In the final episode of the CHLL podcast series 3: Intergenerational Dinner Reflections, Cally, Heather, Lois, and Louise reflect on the week they have just shared together in Utah.  They look back on the successful intergenerational dinner for 40 guests at the beginning of the week, their trip to the Aspen Pando in the middle of the week, and what they learned from the five guests that participated in the earlier episodes in this series.

Lois shares that her big takeaway from the week was that it is really as simple as having conversations.  Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General has said that loneliness is a public health issue in this country, and that community is the solution.  Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise discuss what they think made the June 27 intergenerational dinner such a success for the 40 people that attended, and what they see as some next steps.  

The CHLL podcast hosts are students of Margaret Wheatley who says that “whatever the problem, community is the solution.”  The group reflects on what may evolve of the rich learning experiences they and others had in Utah during this week in June of 2023.
 

Mistakes

The group reflects on how important it is to be willing to make and admit to mistakes for real learning to take place.   Community can provide the conditions to have the courage to act, make mistakes and learn from them.  Cally shares about how the Native American curriculum initiative, developed with her team and partners at Brigham Young University, was founded on the guiding principle that individuals would have to accept that they would inevitably make mistakes, and that the importance of the initiative took precedence over individual ego.  She shares how the group learned to give each other the grace to teach each other and learn.
 

Leadership

In this episode the CHLL hosts gain clarity that the role of leadership is to create the community necessary for people to do the hard work they need to do. Leadership is about creating the spaces where each and every person feels comfortable sharing and listening.  They reflect on their individual and shared responsibility to continue to invite people into well designed conversations, and to encourage others to do the same.  The stakes are too high to simply lament the divisions among individuals and groups.  It is the role of leadership to understand that we need each other, we need community, we need conversation, we need understanding, we need a collective purpose, and leadership must bring people together to create the community that will serve the collective purpose.
 

Learning From Nature

The day following the intergenerational dinner, Cally Heather, Lois and Louise traveled to southern Oregon to visit the Aspen Pando.  The Aspen Pando is 106 acres of a single male Aspen tree that sends out underground stems from which trunks go up. The Pando is a single  organism that presents itself as 106 acres of individual aspen trees.  The Pando is the largest, and possibly the oldest living organism on the planet. Cally, Heather, Lois and Louise share what they learned from the Pando about the interdependence and connectedness of all living things.

In this episode the group recommits to continuing intergenerational conversations to improve education, and to building spaces for communities to better prepare to manage together the very hard questions of our time.

Resources: 

Aspen Pando