[by John & Adam]

Following the big national organization meeting, the two of us took a train ride from Denver to our rustic writing retreat in Utah. Our goal was to make substantive progress on a manuscript describing what we’ve learned by hosting Crossroads. In the process, we expected to discover what Crossroads might be in the future. Our days were divided into thirds: writing the manuscript, seeing the sites, and re-hydrating our bodies.  Train rides and thoughtful pauses in between induced new pieces, models, and re-drafts for the next day.

The local landscape offered useful contrasts to our internal landscapes. Whereas five years of Crossroads feels like a long time, it has no comparison with the geologic features carved over millions of years. On the other hand, the arches and walls we photographed, climbed through and scraped against are the results of the gentle persistence  of water, wind and exposure. We were inspired.

Writing is a long, hard, arduous process.  It, like any building or erosion, is a process of change.  Sand grain by sand grain, a dune is built up; and sand grain by sand grain, a fin is eroded to leave behind the essence.  We hope that our own writing and editing leaves behind some structure that looks as if it was always there, just waiting to be revealed.  Nature’s own whimsy suggests to us that the beauty was always locked somewhere deep inside a pile of sand.  Wind and water just had to work their way into the crevices to find the sculpture within.

As nature’s persistence reveals the comical geology of the desert, there’s a model for all of our work.  Certainly for us there was consolation in the landscape that patience and persistence were virtues for our writing.  Every word added or removed was a sand grain being placed.  And having come from the meeting in which an ocean of educational researchers had convened just days before, we could imagine the sand grains of work being done.  Some should be whittled away, sent by natural forces into a forgettable dune.  But some endure, remain, and have effect.  Having listened to countless words and having been blinded by countless slides, it is easy to become jaded and think that there is no real progress being made.  Some pieces must remain, though: calls for social justice, critique of current standards, and re-thinking of the very bases for practices that we take for granted.  We have to believe that what we do must leave behind something enduring, something important, something worth writing about.

_____

Epilogue: Other images and lessons learned

Lesson 2:
“Sometimes you can’t wait for change; you must carve your own path”:

Lesson 3:
“From out of a dry landscape there is beauty”:

Lesson 4:
“There must be room for joy in our work.”
Or,
“Sometimes you just need to go outside and ride your bike.”
Or,
“Holy $%^& that’s amazing”:

[by Adam]

Exchanges of writing have provided a foundation to many collaborative efforts. For us (John and me) writing to each other remains central and essential to how we work together. Not so long ago, we sent each other emails in an effort to shock, surprise, and delight one another. We learned not to swig coffee when opening an email from the other: too many mouthfuls of coffee have been sputtered onto our screens and keyboards.

A few of you might recall our mock journal called JEST that we handed out at conferences some years ago. John came up with the slogan, “It’s all in JEST” and we giggled as we handed them out to unsuspecting NARST conference attendees. I still believe in the merits of several notions presented in JEST. These included incorporating cheese as a positive reinforcement for science learning, employing sock puppets as  guest lecturers (with an Argyle sock as an international instructor), and relying upon the capacity to interpret science jokes to assess scientific literacy (e.g., Atom #1: I think I just lost an electron. Atom B: Are you sure? Atom #1: Yes, I am positive!). These were ideas simply ahead of their time. Much too far. Nevertheless, these proto-endeavors served as proving grounds for what became Crossroads.

Crossroads itself emerged during face-to-face discussions at other conferences. But details, philosophical and pragmatic, were hashed via email exchanges. Perhaps because our use of writing was so central to the development of our understandings that we insisted that writing by others was a prerequisite to Crossroads participation. During my sabbatical I began to write more frequently and deliberately. I started using a blog and invited John to peer in. I challenged him to do the same, and ever since we’ve been dueling and debating via our blogs.

Another writing collaboration was an infamous exchange in 2007 of op-ed pieces published in the Journal of Science Teacher Education. People who didn’t know us thought they were witnessing a long-standing feud and that there must be bad blood between us. Mostly, it was the opportunity to bring ideas to the fore that otherwise would just sit stagnant in offices — or hang in the stale atmosphere of a tavern in which we first aired these ideas.

The point of all this is to explain that while Crossroads has been a major five-year project for us, there is an entire other realm of work between us via qwerty keyboards. Time and again we re-discover the great potential of letting ideas ferment a bit as we develop them independently. But then there’s an even greater power when the ideas are hashed out in a public forum. Which leads us to our latest Venture.

For one year, we are taking a stay-cation from Science Education at the Crossroads. During this sabbatical we are doing some writing and one of those projects, we’ve decided, should appear here in this most public of forums. This is “Intersections” — not the same as Crossroads, but with a similar orientation and mission. If nothing else, we’ll entertain ourselves with ideas about science education. Occasionally we might shock one another into generating a contradictory posting. Or maybe just send a coffee in an unexpected direction. The hope is that what we start here will evolve into something else that exceeds even our imaginations. We have almost come to expect our initial efforts to evolve and grow in this way.

Our ambition is to use this site as a focal point for critical exchanges about the purpose and direction of our work. We intend to highlight the work of others, call attention to a few traditions we could do without, and debate whether we ought to seriously contemplate alternate pathways. In all of it, we welcome your involvement. You can follow our blog entries, subscribe to the feed, and post comments to us and for others to consider. Best of all would be to provide your own contributions that can appear on this site.