Wellness Thinking and the Habits of Becoming

I have been thinking about issues related to health over the last year. As I creep up on one of those “increments of five” birthdays, I reflect on good health a lot. Adding some extra intensity to my thinking, I have faced some specific health issues this year. Most recently, I had a hernia operation that left me with a scar to mark this particular moment in my aging process.

The bottom line of these timely thoughts about health has been a recognition that I remained curious, and when tempted toward any sort of despair, I have pushed it aside to embrace hope. I hunger to know more and strive to incorporate new learning in my work and my life. 

Educators have an advantage as lifelong learners as we discover early on that there are lifetimes of learning we can do from students, from those younger than us. That truth, that our students will teach us and that our younger colleagues will teach us, magnifies all of the rewards of our profession.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a piece about what we at EXPLO Elevate call a school’s “Habits of Becoming.” I see these habits together representing a helpfully holistic approach to school work and leadership. It is far more of a wellness approach than a reactive, interventional model. With all this in mind, I am adding another characteristic to those I described in that last piece. In short, we should measure school success not only by “progress” but by health.  At the end of this piece, I have attached the original list of the six “habits of becoming.” This week I am adding a number seven:

Thinking about wellness as much as progress:

Wellness thinking has changed the way we take care of ourselves (I am currently sitting feet away from my walking pad!). Wellness thinking should also inform how we steward schools. We tend too often to think of school work as either fixing something or building something rather than how are we taking care of what we have and doing an ever-improving job of taking care of the students, faculty, and families around whom the school is designed. Some other questions you you should ask regarding school wellness:

• How are we adjusting to changes in local, national, and world context in order to serve our missions and our students?
• How are we making decisions rooted in strategy rather than reactivity?
• Who do our students need us to be in this moment? How can we strive to be the kind of adults we hope our students become?
• How do we behave in moments of school stress?
• How do we listen deeply to voices other than our own?
• How do we stay open to what we do not yet know or understand?
• How do we learn from those beyond the usual boundaries of educational dialogue?
• How do we create systems to surface our humanity and humility in moments of crisis?
• How do we build the reserves of strength to do hard things?
• How do we build coalitions and partnerships both inside and beyond our own school community?
• How do we learn from and leverage transparency with all the constituents of the school community.
• What would you add?

To do all of this is uniquely difficult because so many factors are tugging school leadership in other directions. Significantly, so much of this is counter-cultural in the world within which schools operate. The world demands immediacy when the greater need is thoughtfulness. If demands pleasing many constituencies when schools should prioritize doing what is right by its mission to serve students as well as possible. 

So, at EXPLO Elevate, we hope for each school to do a great job of solving problems and of building new curricula and buildings, but most of all we hope for each school’s good health. 

Give us a call some time to tell us about your school’s health. We’d love to hear from you. As for now, I am going to get on the walking pad for a while.

The Habits of Becoming

1. Team processing. Progress Cultures only operate in the full best interest of students when the adults — Board, leaders, and faculty–work together to navigate the complexity of working well with young people. This must become an institutional habit rather than based simply on the preferences of an individual leader.
2. Thinking beyond silos. Related to team processing, Progress Cultures develop the habit of seeking to understand a wider view than the confines of individual, department, or divisional points of view. To operate as a healthy professional ecosystem, each part must act upon the idea of interconnectedness and a shared larger purpose.
3. Naming and celebrating what is good. Progress Cultures develop ways to name and celebrate success and progress. This is a necessary ritual in healthy school cultures, and identification of what is going well blows positive oxygen into the work of the professional community.
4. Avoiding hero and villain thinking. Progress Cultures are not too quick to simplify a complex story into the neatness of heroes and villains. The professional community in Progress Cultures is slow to judge others about whom they may know very little. This is a particular danger today when, too often, the culture around us is lightning fast to judge “the other,” and thus it is paralyzed when it seeks solutions to complex human-based issues.
5. Identifying points of view not in the room. Empathy is an identifying marker of Progress Cultures. This starts with the adults in the community. Ensuring the recognition of alternative points of view is essential and too often neglected unless it has become a habit.
6. Understanding the power of communication. Progress Cultures think of communication as a two-way street. They don’t simply think of communication as what they say to constituents. Instead, they recognize powerful communication is as much how they create opportunities to hear from constituents.
7. Thinking about wellness as much as progress: Wellness thinking has changed the way we take care of ourselves [I am currently sitting feet away from my walking pad!]. Wellness thinking should also inform how we steward schools.