Mindful Listening Leadership

This fall, I've been reading Shane Safir's The Listening Leader with a group of colleagues.  The subtitle reads "Creating the Conditions for Equitable School Transformation." 

The text captured my attention right away.  It speaks to my desire to grow a collaborative, dynamic community of adults in our school as a way to increase student achievement and support school culture.  One of my favorite phrases in the whole book is in the introduction, which explains that Listening Leaders are able to "unleash unrealized energy" in their team.

My experience is that educators have a great deal of energy for the areas of practice and experience where we feel successful and empowered.  Where we have a deep, in-the-gut feeling that something we are doing with, or for, our learners, is making a real difference.  Conversely, finding the energy to tackle the things before us where we are less connected and involved is much more stressful and less inspiring.

Safir argues that leaders who adopt a Listening Mindset are better able to transform culture and release this energy.  He suggests four specific strategies to accomplish this:

Slow Down

Listen before Making Decisions

                                             

Harness the Wisdom of the Group

Distribute Leadership

                                                 
By approaching change in this super-intentional, recursive, and thoughtful way, Listening Leadership becomes a powerful driver for change.

I understood what he was talking about as I read these early chapters.  Applying it to daily practice became another story.

I had an experience with some members of my team heading into the break that really tested my understanding of these principles.  We were working through a super challenging situation with one of our very complex students.  Emotions and fatigue were running high, the student was not responding to the interventions or strategies we had in place, and the team was discouraged.

I jumped in to look for ways to support everyone.  I got a referral into our district's Inclusion Support Team, brainstormed with our Student Services teacher for ways to change things up, grabbed a few new visual tools and tweaked the student's timetable and the EA Schedule.  I hurried to get everything into the team's hands so I could help stabilize things.  I dug into my toolkit, built from all of my years supporting unique students and their teams toward success.

It was a disaster.  The strategies, even the ones that had been wildly successful for numerous other students in the past, did not improve the situation.  This young man's Classroom Teacher and Education Assistants were still frustrated.  Now they were becoming angry.  I started to feel defensive.

Two things happened that shifted my stance from defensiveness to something more open.  To nudge me from the feeling I had to hurry, to find all of the answers and allow me to be ready and able to listen for the ideas, emotions, and other information, that were needed to find our way through this difficult period.

The first was a conversation with a courageous colleague who laid it all out for me.  She identified exactly how she was feeling as a result of some of the decisions that I had made, and shared some key information about the situation with this learner that I was unaware of.  While I didn't agree with everything she said, it was an open dialogue that re-framed my perspective, and helped to shift the direction things were taking.

The second was observing the way that our Inclusion Support team interacted with the student's teacher when they visited our site.  They asked a ton of questions, about the challenging situation, strengths and interests of the student, the rhythm of the classroom, the student's needs, the adults' needs.  Every single question was one I knew to be critically important.  In hindsight, I realized that some were questions I had already made up answers to without checking to see how accurate my assumptions were.

I have worked in the area of student support for many years.  I have lots of knowledge about how to support highly complex learners, how to individualize programs, how to create visual supports and structured routines.  And a lot of the time, I believe I know how to listen and work with my team.  In reflecting on how this situation got to be so complicated and stressful, I  realized that I had been focusing on the TOOLS, not the PEOPLE who needed to use them.

Thanks to the perspective afforded to me through slowing down long enough to really listen,  to share the leadership, to harness ideas from everyone involved, we headed into Christmas break in a much better place.  We have some new tools and routines ready to go for the new year, and resource people coming to help us implement them.  We had a productive team meeting before heading off, I feel like we've mended some of the strained relationships and I'm hoping my efforts to really listen to everyone have allowed me to tweak some of our other structures and routines moving forward, so that we really can slow down and be super intentional moving forward.

Safir argues that to really do this well, Mindful Listening needs to occur with a bias toward action.  In reading a little more of this text over the break, that piece has landed as a bit of a "New Year's Resolution" for me.  My action step is going to be focusing on his metaphor of "watering for deep roots."  Safir argues that "strategic listening [can] create the mental space that can lead to more thoughtful action."

