Learning

The last month has been one of almost overwhelming engagement with other people, ranging from travel with Mary and our daughters to visits with extended family, and capped off this last week with  professional training in the company of some of the people I most respect in terms of what we do for a living.

The time with Mary and One and Two was maybe the best vacation I’ve ever had – not without the occasional family spat but all in all, a loving, thoughtful and downright fun sojourn. The time spent with Mary’s family will probably prove to have been a watershed for me in terms of my relationship with my in-laws. Mary and I both come from large families in which any gathering of siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles requires a large space and a commercial kitchen. So we each tend to see the world through a fairly well-defined familial lens.

Mary’s family is rooted in the very strongly defined cultures of Italy and Lithuania, while mine arises from the largely more assimilated children of Irish émigrés of potato famine vintage. Her family is very East coast whereas mine is very West coast. Many differences in outlook and familial personalities, political and religious beliefs, etc. have made it difficult at times for this Son of the Sod who grew up on meat and potatoes to fold into Mary’s family that celebrates every gathering with the formal sharing of Capoletti-in-broth.

This time, although I steeled myself for what I expected to be another weeklong exercise in smiling through gritted teeth, the visit was entirely different. From the start, I felt accepted and welcome and for the first time, part of the Jonardi family. It was a wonderful visit in which we shared both common and individual experiences and the few rough spots were neither more nor less significant than standard family stumbles.

Our time with our daughters was very much a gathering of four adults – to the extent that you can consider a guy whose favorite toy is a whoopee cushion an adult – and I believe we each gained new perspectives on each other. Parents think a lot about their children transitioning from the family to defining and embarking upon their own lives. But we frequently neglect to understand how much our own lives are being redefined during this time of exodus. I think this time Mary and I saw ourselves reflected in our daughters’ gazes, and as we move forward, this additional perspective will help define our lives together going forward.

I spent the last week in the company of other teachers and course designers who all work with essentially the same audience but from different angles. Some focus on strictly business topics, others on regulatory matters, still others on disabilities advocacy and rehab / accommodations. Some focus on training for skills development and others on education around strategic and policy matters. It was a diverse group of perspectives, brought together by our common mission of working toward leveling of the playing field for persons living with disabilities.

In past ‘summits’ of trainers I’ve always felt an undercurrent of competitiveness. My topic is more mission-focused, mine is higher level, mine is more useful to our constituents, yudda, yudda… There’s always some sort of jockeying when you have people filling a similar role, but separately. This time was different. Every person there seemed to be focused on ‘how do we make our offerings the best they can be?’ The whole three days we spent together, including an impromptu dinner for four that turned into a marathon discussion of Khan and TED and online vs. brick-and-mortar that was so chock full of ideas, I found myself spending the first fifteen minutes back at my hotel room frantically writing notes for future use, was phenomenal. I take part in lots of training events, both as teacher and learner and sometimes both and I learn a little more each time. But this one left me with a staggering load of new ideas for making my own teaching better.

I don’t need to beat you over the head with how this relates to introspection. This last month convinced me that age 60 is no time to be resting on laurels or coasting toward retirement. I learned a great deal from Mary and Angela and Rachel and the Jonardis and my colleagues, but perhaps the greatest lesson I learned is most powerful in its simplicity:

I have so much to learn!

Stay tuned, ‘cause I ain’t done yet. Not by a long shot.