"What Do You Think?"
Somewhat unexpectedly, I hit upon an epiphany during my Leadership 2.0 session at EduCon 2.2.
I had a very simple structure to the session — I listed in the description three ideas that I hoped would be common to the people who showed up. The short description on the conference site stated:
From there, my idea was to simply attempt to build some common language around those ideas and then talk about leadership strategies to allow a group of educators to engender their use in a school. The not-so-dirty-secret is that I hoped that the process of building common language during the session would, in fact, model the leadership practices I try to walk every day. As you can see below, the slidedeck was nothing more than a framework for the conversation.
We were talking about modeling these values as leaders and the idea that teachers need to model inquiry for students as well and Ben Wilkoff asked a great question. He said (and I’m paraphrasing,) "I’m concerned that I don’t know how elementary teachers model their own inquiry in their classroom? After all, there are very few times when they really don’t know the answer."
And I answered, "There’s one question that we always don’t know the answer to — ‘What do you think?’"
And as soon as I said that, the next thoughts came pouring out — and I’ve been thinking about them and talking about them for the past few days before being ready to put them to "paper." That’s the question we can always ask to further our own learning — "What do you think?" It is the question we don’t know the answer to… it is how we learn more about the people we teach.
And then the next avalanche hit.
That question is the connective tissue that I’d never found between two central tenets of my own philosophy. That’s the link between inquiry and care.
"What do you think?"
Caring about our students is more than hugging them… more than being kind to them… more than greeting them at the door when they come into the classroom.
Caring about our students is about listening to them. About learning about them — from them. It is, as I’ve written before, about understanding that if we hope to be a transformative figure in their lives, we must be willing to be transformed ourselves.
And that starts with a question — "What do you think?" and then listening, fully and deeply, to their answer. That is the ethic of care made manifest in the inquiry process.
And I’d never put it together that way before. And I can’t imagine not thinking about it that way now. And here’s the next cool part… that happened because of the structure of the session. It happened because the session attendees were empowered to challenge and question and talk to one another. Even though I was facilitating — teaching, as David Jakes would insist I say — I was open to listen to the folks in the room, not just as a means to get where I wanted to go, but because I really did care about their ideas. And because of that, I could learn too.
I’ve always believed that our ideas are made better when they encounter other ideas and are changed by them. What I think I’d sort of instinctively felt but never found the words for was that it’s not just about the ideas in that moment. The very act of listening to the answer to a personal question — "What do you think?" is not just an academic exercise, it is a foundational act of caring.
It is the link between the way we teach our subjects and the way we teach our children.
"What do you think?"
Thanks to Ben and all the folks at EduCon 2.2 who pushed my thinking forward.
