Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today Bonni episode number 502 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, learning in a time of abundance with Dave Cormier. Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. 

What a great thing it is to be welcoming back to the show Dave Cormier. With 25 years of experience as a teacher, researcher, and author, Dave is interested in how technologies Change what it means to learn and to have learned. He is currently a learning specialist for digital strategy and Special Projects at the Office of Open Learning at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. His new book, which we’ll be talking about throughout today’s episode, Learning in a Time of Abundance, The Community is the Curriculum, is available through Bonni Hopkins University Press.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:23]:

Dave, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

Dave Cormier [00:01:25]:

Thanks, Bonnie.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:27]:

You dedicate this book to your mom, and you write about how she still teaches you about uncertainty. Would you share a little bit about how and what she’s taught you about that?

Dave Cormier [00:01:38]:

For sure. My mom was my hockey coach and my baseball coach when I was a kid. Fixed my pitching stance, figured out that business. My father passed away a couple years ago, and she’s been going through trying to figure out all the different things that that are required for taking care of a 3 acre place. I got a phone call from her the other day, in the summer, and she’s like, I threatened the lawnmower today. It stopped in the middle of the yard. I couldn’t figure it out. It wouldn’t start again.

Dave Cormier [00:02:05]:

I went inside. I grabbed my laptop. I put it on the top of The lawnmower watched the YouTube video and fixed the lawnmower in the middle of the yard.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:12]:

Oh, wow.

Dave Cormier [00:02:13]:

That’s and having never done anything mechanical in her life. There’s just that constant desire to look at a problem, figure out what to do about it, and then move forward. And she’s like that with everything. She’s amazing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:27]:

And oh gosh. I wanna now the episode is just going to be about your mother. I’m scrapping all my notes. Thank you for that. There is another person very special to you in your life that is your partner, Bonnie. I like to joke with you that I am your 2nd favorite Bonni, but your first favorite Bonni, because I have a different spelling than she has. But That’s true. There is a special special artifact that you have in your household.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:53]:

Tell us about Bonnie’s grandma’s recipe book and what that tells us about where we find ourselves living today.

Dave Cormier [00:03:00]:

Well, it’s funny. The the recipe book has been it’s one of those things that When we first got together, it comes out eventually. You know, you have these artifacts that you have, through your life and you look at them, it’s got the handwriting of somebody from 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago. She was in her nineties when she passed away. It’s probably 20 years ago now, And it has these recipe books. And so pineapple cream is one of the recipes we go back to every Christmas, and it is basically what I just said. It’s pineapples and cream, and it is delicious. But it’s the ways that we used to learn how to cook.

Dave Cormier [00:03:32]:

They were the artifacts of the way a family cooked. They’re the the things that You reminded you of home, reminded you of childhood, and those are really important markers. But there are things that we’re losing. Right? As we Now can have a 1,000 ways of making pineapple cream, not in this house, but other people could. Right? And and Recipes expand and our our our palates expand. We have all of these choices of what we can do, and that choice, that abundance is amazing, right, that you have all these choices you could do, but it’s also kind of frightening, and it’s also kind of constraining, and it’s also, I think, anxiety producing for people. And I think it’s a it’s one of those places where the ways that our lives have changed Through the technology that are available and all the information we have access really come into focus because eating is such a core part of what all of us do. And rather than let’s make the thing we made last time, it’s some people for some people, it’s the the pressure to be creative, right, that comes from all this abundance.

Dave Cormier [00:04:35]:

For some people, it’s the pressure to make a choice. You know, the we looked at 27 chicken recipes the other night, lemon chicken recipes the other night. And then instead of going, Let’s take that 1 lemon chicken recipe from the recipe book that’s on the shelf. It becomes a giant family discussion. The same way that I dare any of you to sit down with More than 3 people and choose a show from Netflix. Right? That’s a gigantic negotiation process. And I think because of this, Our decision making practices need to be super different than they used to be, and the way that we learn how to do stuff is fundamentally different. We have access, But now we have so much choice, and that choice we think of choice as good, but, choice can be, you know, one of the most difficult things to handle.

