Reflections on the Course I Just Finished Teaching

I haven’t written a post since the end of January when I told you about the course on which I was embarking.  Here, and in the next few posts, are some of my reflections. 

The course I told you about at the end of January has filled my mind and my days.  It ended last week and has been a joyous, if hard slogging, ride.  I loved the design of the course – from the flow from high level skills overviews, through the focus on three ways to view human systems that are placed in and interact with the environment, the team projects and our 11 amazing speakers, including a panel of four from the Flats Forward Project.  The students in this MBA course were top-notch and delivered high quality projects to their clients in a celebratory last class. 

One change from the original concept was clarity about not designing solutions.  The effective and ethical thing to do when faced with a problem that spans one or more boundaries, is to design a solution process, or even just the start of a solution process.  Old-fashioned values of flexibility and basing information on data were frustrating, but cheerfully accepted as redesign. 

The students in this class came away with a sense of their place in our community, hope for our future and a personal sense of efficacy – of being designers of the future.  For my part, I’ve become more convinced about the relevance of resilience models to problem solving and community enhancement.   

Teaching this course made my heart sing!  I love designing learning events and processes and I got to do my favorite thing 15 times in 15 weeks.  Heaven!  Now, on to more reflections about resilience!

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