12 New Years Un-Resolutions for 2012.

With mere hours until the clock strikes 2012, most people are crafting a line-up of hefty expectations for Monday and the 365 days to follow. Usually new year’s resolutions fall into a few categories: we want to get in shape, make more money, eat healthier, be kinder to people, call home more, take more time for ourselves, and wash our socks more often (right?). These conclusive resolutions are hard to stick to (or in my case, remember), so this year, I’m doing something a little different.

Here’s why.

This year I riled up the confidence to take a leap of faith onto, well, my bicycle. Brandon and I rode down the Pacific coast learning from innovators in alternative education and wise strangers with beautiful, dissonant, complex, raw stories about their life’s learnings. 2011 was a powerful year for us because of them and you.

More than any epic tailwind, we were propelled by the kindness of friends and strangers to support two young crazy people with a young crazy idea. Your advice, dollars (big and small), spontaneous ideas, kind enthusiastic emails, gear donations, clever comments on our blog posts, and ‘likes’ on our Facebook page (wink), meant more than you know. On days when the coastal wind was cold and our legs were tired and we were stuck somewhere far away, your gestures reminded us that we weren’t alone and we weren’t that crazy. Your wise words and small gestures sprinkled throughout the year helped us much more than any ‘lump sum’ resolution we made last January 1st.

So. Un-resolutions.

This year, instead of resolutions, I’m making a list of pocket-size {daily} inspirations. They’re un-resolutions because they aren’t “resolved”… these are ongoing simple quotes, photos, and reminders to live fully, healthfully, and with a hearty sense of openness in each breath – wisdom given to me in 2011 that I hope to offer out in 2012.

1. What is the most important skill? To see the sun every morning and to realize that the sun is shining. A lot of people they don’t see that the sun is shining, even if she is. That is, to see the nature. – Lotti Bitterli, our adopted Swiss bike mother

2. {quote by Ram Dass, art by yours truly}

3. If it isn’t the mystery or the mystery unraveling, then it is nothing. – Walt Whitman

4. I think success now means being in the moment, not being worried. It’s a lesson that becomes obvious as you age. You can always enjoy things that are in front of you. If you invest your time enjoying things, it pays great benefits. If you spend your time worrying, it pays no benefits. Become interested in the process. – Jim Irving, coffeeshop owner in Bodega Bay, CA

5. Everybody is your mirror. I think that we’re always getting feedback on a daily basis… it’s just this constant, circular thing. What if we saw ourselves as the source of generating what it means to thrive? And then that gets mirrored in our relationships and our world. – Kristin Hayden, founder of OneWorld NOW!

6. There is no one alive who is Youer than You. – Dr. Seuss

7.

8. {Ubuntu ngumuntu ngabantu} A person is a person through other persons. – Zulu proverb

9. {We are very small} Touch the earth lightly. – lots of people, especially Annemarie

10. Sometimes it’s important to eat a nice hot donut. – Joey, my college roommate

11. How do I find success? I start the day being the best man I can. Endeavor to be a better man. And go to bed with no regret. And wake up in the morning with no guilt. – Fred Williams

12. Breathe and be wide-eyed. The unofficial motto of our project and the closest I can get to a resolution for 2012.

To 2012 we go!

Why self-directed learning is the future of education

Hey, watch this:

Sal Khan, the founder of the Khan Academy, is a brilliant dude and one of the most super education innovators of our day. A few sprinkles of wisdom that I love about this short video:

• The future of education is one or two giant classrooms where information is available and learning is self-directed
• In this classroom, everyone will work at their own pace, so when students want to take a break to pursue an idea (like building a robot for 6 months, or embarking on a bike adventure wink wink) it will be a-okay
• “Teachers more than ever are fountains of knowledge, experience, mentorship, and humanity as opposed to fountains of a scripted lecture.” zing.
• The best learning happens when the student demands knowledge, rather than having it preemptively delivered to them (how many times have you or your kids said, “I’m never going to need to know this!”?)

