Empathy Re-Boot Project

 flickr image via Allen McGregor

My colleagues and I along with our students at Glendale Sciences and Technology School are embarking on an exciting and challenging journey. We are calling it our Empathy Re-Boot Project.

I have returned to Glendale as its vice-principal three years after a one year stint as its counselor. I loved my time at Glendale before, and always felt like there was unfinished business there. The first time around in my role as counselor, I spent a good deal of time helping kids, and staff members too, develop their empathetic lens; the one that allowed them to walk a mile in the shoes of others toward a deeper understanding of their learning stories. We all have a learning story... the part already written; the part we are writing in the present and the hopeful part we intend to write toward the happy endings of the future. In my second term at Glendale I am thrilled to continue this work with the staff and students of my reunited Glendale family.

In Alberta, all schools are in the midst of an important and necessary paradigm shift toward inclusive learning environments. At Glendale, we have been working hard to re-frame our educational perspectives towards the diverse population of students at our school. We don't have segregated programming at our school. We don't pull students out of class anymore; we hold their hands as we walk alongside them. As we walk alongside them we talk to them. We talk to them about their learning story... what's happened in the past; what's happening in the present and what they want to happen in the future. Our goal is to learn their story behind the story, the one that enlightens us toward deeper understanding of what may be challenging students, and ever more importantly, what they need from us to help work toward mitigating the challenges. We're focusing on students' strengths in as asset-based model of intervention. We're downplaying student weakness and focusing our empathy lenses on solutions.

We are re-booting empathy.

Thinking deeply about virtues and character development, we have concluded that true inclusion in our school requires an intense understanding of others, and in particular, their stories. We are taking a phenomenological-post modernist perspective. We believe that individual circumstances can distract from the learning process, but also that striving to know these circumstances, and focusing on supporting strategies that mitigate them at school will lead us down solution focused paths toward optimized teaching and learning. There is always a better path to take. We must honor the perspectives of those we work with when helping divine the best paths.

We are using our empathic lenses to focus on the resiliency of our students, and we are tapping into that resiliency with intent to nurture its growth. We are recognizing resiliency in ourselves, and  we are using it to support kids who are vulnerable. We are teaching them to be more resilient over time by making sure they know we care, and that we want to help them write personal learning stories with happy endings.

In all sincerity...

flickr image via Sam Howzit

I believe that sincerity is paramount to nurturing trust and commitment in people, and critical to effective communication.

In Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the absence of trust is listed as dysfunction number one for good reason. Trust is obviously critical to team function and team success. Without it we can't be truly committed (lack of commitment is the number three dysfunction) to anyone but ourselves; that is to say if we even trust ourselves... I'm not sure we all do. Trust requires sincerity. We have to be honest with ourselves, and honest with others before we can trust, otherwise our function and purpose is a facade based on insincere and false (or perhaps not entirely true,) premises.

Commitment is not a half-way thing. It's what makes us accountable in the truest sense of the word. To be truly committed to another person, a process or an organization is a selfless act that makes us accountable and requires a sincere and unwavering honesty... even if the act of being committed isn't associated with any form of personal gain or enrichment. In reference to Peter Block's work, my friend Paul Shamlet articulated this very well in a recent post at the #ECOSYS blog...

In his book Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block defines accountability in a novel and compelling way:  “Accountability is the willingness to care for the whole, and it flows out of the kind of conversations we have about the new story we want to take our identity from.  It means we have conversations of what we can do to create the future.  Entitlement is a conversation about what others can or need to do to create the future for us.  Restoration begins when we think of community as a possibility, a declaration of the future that we choose to live into.” (48)  

 Peter Block talks about the new story... but I don't think it's new at all. Our story has always been there waiting to be told in different contexts for different purposes. Perhaps the new story Block refers to really means the new way to tell our story; to give it purpose and authenticity. Through stories it is often said that we can learn from our mistakes, and from our successes. When we tell our stories of failure and success, we are creating vessels for these teachings that benefit all who have an ear for them. This is what makes stories so powerful and important. If we could just get better at telling stories, and in turn listening to them, infinite possibilities emerge.

Our stories are the basis of all the good, and bad, that have befallen humankind since the beginning of time. We all have stories to tell; stories already written (past), stories we're writing now (present) and stories we have yet to write (future.) We obviously have the most control over the story we're writing in the present, but how long is the present? Is it a fleeting moment, an hour, a week, a year or even longer?  I think the point of the long-now present is that we should try to make it as long as possible. In order to connect our past and future to each end of our present, the present has to have a length... this is the long-now, but I think how we determine that length is entirely up to us. Our long-now history extends toward our past and our future. We need to connect with our long-now history in a more meaningful and purposeful way. The longer we can make our long-now history, the more we are able to connect with stories already written, and the stories we have yet to write. Our past helps to show us the way to our future.