I believe I know how to leverage some of these strategies with the "big picture" stuff-  I feel good about the work we did in creating a school vision statement, planning for PLCs, building our tiered support structures by reflecting on student data.  What I learned through this experience is that it's much harder to do when emotions are running high in a crisis situation.  The irony of that is this is that mindful listening has the potential to stabilize things much faster and more effectively than digging in and handing over tools without real consultation.

Fortunately, Safir has a suggestion in this regard, as well.  If I had followed the three steps of Mindful Listening, I would have created the space I needed to navigate things in a much different way.  Being strategic and aware in approaching collaboration-  whether it's for a whole-school initiative, or problem solving with only a few members of the team, it's important to:

1. Look in the mirror....reflect on your own role and interactions.
2. Step into the other person's shoes...no matter how different their perspective, the individual involved has life experiences, information, emotions that need to be considered in moving forward...begin with a bit of empathy.
3.  Step up onto the balcony....take on the stance of a neutral observer watching your interactions with others during the discussion

This situation was an important reminder that our whole team wants what's best for our students, and that the real power to support our learners lays in our collective wisdom.   After all, They're All Our Kids.  

Gratitude for this Year's Lollipop Moments

The end of the school year always has me reflecting back on the year.  June craziness gives way to July appreciation.  As the dust settles, I remember all the things I love about being an educator, and take the time to savour the bits of the year that were extra special.

This year was a whopper.  After 20 years in my previous school district, I found myself in not just one, but two, new school communities.  Not only were my surroundings unfamiliar, but I quickly realized that the scale of things in a larger school district was very different from what I had experienced before.  New people, new systems, different resources, different expectations.  It took until January not to feel like I was driving to someone else’s school every day.

Now that I have time to reflect on what made the difference in the new year, I’m realizing I have some people to thank.  Some lollipops to give out.

I don’t know how many others out there are familiar with lollipop moments.  It’s a new idea for me.  I stumbled upon this great TED Talk while I was looking for something about Leadership for a group of grade 6 students that I worked with this year.

 

Drew Dudley, "Everyday Leadership"

In his talk, Drew Dudley argues that lollipop moments are moments in life where “you have made someone’s life better by something that you said or that you did...” These are moments that resonate for us, as individuals, but the person who created them isn't even aware of what they've done for us.

He defines these moments as acts of everyday leadership, explaining that “we need to redefine leadership as being about lollipop moments, how many of them we create, how many of them we acknowledge, how many of them we pay forward, and how many of them we say thank you for.”

As I was wrapping up my time with students this year, I invited kids from a number of classes to make a lollipop for a special adult in our building.  Many knew exactly who they wanted to give them to.  An EA who “didn’t give up when I didn’t understand the math.”  A teacher who “let me be creative when we made puppets.”  A counselor who “helped me with my friends and finding people to hang out with at recess.”  These lollipops weren't created quickly.  I was astounded by the love, care and genuine appreciation that went into them.

Older students watched the clip with me.  It's less accessible for the little ones, so with them, I read Cara's Kindness, a great story about paying it forward.  The idea of giving someone a lollipop to say thank you wasn't hard to wrap our heads around after we thought about kindnesses that had been done for us over the course of the school year.

As educators, EAs, secretaries, principals, custodians, we are making a difference every day, whether we know it or not.  Our bulletin board had over 100 lollipops when we were done, and each one was different.  And I know with certainty that the adults receiving them didn’t already know how deeply the students felt about the things they had done for them, because I spoke to a few who were genuinely surprised, and touched, by some of the sentiments shared by the kids.

I wish I’d taken the time to speak directly to more of my colleagues before the year wrapped up.  the easy excuse is the fact that I was inordinately busy this June, even for someone who works in education-  I was at two schools, was packing to move to a third, had a kid turning 16, another graduating from high school, and both of them leaving for an overseas trip with their Scout group.

But that really wasn't it.  I didn't offer the lollipop thank yous personally because the thank-you’s were coming with good-byes for the second year in a row, and in all honesty, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I had lots of lollipop moments this year.  I was warmly welcomed by two school communities. I shared two different school offices with clerical and admin colleagues who always put kids first, even when they were making it really difficult for us to do so. I worked with dynamic educators who were creative, and energetic and positive.  I had the opportunity to learn alongside some beginning teachers who asked amazing, smart questions that pushed me to become a stronger educator.  I collaborated with a diverse team to bring a highly complex group of grade 12 students through to graduation, and shared a rich kindergarten/grade one classroom with a master teacher of infinite patience.  No one gets to do all of that in a single school year.  I was given a tremendous gift.  My lollipops are for the teams at Cedar Elementary and Secondary Schools. 