Dave Cormier [00:05:16]:

And frankly, we’re just not trained to handle it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:18]:

I wanna warn listeners, if you’ve not met Dave before or read his book yet, he sounds like just Such a warm hearted guy full of these warm stories. I need to warn readers, he also tells us that ketchup is evil. That is Actually, what is written in the pages of this book.

Dave Cormier [00:05:39]:

Tool of the devil will tell you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:05:42]:

I mean, You and I can agree to disagree as they say in the discourse, but, some I actually have different varieties of french fries that Choir different condiments. There are mustard fries. There are ketchup fries. Oh, for sure. There are I mean, there’s 1,000 island fries. There’s Every particular french fry has a a condiment that matches it perfectly.

Dave Cormier [00:06:06]:

I’m okay with condiments.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:07]:

Yeah. Just thought it

Dave Cormier [00:06:08]:

would be mayo. You can give me some aioli. You can put, I made a delightful salsa yesterday that would be wonderful on top of any french fries. Just don’t give me your ketchup Thank you.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:18]:

Well, one of our 2 children would agree with this. So I need to I need to admit something. I admit a lot on this show. I get so confused When we talk about 21st centuries, because it always seems like that should be the one that we’ve already had. So if anybody else gets confused, You talk about 3 underused 21st century literacies and you are talking about the century we are in, even though that sin do you is it just me? Is it like, seems kinda confusing. Every time it’s like daylight savings time for those who quote unquote Celebrate it. I always Dave a counting on my fingers. Are we moving forward? We’re going back.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:58]:

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? So, yes, We are talking about 3 literacies important for us today.

Dave Cormier [00:07:06]:

Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:06]:

I’m going to read from your book and then invite you to share about a Saturday night Dave skit in reference to that. So you say, we need to be suspicious. This is by the way about the first I should say what it is. The first literacy, humility. And you write, we need to be suspicious of anyone who is providing 100% certainty on any complex issue. Tell us now, and I’ll put a link in the show notes so people can watch it for themselves. Tell us about this Saturday night light live skit called Should I Chime in on This?

Dave Cormier [00:07:40]:

Yeah. It’s it’s one of my favorites. So it’s Keenan who is hosting for those of you who are SNL fans. And it’s basically Jeopardy. So there are 3 contestants just like Jeopardy, and it’s kinda set up that way. And in order to win on this version of Jeopardy, All you have to say is, I’m not gonna chime in on that, meaning it’s none of my business. I don’t know anything about this. And inevitably so there’s 3 people lined up and they ask them questions that are controversial, that are about social issues, or about war in some foreign country or what we should be doing with some some refugee issue.

Dave Cormier [00:08:16]:

And inevitably, everybody has to chime in, and then they lose. All they have to do is say no, But they simply cannot do it. And then the last guy, he is this he’s being played for for a Canadian, at least, he’s being played as some hipster from New York, and The question is about some woman’s issue that he clearly has no business making an opinion on. He goes, I would never have an opinion on that issue. But if I did, What I would say is and then he loses the game as well. And it’s this, I think, sense that we have, but I think it comes out of the way we’ve been taught and the way we look at learning, That somehow when someone asks us a question, in order for us to do our job in the social interaction we’re in, we need to answer that question, not Suggest that we might have no idea what you’re talking about, not hedge our bets, or or sort of Suggest that, you know, that’s a complex issue and and but answer it. Right? That that’s somehow a right answer to every question. And I really do think the education system has brought us there.

Dave Cormier [00:09:16]:

I understand why. You know, we used to live in this place where we had to remember stuff. We live in a scarce environment where the information that we learned at school was something we had keep precious to us because we had no other way of getting it, but now we’re using that approach to handle a whole bunch of stuff we have no business being involved in. Anyway, that that SNL episode is perfect for everybody.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:09:37]:

It’s so good. It’s so good. I Dave that as I was reading the book, I would get to go kind of not Check the references, but literally check out the references because there are so much good things in there. So another related one as we walk through and and use the literacy of humility, we also need to be thinking about trust.

