yet the only time we have opportunity to explore those locations is for dinner (or…karaoke on occasion).
To stay true to our values, Big Picture Learning has designed a conference going experience that recognizes that there is as much (and often more) to learn from our host community as there is from the experts who convene inside the walls of whatever hotel we’ve decided to locate ourselves in. For our upcoming summer conference — Big Bang — in historic Kansas City, we’ve worked closely with community organizations like the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the Latinx Education Collaborative, Cherry Pit Collective and more to design thoughtful, unique experiences that allow Big Bang attendees to glimpse — if even for a day — why Leaving to Learn opportunities are as important for adults as they are for young people.
Around the same time what we first publicly announced our 2023 Learning to Learn slate, news started spreading fast about the near fatal shooting of Ralph Yarl, a Kansas City youth who inadvertently went to the wrong house to pick up siblings. We have prided our organization and our convenings as places where we would lean in and speak up about the issues that affect the communities we serve. And there was some fear that — around the same time we were announcing an excursion to Kansas City’s renowned sweets shop — Christopher Elbow Chocolates — the city itself was bleeding, literally and figuratively, in the national spotlight.
This isn’t the first time we’ve had concerns about what a Big Bang in Kansas City could mean. In the last year, Missouri has passed some of the lenient gun laws, the most strict anti-LGBTQ+ bill, and has even threatened to defund its entire public library system after the local ACLU (another Leaving to Learn host) sued the state following a move to ban hundreds of books from local public school libraries.
And what of Big Bang 2024, to be held in Memphis, given the Tennessee House’ recent expulsion of Representatives Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson who, along with fellow Representative Gloria Johnson, stood in the galley to protest — along with hundreds of community members, overwhelming made up of youth from across the state — the legislature’s muted response to a recent school shooting at Covenant Christian School in Nashville.
But here’s the thing. Among the youth who attended several rallies at the Tennessee Capitol were students from Nashville Big Picture High School. How can we say — with authenticity and sincerity — that we have much to learn from young people, and from the community, if we turn away from those young people and communities who have the most to teach us? How can we later say we were part of the solution if we aren’t present in the midst of the problem?
It’s understandable that members of the Big Picture community would show concern with the symbolic aspect of having our largest convening in states which, by all appearances, fly directly in the face of the values we espouse. In our own “Who We Are” statement, we express that:
We exist in an era in which populations of peoples and students who have rarely enjoyed equitable opportunities find themselves marginalized and demeaned. This adverse change in our nation’s climate threatens the sanctity of the spaces in which students who desire honesty, respect and authenticity seek refuge.
But we don’t visit states. We visit communities. And we don’t just visit chocolate shops, aquariums and museums. Built into this Big Bang (as a pre-conference experience) is an in-depth Leaving to Learn to the Brown vs. Board of Education National Historic Landmark in Topeka, Kansas. We understand that if we refuse to learn from not only history — but the present as well — we turn a blind eye to the seeds of progress.
It is our duty to embrace the strength and knowledge of community members and young people who are setting the direction for our future every day. It is our duty to Stay to Learn. It is our duty to Meet the Moment.
