Of Milestones and Space

I am writing this on a train stalled in the middle of eastern Ontario because there is some sort of fire on the tracks. This is a perfect example of the kinds of "find time for writing" that I have done throughout my time in academe. I had set up time to write this blog now because I knew that I would not have time to do it other wise this weekend, but this train car is also old and with a crappy seating set up which means I don't have the space that I usually need or appreciate to write. So all of this to say I will probably keep it short this week. You need to be comfortable to frame things and to write a lot and I am simply not in a comfortable space right now, but it is blog week and I have things I have been thinking about this week that this fire on the tracks is reinforcing. 

All of this traveling pause situation has me thinking about the way that we do the work that we do. How we fit things into slots of time where possible, where there is time where there is simply not enough time to do the things that one needs to do and that we need to make hard (or harder) decisions about what is a priority and what is a "nice to have." We make a lot of these choices pedagogically and curricularly. We make these choices individually for the most part, and sometimes those choices are made for us, by administration or by larger institutions. What is decided as a priority also impacts the kinds of learning outcomes, goals, and milestones that we can frame for our courses and our programs, and this also extends further to the skills and knowledge that graduates bring to their future work and community support spaces. 

Usually now is exactly the time where those choices are decided. When syllabi are finalized or reading lists finished. What do want the learners to take away as learning and be applicable in the different places they are in. Etymologically milestone is a marker of progress. It has physical and tactile implications for something that is a bit harder to define. How to we make space real, we give it a marker. How do we make learning real, we give it an outcome, we measure the outcome, we hope that the outcomes align in all our programs and courses. Outcomes like milestones are ways of flagging moving ground (unlike my situation currently where I am not moving at all would really like to be). They also are emergent, even if some spaces really do not like to think about emergent outcomes because that is harder to think of in the larger scope of accreditation programs where they like to have everything accounted for.

But emerging outcomes are a reality. Just like random fires on a track even though it is going to torrential rain this evening are a reality. So basically what I am saying this week is we approach our course design every fall having some sort of real idea of what our milestones should be, but maybe what we need more of, in a space of unknown that the fall semester will be, is have more space for what could be. Like what am I learning about this fire situation, besides listening to my gut about travelling today. I am learning that maybe I needed to take the space to talk about outcomes as we rev up to the semester, and that I wouldn't have time to do this otherwise so here I am typing a thing. 

I hope your start-ups go well. I will be back in a few weeks with more thought out ideas about the semester to come and also what I am going to be doing with my podcast term. So stay tuned, and maybe lets reflect on our relationship to time and space because I know mine are both changing every day.