 

I highly recommend Dudley’s talk if you haven’t seen it.  Next year, I’m going to collect lollipop moments right from the beginning of the year.  And, I’m going to have a stash of lollipops in my desk to help me celebrate them.  I challenge everyone who reads this to do the same.  We should be celebrating and acknowledging the grown ups.  It's the work they do every day that makes such a profound difference for our learners.  We are all working together, because They're All Our Kids.

My Journey Toward Reconciliation

I’ve been at a couple of gatherings recently where I was asked to reflect on my personal Journey toward Reconciliation.  This is a new question for me.  Up until recently, I think I had viewed it as Canada’s journey toward reconciliation.  Or as Education’s journey to inclusion.  Or perhaps as Educators’ journey to understand and embed First Peoples' Principles of Learning into our practice.  I was an interested observer.  

That’s not quite right.  I was more than an interested observer.  I have reflected on the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  It was important to me that our family visited the U'mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay when we were in Port Hardy two summers ago.  We have had conversations about Residential Schools as a family, have learned about spirit totems and symbols, learned a bit about the Indigenous history of our area.  I spent several years on the Indigenous Education Advisory Committee for my previous school district, and felt I was part of
 the conversation regarding supports and opportunities for our learners.  I have invited Elders and other First Nations’ resource people into my classroom to lead discussions and activities.  I think I was moving from Awareness to Developing my understanding, I wanted to be doing supportive, respectful work with learners.  I had boarded the canoe.

Over the course of the past few months, I have been blessed with invitations to some rich conversations that have profoundly shifted my outlook.  I usually look at motivation and engagement through the lens of wanting to move from thoughts to action, but it has suddenly dawned on me that this is far from a linear progression.  (Thank you Linda and Judy.  I’ve had enough practice now that I don’t need to look for the Spirals anymore, they just seem to find me 🙂).

I recently explained to some colleagues that I am a “do-er”. I approach new learning by making to-do lists and looking for my action steps.  I’ve come to realize that’s only going to get me part way there.  Not that action steps are a bad thing.  It’s just super important to take the right ones.  I am aware that my personal journey toward reconciliation is going to take some more reflection and planning.

What led to this shift?

First, a conversation with colleagues where we all shared a bit about our own journeys.  I thought we would talk about what we had “done”. (I talked about my visit to Alert Bay).  We did.  But the part  of the conversation that stayed with me wasn’t the stories of what others had done specifically around reconciliation.  It was the part of the conversation where I learned a bit more about who my colleagues are,  about their personal journeys in life.  About understanding one another and our perspectives on a deeper level.

We were asked to introduce ourselves in a way that shared a bit about our heritage and our childhood.  I have heard Elders and others describe where they were from as part of a Welcome or Acknowledgement before.  I saw this as a way to learn a little bit about the person, but until we all did it as part of a larger conversation, I didn’t realize how profoundly this could help build community amongst those present, how it would build connection and link our stories.  At first, I wasn’t even sure what to say about myself.  My family is my family, but I’ve never  really deeply considered how my heritage has shaped me.  I don’t know much about my family prior to my Grandparents’ generation.  That history isn’t in Canada, and, for a number of reasons,  it’s pretty hard to track down.

The second conversation that shifted my thinking was a visit to the Stz'uminus Secondary School for sharing session.  I was invited by Anne Tenning, our District Principal of Aboriginal Education, to come and listen to community members share their thoughts and suggestions about things we could do at school to help their children be more successful.  One of the individuals who shared talked about how challenging it is for our First Nations students to walk in two worlds.  I have thought about this before, but the second part of her message landed in a different way.

  She went on to explain that the part schools often missed was that while there was sometimes an acknowledgement by the school that we ask a lot from our kids when we expect them to blend public school experiences with cultural traditions and expectations, but that it is not well understood that in doing this, we can also create a tension that is un-resolvable for many of our kids, because many teachers don’t really understand that , for our Indigenous learners, culture has to come first.  That the celebrations, or traditional practices in the community, take priority over school expectations.  It’s not that school isn’t important.  It’s that the other pieces are essential, and are deeply rooted in identity and community.  We need to respect and embrace this in a deep and authentic way for our learners to feel safe and successful in our classrooms.