We can apply this idea to our every day lives pretty easily. Think about the last time you wanted to try cooking up a new dish for dinner. How did you figure out what to make? I’d venture to guess that you decided to look up a recipe online (maybe on epicurious.com), or perused one of your existing recipe books (genius!). And what did you do when you stumbled upon a cooking term you weren’t familiar with? You probably looked it up (brilliant!). If someone had narrated recipes to you sometime when you weren’t interested in actually cooking anything, you might have tuned out the lecture and ventured into the inner-depths of lala land. But when you had a practical and immediate demand for the information, you learned it quickly and relatively easily.

When we understand what our goal is – what it is that we want to create – figuring out the steps to get there is fun, relevant, and intuitive. If the steps aren’t intuitive, we can reach out to teachers and mentors for guidance. I think this simple idea is the key to unearthing our next education revolution.

Check out the Khan Academy, TED.com, OpenCourseware, P2PU, and Zero Tuition College for more free learning tools… these guys are spilling out knowledge and resources for whenever we decide we want to soak ’em up!

Ending a chapter: eastward by train.

When the moment came for us to squeeze Sitka and Moose (our bikes) into inhospitable cardboard bike boxes and lug them to the FedEx in downtown Berkeley, I tripped on the sidewalk near the muffin store and took Brandon out for a beer. It was a bittersweet night of accomplishment mixed with that belly churning you get when you want to cling to the last string of something good. The next day we got on a train at 9 in the morning carrying a giant jug of half-brewed kombucha, a tattered ukelele, and the remains of our bike adventure packed tightly into our backpacks. We set east from our temporary home of CA to make an eight day train voyage to the east coast in order to spend time with our families for those days that we celebrate in December. I felt – and still feel – an uncomfortable nostalgia for the west coast (which, by the way, I had only visited once before this trip, when I was 22). Having now spent a solid six months teasing its contours on two wheels, it has come to represent more than rugged hills and tall trees: it is the home of our epic adventure.

It was only fitting to leave the coast with a similarly epic (and slow) voyage eastward. The California Zephyr (run by Amtrak) is quite a trip. I’m pretty sure the majority of fellow travelers on board are either afraid of flying, hopeless romantics, or simply looking for someone (anyone) to talk to. A few also do it because the scenery is spectacular.

Some Zephyr highlights:

1. We spent five hours talking with two relatively wild ramblers about: if there could be such thing as a ‘benevolent dictator’, the concept of God (who one guy characterized as a “frantic, nervous Woody Allen type”), the blues (via harmonica), string theory, and the meaning of life

2. We had on-train park service narration between Sacramento and Reno (the unfortunate accent of one narrator made him sound like he was saying ‘ray rod’ instead of railroad… which was, to our delight, referenced roughly every four words for several hours)

3. The personal narration of a train-enchanted four year old who, for an hour or so, made sure to remind his grandmother: “hey look! I’m looking out the window!” and “we’re on a train!”

4. Oh yeah, the most incredible traverses of the Sierras, several giant red canyons, and the Rockies, and snaking along the Colorado river, shooting through vast deserts and snowstorms, and leaping the continental divide. I will admit that I was a bit relieved I didn’t have to pedal my way through some of those snowy mountain ranges to get the views!

We’ve made stops in Salt Lake City and Denver, where we’ve climbed two mountains, hung out with Space Jesus, learned swing dancing at 1:30 am, spotted a great horned owl in a friend’s backyard, and acted ridiculous an unquantifiable number of times in public. Today Brandon played songs from “Amelie” on a random piano placed conveniently in the middle of downtown Denver and I waltzed.

I leave you with a few images from the journey:

riding wind and finding herenow.

Do you think that having a spirit of openness can lead you exactly where you’re supposed to go – where you need to go – without you even realizing it? These days I do.

