Evergreen
In the summer of 2017, a group of seven us — Chris Jones, Jane Schmidt-Wilk, Stuart Tanner, Leah Waller, Fred Travis, Dina Chammas, and I — went to The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, for its annual National Summer Institute on Learning Communities. We wanted to learn more about this best practice in education, and we were fortunate to have a grant from the Wege Foundation to support the costs of attending this 4-day workshop.
More than 20 other colleges and universities from around the country sent teams, with about 150 people participating in all.
I’d never been to that part of the country. Evergreen State College sits in the middle of a 1,000-acre forest — stunningly, primordially beautiful.
The four days featured great keynote speakers, concurrent sessions on many topics of interest, advice from experts, and great discussions among ourselves.
On the final evening of the institute, each team was to prepare a short, fun presentation summarizing their main feeling from the previous four days. Several groups created new lyrics to popular songs, which they sang, karaoke style, over the original. Several presented haiku verses. Some presented slide shows.
I had created a limerick tribute, and our group decided this was what we would present. The response at the end was quite gratifying. Click the button to listen to the recording.