This summer, while participating in a Principals’ Training Center (PTC) course, they invited me to offer a Pearl of Wisdom. It’s not often we are asked for wisdom. As teachers, there is a fallible assumption that imparting wisdom must be integral to the role. Those of us “in the know,” however, understand that true teaching is far less connected to imparting wisdom, and far more fastened to skills-building and emotional intelligence.
So being asked to present a Pearl of Wisdom for the PTC, I felt like an imposter. Was I enough to profess “wisdom?” A concept, like a Scottish tweed, woven through threads of experience, successes, failures, expertise, all in the educational domain. My hesitancy lay in the fact that teaching is my second career. Although I have 13 years in education, outweighing the 12 years I spent in governmental policy, I can still feel metaphorically “on the back foot” amongst colleagues. There are meetings where having worked in an entirely different field feels like a blind spot. The experience receives a passing acknowledgment, yet a more pressing need exists to focus on the immediate, to gloss over what, at first thought, may not appear relevant. We work in fast-paced environments. We have goals to set and work towards. We are endemically time-stricken.
Reflecting on my experience of the past two decades, and the invitation to present at the PTC, I realized an understanding- blind spots are an invaluable space for learning. Just as an artist uses negative space to add depth and complexity to a subject, I have learned that intentionally paying attention to what is not visible about ourselves and each other leads us to building more effective teams.
My Pearl came to represent an acknowledgement that we are more than a LinkedIn scrolling of educational titles and accolades. We are both successes and failures, we are challenges we have overcome; we are biases we have fought against. There are things left unsaid in our resumés. There are the “if you only knews.” There are blind spots. What happens when we shine a metaphorical flashlight into these shaded spaces? We, and our teams, grow.
Investing in a more fully dimensional picture of how our individual life experiences have shaped our pedagogical values and professional approach is good for teams. It supports Lencioni’s foundation of trust, enables us to lean into compassionate curiosity and values vulnerability as integral to effective teams. More importantly, it allows us to learn about each other. Dan Coyle in The Culture Code writes of cultures of belonging through “safe and rich collision spaces.” By creating the space to embrace our own and each other’s experiences, we have an opportunity to recognize our community beyond our profession. Yes, we are educators, and we are people, with life stories to share. We are mutually invested in the business of people, aspiring to authentic relationships with our students. It starts with us. How else can we model grace and kindness in such a way that our students can be inspired to do the same?
Practically speaking, what can we do to navigate potential blind spots in ourselves and our teams to promote cultures of belonging?
We can follow three steps: Pause, Perspective, Pace.
Step 1: Pause.
There is an urgency in education that presses us, compounded by curveballs and an avalanche of tiny unprecedented 10-minute tasks on top of our day job. These tasks have us on our feet from August through to June. Too often we move too fast.
We need to pause.
We need to check in with our teams and avoid assumptions that we’re all on the same page. Being intentional in our communication, taking time to discuss polarities, and asking ourselves what might not be visible to us and why, are all essential strategies for coordinating a team through pedagogical planning processes. Purposeful inclusion activities, protocols for decision-making, and meeting reflections are invaluable to this process.
When the pace is speeding up, we owe it to ourselves, our teams, and above all our students to slow down.
Being attentive to pace is all the more important from an implicit bias perspective. In Deep Diversity: Overcoming Us Vs. Them, Between the Lines, (2015) Choudhury writes that bias becomes especially pronounced in decision making situations where time is limited, or stress is high. It is difficult to be aware of this implicit bias, he says, because it regularly outpaces our ability to think about it. We are damaging our educational systems and the students we serve, if we fail to slow down. By slowing down, we can check ourselves, we can check in with each other, we can check for biases. We can be our better selves.
Step 2: Perspectives
Be intentional in seeking out what we cannot see.
The diversity of perspectives we collaborate with is the gold dust to our teams. Understanding why team members feel a certain way, adopt a certain path, or hold steadfastly to an idea can help to unlock relationships and build successful collaboration. We must invest in the perspectives of our community around us, even if it clashes - especially if it conflicts. Lean into what Jennifer Abrams calls, “hard conversations” with colleagues. Inviting, valuing, discussing the perspectives of others initiates belonging. Whether this is with students or colleagues, this is the beauty of our international environment and how we can work authentically to create global citizens. In modeling it, we step on the path to a more peaceful world.
But perspective isn’t only our history. We are layered with complexity. We are the stressful morning before school, the parent of a struggling child, the angry 3:00 am email in our inbox... and we bring that energy with us, despite ourselves. We cannot simultaneously advocate for wellness and hold ourselves to unattainable standards. We owe it to each other to remember the perspectives of team members, to give grace to the minutiae of all our daily lives, before we dive into dialogue, discussion, and decision-making.
Step 3: Pace
Pace is the precursor to pause. As educators we hit the ground running. August arrives and we are out of the starting blocks and leaping over hurdles like Olympians. We work quickly in international schools, and with digital learning platforms, and the pressure to pull away from Covid, the pace can begin to feel like an interminable acceleration. This step is a reminder to acknowledge the pace. If your team is feeling pressured, if people are beginning to talk about not having enough time, if sickness days are rising, if tempers are waning, it is possible that the pace needs checking. It may be time to return to the start of the cycle, and for a moment, take a breather, and pause.
Pause, Perspective, Pace. Three steps that are cyclical - much like a pearl. In paying greater attention to these three steps, we can shed light on the blind spots in our team. We can invest in a more fully dimensional understanding of how our teams’ individual life experiences have shaped their pedagogical values. This in turn supports the development of more authentic relationships, which is crucial to effective teams, and ultimately, student learning. To quote the writer Anaïs Nin, “We don’t see things as they are; We see them as we are.” Opportunity for learning lies in the lens we choose. We need to invest in seeing each other as we truly are. As diamonds hide in the dark, the true value in our teams may not be visible until we look for it.
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Jenny-Lee Moore is a middle level leader at the United Nations International School, Hanoi.