Dave Cormier [00:10:00]:

Mhmm.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:10:00]:

And where we place it differently than perhaps how many of us grew up. Would you speak to us about informed trust?

Dave Cormier [00:10:08]:

Sure. So I teach, bachelor of education students right now at the university, and one of the things we talk about is bias. And all of my students believe that any article that’s in a journal is unbiased because it’s a research article, and somehow you can trust it Because it’s been published. Right? And so one of the the things that I do is I get them to search up learning styles And I say I get them to search, how can I use learning styles in my classroom? And they find a bunch of articles and they cite them and we talk about them whenever else. And I go, okay. I want you to go back. Once you do the same search, but I want you to include the word hate in front of learning styles and see what happens. They get a whole other suite of articles that claim that Learning styles have no basic and scientific fact, and they’re like, but those other journal articles just said that it was true.

Dave Cormier [00:10:54]:

And then, like, Right. Because it’s not about it being true or false, and and all of you listening probably have beliefs about whether it is or not, but that’s not the point. The point is understanding Who the author is and what their position is and how that represents the research they’re interested in and understanding not trust or don’t trust, But how to trust? So once I know who Daniel Willingham is, for those of you who are familiar, I know that he really, really cares about memory. I’m not a big fan of his work, so I know where it fits, and I know how to trust the things that he’s written. Right? And I think That’s how we need to approach everything, whether it’s how we handle fossil fuels in our culture. It’s not about it being right or wrong. It’s about understanding where people are from. Doesn’t mean there aren’t things that are wrong, and there definitely are, but understanding how that happens, who people are, where they come from, And what framework they’re they’re in, I think, is one of those really difficult skills that we need for two reasons, 1, so we can understand things, but also So we can trust to other people and understand because we can’t figure everything out.

Dave Cormier [00:12:02]:

Right? We need to sort of We need to to to workshop those things in our community. We have to have other people we can trust. I happen to trust scientists. And from From a certain perspective, depending on who they are, like, I need to know where they’re from, but they’re the experts and they’re able to do the work, and I’m willing to trust them with that. But I think that informed trust is where we need to get to because there’s too much for us to understand, and we still, as citizens, have to make choices and vote and all those things. I think the informed trust is a a critical process.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:33]:

And you’ve perfectly segued us into the 3rd literacy that you reflect on and that is how we apply our values to decision making?

Dave Cormier [00:12:43]:

Yeah. It’s a hard one. And certainly I mean, I’m certainly not claiming that I’m Great any of these things. They’re they’re the things I’m always reminding myself of when I end up in a conversation. The the learning styles thing, I think, comes Comes in there nicely. So the one of the things I tell my new teachers is that I care way more about whether a grade Dave student loves math than whether they know math. In controversial position maybe, but in the end of the day for me, if you love math, You can continue to learn it and you you have a space inside of yourself to grow. If you hate it but got it right, you’re probably done.

Dave Cormier [00:13:20]:

Right? That’s those are the things I value. I value the the headspace of a child whenever they’re learning. Right? And I value that more than whether or not they get something right. And I think when we look at those values and as we learn, as we teach, as we try to figure things out, as we decide whether or not our child needs a cupcake, It allows us to make good decisions. Right? Not all the time, not in every space, but I think particularly when we’re confronted with stuff we’re unfamiliar with, stuff that makes us uncomfortable, That going back to what my core values are, how I decide, can make our Our decisions more reflective of what we care about. Then, I mean, it may sound it sounds trite when I say it out loud, but so much of what happened before had our values baked in. Right? So if you only have a small number of choices, your values are kinda baked into those choices, and you don’t need to decide about them because you’re kinda following along with the group that’s yours. Right.

Dave Cormier [00:14:15]:

Whereas now because we have access to everything and everyone or those of us who have access to the Internet too, it means that we have to activate those values a little more, think about what they actually are, We are and think about how they apply to the decisions we make.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:27]:

The 3 different kinds of literacies you just helped us learn a little bit about, humility, informed trust and applying our values to decision making. You suggest that we might start to or continue to use various practices. The first of which is that we build new fact habits, and you draw on the work from Mike Caulfield. I just wanna let people listening know that I’ll put a link in the show note to Mike’s episode where he goes in a lot more detail about that. But I I love to have you share just a little bit about the role that you see emotions playing as we think about building these new Fact, Habits, and because you had your own unique obviously, we all we all think about the ways in which emotions affect us as we’re going through. Would you share a little bit about that?

