Urgent vs Important
This year I’ve come back to Cohort 21 as a coach. I felt like the face-to-face sessions and this community helped to motivate and inspire me to focus on continuous improvement of my practice and program(s). I wanted to continue to grow in a community that supported me and also held me accountable for my professional goals. The action-research process helped me tune in to where I was already prioritizing and leaning into, as well as to places I wanted to direct my time and energy to.
I am looking forward to continuing the work from last year while expanding and deepening my focus in specific areas. As I return to Cohort 21’s reflective process, I once again get to consider my use of time and the important goals in my professional world. A lot of the important but not urgent areas I’ve identified through the matrix activity are related to looking at programs and school culture from the bigger picture. I am keen to do more mapping, scope & sequence creation, integration between programs, and longer-range planning.
The areas (and questions) that might be interesting to leverage the support of this community are as follows:
- Continuing to work toward inclusion, allyship, representation, and belonging for 2SLGBTQ+ students through the creation and facilitation of a Pride Club (GSA).
- What are the opportunities to explore school culture and positive masculinities while designing opportunities and initiatives that create safer spaces for students?
- Continuing to explore and integrate learning about positive masculinities in curricular and co-curricular programs.
- How might we design co-curricular safe spaces to discuss positive masculinity that are “cross-tarmac” (include junior and senior school students)?
- How might we continue to use health classes as a program to draw explicit connections between gender and positive living concepts?
- How might we tap into our alumni community as a resource for conversations about positive masculinities?
- What professional development would support our staff in learning more about the shift from toxic to positive/healthy masculinity?
- Leaning on student voice to better design curricular programs.
- What do middle school boys need from an inclusive, harm-reduction, skills-based health program?
Season 13 Strands
The ideas above really fit into two strands:
- Pedadogy, Belonging & Wellbeing (7-12): This strand encompasses the work involved in continuing to design a health program focused on student voice and positive masculinity. This strand resonates with me because there’s a lot of potential in the curricular development to highlight these complex and nuanced topics. It’s also largely where my energy is already going, so it makes sense to focus here with Cohort 21.
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice: This strand highlights the work that schools do to create spaces that promote wellbeing through a sense of belonging, and understanding the culture of masculinity is just as important as teaching about positive masculinity.
My school (RSGC) is prioritizing equity and belonging in our professional development work. There’s a passion to meet our students where they are and to understand all of the pieces of their identities that make them special in order to create an inclusive community. There’s also an urgency to re-think traditions, practices, language (and more) that are deeply engrained in school culture; these are often spaces where toxic masculinity can live and, conversely, spaces where positive masculinity is needed more than ever. My questions at this point are mostly related to what capacity I have for professional learning and redesign of my program(s), realistic ways to involve students in the process/topic, and the timeframe for meaningful change and culture shift. At this point, I’m trying to start small within my sphere of influence and to be realistic about my expectations of myself, our students, and the school.
Creating gentle experiences for boys to slow down and connect.
Savannah – I love what you’re working on! We just started at GSA at my school last year and I’m currently one of the lead staff on it if you’d like to chat about that sometime and maybe get some ideas. I would love to hear more about how you discuss positive masculinity in your class as I’m sure it can be transferable or integrated into other subjects as well.
Hi @sbarker – after reading your post I feel like this is a great next step in continuing/building upon your action plan from season 12. I think what resonates with me, about this being a way to push your thinking and actioning forward, is the part that centers around meeting your students where they are at. I feel like when we look at increasing meaningfulness in any aspect of our K-12 education system, if we can root ourselves in a place of genuine willingness to meet on common ground, we tend to set ourselves up for increased chances of successful changemaking. I think you summed it up really well with your HMWQ centered around student voice in your health program! And so excited for you to collaborate with @dsimpson and anyone else who has experience with GSAs and/or groups like this focused around wellbeing and inclusive spaces and places for our students (and teachers!).
On a similar but slightly different tangent… I am intrigued with what the intersection between your wonderings around professional development needs of your colleagues and the voice/choice of your students could yield. These last two HMWQs seem like they could be quite connected from the perspective of meeting people where they are at. Perhaps there is something that could tie the two together? Excited to see where you head with this, Savannah!
Hey Savannah – looking forward to another year of thinking and collaboration with you. We have a GSA in our high school (Y8-12) and are looking to start one for Y6/7 students so would love to talk that through. We are also looking at ways to talk about and surface multiple iterations of masculinity at our school. One of our design teachers opened up the lab space for Taylor Swift friendship bracelet creations and now some of the Middle School students want a Taylor Swift spirit dress day for this week. Exciting times as we look for ways to make school more inclusive. @emartin @ljensen
Love that you are continuing your project from last year Savannah! Excited to see what this year will bring.