We are always looking for tangible ways to convey curiosity and anecdotal learning, especially given how time challenged we are. Maybe it’s a little easier for older people…let’s say 40 and older…but for those we encounter in classrooms from seventh grade through grad school, the challenge of cutting through distractions, bombardment of messages, visual stimuli, social media and everything else can be very dauting, and no one has been given more than 24 hours in a day to make it all fit together.
So last year for class, since I enjoy mixing the tactical, the tangible, with the metaphorical, I came up with an idea; a way to literally have a reminder for students to be curious learners. I went to the local Dollar Tree and bought 25 sponges..the cleaning ones you can use for any household task, and then went to the Columbia bookstore to get some stickers to put on these Columbia blue sponges (yes Dollar Tree actually sells sponges in sets of five that luckily are Columbia blue; good luck if I tried to do this for my underclassmen at Fordham in the spring…maroon sponges don’t exist).
The task is simple. Keep your sponge in your backpack and use it as a tool…a simple one…to tell us each week what you absorbed…in class, on social media, in the community, with your friends etc. etc. It was not a tried and true goals oriented assignment (that has thrown some of the more academically hardened students for a loop as they try and use the creative sign of their brain a bit more for storytelling), it is a point of stimulus to remind you to think, and to learn.
More importantly as you absorb the trivia, the tasks, the encounters of the week, we remind the students that sponges also give back, so squeeze out that knowledge from time to time and share it with others. Most classes we start by going around the room and randomly asking…not everyone likes or has to participate in this…what your sponge absorbed this week. We have sponges make it to WNBA games, to the park, to the library, even some brushes with celebrity over the past few years. Some have gotten lost or thrown into the wash, and have lived to come out the other side. Some have been sliced and diced and shared with others. Some have gone on trips to places far and away. Some probably never make it that far, but that’s ok too.
One other thing those blue rectangles do…they find ways to reshape themselves as well. They are metaphors for reinvention, as my longtime friend and colleague Chris LaPlaca reminded our students during his recent visit to class, after retiring from 43 years leading the communications strategy at ESPN.
“Always be a sponge, you can never absorb too much information as you shape your career.”
A little pull here, a little touch there, a little kneading here, and what you started with may not be what you end up with, and that adjustment is also valuable on the journey.
The sponges, most of all, are meant to remind us to keep learning, reinventing, looking at things differently, and making light of a world, and a business, which we tend to take way too seriously all the time.
Are they a little silly or simplistic? Maybe. But for those who stop learning and absorbing, you run the risk of what happens when we don’t act like sponges…we dry out of creativity, adaptability, and even usefulness. Then we get replaced.
Maybe it’s not so silly after all. Keep absorbing, even when you don’t want to. You never know the value of what you soak up, and then share until you try.