Dave Cormier [00:15:16]:

Yeah. So Mike Caulfield’s work is great and has been great for a long time. His new book’s out. You should get it. The one of the big insights for me in reading his stuff was When he talks about the one sort of perspective you need to take up, which is every time you have an emotional feeling about something and you respond emotionally, particularly to a fact Or to, like, a way that something is framed, that’s the point that you have to stop. That’s the point where you need to stop and ask yourself, Do I know enough about this to know whether or not this makes sense? There’s your humility. This is somebody that I should be trusting. This is the perspective that this person comes from.

Dave Cormier [00:15:53]:

Like, is there even does it do I even know who said this? Right? Do I know how to trust it? And then Does this does it actually reflect my values? Does it reinforce something about myself that I’d rather not have to think about, Or does it actually reflect who I wanna be as a person? And I think that response to emotion, particularly when we’re dealing with stuff that comes up in the Internet, stuff that comes in at random, Stuff that comes in when you’re not expecting it. Then again, Mike’s work for that is really, really good.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:16:19]:

Your next bit of advice, a practice we could adopt is to leave bread crumbs. And you suggest that we don’t only leave bread crumbs in a formal sense, that way we might in an academic context, but even in casual conversation. Share a a anecdote about what that might sound like and look like.

Dave Cormier [00:16:36]:

Yeah. Sure. It’s Bonni. I got into a disagreement with a long standing friend of mine last night Bonni, Facebook about this very issue. We should be like this according and it’s a quote out of a book that A picture was taken of it and posted. And I’m like, just tell me what the book is. Just let me know where that quote comes from so I can follow it back. And just like you did where you’re able to follow back On the Saturday Night Live skit, that ability to know where a thing comes from and that habit of doing it and also just the respect to the next person, but you’re not just saying this thing is true or this thing is the right way of looking at something, but rather this is what This person has said about it, and I happen to agree with it.

Dave Cormier [00:17:16]:

Right? And I think, I mean, Facebook is an obvious location for that. But, anyway, what we do that, I think that habit, The more we do it, the more we say, I have this perspective and I saw it at a conference and this person said it. Just that habit of coming forward, Leaving the bread crumbs behind, making it clear so that the artifact of that conversation, the next time somebody sees it, they can also do that. Right. I just think it makes the web a better place. And then I think better for discussions as well because it’s less the more we’re discussing the idea And the less we’re arguing with each other, the better everything’s gonna be.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:50]:

In this next practice, you tell us. We’re you’re really with the controversy in this book. You tell us we need to learn to cheat. Yeah. Honestly, and I’m quoting here, no really, I want you to cheat. And you talk about borrowing our understandings from one another. And before I ask you to reflect a little bit about this, I need to share with listeners about an exchange that I had with your partner Bonni. I I I first had to see if you all were familiar.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:18:19]:

There’s but a few memes going around that apparently men in our society really, really, really like to talk about the Roman Empire, which made me laugh so hard. Turns out that the the Dave that I’m married to, not Dave the Dave that I’m talking to, is one of the few men who doesn’t think about the Roman Empire. But I’m just setting this up for you. I am now gonna give you full space to talk about the Roman Empire, which according to Bonni, you’re gonna want to do anyway, or otherwise tell us about the customs for young Roman men and their educational system at that time.

Dave Cormier [00:18:57]:

Wow. That was I did talk about the Roman the Roman Republic and I did I did put that in the book too, didn’t

Bonni Stachowiak [00:19:03]:

Yes. Yes. How did they used to learn? What was their educational system like?