In that moment, I realized that, although I was aware our students sometimes walk in two worlds, I had unconsciously made an assumption that my job was to help them figure out a way to walk more successfully in mine.  I drove home from that evening feeling excited about possibilities.  I can’t wait to connect with the community to learn more and to work with them to find ways to invite aspects of our local First Nations culture into our school.  Not in  an "add-on" or "special event" kind of way, but as part of the way we learn and grow together, every day.

Having said that, special events can be pretty special too.  Last Thursday evening, I was part of the Aboriginal Graduation for our school district.  I've been to similar events before.  But this was extra-special for me.  I have always enjoyed the performances by groups of students from the schools.  It's lovely to see children sharing something they've learned with an audience.  But Thursday, I was surrounded by community members who had come together to celebrate their children's accomplishments in a way I have not been part of in the past.  Adults and children drumming and dancing and celebrating together.  It was not a school district event where we invited the community in.  It was an event for and by the community that school district staff and other guests were welcomed into.  The dances were not simply performances.  They were authentic, organic celebrations.  I was surprised when one of my students, whom I've never seen in front of a crowd like that, sang with abandon and joy.  My heart was full.

I think I’m raising my paddle and beginning my journey into deeper waters.  I’m learning how to listen and to ask questions so that I can really understand and advocate for things that are designed not just to help our kids walk in two worlds,  but to make sure that more of their world is embraced as part of their school life.  

I’m confident this will support not only our Indigenous learners, but all of our learners.  We will all benefit from being better listeners and from learning to understand one another.  I now see that it’s not about listening so that I can create my own to-do list.  It’s about sincerely, deeply learning, and about finding ways to go on this journey together.  I am so excited to begin, because they are all our kids.

Career Life Exploration

I've been thinking a lot about this transition-to-adulting business.  I have a son graduating from high-school this year, and he's really struggled to carve a pathway for himself, so I've been watching the evolution of the new high-school Career Education curriculum with interest.

Educators have always been invested in preparing kids for the future, but they've not always produced the results they hoped for.  Some of our kids have made the most of the opportunities available to them...they've explored work experience, gone to job fairs, done campus tours...they have amazing scholarship applications, resumes and cover letters, and know exactly where they're headed.

Other kids are more like my son.  They know how to "do high-school,"  but are pretty overwhelmed by the idea sifting through the possibilities that exist after graduation.  They collect pamphlets and course catalogs at University Fairs without talking to anyone.   They wait to apply for jobs, or scholarships, or schools, because they don't know how to make sense of their options.   As June 30 approaches, making decisions feels even higher-stakes, and it starts to feel safer to avoid making a decision at all, rather than making the wrong one.

This spring, I've been lucky enough to participate in a district conversation about Career Education at the same time I've been watching my son and his friends navigate their last semester of high school.  It's struck me that part of what's happened for a couple of them is that for them, career exploration has been a series of "moments," rather than a journey.  A cool visual resume in grade 9.  "Checking off" Planning 10.  Completing a Grad Transitions package in grade 12. 

(Below is my first go at a Sketchnote for public consumption.  Pardon the rustic drawing, but it captures my take on what the new curriculum for Career Life Exploration (gr. 10) is all about...)

I am super excited to be part of a conversation around building Career Education as a seamless continuum.  I love that this continuum will begin in grade 8 and keep building until graduation.  Students will have opportunities to explore their career pathway in a variety of environments-  embedded in other courses (for example, financial literacy in mathematics, resume and scholarship writing in English, person sexual health and social media literacy in physical education).  It'll never be "done."  They'll keep adding layers of understanding and experiences as they go.  Recursive reflection as they learn more about themselves and the world. 

As adults, we know that we didn't need to know everything we would do for the next 30 years on the day we graduated from high school.  We know that we can make a decision that's the right fit "for now,"  without committing to "forever,"  and that building our personal network and skills will help us create opportunities for ourselves down the road, even if we're not 100% sure which road we're taking.  We know the value of  balancing work and life, of being aware of global trends and our own talents and skills.