Sadly, in the midst of our fast-paced lives these days, our long-now histories have become much shorter. Our hectic lives are spent scrambling to 'get ahead and we've lost our connection with the powerful stories already written; our own and those of others. We are living in very short long now's, and when this happens our ability to connect in useful and purposeful ways is hindered. We have lost a sincere connection to the teachings of our past, and we've lost a sincere connection to our goals for the future. We are alas, living in the moment... not necessarily a bad thing if we could just make that moment a much longer one. We have to be more accountable for our stories; we need to be committed to sharing them in purposeful ways, and we have to listen to the stories of others trusting that there is always something to learn from them.

Using our long-now stories like this will draw us closer to each other as we seek interdependent networks of support in others, our processes and our organizations. The long-now narratives we share with each other illuminate the imperative that we be committed to our collective well-being; they expose our individual vulnerability, but they make us stronger as a team or group at the same time when we realize we are not alone in our story. Being sincere and honest with each other allows trust to grow and all of a sudden our long-now histories start to overlap and we communicate more effectively; we move from independence to interdependence. Not a bad place to be.

Smile... the world is good.

flickr image via ephotography

"Always smile back at little children.
To ignore them is to destroy their belief that the world is good." ~ Pam Brown 

This fall I began teaching at a new school. I am also the new vice-principal of my school. My old school and my new school are very different in many ways... different enough that they are almost incomparable. For the most part, the two schools side by side represent totally different educational contexts. I have been asked by many this fall to make comparisons between them, but I can't; they're like apples and oranges. They are both great schools doing great things but in most different ways. There is one way, however, that the two schools are identical. 

When I get asked to compare my old school to my new school, I simply say, "kids are kids." No matter where I've taught, or whatever context I was teaching in, I have always kept this notion at the forefront of my practice. Remembering that kids are kids no matter where in the world reminds me to make sure I help them preserve their innocent perspectives as long as they can. The world will happen soon enough... for now they're just kids, and they deserve to live in the world they dream of... the one that's good and happy and safe; the one that makes them smile just because they are excited to be a part of it.

When I walk down the halls, around our campus, and into classrooms every day, I remember to smile at kids, even before they smile at me. I greet them and take the time to speak with them as often as I can about anything they want to talk about. This is the best thing I can do as a teacher and school administrator to help kids feel a sense of welcome and belonging at my new school. I did this at my old school too, and every school I taught at before that.

The more I do it, the more I'm convinced that the kids are right. The world is good, and they are going to make it even better.

Rural EduKare

image designed by Gigi Luberes

In my original post on EduKare I contextualized it as a concept that mitigates problems inherent with urban education. The reality is that EduKare as a concept can also mitigate problems inherent in rural education. The reason it can work well in both settings is the principle behind it- empowerment of individuals in a local context.

Recently I had the good fortune to meet (virtually) Steven Putter (via Twitter @stevenputter.) He lives in Water's Edge, Zambia, and coordinates a very exciting project; one as exciting as I have come across, the Imagine Rural Development Initiative (IRDI). This statement sums up the purpose behind IRDI...

Propagating sustainable success. Creating scalable models for impacting change, IRDI engages real time development for building sustainable communities through the empowerment of individual skills.

The magnitude of this statement is important to note. As a lacrosse player and long-time coach, I often describe the game to non-lacrosse folks and new-to-the-game players as "a team sport played by individuals." Essentially a team is only as strong as its weakest link; in sport and in life. Empowering individual skills in local contexts is a powerful effort that must be made when the goal is a sustainable community, sports team, culture, classroom, school, etc. One element of IRDI that resonates strongly with me is Emergent U. Emergent University is part of a larger initiative at Water's Edge, Zambia to educate local citizens who desire to give back to their community following their study and training. Water's Edge is what EduKare looks like in a rural setting. The underlying principle behind Water's Edge is sustainability. IRDI's effort to create sustainability manifests through support for the individual... just like EduKare...

An EduKare teaching and learning environment considers pivotal learning variables in each student's story... the story already written, the here-and-now story and the future story every teacher helps write. EduKare is an approach based on the foundational belief that every child can learn, but that detractors to learning can be powerful debilitating forces in a child's life. If these forces are not mitigated, learning will not happen effectively. The EduKare teaching and learning environment very simply provides the services required to mitigate powerful learning detractors in the lives of young people so they can then focus their energy on achieving relative academic success.