Dave Cormier [00:19:07]:

Yeah. No. So they this is for rich people, obviously. They it’s interesting because there’s a couple of stories that we do have of people going all the way to a separate island and and learning from 1 person in 2 week journeys and whatever else. So there’s formal training out there and there are schools and stuff, but the real learning happened as a mentorship model, often with an older gentleman who would bring you to the forum and walk you through the customs and show you how to do the interactions. And you learn less by being told what to do, but more The way that doctors learn, frankly, whenever they’re inside of hospitals, they learn with the the senior doctor. Right? And that that way of becoming, that way of coming to know, That way of copying, that way of becoming part of the community, right, the community of Romans standing around the forum is the curriculum you need to learn. Right? How to be a member of that community is the goal of the learning process, And it’s the same with medicine.

Dave Cormier [00:20:07]:

Right? The reason why doctors are actually, their doctors by the time they do this go into hospitals And work with senior doctors is to learn how to be like that community. You’re studying interactions, the way that people talk, the way that people You know, I I talked to, I used to run a med school for a short period of time. And I asked a bunch of doctors whether or not, If they had a superpower, whether they would wanna know everything or whether or not they would want to be able to convince their patients of anything, universally, With the exception of the surgeons who don’t talk to their patients, it would be convince their patients of things. Right? And that learning how to convince your patients things, for instance, is one of those things that doctors need to learn how to do, and they learn it by being part of that community. Right? And I think for me, that’s why I say the community is the curriculum. Becoming part of that community, and it’s something we cheat. We steal it all the time. We’re taking stuff from other people.

Dave Cormier [00:21:01]:

That’s what we’re doing. And to me, there’s no need Hide that. I mean, certainly now with AI the way that it is, let it go. We’re, you know, post assessment in that sense and, need to just Except that we’re stealing from each other all the time?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:21:15]:

Yeah. And and I think none of these can be separated from each other. So I’m gonna skip though down 1 to to have you share a little bit about learning to see who’s left behind. I see where where when we do this well, It really works when we do it as a common good. We the the community, not me, espousing all and and asking you As a learner to model yourself after me, but us learning to do this together. And so yeah. Because it because Sometimes what I see makes me bristle a little bit because it really becomes no take on the way we dress, the way we act, the way we write, the way we think without really valuing all of that community, which I know you certainly do. But so talk about learning to see who’s left behind.

Dave Cormier [00:22:02]:

I, I mean, the more effective, the faster, the more powerful, the more egregious the harm to the people who don’t have access. Right. So on on the on the surface of this, if you don’t have access to the abundance to the Internet, to the way of reading, if The language that you happen to speak is not well represented. So all kinds of ways that people simply can’t participate, and I think they fall behind quicker. I think more subtly, one of the first times I came across it was working for the government of Prince Edward Island, and we’re talking about, that’s a province in Canada, very small province for those Oh, no. We’re talking about digital first architecture for health services, and it’s great if you have digital. But if you’re somebody who doesn’t have access for one reason or another, whether it’s a an ability issue or desire issue or it could be a religious issue, whatever it happens to be, If you cannot easily use the services through a computer, you simply cannot use the surface. Right? If you walk into a government office and try to find a human Who is gonna be able to do that service once you’ve gone Digital First? What happens is the few people who are available in government offices are generalists, So they don’t know each individual service as they would Dave before we went digital.

Dave Cormier [00:23:17]:

They have a vague understanding. They might Search through the Internet with you, but if you’ve already had that problem, that’s not necessarily gonna help. And I think it’s another one of those people get left behind. Right? So Because we’re all using these digital services, it seems great, but there are more and more people who get hived off who don’t have access. And I think learning to Understand that there are the the major places where people are involved, like, they don’t have an Internet connection, but there’s also all these other ways That as we change, we need to ask ourselves, okay, so we’ve done this and it helps us over here, but who have we necessarily excluded by making this choice? And I think it’s it’s just a habit we need to get into. I’ll tell one more story, actually, if you don’t mind.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:23:56]:

No, please.

