As I noted in my previous blog, I had wide-ranging discussions with J.P. Bryan over more than four hours in Marathon, Texas. These are just a few highlights; I will reserve more for the book. J.P.'s personal history, knowledge of the history of this part of America, and ability to place those into the context [...]
If I had stuck strictly to my Wisdom Road mantra of finding “overlooked” voices in America, I would have missed the remarkable opportunity to spend time with J.P. Bryan yesterday in Marathon, TX. I doubt J.P. has been overlooked for much in his life. He is a long time business leader in finance and oil [...]
Kathy and Toby Collins met in high school when both of their families started farming about six miles south of Wilcox, Arizona. They have been married, according to both of them, for “64 blessed years”. There are not many family farms left in the valley. A dairy came in and bought up a lot of [...]
Sometimes you find kindness at a repair shop. On the outskirts of El Paso, an engine warning came on; no big deal; oil level a bit high and maybe I needed to drain a half quart. Found a diesel shop; nice supervisor; said checking the problem would just take a few minutes. "The [...]
Tubac, Arizona is just 25 miles from the Mexican border. For centuries it has been at the heart of the borderlands, rich in multicultural traditions and influences. Over time the border itself has been fluid, ephemeral, and often arbitrary. Currently, this area of the border is one of the most active in terms of commerce, [...]
My first interviews of Wisdom Road Leg 2 were in the small town of Tubac, Arizona, about 30 miles north of the border with Mexico. Tubac is like a mini-Santa Fe; a couple of restaurants but about thirty art galleries and flocks of snowbirds at this time of the year. The Santa Cruz River, really [...]
For more than two decades, forward-leaning educators have focused on a set of skills that for some reason all started with the letter "C": creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, etc. I want to add another "C" to that list, one, I would argue, that will be more important to the world going forward than all [...]
A colleague (Gardner Barrier, head of school at Forsyth Country Day School in Winston-Salem) asked me this week if I felt gratitude was a motivator for my Wisdom Road journey. In that moment and from that question I realized that gratitude is probably the principle driver on this complex, challenging, and frequently uncomfortable project. I [...]
How the mighty ripples of school transformation have spread! I just spent two weeks working with Unity Grammar, a K-12 co-ed Islamic faith-based school in Sydney, Australia. Yes, the clothing is different, and prayer time more frequent, but the hospitality, generosity, and fervor with which these edu-leaders want to change the traditional model of education [...]
Is the nuclear family, an icon of the 20th century American dream, a failed human experiment? Hidden within the seven weeks I spent on Leg 1 of Wisdom Road this fall was a feature of rural America that is becoming as extinct as the buffalo that once roamed the plains: large, extended families. As I [...]