Despite wild winds and an ever-shrinking timeline, Brandon and I hopped on our bikes last week for one last mini bike tour (or “tourito”) down the California coast (before heading back east for the holidays). We dressed Sitka and Moose (our bikes) in an infallible concoction for success – one change of clothes, two sleeping bags and pads, a tent, a sprinkle of bike tools, a dash of chain grease, and (obviously) a large block of Tillamook extra sharp cheddar cheese.

We set south for a 60 mile ride to Davenport, CA (near Santa Cruz) a bit late, counting on the crazy winds for a hefty boost. The plan was to call our wonderful bike-touring farmer friend Robert when it got dark, and he would give us a ride in his truck over the mountains to his farm in Boulder Creek. The plan went awry though, because there was no cell phone service for 20 miles or so (perhaps a forewarning we didn’t recognize). We did every combination of searching for cell phone service (“one bar! no, no bars”), cycling in the dark (“can you tell if the edge of the road is a cliff?”), and asking strangers for advice (“no towns for 10 miles? ok, guess we’ll keep chugging”). Who knew the San Francisco ‘burbs disappeared so fast?!

Sooner or later (well, later), we managed to reach Robert, and get a ride up the long windy hill to his farm, “Camp Joy”. On the way, the howling wind caused redwood branches to snow from the sky before us. We saw a transformer explode and a redwood branch crashed heavily on top of the truck roof.

We arrived at the farm in deep darkness. It was majestic.

For our whole visit, there was no power at the farm or anywhere for three towns over. This produced a certain type of silence I hadn’t felt for a long time. Our cell phones died, our cameras died, there was no internet, there was no buzzing refrigerator, there was nothing but the very present moment we were in at that very present time.

Without the option of being distracted by means of connectivity to the outside world, we were forced to focus on exactly where we were. At night we cooked a feast by candlelight and shared it with 15 other community members under the warm glow of hanging candelabras. The fire dictated where we could look (see) and brought us all together in the same room for hours of conversation.

I hadn’t realized that in the hustlebustle of my life in the East Bay – working on the project, exploring ‘next steps’, keeping in touch with friends, taking advantage of every opportunity around, and so on – and having endless options of things to do was pulling me away from my present moment. My “herenow”. When I found it in that candlelit farmhouse, entranced by the glow of the candles and the thoughtful words of strangerfriends around a giant wooden table, a feeling of calm and contentment washed over me.

I’m all for the wild frantic beauty of exploring everything life has to offer, but I think having too many choices of things to do (or connect to) has the potential to pull us away from our herenow. When we set off on a wide-eyed and pedal-powered adventure, we had no idea what the wind would blow our way. Looking back, it was exactly what we needed and an experience that continues to wind through my thoughts as I embark on the next leg of the big adventure.

Where do you find your herenow?

Ten ‘Wise Routes’ to Self-Discovery without School

What if we prioritized self-discovery over academic achievement? What if every high school graduate was encouraged to spend a “gap year” soul searching – creating things, working, apprenticing, adventuring, exploring, risk-taking – in the real world before jumping head-first into college? In a recent post, I said that funneling high school students directly into college doesn’t just promote a one track definition of “success”, it also forgoes an opportunity for students to apply their ideas and explore their passions in a way that will benefit their future education (however extensive that ends up being).

So what could you do with, say, a year of self-directed learning on your own? Here’s a list of ten “wise routes” to self discovery without school, chock-full of links to my favorite organizations and ideas for your (or your kid’s) time away from the education system:

1. Become an education hacker. Whether you want to learn how to build a website, speak Spanish, start a garden, write a book, become an expert on the French Revolution, or double knot your shoe laces, there are oodles of ways to educate yourself about just about anything for free. Watch this video for a great intro. Then check out p2pu.org for free online collaborative courses, find a Free Skool in your area, create your own Citizen Circle, or join the Uncollege movement.

2. Go on a group roadtrip. Looking to see what’s “out there” far and away from your own “bubble”? Why not go on a roadtrip with Roadtrip Nation (in a big green RV) or The Otesha Project (a group bike trip!)?