Dave Cormier [00:23:57]:

It’s something that I used to do presentations for residents assistants. They’re the people who are in charge of residences on campus, And I used to talk to them about posting party pictures on Facebook and telling them that they’re leaders of everybody on their group. And anytime they have a party that includes some of those people and they post it publicly, you’ve automatically excluded all those other people. And part of leadership is understanding how the choices that you make leave other people out, right, because you’re automatically associated with a group. And so when you choose to take a subsection of that group and then choose to advertise it, right, and once you say it out loud, you’re like, oh, yeah. No. That’d be terrible. I’d never do that, But it’s a pretty consistent thing that people do all the time.

Dave Cormier [00:24:39]:

Right? And I think so there’s those social ways we leave people behind too that because we have all of this connection and abundance, they don’t Hasn’t occurred to us, but it’s that it’s another one of those muscles that we have to work on.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:24:51]:

You shared earlier about your father a bit, and I wanna I wanna Read from your book a a little story about him. You write, what is the common sense of learning for the 21st century? It’s a truism to say That common sense isn’t that common anymore. At least it was a truism when I was on the phone with my father. My father would suggest that people don’t have the sense that they used to have. I think the challenge might be that we have lost our common more than we’ve lost our sense. Share more about the loss of the common, Dave. Mhmm.

Dave Cormier [00:25:29]:

So my father grew up In a very small town, 350 people over a 20 kilometer stretch in Northern New Brunswick, would have learned to hunt when he was 5 or 6 and etcetera, etcetera, ran a farm and could do everything on that farm one end to the other. And I think to to some degree, he was talking about knowing the answers to the questions, how to fix a tire, how to Skin a deer or whatever it happened to be. People had the answers to the questions in front of them. And I think to some degree, that’s because the people in your community, whenever it’s that tight, all have the same problems. Right? So you have the problems in common. The solutions are available and known, and so To to be to have common sense is to know the available decisions. Right? And when you open that up, whenever you change the when you multiply The possibilities, suddenly the answers aren’t there in the same senses. And then you start to understand that a lot of these things aren’t really answers, they’re approaches.

Dave Cormier [00:26:25]:

Right. So not even decisions you make because they’re right. They’re decisions you make because everybody makes the same decision. And so once we Start talking across cultures. Once we even just leave our hometown, suddenly, those answers start to change. We start to hear different kinds of answers. We don’t share the same Values necessarily or even the same approaches to those situations. We don’t want the same things from them.

Dave Cormier [00:26:48]:

And so when We go about making decisions. A lot of our approaches to that in groups is to try to find the right try to find the accepted way to do something, and we simply don’t have those things in common. We don’t have the backgrounds in common. We don’t have which is great from a certain right? It means that we have new choices and new possibilities, but it just means we need new approaches. Right? Our like I said earlier, So much of what we do is trying to find the right answer. Then when you have 2 people from 2 different cultural backgrounds, there isn’t gonna be one. There may be wrong answers. There’s always things that are bad.

Dave Cormier [00:27:23]:

I’m happy to believe that. That’s not what I’m saying. But between the 2 of us, common terms with What we should do, whether it’s choose a Netflix show or decide what we do about the problem that both of our kids have at school, It’s just different. Right? It requires a different approach. It requires different kind of give and take. Right? Because we don’t share those things in common, That’s hard to make sense of what the other person wants and what we’re trying to get done.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:47]:

I so enjoyed reading this book and I’ve also enjoyed getting to hear you and and learn from you in other contexts. And I was able to listen to an episode that you did with Terry Greene on his Getting Air podcast. I teased him on social media. He neglected to ask Cue something. So he’s not here to defend himself, but I can’t let this interview or at least this part of the episode end without really I mean, so many times this happened throughout my reading the book, but I laughed so hard. So you were talking about how quickly an us can get constructed as we’re and this was under your thing of modeling our values to help build a pro social web, how quickly this happens. And you made reference to How easy it would be for us to find a group of people with a deep interest in, and I quote, Gnome carving, which is something that you participate in. Are there gnomes being harmed in like, is there is there is there a cause I need to sign up for? What are you doing carving gnomes? What’s what’s what’s this?

Dave Cormier [00:28:45]:

Gnomes start out as blocks of wood. Yes. I happen to carve gnomes in my house. They’re not preexisting gnomes that I then go carve. This is They’re they started as non gnomes.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:28:57]:

This is why I’m so sad this is not a video podcast, and I can’t say, please show us of your carved gnomes.

