disruptive juggling

So, I have a new analogy for innovation in the classroom and the disruption it causes. First let me explain why disruption is a beautiful thing. I was asked by members of a school committee (another name for a school board), "what is innovation?" My response was and still is, "You can call innovation anything you want. You can park it in the arts or the sciences, but what innovation will always be...is disruption." Now, that word is a bad, bad thing for most folks, especially in the static walls of a ancient educational model. Can you hear the old school masters echoing, "You will not disrupt this classroom!" or "You are a disruption to learning, young man." Maybe that was just my history. In any case, we spend most of our lives, personally and professionally, trying to avoid any and all disruptive situations. I'm certain it's tied to some evolutionary force for survival.  It's root is in Latin. It means "to break apart." In our modern connotations, we've added, "to throw into a state of confusion." Hence the fear and negative attention the word draws. But if we could go back to something I wrote a few sentences ago, to this concept of "some evolutionary force of survival," I think we'll start to see how beautiful and necessary "disruption" is as an evolutionary force  for our species.

We're only human. It is necessary for us to build, to make, to create, to survive. Innovation is evolution, is disruption to known systems and patterns of operation. Innovation is analysis - remember to "break apart" - of a modus operandi. Now if we called innovation "disruptive analysis" we'd sound all sorts of smart. Even though we'd be linguistically challenged and redundant. But that's all this is folks. If innovation is disruptive and disruption is analysis, then innovation is analysis. Analysis is Greek for a "dissolving." Invention is what you do with the parts you've separated. Innovation is the environment that facilitate and celebrates the itemized analysis of parts of a systems. If we don't create this space for innovation we will not evolve.

The analogy is this...

How many people here can juggle? And remember juggling is at least three objects in motion at the same time in and out of your hands. Tossing around two objects is not juggling. Ok, usual response to the question is 2-3 out of 20 people can juggle. A few more have tried.  Now let's look at the face of a first attempt at juggling, either complete cluelessness or total concentration. If you've ever been coached by a juggler, they always say face a wall, neophyte jugglers are sent to the corner of the room. Take that for whatever it's worth. Let's speed this up...

So let's imagine our jobs as juggling. It's an appropriate metaphor, almost cliche. A new job, hopefully you're juggling bean bags. No, negative impact. Just gotta focus on keeping the bean bags moving. but you cannot turn your head away for a second. And as a newbie, you will drop. The effect is actually in the fact the the bean bags are being pulled away from you. Hence the face the wall instruction from jugglers. Ok, as experience grows, you're still juggling, and now you can turn your head, now you can possibly have a conversation while juggling,  maybe even you have added an extra bean bag, whoa, how fancy of you now, go stevie, go it stevie, it's your birthday, its your birthday.

You know the feeling. As a newbie and as a moderately experienced juggler and the feeling of satisfaction of talking and juggling and keeping the bean bags moving. That's part one.