September 20, 2026
What Are We Practicing Becoming?
Dear Mack Community,
This week, I have been thinking about rivers.
Maybe that is because I recently came across these words from poet and Mack parent Emory Hall, whose collection is appropriately titled Made of Rivers:
my life is made
of rivers.
no matter how far
i trace them
across pages,
across time,
across oceans,
somehow i land
at the banks
of myself
over
and over
again.– maps.
I keep returning to those last words:
over and over again.
A river shapes a landscape not through one dramatic encounter with stone, but through returning. Flowing. Repeating.
Over and over again.
And I wonder if the same is true of us.
What
Fifteen years ago, I wrote a post on my blog called A future of synergists and dot connectors. I described myself as someone who loved finding connections among ideas, disciplines, and people.
But even then, I caught myself before calling that simply a talent.
“Like anything,” I wrote, “I have to practice this skill.”
So I practiced looking for connections. Purposefully. I experimented. I took chances. I failed. I kept looking. Over time, something I practiced increasingly became part of how I moved through the world. (it’s about learning.org)
A year later, I undertook a strange little experiment I called 60-60-60: sixty posts in sixty days, in sixty words or less, each an effort to question, experiment, practice, and learn out loud. I was fascinated by what repeated action might do, not simply to my writing, but to my ways of thinking and noticing. (it’s about learning.org)
Apparently, I have been thinking about this for a while.
And I am still wondering:
What does practice make of us?
So What
We often talk about talent as something someone has.
She has a gift for mathematics.
He is a natural musician.
They are remarkably creative.
And at Mack, a school intentionally designed for gifted and creative learners, we know that differences in ability, cognition, intensity, curiosity, and imagination are real. Part of knowing children deeply is recognizing what is already there.
But a gift is not a finished product.
Talent may tell us something about where we begin. Practice helps shape where we can go.
Because we practice far more than piano scales, multiplication facts, free throws, or spelling words.
We practice what we do when something is difficult.
We practice whether we ask another question.
We practice how we respond when someone disagrees with us.
We practice listening.
We practice noticing.
We practice courage.
We practice impatience, too.
We practice giving up, or beginning again.
And gradually, almost imperceptibly, those repetitions begin cutting channels.
Perhaps this is one reason schools matter so much. Children are not simply acquiring knowledge here. They are practicing ways of being.
And adults are, too.
Maybe culture itself is what happens when a group of people practices certain ways of being together long enough that those practices begin to feel natural.
Now What
This brings me back to Emory’s river.
Her collection Made of Rivers follows the anatomy of a river as a metaphor for self-discovery and transformation, the winding movement of becoming. (penguinrandomhouse.com)
A river is shaped by its banks.
But given enough time, the river shapes the banks, too.
I love that tension.
We arrive in this world with particular gifts, temperaments, histories, strengths, challenges, and ways of seeing.
And then we flow.
We encounter people and places. We make choices. We repeat things. We develop habits of attention and response.
We practice.
Over and over again.
So perhaps the question for this week is not simply:
What are you good at?
Or even:
What are you practicing?
Maybe the more consequential question is:
What are you practicing becoming?
A more curious person?
A more generous listener?
Someone who notices beauty?
Someone willing to stay with a difficult problem a little longer?
Someone who tries again?
Our gifts matter.
Our practices matter, too.
And like water returning to the landscape, over and over again, our repetitions leave their mark.
The view from here: We do not only get better at what we practice. In some small way, we become shaped by it.
I am especially grateful to Emory for allowing me to weave her poetry into this years-long thread of thinking and into my recent revisiting of these ideas. Her words gave me a new way to see something I have been trying to understand for a long time.
With appreciation,
Bo
About The Alpine View
The Alpine View is a weekly reflection from the Head of School at Mackintosh Academy Boulder. It is a place to pause, notice, wonder, and make meaning together about learning, childhood, community, and the work of becoming. The view may change from week to week, but the hope is the same: to look closely at what matters and to invite conversation about the people we are and the people we are becoming.
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