Reflecting is the key to directing! If you want to design for thriving, you must know how to reflect.
I sat with my journal this morning, writing about the month we’ve concluded, planning the month to come, when my phone beeped. My
guest podcast on Transformative Principal with Jethro Jones published. The tweet re-affirmed the message of the day: Learn How to Organize Your Life by Being Reflective. If we self-reflect we can self-direct.
Reflecting…
This year opened in September with a gentle gathering of our team. The faculty cohort was settled in June, so we knew what our beginning would look like. We were rested and ready for the warm swarm of the students by September.
We considered, “What does it mean to be gathered to learn and guided by grace?” Our hearts wrapped around those words and reckoned them as our year’s pilgrimage to discover, to mine out meaning, to uncover truths.
What we knew for sure is we want to learn how to see. My colleague queried, “If that was all I taught my students this year, wouldn’t it be a success?” It is an essential question:
How to see?
We want to learn from a beginner’s mind. It is a delightful, unencumbered place. The place where discovering is uncovering for the first time.
Let me tell you a story…
The wrapping on the box was soaking wet as we dragged it from the front porch. It dripped big raindrops all the way to the kitchen counter, as if leaving a pathway of dots marked to the big ‘X’ on a treasure map!
G, already a grown-up 5 years old, jumped out of her chair and her skin all at the same time. She knew the package was for her and she knew what was in it! The delight was palpable. Her very own suitcase was finally here!
It has a butterfly on it, with delightful shades of blush and bashful. It was a first and she relished in the suitcase and the promise of travel.
Beginner’s mind. Unabashed, uninhibited delight in the joys of life! Do you see with a beginner’s mind?
What do you see?
What I want to see, with a beginner’s mind, is the learning and the grace.
Yet, I can walk around blinded by the schedules, the responsibilities, the obligations, the duties, but what about the delight? Each day the ‘amazingness’ happens and it is ours to see!
The suitcase made us late for the team meeting on the day of its arrival, but maybe the team needed to hear about the paradox between my commitments and her beginner’s mind, my responsibilities and her delight. Maybe grace is living in the paradox.
How can educators and parents hold the paradox of responsibilities and delight? We must learn how to see both, in balance.
Feedback
Recently, I got some feedback on my writing, suggesting it should be “tactical and creative advice for educators.” Maybe. However, I think there is lots of that on the internet. I think what will really create sustainability for educators and parents is to design a life where self-reflection is driving self-direction.
I believe in you! The answers are inside you.
And, guess what, as you nurture those competencies in your own life, you will pass them on to your children. You will . The capacity to reflect will be a great gift.
Personalized learning will happen in step with our children’s ability to reflect.
Wishing you wonderful opportunities for reflection this week…
For the sake of the children,
Karine
PS If you need a tool to help you self-reflect on what matters most, please download the