It's a gift that I am able to work with my colleagues to build opportunities for our students which will encourage them to do the same. 

My son now has a plan he's looking forward to.  After several months of wondering why he had to make a decision before the summer, and trying to find a way out of the Bachelor of Science his mother strong-armed him into applying for in February, he's been accepted into Culinary Arts at VIU.   He weighed his options, he's made a commitment to the next year that he's excited about.  He's trusting that this leap of faith will be a positive experience and will give him some skills that he can use in the future. 

I'm proud of him.  I'm excited for him.  But,  I can't help but think that this year of agonizing would have been a little bit easier, the options a little bit clearer, if he'd started thinking about them much earlier in his journey.  I know most people apply for Dual Credit programs with less than 12 hours to go on the application deadline.  But I also know he wasn't the only one of his friends completing the application the same day he was. 

We have students who have a clear goals and a plan to meet them much earlier.  They know they've "always" wanted to be an archaeologist, or a doctor, or a dancer.  But I would argue that isn't the case for everyone.  And I can't help but think that this new framework will most help those who need more support.   We have much to be optimistic and excited about.  I know I'm excited that I get to be a small part of it.  After all, They're All Our Kids.

Belonging is the Beginning

Belonging is the beginning.  That's the opening phrase for our school's first goal this year.  It continues as follows:

Belonging is the beginning.  Our goal is to create structures,  ceremonies, and learning environments that will set the stage for a culture that is accepting of all students and meets them where they are in their learning journey.  

Earlier this year, I collected some photos of learners participating in various opportunities around the school, as examples of community, places where kids were engaging and could belong.  These are lovely pictures, and genuine examples, but they fall short of providing deep opportunities for EVERYONE to belong.   Kids join in if they choose, but if you look closely at the pictures, you'll notice that many of our learners don't appear in ANY of them.

Since I took those photos, the staff has really come together to consider deeper, more deliberate and focused, initiatives to help our kids who most need to belong find a place in our learning community.  While we're only at the beginning of this journey, I'm really excited about how things are going.

One of our PLC groups has decided to focus on ways to forge connections with a number of our students who are living on reserve, and who are not finding success with their learning.  While we see many of these kids every day, they are not attending their classes, are not participating in the clubs and events around the school, are not successfully moving toward graduation.  They are not finding their way to us, so we need to go to them.  As a staff, we're going to take one or two of these learners under our wings, encourage them.  Support them.  Meet with them at least once a week, and listen to them.  

We're also going to reach out to their community.  We would like to explore hosting parent-teacher conferences at the Band hall, to help families who are not able to get into the school get to know us and for us to get to know them.  We're going to work with our elder to offer opportunities at school that are culturally relevant for these learners.  The counselor for Aboriginal Youth Mental Health now holds weekly office hours in our building.

Our course calendar for next year will have some changes.  While pairing wood shop with math didn't quite pan out as we hoped, we're optimistic that pairing foods with math next year will give our students a way to learn practical numeracy skills at the same time they learn to create family meals and culturally-based recipes.  This is not an intervention for our vulnerable students, but a super-exciting opportunity to be part of a cohort that approaches learning a different way,  based in First Peoples' Principles of Learning.  Our big dream is that it's the start of a new way to approach learning in our building as a whole.

The Aboriginal Education teacher at our school has been working with a local artist, and some time in the next year or so, we will have a beautiful carving hanging over our stage and multi-purpose room.  He hopes to create Aboriginal Student Council at our school, to help our Indigenous students have a larger voice.  A member of this student council will sit on the executive of our broader Student Council, alongside the grade reps and representative from the Queer-Straight Alliance.

Our Learning Leaders team is also seeking ways to enhance connection and belonging for our students.  We've been reading Martin Brokenleg's book "Reclaiming Youth At Risk," and are excited to be implementing a school-wide focus on the Circle of Courage.  As part of our weekly recognition gathering, we'll give "shout-outs" to students demonstrating belonging, independence, gratitude and mastery, creating a large visual display to acknowledge their contributions.  We'll teach lessons in all of our Humanities and English classes exploring these areas, with belonging being our first quadrant.

