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

In this episode Cally talks with two people, from different generations who attended the June 27, 2023 dinner in Heber Utah, who are both personal friends and mentors to Cally.  Cally, at 60 years old, is a baby boomer and she talks with Kay who, at 81 years, is from the silent generation and Heather who is a millennial at 32 years of age. 

They share experiences, such as learning to cook, garden, do home repairs or sew clothes or costumes, that have, across the decades, instilled in them a sense of resourcefulness and self confidence.  They describe watching a parent can fruit, or repair an appliance as a kind of early mentoring experience, that they feel lucky to continue to practice in their current relationships: Cally to Heather, Heather to Cally, Cally to Kay and Kay to Cally.  The mentoring is by no means one way.  It is not necessarily older woman to younger woman, but rather reciprocal.  Cally instantly recognized Kay’s wisdom and experience, and Kay marveled at Cally’s ability to develop programs and networks which were made successful by Heather’s keen skills at project management and systems development.

They wonder and reflect on whether well-intentioned risk management for children today, interferes with young people’s ability to develop the kind of self-reliance that these women are grateful for in their own lives.  They wonder about how social media, and social distancing, have impacted young people’s opportunities to meet and connect with others in ways that these women have benefited greatly from.  

They discuss that too much emphasis is put on curriculum and assessment in education, and not enough emphasis on relationships and connection.

Kay says, “There is real power that comes from helping your peers and sharing information. In the end, it's the connectedness that matters.  There are many kids that haven't had role models or the resources that we were lucky to grow up with.  But I have observed, and I have a sacred belief in, the resilience of human beings to find what they need and become the best they are. There are so many potential detours, but the resilience of human beings is always there.”

Cally agrees.  “Yes, all learning happens within relationships.  It is the teacher that establishes that culture. And when that happens, the role of teaching can be from student to student, student to teacher, teacher to student, and everyone learns from each other.”

They discuss how important mentoring for teachers is, and that too often the most important professional development is overlooked by practices that keep teachers isolated from each other.  They discuss how important it is to continue to work for improving public education because it is the one institution that will always be intergenerational. 

At 81 years of age, Kay is in the process of creating a new women's organization that lifts up the experience of older women and connects it with the vitality and new ideas of younger women.  The group discusses how their various projects intersect and inform each other.