{"id":227,"date":"2025-10-04T19:44:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T19:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/?p=227"},"modified":"2025-11-29T11:28:43","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T11:28:43","slug":"feasibility-for-the-win-but-not-at-the-cost-of-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/2025\/10\/04\/feasibility-for-the-win-but-not-at-the-cost-of-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Feasibility for the Win, But Not at the Cost of Impact!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer:<\/strong> I have not had a chance to even read what the SPARC via Flint generated for me but wanted to Press Publish<\/span><\/em> and then I will commit to coming back and editing\/reading\/updating it in the near-ish future! Thanks to Insight Engine for a FANTASTIC first F2F today!<\/del><\/p>\n

Updated Disclaimer:<\/strong> I did not get back around to re-reading this in a timely fashion, but I still got back to it JUST before the 2nd F2F of Season 14, so I’m calling that progress compared to previously attempted blogging endeavors! Additionally, overall Flint captured my thinking well, but I have definitely tweaked a few things to add clarity for where my thinking was at and is almost two months later than the original post.<\/p>\n

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[Image created by Flint – it’s called The Living Network and is a combo of Flint’s suggestion of The Connected Constellation and The Growing Network image suggestions.]<\/p>\n

I’m currently deep in the backward design trenches, crafting a month-long virtual STEAM enrichment program for Grade 10 and 11 students that takes place annually in July. It’s the kind of project that keeps me up at night \u2014 not from stress, but from excitement about the possibilities [Note: I think it’s kind of hilarious that Flint has such a flair for the dramatic here. But also, I could totally see myself being this dramatic, so while it does not exactly keep me up at night, I’m leaving it for the sentiment of it all.]. How do you create an immersive online experience that honors Indigenous ways of knowing while delivering rigorous STEAM learning? How do you make it feasible without diluting its transformative potential?<\/p>\n

This tension between what’s practical and what’s powerful has become my professional North Star this year. Too often, I’ve watched well-intentioned programs get watered down in the name of “realistic expectations.” But what if feasibility doesn’t have to mean compromise? What if it means getting creative about how we deliver impact?<\/p>\n

My approach starts with something I’ve learned to embrace more fully over my decade-plus journey with Cohort 21: leading from a place of vulnerability. In team interactions, I model collaborative leadership and work to flatten hierarchies when possible by doing my best to show up authentically. This includes admitting what I don’t know, and sharing where I am at on my own learning journey. I believe that when we show up in this way, it often gives our colleagues and teammates permission to do the same. And as many of us have experienced in the edu-sphere, when educators model stepping outside their comfort zones, our students are more likely to follow suit. Especially when working with youth, I find that they embrace growth mindset not because we tell them to, but because they see us living it.<\/p>\n

The question that won’t leave me alone is how to create truly inclusive educational opportunities for all students, with particular sensitivity to Indigeneity. This isn’t about checking boxes or adding cultural elements as decoration. It’s about fundamentally rethinking how we design learning experiences from the ground up. It means embracing difficult conversations, and not shying away from confrontation, a skill that was not naturally in my wheelhouse, but I found I developed through years of action-based iteration (like Cohort 21 and my previous summer work with Shad Canada) where through collaborative leadership systems I found myself working hard to reframe how I viewed confrontation as whole, and also how I looked at my own biases and “learning edges” along the way [Note: I put “learning edges” in quotation marks because it was something Flint came up with that I actually quite liked but did not use where Flint had originally suggested. Additionally, while I overall have greatly appreciated how Flint synthesized my thoughts, the original output indicated that I did not like admitting that I had struggled with difficult conversations, and while I think we all struggle with things like this, like confrontation overall, I actually have not found it difficult to admit this, not really ever professionally – and maybe that’s my actual struggle, the oversharing of it all? Anyway, just thought I’d add this verbose tidbit for anyone who happens upon this post the updates!].<\/p>\n

What I hope others (others here refers to both youth who participate in the program, and adults who help lead the program because both often find the program transformational and counter-cultural compared to other communities they have been part of before) experience through this work is a sense of connectedness that ripples outward. When the team members and facilitators we bring on feel genuine belonging as we build our community together, that energy transfers directly to our student participants. Intentionally inclusive community isn’t something you tack on at the end. Community of this kind is the foundation that makes more encompassing inclusion possible, and I’d argue maybe even probable.<\/p>\n

As my journey as an educator has evolved and meandered, I find that my current work in building and developing Shad’s Virtual Program involves grappling with the tensions between knowing that a community-based foundation yields amazing results and the sheer amount of time and resources it takes to do that well in a virtual environment. I really believe our team has showcased that virtual learning spaces can be community-building opportunities as opposed to disconnected, asynchronous, and text-heavy webpages students access. We have explored how rigorous doesn’t have to mean exclusive, and that feasible doesn’t have to mean lowering the bar. We have been attempting to create something that honors Indigenous perspectives while pushing STEAM boundaries, something that’s sustainable for facilitators and educators while still feeling transformative for students.<\/p>\n

The real test as educators isn’t whether we can pull off one successful program, class, academic year. It’s whether we can create a model that other educators can adapt, iterate on, and make their own that is sustainable, potentially scalable, and student-driven. Because impact isn’t just about the students in our program and schools, it’s about shifting how we think about what’s possible when we refuse to choose between feasibility and transformation.<\/p>\n

What would change in your educational context if you stopped seeing practical and powerful as opposing forces? What would you create if you knew you could make it both sustainable and revolutionary? [Thanks for this last line, Flint. It’s what IS going to keep me up at night now!! \ud83d\ude09 ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer: I have not had a chance to even read what the SPARC via Flint generated for me but wanted to Press Publish and then I will commit to coming back and editing\/reading\/updating it in the near-ish future! Thanks to Insight Engine for a FANTASTIC first F2F today! Updated Disclaimer: I did not get back … Continue reading “Feasibility for the Win, But Not at the Cost of Impact!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/elissagelleny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}