Dr. Wesch has presented something more than the flipped classroom.  This is the classroom, blown out, flipped around, turned inside out and completely changed.  I remember in our first JDP class with Dr. Jeffries, she thanked us for allowing her to be a co-learner with her and I thought to myself that Wednesday evening, "I am not in Kansas, California or even the world I know".  

I had never been asked to be a co-learner with a professor.  I had experienced education as the lecture hall, the straight row, the faked attention in Dr. Wesch's picture of his Introduction to Anthropology class and here was the esteemed co-creator of the JDP asking me to be a co-learner.  That word peaked my interest and caused me to be engaged in class in a much deeper way.

This is the truth of life, isn't it?  We are all, co-learners in the grandest and most unknowable classroom.  Our lessons will never be finished, our studying will never be completed and our syllabi will stretch out to the end of our days and beyond as those we leave take up what we passed on to them.  

In my first year of teaching, I was blessed with a mentor who guided me along my path as a fledgling educator and a fledgling adult.  As I sat with her after a difficult day, I asked her "Why?" It probably sounded more like the "Whaaaaaaaaaaaiiiihy" of a three-year old, cranky and needing a nap but the why was really about life.  "Why am I here with a room full of kindergartners who think I have the answers, when I KNOW I don't know the answers?"  "Why can't I make Mikey talk instead of growl?  Christopher sit instead of roll? Luciano smile instead of cry? Whaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiy?"  

She listened, let me empty my bucket of despair and then said "Every child you will ever have as a student is more a teacher to you than you are a teacher to them.  You will teach them a few things about what they need to move on to the next grade.  They will teach you more important lessons...how to be patient in the face of frustration, loving in the face stress and inspire in the face of fatigue."  Seriously.  How. cool. was. that. message.  When she said it, I almost thought she would then, either float into a luminous cloud or die right before she finished.  

I took Eleanor's magical words along the path of life with me.  Her words shaped the way I raised my children, created relationship with my husband, taught my students and, now, how I lead.  It is a humbling way to live and the most freeing.  Over the years, I have let go of the need to have answers, much less the right ones. I have learned to trust that when I approach a situation, I will learn so much more if I open myself to the possibility that the lesson is not what I think.  

Dr. Wesch engages his students because he walks alongside them, delighting in the fact that he learns just as much as his students do.  He is not the holder of the knowledge but a facilitator along the way.  The vision he has emboldens the learners in his class and prepares them to solve the problems of tomorrow by relying on those around them.