3. Explore jobs, internships, and apprenticeships. What if you spent a year exploring 4 different jobs, internships, or apprenticeships for 3 months each (or 2 for 6 months each)? This is a cool way to ‘dip toes’ into a few different fields, make connections without committing to anything long-term, and potentially make a few bucks along the way.

4. Voyage abroad. There’s no doubt that traveling abroad and experiencing a different culture is one of the most life-changing things you can do. It’s usually not free, but there are some great gap year traveling programs that offer scholarships. Our faves?: OneWorld Now!, Carpe Diem, and The Traveling School.

5. Help your community thrive. You don’t have to travel around the world to discover new things. Why not invest yourself in helping your own community thrive? Learn from neighbors or volunteer at a community organization in  your area. Check out City Repair to get some ideas for reigniting community interaction.

6. Start your own venture. Is there something you want to change in your community (or world!) that isn’t being addressed? You can start your own venture and even get coaching and start up money to do it! Check out Ashoka’s Youth Venture or contribute your idea on Changemakers to win funding and recognition.

7. Build. Something. Big. At TEDxYouth last weekend, we heard the incredible story of Kendall Ronzano, a high school student that decided to build her own HOUSE and founded Nerd Girl Homes. If you like learning by doing, why not build something of your own? And hey – there are tons of great bike collectives all over the world where you can get free help building your own bike (coughsocoolcough).

8. Start a blog. Blogging is a great way to share your interests and ideas with a community of people interested in following along. I was inspired by my friend Rachel’s “Never-Have-I-Ever” blog, in which she tried a new thing every day for a year, and wrote about it online. To get tips on how to create a good blog, visit the WordPress support page, sign up for a class with Britt Bravo, or just read a bunch of blogs and get a sense of what you like!

9. Design your own Wise Route. If you don’t want to pay a program to have a cool travel experience, why not design your own? Whether its a backcountry hiking trip or a cross country bike tour, designing your own adventure is an incredible learning experience. Grab some friends, pack your bags, download an Adventure Cycling map, hop on a bike, and see what’s out there!

10. Embark on a quest for silence and inner peace. Sometimes in our search for ourselves, we forget to look inwards and focus on inner peace. The quest for less, not more, can often be the most challenging. Spend some time alone (perhaps in the wilderness). Meditate. Breathe. Be present. Prioritize you.

How To Give the Gift of Less Stuff.

As herds of homo sapiens flock to big box stores to snatch the hottest products on super-duper sale, I find myself lounging on a giant couch feeling anything but stressed. This year, I am rethinking the value of stuff.

Next Friday marks six months since Brandon and I rolled away from our DC homes with just our backpacks and panniers. We each had a book and a journal. We each had 2 pairs of bike shorts, one pair of pants, 3 shirts, and an undisclosed number of underpants. We each had a mini watercolor set, a helmet, some camping gear, our cameras, and a couple bike tools. In August, we got a $39 ukelele that we named Elkie Moonshadow (who is now covered in bike maps we didn’t want to throw out). That was it.

Our culture tells us that the holidays are a time for giving people more, but for the last six months, I have been happier than ever because I’ve had less. Sure there were days that I would have loved to wear a cool-looking pair of jeans (but who says bike shorts aren’t formal night attire?!) or have a few more books to read, but I was more than willing to sacrifice these things for the incredible gift of traveling lighter. I wish I could give that gift to everyone I know.

The next few days tempt us all with messages to buy stuff fast and save some money, but I’m challenging myself (and you) to create something instead. Create a hand-made piece of art, a song, a collaborative project, an experience. Give someone a day-long scavenger hunt leading to an incredible new place or an afternoon bike trip together down to the river. Give someone a home-cooked feast, a good laugh, a poem, an opportunity to feel goosebumps. Give a skill-share: teach your loved ones something they’ve always wanted to learn (like how to bake bread, play Stairway to Heaven on the guitar, or solve a Rubik’s cube behind their back). Be creative. A light gift carries a lot of weight.

