#588 the intersection

I just received a letter in the mail notifying me that my credit card was one of the ones that was breached in the Target debacle.  I knew that I had shopped at Target during the affected period, but it seemed hypothetical when I heard it on the news.  When I read the letter from the bank, suddenly the general interest news story that was out there hit home and became personal to me.  

I was reminded of a quote from master teacher Parker Palmer that we often referenced in my student affairs days: our work was "the intersection of the big picture and the little story." One of the roles of a teacher is to connect the news of the world to something that students can relate to.  Student life lectures and educational programming attempts to do the same thing.

Poverty seems theoretical until students actually serve homeless people at the soup kitchen or in Ecuador.  The war seems remote until a classmate's brother is killed in action.  Bullying is something that happens elsewhere until you hear a first-hand account of the impact it had on someone's life.  AIDS was a California disease until the AIDS Quilt gave a personality and humanness to hundreds of its victims and took it on tour across the country.  My dad ignored the perils of smoking until he had a piece cut out of his lung.  

All of us in some way are teachers.  Think about Parker Palmer's wisdom when you are trying to help those in your organization understand change efforts or your children to understand why philanthropy is a good thing.  We need to connect the implications to the actual and make it personal if we want behavior or thought to be impacted.

-- beth triplett
leadershipdots.blogspot.com

@leadershipdots
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