The Unstoppable Force vs The Immovable Object

At its best educational social media is amazing. It's inspiring, it's passionate, it's encouraging, it's positive, it builds people up. But, at its worst educational social media is fractured, contentious, jealous, and argumentative. Last week gave us examples of both of these things. We saw, as we always do, awesome stories of educators doing amazing things in their classrooms; of pushing boundaries of inspiring people. We also saw massive debates over issues like homework, and working from home, and working outside of your working hours, that stretched far beyond, what at least I would consider normal discourse. 

I think it's worth exploring not the content of any of these tweets that pushed my comfort level for how we should be talking to each other, but the idea that even in education, where we tend to agree on quite a few things - you know, the whole we have more in common than we have that divides us thing - we still found a way to dig ourselves into firm positions, and intractable opinions. We very much saw The Unstoppable Force vs The Immovable Object this weekend Twitter. 

First and foremost, OnEducation is a podcast meant to start conversations without knowing the answers. While I have strong opinions, and while I speak passionately about certain things, and I make strong arguments, I also acknowledge that I don't necessarily have the answers for even the conversations that I'm starting. You can hear me say on the podcast all the time “it's complicated” and that's me basically saying “listen I don't know the solution to this, but if we don't even have the conversation we're not going to solve the problem.” 

This brings me to my reflections on the past week. I am a movable object. I'm someone whose mind you can change with the strength of your argument. I'm also someone that expects you to debate your position with strength and passion and bring the evidence. If you can't do that you're going to have a hard time convincing me of almost anything. But, if you can do that, then you can convince me of almost anything. I want to be someone who knows it's okay to be wrong. Someone who knows that they don't have all the answers and sometimes may even say something stupid. But I also want to be someone who can stand corrected. I need to be willing to acknowledge what I’ve said is incorrect, and embrace change. 

I really want educational social media to be a powerful force for moving us forward. But the only way we're going to do that is if we embrace the fact that we're not always right, and we're here seeking answers. Even if those answers are ones we don't want to hear.