A Culture of Connection

“Connection is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The ability to feel connected is neurobiologically – it’s how we’re wired – it’s why we’re here.” -- Brene Brown

We had the privilege of listening to George Couros this summer at the Indiana DOE regional eQuip conference held at Plymouth High School.  George’s message is a powerful one that validates many of the ideas we have discussed moving forward with our small learning community.  As high school teachers, yes we still teach part time, we understand the culture in a high school is not always conducive to the holistic learning environment that is present in the elementary years.  At our school, students change classes every 12 weeks and rotate in and out of 5 classes per day. Some teachers may have more that 100 students in any trimester only to have a new set of 100 students the next trimester.  Add to that challenge, the need to navigate quickly through curriculum and standards, many of which culminate in a state mandated end of course assessment.  

Furthermore, the nature of high school content is to create silos of discipline specific instructors.  Not the ideal environment for creating that holistic base that is so important for both teacher and student growth.  There is power in partnerships and purposeful collaboration.  Fortunately, many schools, including PHS, are recognizing these challenges and taking proactive steps to reimagine a connected interdisciplinary staff and student culture.  So when George talked about the need to humanize  ourselves to our learners, we knew that journey we had started with our staff placed us on the right path.

SO how do you create an environment full of human connection, where both learners and facilitators feel so comfortable they can be truly authentic and vulnerable?  Short answer it takes a lot of intentional work.  The focus of our work started with staff culture and connection this summer.  At NTAC, this summer we had the pleasure of hearing Jim May speak on the importance of staff culture.  One of Mr. May’s quotes that has really driven our focus is “The adult culture and performance of the school will function as the ceiling for the student culture and performance of the school.”

With this in mind, we set out to increase the awareness of our own personalities by taking the Myers Briggs Test.  With so many integrated courses we felt it would be very important for the new combination of facilitators to become aware of both their own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of their partners.  We both have found this to incredibly helpful in our Collaborleading efforts.  Learning to appreciate your own personality quirks as well as those you work with on a daily basis is extremely important to creating a community of connected and caring individuals who respect and value their differences.  

One of our favorite Ted Talks is Brené Brown’s “The Power of Vulnerability”  What does it mean to humanize yourself to your peers and students?  As we continue to cultivate a culture of connection, we would love for you to share your ideas on how you are creating creating a strong staff/student culture by encouraging connection and humanization.  

Encouraged to Fail

“Fail often so you can succeed sooner.” — Tom Kelly {General Manager IDEO}

Last week on Facebook was a piece of clipart posted with the following acronym for the word F.A.I.L. {First Attempt In Learning}. Hmm! What if that acronym greeted every student {or teacher for that matter} when they entered school? How would they go about their day differently? Would they be more willing to take risks if they knew they were supported in those efforts?

Most of us grew up or have been teaching in an educational environment that rewards hoop jumpers, compliance, lack of noise or chaos, a focus on the end goal of a good grade, etc. What would happen if, instead of encouraging this behavior, we encouraged learners to try new things knowing if they failed, we would help them learn, reflect and grow from the experience? How might they change and how might this change impact their future efforts?  

What might happen if we support our facilitators in the same way? What if we encouraged them to try a new activity or a new way of introducing a lesson? One of our new facilitators likes to use the term, “Be Revolutionary”. Does being revolutionary mean you will never fail? Does being revolutionary mean you won’t take risks? How does being revolutionary push us to the next level? As Co-Directors, we hope we are creating an environment of support for our facilitators so they have the opportunity to be honest, vulnerable, take risks and yes even fail. We will fail as Co-Directors and trust us we both do not like to fail.  We believe we have the same support system we are giving our staff to be risk takers in order to catalyze our growth as a school.

A few weeks ago, one of us took a big risk. And the other was quite nervous about the risk, though that does not mean the risk taker was not supported.   

I(Michael) got the opportunity of lifetime a two weeks ago to skydive for the first time.   The best part about it I got to experience it on the same day as my grandmother.   This was something she has wanted to do for awhile and she was able to fulfill this dream as part of her 75th birthday wish.  The plan was to jump together, but the combination of a small plane and having someone video tape both of our experiences would not allow the same flight jump.  Nonetheless it is a day I will treasure forever.  The risk was very real and great, but the reward of sharing this experience with my grandmother was priceless.  

One of the few places we are asking our students to fail less is in their encouragement of others.  We had both the freshmen and sophomore classes watch this Drew Dudley TED talk (we also showed it to our parents on parent night.)  The power of a positively spoken or written word is like fuel to a soul.  It physically can provide energy to a person and their day.  Most of our learners voluntarily participated in producing a sincere note of thanks to someone who had made a difference in their life in the past year or two.  We gave them some ideas or areas to concentrate on, but they ultimately made the decision who to write to.  We probably will never know the true ripple effect of these positive posts but we know they helped our learners at least for a short time think of someone else and how they could make their day a little brighter.   

Much like we did with our staff this summer, we have started the school year by focusing on building a strong cultural foundation.  We believe that if we can continue to create a school culture that embraces struggle and failure (students read and reflected on this article) as a positive and a learning opportunity and if we can encourage and cultivate young people that occasionally remove their selfish lens and think about how they can lift someone else up even for a brief moment, then we have a chance to build a school that thinks and acts differently than the norm.