Dave Cormier [00:29:05]:

The communities are there.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:06]:

Yes. And you have found your us. You have found your people.

Dave Cormier [00:29:09]:

Well and the beauty of the creative us is it’s not formed out of them, and it’s something magical about it. Right? Whenever you find a spoke of people who are interested in the obscure little thing that you like, you don’t have to frame your belonging by making it them, And one of the I don’t mean to to darken this conversation, but it’s one of the things that I found again and again in online communities is that people tend to eventually shift Towards talking about who is not part of the community so they can define who is. And the Noam Carver is not so much.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:29:43]:

So before we get to the recommendations segment, I wanted to read one last quote from your book. And this is under the 9th practice that you suggest that we might employ and that is take time to be bored and to care for yourself and others. And you’re right, We can’t work all of the time or be connected all of the time, so we need to talk to the people we love and figure out how to make time and be alone and quiet and bored while still being respectful of the people we’re connected to. Caring is always uncertain. It can often be hard, but I think it’s worth it.

Dave Cormier [00:30:23]:

Yeah. You know what? I think about a woman who I was talking to at a presentation probably 10 years ago and she was talking about her kids And how she didn’t know how to talk to them about the mean stuff they’re watching on YouTube. Nothing’s really changed in that sense. We still parent our kids. We still have the same kinds of challenges. Kids didn’t start being mean 15 minutes ago. We still need to step in front of those things. It’s about carving out the time, and we don’t do it enough here either.

Dave Cormier [00:30:51]:

And I’m certainly not claiming that we’re great at it in this house, but, you know, we had the power go out about a month ago. And everything went quiet. We lit some candles, and the kids grabbed guitars and started singing on the floor. And it’s amazing to me how Every time we find some boredom, if we can keep a positive attitude, we start coming back together a little bit more. That’s not to say the technology is bad or good or whatever. It’s that it’s easy to numb your mind. It’s easy to just take in entertainment. It’s easy to try to learn one more thing.

Dave Cormier [00:31:24]:

I think you lose some of the social, some of the the things we really care about, the things that make us make life fun or interesting. And I think Taking that time and consciously taking it, which is what we didn’t used to have to do. We used to get gifted boredom because the TV shows were set. And if it wasn’t 8 o’clock on Thursday night, you weren’t able to watch that show you were waiting for, so you were stuck. You might say call it having, I don’t know, conversation with somebody. And I try to find spaces in my own life where I do that. One of my favorite things to do is try to talk to people at a bar, at a like, at the bar, and you can see you can see it happen, and people would be like they’ll look at their phone and they’ll they’ll Put it down, and then they’ll kinda go, why was I doing that anyway? And then not because you’re not talking to other people on that phone, but because Some of that space and connection is important too. Right?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:32:18]:

Thank you so much. This is the time in the show where we each get to share our recommendations. And the first thing I’d like to recommend is a book called Learning in a Time of Abundance. Happened to be speaking to the author right now. I shared this with Dave before we started recording. I cannot think of another book in this whole universe of of Types of books that I might read to interview people for this podcast that made me laugh ever, but especially not laugh Repeatedly, but yet also make me think so critically about my own practices, about my own Values and the ways in which I show up. I I I love the range of emotions I was able to experience as I was reading. And I also love that you left space for me as a reader.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:07]:

You did I think about I’m not a media critic person, like, that’s not my discipline, but I am friends with people who are and they always talk about, you know, or writing, like, don’t try to tell everything you’re supposed to be Feeling there’s some you have to leave room to respect your reader, that that that they’re smart enough to be able to figure stuff out. So I think this particularly came out for me, in the humor because you didn’t choose to explain it all. It just made me laugh so hard. We’ve got gnome carving. We’ve got, I I I I the ketchup thing. I mean, they’re they’re literally I just Sometimes I would just highlight it just because I was finding fascination with how many times I would guffaw as I was I’m

Dave Cormier [00:33:49]:

glad you enjoyed it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:51]:

