By: bsherry
learning, , , ,

Swimming in the Deep End with Jennifer Abrams

I was excited to be able to attend Learning Forward Ontario’s Summer Professional Learning event this past week. The learning was focused on the kinds of resistance we sometimes face, especially in times when the people we serve feel vulnerable and disempowered.  Jennifer provided a lot of background information to give us an opportunity to reflect on why this resistance might occur: lack of trust, communication or collaboration issues, cultural implications and generational considerations, to name a few.  While the day was packed with amazing information and a book list to keep me following up for ages to come, two key areas really stood out as relevant to my current situation and the professional learning that I’m engaged in right now: asking the right questions and understanding the difference between problems to solve and polarities to manage.

I’m an optimist by nature and, I believe, a better listener than talker. My natural tendency is to ask more than tell, to listen and reflect, more than direct.  I loved the lists of questions that Jennifer provided to add to my repertoire, both in the kinds of questions and sentence starters that will help broach difficult topics, and to support reflection on my role as a collaborative team member.

Two that stand out for me involve questions that I’ll be keeping front of mind as I begin a role in a very new educational culture and context this year: 

  1. Am I aware of my assumptions and values and know when they are getting in the way of moving forward with my colleagues?
  2. Am I able to stand outside myself and see how I might be impacting others or be seen by others? If so, how? 

 I also found the opening quote that she shared, very powerful: 

“Our conversations invent us. Through our speech and our silence, we become smaller or larger selves. Through our speech and our silence, we diminish or enhance the other person, and we narrow or expand the possibilities between us. How we use our voice determines the quality of our relationships, who we are in the world, and what the world can be and might become. Clearly, a lot is at stake here.”

Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Connection

The other strong connection I made during the day was about Problems to Solve vs. Polarities to Manage. This reminded me so much of the wicked problems that face us as educators and the need to develop problem solving models that involve really deeply understanding the issues and empathizing with and involving all stakeholders along the way. I liked hearing how we need to move away from ‘Either-Or” thinking to ‘Yes, And’ approaches.  Jennifer pointed us to the work of Jane Kise in Unleashing the Positive Power of Differences: Polarity Thinking in Our Schools and I think this will be the place for me to start in follow-up learning to this amazing day! Thanks Jennifer!