College Shmollege: Re-routing the path to success

I am SO over all these programs that define success as getting more kids into college. Sure, I think we can all agree that college opens more doors for teenagers than, say, a four year stint flipping something falsely described as a “meat” in a fast food joint, but by promoting college as the only real path to success, we are doing today’s youth more harm than good.

Is the path to success a one-way train track to college or might it be a complex network of squiggly routes, different for each of us?

An empty promise

This article in GOOD about a nifty program called College Unbound reveals some chilling stats about our broken education system today:

Tuition’s doubled in the past decade, rising faster than any other item in the Consumer Price Index since 1978. Student loan default rates are increasing. Only 56 percent of students complete a four-year degree in six years. And a nationwide study last year, using a test called the Collegiate Learning Assessment, found that 36 percent of students demonstrate no gain in learning between freshman and senior year.

And how about this statistic from the same article?: first generation college students have an 11% chance of graduating from a four year college. Yep, for those that aren’t math-inclined, that’s an 89% dropout rate. Ouch. So much for social mobility.

College once promised an undeniable return on investment. It was generally assumed that the amount you paid for a degree would be dwarfed by the amount you’d make once you got out. Looking at the number of my highly educated friends that are now working in coffee shops, restaurants, and farms (respectable jobs that don’t actually require a debt-incurring degree), it’s not hard to see that this promise has lost its gut.

It once made sense to ‘discover yourself’ and find your passions in college. Today this idea has an irreconcilable price tag. It doesn’t make sense to go to college to ‘find your passion’ (eyes closed, fingers crossed!). It makes sense to explore yourself and find your passion first, in the real world, and then decide if college is the best way to get there.

BUT

Today’s parents, teachers, coaches and administrators somewhat unanimously preach that doing well in school and going to college is THE ONLY way to pave the path to success. Our society holds students to insanely high (sometimes even aggressive) standards of academic and extracurricular performance (if you have any doubt, or just want to watch an über-powerful film about this, check out Race to Nowhere).

This type of pressure can suck… the joy out of learning. By teaching students that they must meet these standards in order to be successful, students learn to prioritize compliance at the cost of their genuine curiosity and interest in learning. Is it just me, or is this totally barbaric?

Researching professor Peter Gray says (and I’d recommend reading the whole article)

Schools, as we generally know them, interfere with children’s abilities to educate themselves. When we confine children and adolescents to schools, where they are assigned to rooms by age and can’t choose their associates, where they can’t pursue their own interests but instead must conform to the dictates of the teacher and the time course of the bell, we interfere with their abilities to educate themselves.

What would happen if parents encouraged their kids to take a summer, semester, even year “off” to explore the world on their own (through travel, apprenticeships, work, taking a risk on a new idea, creating their own project, etc.)? What would happen if teacher were allowed to give students a week each semester (or a day each week) to learn whatever they want, in or out of the classroom, and share it with the class afterward for no grade? That would be a step in the right direction…

What if every parent, teacher, coach, guidance counselor, and school set just as high standards for their child’s self-discovery process as they did for their child’s success in the classroom?

 

We’re interested to hear your thoughts about this post in the comments section, and hope you’ll to stay tuned for our next post: Ten Wise Routes to Self-Discovery Without School.

Trail Blazing: Some Food For Thought

 

I would be (in this order)…

1) conversing with a variety of creatures in the canopy of one of the Giant Sequoias I met in Yosemite

2) chatting with the coffee farmer that grew the beans I’m now drinking (mmmm)

3) exploring the inside of Barack Obama’s head

 

And I think Brandon would be:

1) inside a local microbrewery, picking the brains of the hippity hop brewers

2) photo-documenting every moment of every Occupy demonstration worldwide

3) fluent in Spanish, ordering a burrito somewhere in Central America

 

How ’bout you?

Portrait in Sound: Fredrick Lee Williams

 [Note: This recording contains some swearing… earmuffs kids!]