The lessons are part of one other exciting piece.  Last week, I was lucky enough to participate in FNESC's session on the revised English First People's 10-12 curriculum. It was my first exposure to these courses.  They are literature-rich, built around First People's Principles of Learning, and arranged thematically.  It's as if the unit on Belonging was especially created just for us.  It arrived in my hands at the just the right time.  These lessons will provide a beautiful launch pad for our work with the Circle of Courage, and will hopefully inspire some of our students to sign up for the other English First People's courses being offered next year.  (The final draft of the guide will be available online by the end of April, 2018).

This is one of those rare magical times when everyone seems to be moving alongside one another in a common purpose.  We've taken some deliberate, focused steps together, and I truly believe it has grown from an intrinsic understanding that belonging really is the beginning. We didn't start from the notion that it was "time to work on goal #1."  We have a collective awareness that what we're doing isn't enough for some of our kids, and a deep desire to figure out how to change things.  It stems from the belief that EVERYONE deserves to have a place they feel successful and part of in our school.  I'm proud to be part of this team.  We understand that they're all our kids.

Grappling with Meaningful Inclusion

This has been an interesting spring for me.


I am someone who advocates for ALL students to be welcomed and included in learning environments across the district.  I define myself as an inclusion advocate, engaging in problem-solving and planning conversations all the time.  I visit classrooms and teach model lessons to help classroom teachers envision ways to differentiate and provide multiple points of entry so that all students in their learning community participate in meaningful ways.



This year, I was challenged with supporting a couple of school teams who were really struggling provide a meaningful school experience for two learners who are on the autism spectrum, are non-verbal, and who have significant challenges with self-regulation.  Not regular challenges with self-regulation. The kind of challenges that led to two adults working with each of these children at all times, and programs that had evolved to the point where these children were essentially isolated in a separate space with those adults for the bulk of the day.


This was really hard for the dedicated, empathetic, creative teams working with them.  Each and every person- and I do mean everyone - classroom teachers, learning support teachers, education assistants, administrators, parents, itinerant specialists and outside consultants - supporting these children wanted more for them.  Success timetables with opportunities to learn and grow alongside peers had been developed for most every environment, indoor and out, for these students.  The speech-language pathologists had developed high and low-tech communication devices for them, there was a clear and workable structure for a visual schedule and transitions.


We just couldn't get there.  These learners are incredibly complex, and we learned, over time, that their significant sensory needs currently impair their capacity to be safe and successful in typical learning environments.  Even in the spaces that had been set up for them in their home schools, they were exposed to bells, announcements, lighting, noises, large groups of moving children, and even "funny smells" from hot lunch and cooking programs.  We just couldn't get the recipe right for them.

After many, many, parent meetings and conversations with the teams at both home schools, we decided we needed to do something different.  We needed a place where we could focus on these students' needs, and systematically build in interventions and opportunities, especially tailored for them to build capacity with the skills they needed to be successful in their home school environments. We needed a facility that provided opportunity for practicing learning behaviours in a classroom, for up-regulating (our sensory room), down-regulating (our quiet room), and easy access to the washroom.    We needed to be able to work through the challenging moments that would be needed in a way that allowed these students to scream, to cry, to sleep, to explore, to succeed, in a respectful, open way, while keeping everyone, both students and adults, safe while this practice happens.


Thus Bridges was born.

Over spring break, we relocated some of the Learning Service offices to vacate a four-pack of learning spaces that were ideally arranged for this type of supportive environment.  We ordered equipment, found a teacher, enlisted the help of some education assistants who already knew the children from their previous environments, and got things going.

Right after the break, these two students began to attend this new centre.  It feels like the successes are building.  The team of adults has worked tirelessly to create a warm environment.  The classroom is full of literature, and displays of student work (I love the sensory-friendly bulletin board of actual artifacts they created on a recent nature walk).  They have bean bag chairs and soft lighting, they have a kitchen table to gather at for meals and snacks,  and they have a lot of fun creating special events for their class. (My favorite so far was May the 4th Be With You - Star Wars t-shirts and alphabet, an awesome quote from Yoda on the door).


