We’re off once again. Trying to contact me, or one of my little band of students, in the coming week will be next to impossible. We’ll be completely off the grid. We’ll be far from the pace that guides us in this country today. We’ll be far from conducting “school” in any traditional fashion. And we’ll be completely immersed. Completely immersed in the sea. Completely immersed in one of the most delicate ecosystems left on the planet. Completely immersed in learning.
You cannot know a coral reef from the dusty pages of a book. You cannot know a reef from a sleek and shiny laptop. To know the reef, you must enter the reef. And that is exactly what we’ll be doing until we return a week from now. Wish us safety and luck. Wish us blue skies. Wish the wind to gently nudge our sailboats to the next patch of coral. Wish my students the experience of their young lives.
Since I began writing this blog in 2008, the time between adventures with my Marine Biology students seems… compressed. It seems like we just returned from one of our Bahamian field studies. I’m pretty sure that’s a sign that I’m not getting any younger. Nor are my nerves any less frayed. I now spend a massive chunk of my days behind the screen of a computer, and that wears on you a bit at some level.
I need this week like my students need this week. Right now, I need to be off the grid. I need to step away from bits and bytes. I need to, wait… swim… away from the grind of rapidly moving an entire district into a 1-to-1 learning ecosystem. I need to swim to a place where I can think. I need to find renewed perspective. I’m betting I can do just that on a coral reef. I’ve done it before. In 1998 a similar experience helped me to understand not only the planet, but myself a little better. Here’s hoping the coming week does the same for a new crop of eager students…