And So it Begins…

The Little Big Things project “officially” began almost immediately after it was announced that I had received the Lindback Award for teaching excellence. I knew that I would be asked to deliver an hour lecture on any aspect of teaching, and that this hour would count. A lot.

I have many areas of education I could have lectured on; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work, student engagement, and educational technology being areas of expertise I have, but I kept coming back to pivotal incidences in my life that got me to where I am today and I am most grateful for. These key moments were actually seemingly very small things that others did for me, but had very big impact. I’ll get into those moments in later blog posts, but for now, let’s just say I couldn’t let go of this idea of what if I could somehow document, classify, and channel these small things into a framework to foster the same big impact on a broader scale? So the Little Big Things project was born.

For the past year I have conducted research, read loads, listened to wonderful story after story, processed data, and tried to formulate the lecture. It didn’t take long to realize that an hour was not long enough and the Little Big Things was something a bit bigger than just a talk. Hence this blog and website. I have no idea if anyone will ever read this, but I am hopeful.

I am writing this first blog ahead of my Lindback lecture and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. What if this talk is not academically “rigorous” enough for the academics who will be watching this? What if I am just highlighting what my dad would say is “the bleeding obvious?” What if I am missing something important in my talk? These are all questions I have and I honestly don’t know how this will land. One thing that I am in no doubt of though, is that The Little Big Things matter and change lives. And since I am 100% convinced that is the case, I am hopeful even if all my fears about my lecture come true, that in fact this will all be worth it.

Stay tuned to see how the lecture goes…