I'm not going to pretend we haven't had difficult days.  Of course we have.  When you're supporting learners as complex as these young people, you will always have things to work out and wonder about.  But overall, the families are thrilled their children are able to be at school all week, to learn alongside a peer, to participate in field trips, and to have the time and space they need to have their individual needs supported along the way.
But that's not really what this post is about.  This post is about the gnawing niggle in my stomach that I've had since the moment Bridges opened it's doors.  I'm awfully proud of the work being done in there.  I can't even believe how fantastic the team of adults is -  taking every moment in stride, continually reflecting on next steps, or considering antecedents or triggers for the challenging moments that erupt on a daily basis.


So if Bridges is successful, why can't I just relax and celebrate?
It's because I struggle, every day, with how this matches with my beliefs about inclusion.  If I believe that teachers need to teach for ALL, that classrooms need to provide multiple points of entry for ALL, that They're ALL our Kids, how can I be ok with having two students leave their home schools, their neighborhood schools, every day, to attend this off-site environment?


After attending the BC CASE conference last month, and being lucky enough to listen to several educators whom I have immense respect for, I've landed on a couple of thoughts that are helping. 



1.  It's about having a PURPOSE within the PLACE.  (Thanks, again, Shelley Moore).  You're right.  Students need to have something meaningful to DO in the place they are learning.  We need to create meaningful opportunities for them in the learning environments they encounter.  Because of the challenges these young learners currently experience, we couldn't do that in their previous environment.  They are not yet able to regulate in a safe enough way to be with other children in a busy, or even a quiet, space.  This led to dangerous situations, sometimes resulting in injury, in their previous settings.


Bridges is a PLACE that meets them where they are at, giving them opportunity to practice being self-regulated learners in an environment that has all of the additional supports and tools, and access to specialists, they require if we are going to help them to develop these skills. Their PURPOSE is building the skills they need to Bridge (pun totally intended) back to their home schools when ready.


2. It's about COMMUNITY.  It's not enough to say we're doing "Social Inclusion" by allowing them to warm a seat at a table somewhere within a room full of others.  (Thank you, Pat Mirenda.)These children deserve an opportunity to develop friendships and connections with peers.  Things were very difficult for them in a larger school environment.  They were too overwhelmed to connect with peers, or "big buddies."    Their whole experience was structured around the adults setting up opportunities for them to interact in safe ways-  which meant there was most often an adult "buffer" between them and other learners.  Now they take turns with activities in their new classroom. They sit together to eat their meals.  They go on weekly field trips to the library, daily walks on the nature bath.  They get Star Wars day.

3.  It's about the WHOLE CHILD.  If we're really wanting meaningful opportunities for our children, we need to provide meaningful learning opportunities (#1), to fostering a sense of belonging in a social community (#2).  And we need them to feel a sense of self-worth, of success, in their experience.  (Thank you, Jennifer Katz.)  While they're at Bridges, these learners interact with one another, with the adults in their classroom, with older students who visit and read or do art projects with them, with their community on field trips.  There is enough space and time to notice each little success and celebrate it.  There is enough space and time to sit and wait for them to think about next steps, to process decisions, to "plunk down" on the path and work something out for 10 minutes, if that's what they need.   Every day, every task, gives us a chance to learn more about these children, and to adjust and scaffold what's next.  Their environment allows us to pace things in a way that honors and respects their highly individualized journeys.


So, now I have three suggestions or thoughts I can offer when challenged to describe Bridges as an inclusive place. I am proud of Bridges because I see how supportive and successful it is being for these learners.


I'm glad that the gnawing niggle in my belly remains, though.  This environment was created as an INTERVENTION for some children who really needed another way to approach their learning.  It's not a "new school."


We need to always be mindful of our end goal - self-regulated learners who have developed the skills and capacities to return to find a purpose within a place back with their peers in their neighbourhood schools.  That is the purpose of this place.  The moment we move away from that, and become complacent, or accept this type of intervention as a "necessity," without looking ahead, we've missed the point.  We have a moral obligation to provide meaningful opportunities every day for every learner, in the most inclusive way possible.  This intervention, like all intervention, needs to be goal-focused and time-limited. 


Bridges is an inclusive environment for learners who were isolated in their previous settings. These learners experience opportunities that allow for that challenge, support, community and celebration in their daily school experience.  It allows for wrap-around support to care for our most vulnerable students.  But it is an intervention.  It's not a "program."  It's definitely not a "school."  As long as we remember that, we'll remember that They Are All Our Kids.