Being Included Rather Than Being Told

Something different happens when people get to participate in the thinking.

Years ago, something wonderful happened in one of my dance classes.

A group of my students got together outside of class, chose a song we'd been using, and choreographed an entire dance.

On their own.

Then they presented it to me.

I hadn't assigned the project. I hadn't organized the group or directed the choreography. They took the movements they'd learned, worked together, made their own creative decisions, and brought something new back into the classroom.

I was delighted.

As a teacher, there is something especially satisfying about watching students become confident enough to create something you didn't teach them.

I've been thinking about that experience again recently, partly because something similar happened in a completely different setting.

I was talking with a coworker about my experiments with AI and the Thinking Campus I've been developing.

The Campus is an environment I've created within ChatGPT where I can explore ideas, examine different perspectives, challenge assumptions, and develop things I'm working on.

It's become an important part of how I think, learn, and create.

As I was explaining what I'd been doing, my coworker was following along. She understood the concepts, even as I moved between the different parts of the system.

Then, right in the middle of the conversation, she said something along the lines of, "Oh! That could solve my problem!"

She had made a connection to something happening in her own work.

And suddenly, the conversation had somewhere new to go.

I love moments like that.

My energy goes up. Ideas start connecting. Someone takes something I've said and sees a possibility I wasn't specifically looking for.

That spark is FUN.

It also reminds me of something I've noticed about how I learn.

I tend to think in what I call 3D chess. Several ideas can be moving at once, and I'm often looking at how they relate to each other. I may move from the practical details of something to a larger concept and then back again, sometimes taking a side path because I've noticed an interesting connection.

I know that isn't how everyone prefers to think or learn.

When I find someone who can follow those movements and contribute their own connections, the conversation becomes especially enjoyable.

And lately, I've been noticing how important that experience is to the way I use AI.

I've been working with ChatGPT for quite some time, and I've developed my Thinking Campus into a space where different perspectives can participate in exploring an idea.

But as the underlying AI models have changed, I've noticed that the quality of those conversations can change too.

Sometimes the responses become more organized, more efficient, and more inclined to reach a conclusion.

Which sounds useful.

And often it is.

But there are times when I want to stay with an idea a little longer. I want someone to notice the odd connection, question an assumption, or introduce something I hadn't considered.

I want to participate in the discovery.

I've spent part of this past week working on how to make the Campus feel like that again.

And during those experiments, a distinction emerged that stayed with me.

**Being included rather than being told.**

I've started recognizing how often that distinction appears in other parts of my life.

Just the other day, one of my beginner dance students was struggling with part of a combination.

As I watched her work through it, I began changing the movement sequence on the fly. I adjusted the combination to make it more accessible, and somewhere in that process, I found a better version for beginners.

My student was learning.

I was learning too.

Her experience influenced what I created.

It reminds me of those students who choreographed their own dance all those years ago. They took what they'd learned and made something of their own.

And of my coworker, who took an idea from our conversation and found an application I hadn't anticipated.

In each case, participation changed what happened next.

That's something I value deeply, whether I'm teaching, collaborating with another person, learning a new technology, or working with AI.

There's a wonderful kind of energy that comes from being part of a conversation where the outcome hasn't already been decided.

Where an idea can move between people, change shape, and become something none of them arrived with.

And sometimes, if you're lucky, someone surprises you.

A Gentle Reframe

I've been thinking that a good learning or creative environment gives people more than information.

It gives them room to do something with what they're learning.

To question it. Experiment with it. Connect it to their own experience. Perhaps even take it somewhere the person who introduced it never imagined.

Because some of my favorite moments as a teacher, a creator, and a learner have happened when someone else took the idea and ran with it.

And I got to be surprised by what came back.