It Begins With Culture: Fostering and Leveraging a Healthy Community Eco-System

We are each others’ single biggest resource and so we must search for ways to access and leverage that. I believe it begins with the endless assurance of collective support through endless, collective celebration.

Each morning at RLC we gather in a circle as a school (yes, we’re that small and it’s awesome!) to offer gratitude. We are grateful for the precious land being shared with us. We stop to realize how lucky we are for each other. We slow down and breathe. Beyond the stress of an English essay or a Math test or a Discovery Project, we work to build the larger context, the greater sense of importance, of belonging. We are good at understanding the importance of a healthy community eco-system. How then might we extend that to better realize our place within and impact upon the many larger eco-systems surrounding us? How can we better ensure that realization resonates so that its lasting with not only a sense of belonging but also responsibility and commitment. I wonder if excitement begins here?

Last school year, my first at Rosseau Lake College and my first as Academic Lead, I made it my Action Plan to more deeply foster a sense of mentorship within my new community. In doing so, I explored the very idea of mentorship and what it means to be a mentoring culture. I did this in part by placing it in opposition to a “judging culture.” (you can read that post here)

In the end, the approach was relatively simple and it was surely that simplicity that contributed to its resulting and hopefully lasting power. To begin, I teamed the teachers up in pairs – randomly I said, but truthfully with a little manipulation towards particularly “odd couple” (the odder the better, I say!): Arts with Science, Math with English, etc… In pairs , teachers shared a pre-observation meeting: what are the particular challenges you’ve identified in your practice this year? What are the innovations you’ve implemented in response? In general, what would you like to have observed? LOW PRESSURE. Over the next several weeks, teams found the right opportunities to be in each other’s class to simply observe, take it all in, capture some memorable moments or epiphanies, talk to a student or two. LOW PRESSURE. To culminate, we leveraged our weekly Tuesday morning meetings to present (one pair per week). What did you see? What did you learn (about the teacher, the students, their relationship, yourself)? What from your partner’s practice could you imagine implementing into your own? 5 to 10 minutes, no more, and again… LOW PRESSURE!

I should say that tone and approach proved essential here. It was important that we had a clear (and simple!) framework and that our objective was equally clear: to continue growing our individual personal practice through the pure celebration of the incredible work of each other. Judgement was entirely absent. Not only was there no place for it, there was also no opportunity for it (and besides, our teachers are better – MUCH better – than that :)).

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I reflected upon this as part of last year’s Action Plan, but there are some unfortunate realities that plague the teaching profession at large; teachers feel judged, they close their doors and they hide. And so, this enormous opportunity is lost. We are each others’ single biggest resource and so we must search for ways to access and leverage that. I believe it begins with the endless assurance of collective support through endless, collective celebration. And so here I will take the opportunity to somewhat authoritatively impose my thinking upon the larger discussion of teaching and learning:

If your school is not doing everything it can to intentionally foster the health of your community eco-system(s), then all other initiatives and implementations have far less traction and meaning. You are spinning wheels and wasting precious energy. I should also say that this is by far the single greatest lesson taught to me through my participation with Cohort21.

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As a teaching and learning community, it is exciting to contemplate a year ahead on a foundation of what I believe to be an increasingly healthy ecosystem. Of course, we are also a culture of innovation, and so we have to ask… what’s next? Well, how about this:

STEP 1: Spend a morningof our June PD week paddling out into Lake Rosseau. Raft our canoes up. Smudge. Give gratitude. Travel backwards 1000 years to imagine the sights, sounds and people.

STEP 2: Distribute a copy of the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action as summer reading.

STEP 3: Plan and provide a week of PD and workshopping in August, facilitating imagination, collaboration and Action Planning, ensuring a year of meaningful, tangible connection between all aspects of school life, the outdoors, the local First Nation, our past…

STEP 4: Scatter four separate days of all-staff community building activity (axe throwing anyone?) across the school calendar.

More to come on all of this soon! For instance, I can’t wait to reflect upon the full integration of learning in Grades 9 and 10 through our Outdoor Education Program… that and our mandatory Faculty Choir participation!