Becoming
Changing through connecting stories
Six of us circled up at last week’s Studio for Playful Inquiry meet-up.
One participant started the conversation by listing their week’s collision of events, including a school-wide art show with parent meetings and a fundraiser, followed in near proximity by a professional development event for visiting educators. I think there was another thing or two on the list, of equal heft.
That seemed like an awful lot. Given all of those demands, I wondered aloud, why did they choose to spend their hour on this call?
They responded that they wanted - that they needed - to be a part of a different conversation, away from all of that.
One person was in their car, headed home from work, as another participant on the screen was on the other side of the planet, making breakfast and getting ready to head to school. By way of introduction, I asked that person to share something they were looking forward to doing with children that day. They referenced this month’s change through line: Their classroom of three-five year-olds were tangled in relational dynamics dominated by a sense of competition and an absence of compromise that this teacher was struggling to disrupt.
This awakened stories from everyone involved: connections to experiences with children, past and present. One shared how they valued checking in with children when they saw them starting a way of playing that appeared as though it might leave anyone feeling defeated or excluded: They talked about how important it was to them that people who feel like things aren’t going well - especially in ways that repeat - to have a chance to imagine a richer encounter and bring that alternative to life. Another person shared a story from earlier in their career of creating ways for the group to play their way together back to camaraderie, moving from separation to cheering each other on. A third talked about the value of humor: How they found that exaggerating the situation led the children they were working with to find greater equanimity. Persona dolls were proposed as a pathway toward considering the territory. People thought that alongside getting some actual lived experience with different ways of being together, this was territory around which to go deep into exploring feelings and desires and ideas and hard truths and visions of what could be.
This conversation was real practice in exploring the questions Susan and I used to frame this month’s through line:
How are your values a raft in the currents of change?
What keeps you focused on what you can do?
How do you find balance between letting go and looking away?
In a conversation amongst diverse educators from different schools in different cities and different time zones, the way in which we’re each navigating those questions will be different - so too the waters we’re navigating, the values we’re choosing to buoy us, our own points of balance. But being together and sharing stories helps us on those journeys: it provides mutual mentorship for courage and change. It invites us to run together through the desert, like the children in Cara Romero’s piece.
I left the conversation with no doubt that the teacher walked into their classroom that day with new eyes - and all of the rest of us moved into our next engagements changed. The Meet-Up ended after an hour, but I know that its ripples continued. It left each of us better prepared for what came next.
We have the power to shift our attention on children from asking how do I get that child to stop that behavior to wondering what big human issues are they grappling with and how can I get alongside them? Part of making that shift is doing the same with our colleagues.
In a piece Susan shared with The Studio community earlier this week, Rebecca Solnit writes,
“Most truths are… easy to hear or recite, hard to live in the sense that slowness is hard for most of us, requiring commitment, perseverance, and return after you stray. Because the job is not to know; it’s to become. A sociopath knows what kindness is and how to weaponize it; a saint becomes it.
“We need stories in which getting where you’re going—individually or as a society—mostly happens step by step with maybe some backsliding, muddle, and stalling, not via one great leap.”
As we continue to navigate and enact change, I don’t think that sainthood is the goal - but growth, courage, and integrity are. Those aren’t muscles that build from purchasing curricula: They come from developing and sharing stories with each other.
Thanks for reading. If you valued this post, I hope you’ll share it with others. If you’re not yet a member of The Studio for Playful Inquiry, I hope you’ll join us and come to a Meet-Up soon.