Six Igsby, Ed.D., M.A.
CVO
Favorite Youtube Channel:
Mind the Game
Favorite Literary Characters:
Calvin and Hobbes
Inspirational Quote:
"Making people smile is a higher art than making people laugh." - Norm MacDonald
My Six-Year Self:
I live a quiet life near the water and good friends. I cook food that nourishes the mind, heart, and spirit, and the content I put into the world does the same.
Read his Peer-Reviewed Dissertation Here:
A Bit About Dr. Igsby
Six is a storyteller and an inspired learner who’s usually grumpy and grinning at the same time. From a decade teaching English, coaching basketball, winning multiple state championships, and directing Kairos retreats at an all-boys Jesuit high school, Six developed a deep appreciation for the Ignatian approach to learning through experience, reflection, and action.
His doctoral research explored how our relationship to being curious shapes and limits our learning, leading him to theorize that there are six ways humans connect to curiosity—observing, hunting, adjusting, storytelling, playing, and coddiwompling—and that we’re typically encouraged to connect to only three. If the theory holds water, Six suggests that many people have lost the link between learning and nourishing the human spirit.
On the basketball court, Six developed a learning philosophy he calls "iterative practice" after being a part of three consecutive state championships. The winning was evidence that anchoring learning to possibility, probability, and individual skill sets allowed the players/students to not only fall deeper in love with the game but inevitably taste the sweetness of surpassing the given (i.e., the "pile of crap" that was handed to them also known as a not-so-ideal life situation).
Six thrives in intimate learning environments where artists (impassioned teachers and learners) can ask meaningful questions and iterate (try and try again) into their own aliveness—he calls this coddiwompling—and finds that this approach often leads to meaningful discoveries, creative endeavors, and, most importantly, vibrant living.
The Origins of
"Spill the Water"
Three Short Stories about Six
1990 (7 years old)
2012 (29 years old)
November 2022 (39 years old)
I was playing a game with a friend, and I cheated. He told on me, and his father lectured me about fairness. A few days later, we were playing the same game and my friend cheated. I told on him, and his father lectured me about tattling.
I was earning my Master's in English. In an Argumentation class, a professor gave my essay an F, claiming "good arguments split the room." I countered that good arguments win the room. He let me revise the paper. I rewrote it, arguing that his understanding of argumentation was stupid. When I defended this to the disciplinary board, I told them I had simply followed his instructions exactly, and pointed to the result: my paper had certainly split the room! They didn't expel me, but they assigned me a new professor.
I hired two life coaches because I was beaten, exhausted, and resigned. I wasn't suicidal, but I thought about it a lot. Together, they helped me delineate me from my thoughts, emotions, and history, and they helped me build new habits for changing my relationship to reality. Did my life magically get better? No. It got better one painfully slow step at a time. Is my life perfect? Absolutely not. But I laugh a lot more, I smile a lot more, and I eat food and converse with people that makes my mind, body, and spirit feel infused with a humbling dance with the agonies and ecstasies of being human.