Sometimes picking up a box of Rice-A-Roni from the store can be a wild experience… at least it was for us back in Quinault, Washington. We’d nearly finished riding for the day when we realized we didn’t have any food to cook for dinner. After asking a few locals for suggestions, we learned there was just one place to grocery shop within 30 miles – a small mercantile perched crookedly off the side of highway 101. As we balanced our bikes precariously out front, an old man with tinted sunglasses busted through the front door. “Now what the hell are you doing with all that crap on top of your bi-cycles?”

An hour and a half later, we had moved precisely 4 feet from that front door. Seated comfortably on the wood bench outside the store’s entrance, we listened to Fred’s life stories and sage advice. We were enthralled by his wise ramblings (which almost always had a point at the end), eagerness to (quite literally) spell out his morals, and wild rants with passersby: a local truck driver, an old friend, a young native Quinault woman that worked at the mercantile, some slick, sharp-shooting cops.

I’ve posted 14 minutes of Fred Williams’ brilliance here for you to enjoy. I have left it raw on purpose. To someone that wasn’t with us in person, following his sweeping hand gestures (like the way he cups his mouth when he says COMMUNICATION) and theatrical facial expressions, it might feel confusing at times. Go with it. These moments of roadside banter are decidedly more illustrative of Fred’s character than any answers to the questions that invoked them.

Ride Somewhere Far

If we get bad grades, we are not failures. If we decide to take a gap-year, we are not drop-outs. If we want to re-think our educations, we are not threatening our futures. What we do threaten is the dogma of success that continues to weigh down the spirit and creativity of a new generation of potential leaders and thinkers. This is not an attack – it is a plea.

Take a moment to consider the pieces of our lives that we’ve normalized with one another – ask yourself, what are some pervasive influences of our high-speed culture? The parts of our dreams and expectations for our futures that have been passed to us like a homogenized contagion. The voices of our mentors encouraging independence and creativity, but hesitant or disapproving of life paths radically different than their own. There is clearly a security that we feel in being able to all relate about trending interests, entertainment and gossip – “do you have the new igadget?!” – to be asked about our college plans and hope to receive approving nods and shoulder pats – “so what schools are you applying to?”. But how do we actively challenge that norm, especially of our educations – and succeed?

Taking your education into your own hands may be an incredibly intimidating task when you’ve been led through the hallways of block period schedules for so many years. It may even take some seriously ground-breaking conversations with parents and friends for them to understand that your needs are rational – but it’s true! – we all have diverse needs and we all learn differently; it’s a bit silly to have needed Harvard Research to recognize that – but it’s helped! The acceptance of alternative schooling is clearly on the rise but still, our education system has evolved at a fraction of the speed as our cultural consciousness. It is normal, critical even, that you feel empowered to change it and catch up. The initiative, the inspiration and the adventure that others will see as you revolutionize your education will be a catalyst for more to do the same.

Ok – so what does bicycle touring have to do with any of this?

Imagine, at 17-years-old, three months of travel in a local or remote region meeting professionals in the fields of your interests; strangers excited about your adventure; support from your mentors, friends and family; all the while receiving academic credit, but most importantly, discovering and developing practical and social skills for the rest of your life that traditional schools can only attempt to embody. Bicycle travel is an inexpensive, healthy and exciting vehicle to bridge life and experiential education. Not to mention – far less dependent on costly fossil fuels!

So much of our youth is a search for identity – but we continue to spend the majority of our time at this stage with a large group of similarly confused individuals of the same age. Somehow we are convinced that peer pressure and age-segregated pass-fail systems with a handful of team sports will create legions of critical, creative and competitive thinkers; and that if we just stick it out for another four years we’ll probably have a nice paycheck and a golden retriever, or poodle if you prefer. Sure, this system works well for some – but what has it taught us and at what cost?

The Wise Routes Project is an experiment in living. A shout-out to jump on a bicycle and go far with your questions and curiosities. If school bores you, say so! Everyone is your teacher and it’s time to discover your interests now so that later programs can serve you well. Make learning something you enjoy – and convince the rest of us that it’s worth it.