Brief context: I co-facilitate a course for eighth graders; the course is called “Synergy.” Synergy is a non-departmentalized, non-graded, transdisciplinary, community-issues-problem-solving course. My teaching and learning partner Jill Gough (@jgough; Experiments in Learning by Doing) and I co-created the course and we are the two adult-learners among twenty-four student-learners. [If you want to know more about #Synergy, then you can search that category/tag on either of our blogs.]

Brief story: Yesterday, Jill posted this TED Talk on our Synergy Posterous (the collective observation-journal system for our team). Mick Ebeling’s talk is well worth the 7.5 minutes. Be inspired to do something you think impossible…

A sub-group on our team is interested in something they are calling the Graffiti Project. A few student-learners are curious about graffiti and such questions as “is graffiti art or vandalism…could it be both?” Or “why do people paint graffiti…not the quick ‘dirty word’ kind, but the elaborate, beautiful, intricate-scene kind?”

Curiosity begets a project. A project begets an investigation. An investigation begets a TED talk. A TED talk begets…

What could come from this series of path points on our journey in Synergy? Perhaps the team, ages 13 to 40-something (high 40s!), will internalize these critical questions of innovation, connection, citizenship, relationship, and possibility:

If not now, then when?

If not me, then who?