In the real world, people have problems and challenges in urban and rural settings. Negative factors like poverty, violence, limited exposure to good education, and lack of family privilege don't discriminate between rural and urban settings... these are borderless elements that prevent individuals from focusing their energy on moving forward in life to overcome the odds they create.

We often place geographic borders around negative factors like poverty, and we convince ourselves that these are actually what's holding us back. I have heard many wishes that "if I could just get out of this place, I'd be free from the bonds that hold me back." I think this is an unproductive perspective, and I think Steven Putter does too. Sustainability, to me, is synonymous with productivity, purpose, vision, and pride. Instead of taking people out of the environment they believe is holding them back, we should be reinventing the environment so it is productive, purposeful, and visionary; one that people are proud to be part of and want to stay in. The process needs to be more than just window dressing; when successful, it's a process of creating vision and purpose so people can thrive as productive, proud members of the reinvented communities they live within. Sustainability in communities is supported by learning; it requires that we learn from our place.

I think learning and movement can be thought of in a synergistic way. How we frame learning is key if we are to create a platform of support that sustains it over a lifetime. Our innate desire to learn; to navigate the world we live in needs environmental support to be sustainable in a given environment. It needs a local context making our place a learning place.

More than any other biological species, it appears that humans are born to learn. We learn in so many different, and natural contexts. We are in constant motion; traveling in simultaneous physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive realms. Robert Sylwester characterizes this need to be in motion,

The planning, regulation, and prediction of movements are the principal reasons for a brain. Plants are as biologically successful as animals, but they don’t have a brain. An organism that’s not going anywhere of its own volition doesn’t need a brain. It doesn’t even need to know where it is. What’s the point? Being an immobile plant does have its advantages however. Plants don’t have to get up every day and go to work because they’re already there.
On the other hand, if an organism has legs, wings, or fins, it needs a sensory system that will inform it about here and there, a make-up-its-mind system to determine whether here is better than there or there is better than here, and a motor system to get it to there if that’s the better choice – as it is, alas, when we have to go to work.

Yes, we do. Each of us is responsible for our livelihood, and for supporting those who depend on us for love and care. Acquiring the skills necessary to fulfill this responsibility is a challenge for all of us. Creating local contexts that reduce our far and wide search for a sustainable life is key to a sustainable home community. Empowering individuals to move within communities instead of away from is how we get to vibrant, self-sufficient communities.

Another recent Twitter acquaintance, Mpule K. Kwelagobe (@MpuleKwelagob) introduced me to the term endogenous (thank you Mpule.)

... from Dictionary.com

  [en-doj-uh-nuhs] 
adjective1.proceeding from within; derived internally.

In addition to representing her country, and the continent of Africa as the first Black African woman to win an international pageant and 1st delegate from Botswana to compete in the Miss Universe pageant, Mpule is doing awesome work in Africa to empower people from within. We don't need to move away from the places in life that we believe are holding us back; we just need to learn how to move (learn) within them. Local efforts to support individual members of a community create a ripple effect that sustains the larger community making it viable and productive. This is the key to creating room to move within communities.

Purpose leads to pride.
 

The Kugluktuk Grizzlies- LAX for Life

I was facilitating a lacrosse coach's clinic this weekend and we got into a conversation about what involvement in sport can do for kids. I am a strong believer in resiliency. Resilient people have purpose; something that keeps them going in the face of adversity when the odds are against them. There are many ways we can find this purpose... for many it is found through sport.

Tyler Waycott, a great lacrosse guy was one of the coach participants at the clinic. He shared this story with us, and being a lacrosse guy myself, I was choking back tears...



Turns out Russ Sheppard is also an acquaintance through lacrosse, and a fellow lacrosse coach facilitator. I had heard him talk about his time teaching in Nunavut, but I had no idea how great a thing he did up there. Unfortunately the lacrosse program is no longer operational in Kugluktuk, but one lacrosse blog reports that the community is rallying around other sports like soccer and keeping the spirit alive.

I'm going to guess that Russ leaving Kugluktuk was the main reason lacrosse is no longer played in the community at an organized level, but I'm not sure. At any rate, it's too bad that the program is no longer.

This story however, is one of the great ones and will last as an example of how to build resiliency through sport. Russ was a "significant other" in the lives of many kids in Kugluktuk. He cared enough to go the extra mile and support them through a sport he loves. What an honorable thing to do. Sharing his passion for a game with those who felt they had nothing saved their lives.

Sometimes all it takes is for one person to introduce us to one thing that creates purpose... then we're off to the races.

Teachers have the opportunity to do this for kids every day.