So, what a gift it is for so many reasons, but that I I found it particularly unique in terms of your use of humor for such Serious and important and necessary things. The second thing I would like to recommend is sort of related in that it is very, very funny, but also taught me something. I I have found a new genre of humor that I love, Dave. I love any sort of humor that has to do with Capocha, the the How to prove you’re not a robot on the Internet and things. Because it it’s such a source of frustration. I cannot do it. It’s like, you know, select all of the Fire hydrants you see, and I’m like, but it’s that like, is the pixel that’s overlapping? Are you gonna count me on? Like, I I I mess it up all the time, and I, like, have Go back through it 3 4 times. So I find that kind of humor.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:34:36]:

I’ve actually recommended a humorous video on that vein previously, but this one is both funny, but also teaches you something. So it’s why can’t robots check the box that says, I’m not a robot. So I laughed. It’s by a comedian, but it also actually explains why robots can’t check the box that says I’m not a robot. And it explains sort of the uniqueness of the way a human might even just move our mouse or our Cursor across the screen being different than a robot would be, and that that’s some of why they’re getting informed. Dave course, many of us have heard of, like, their training AI as we do their work for them. And so I’ve heard a lot of that, but I hadn’t heard a lot just about the uniqueness of the way that our cursors move and stuff. So it’s funny, but also informative.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:21]:

And yeah. I I felt like I was finding an us of people that don’t really enjoy trying to pass those Pass fail test, they’ll send you right back through if you don’t get it right. So and, I’m gonna pass it over to Dave for what he wants to recommend, but I’m also gonna put it in the chat for him. Not to watch now, of course, In case in case he’s curious, Dave is looking curious on the screen right now, so he can, bookmark this one to watch later.

Dave Cormier [00:35:47]:

Click. Yeah. So I I’m there are so many great people doing great work that, anytime I ask for recommendations, I try to use the ones from today. Mhmm. So for today, the things that informed me the most For those I’m sure lost who this guy is, but Josh Eyler on Blue Sky Dave talking about grades and talking about how they’re made up and how We really need to get this out of our heads, and he’s got a book coming out on the same topic. So my recommendation, yes, yes, buy his book. But follow him on Blue Sky or Twitter or whatever you happen to prefer Just because he does such a really great job of explaining what the issue is, how the media has taken it out of context, And what’s important about it? So follow Josh Eyler, figure out what he’s talking about, and and and, obviously, buy his book. My other recommendation is from Amanda Podany.

Dave Cormier [00:36:33]:

Amanda Podany is a faculty member at a university in the United States. I forget. Also former bass player from the Bengals, And her book is called Weavers, Scribes, and Kings. It just came out on Audible, which is how I consume most of my books nowadays, And it is a retelling of Mesopotamian history from the point of view of women, and it is fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. I just won an award another award actually for awesomeness, I assume. But it’s really good, and I heartily recommend it.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:08]:

Oh, that sounds so good. Our our one of our kids is in middle school right now and learning about some some history as well, and they have Hip hop songs from when I was growing up and that they’ve redone for this. I see a future recommendation Should come in because all I can think about is this. Now it’s like replace the lyrics from from back then with, like, these lyrics of some part of history, it’s so fun when when people can retell things in different from different perspectives, and also kinda create for us a reimagining of of things which Really can help us, both stay humble and curious as you have have expressed. These are so great recommendations. And what a joy it is get to talk with you again and

Dave Cormier [00:37:52]:

Oh, it’s a pleasure.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:37:54]:

Yeah. And just the continued ways in which you are so generous with helping us Think and think again and, the way that you’re emblematic of all these values and practices that you talk about in the book. Thank you so much.

Dave Cormier [00:38:05]:

Thanks for being so nice about the book too. Cheers.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:38:10]:

Thanks once again to Dave Cormier for joining me on today’s episode, and thanks for each of you for listening. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever to Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Smith. I hope you’ll head over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe if you have yet to sign up for those weekly updates. You’ll get the show notes from the most recent episode as well as some other resources that don’t show up in the normal podcast feed. So thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.