Why Talk About Purpose?

Weaving instruction in Peru

Weaving instruction in Peru

I’ve always been someone who’s searching, looking for deeper meaning, trying to make sense out of things. Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what gives a life purpose. I think one of the reasons I became a teacher and enjoy working with young people because they are so interested in that question. It seems to me that schools should be places to examine purpose, to spend time learning what skills, interests, values and vision a student has and then trying out different ways to put them into action. This work happens sometimes in the classroom, and sometimes through activities outside the classroom, but it is most often hit or miss, a happy accident. I would love to see schools become places where purpose is intentionally explored and practiced.

With Ross

With Ross

To this end, I am involved in a number of projects. I co-facilitated a summer course for educators last year to examine their own sense of purpose so they can help students do the same. Following up on the success of that course, my colleague Ross Wehner of World Leadership School and I have continued to mine this rich and essential topic. We have embarked on a three-pronged journey this year to continue the work. Our first collaboration is a book for school leaders and parents on why purpose is so important and how it can be fostered in school communities and at home. The second is a purpose curriculum guide for K-12 teachers who seek practical tools to use in the classroom. The third is a K-12 Purpose Summit in Boulder, Colorado October 4-7 where educators will use a variety of methods to explore their own sense of purpose, practice some of the exercises found in the curriculum guide, and work together to create projects that will enrich student experience. We are excited to host participants from independent, charter, parochial and public schools working together on this crucial topic. I hope you will join us!

Why talk about purpose? Because it’s what gives life meaning. When you know why you are here, what you have to contribute, how you want to make a difference, and then discover the way to do it, that leads to a fulfilling life with no regrets.

2017 Purpose Group in Peru

2017 Purpose Group in Peru

Partnerships

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” — an African proverb

I love this quote in spite of its unknown origins and somewhat vague reference to an entire continent rather than a specific person, country or culture. I like it because it is one of my core beliefs. People need each other. We hunger for connection. We do better when we work together. We are meant to exist in groups and can accomplish so much more in teams than we ever could on our own. For many of us, myself included, it is simply way more fun!

Purpose group in Peru

Purpose group in Peru

That is why, as a consultant, I am constantly seeking people with whom to partner. When I work with a school or other educational organization, I consider our time together co-creative and hopefully mutually beneficial. I look for organizations not only to hire me to add value to their work, but who truly want to share power, responsibility, and rewards. I serve on boards of organizations I believe in so I can feel part of something greater than my own individual company.

ISEEN board retreat in New York

ISEEN board retreat in New York

I would like to highlight two particular partners in this post. The first is the board of the Independent Schools Experiential Education Network (ISEEN), an organization whose mission is “transformative teaching and learning in an interconnected world.” Chairing this board is a rich, rewarding, exciting endeavor, even when we are wrestling with challenging issues and moving into uncharted territory. All of the board members are engaged, hard-working people with full time jobs and busy lives, yet they volunteer their time to attend meetings, create strategic plans, work out minute details of budgeting and finance, and manage to have a good time doing it! I am so grateful to know each and every one of them, and to chair the board during this time of tremendous growth. Though I have a title, we function with a shared leadership model and as a true team. I look forward to the annual Winter Institute for program directors and administrators, Summer Institute for classroom teachers, and our new initiatives for regional meetings and an international institute. In all of these cases, we partner with local schools and community organizations to create our offerings.

Collaborating with Ross Wehner in Peru

Collaborating with Ross Wehner in Peru

The second is World Leadership School, an organization that seeks to “empower young leaders to find innovative solutions to the world’s pressing problems, by partnering with K-12 schools to make the shift to 21st century learning.” I have worked with them as a trip leader on both student and faculty trips, leader trainings, and other initiatives as they evolve such as TabLabs. I am currently partnered with Ross Wehner, World Leadership School Founder, on a project to create curriculum based on Purpose for schools. At the same time, I am working with Shayna Cooke, Director of Educator Development, on an excursion in the Peruvian Andes where teachers will explore innovative educational practices and create their own projects to bring home to their own schools. You can read more about it here: we’d love to have you join us!

On a student trip to Peru

On a student trip to Peru

Why do I love partnerships? Maybe growing up in a family of six children had something to do with it, maybe it’s my extroverted personality, maybe all those years of going to summer camp, and maybe a combination of all these things; it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I love working in teams and feel energized, fortunate and happy when I find people and organizations interested in these kinds of generative partnerships.

Educator Development Rocks!

Welcome back to school everyone! As we dive into a new year, it is important to reflect on summer learning experiences we want to use in our work. Middle school history teacher Kelsea Turner joined Ross Wehner and me on the WLS/Global Weeks educator course Exploring Purpose in the Peruvian Andes in July 2017. These are her reflections…

I went rogue after college when my backpack and I set out for Western Europe and ended up in Damascus. After a couple of years, I folded up my map, put my pack in the attic, and hunkered down in the American Midwest (where I grew up) to recover a bit from all of the journeying, sitting out on the big adventures for a while. But a couple of years ago, I discovered the beauty of the summer educator course – experiential and global education for teachers. If you’ve never had the good fortune of going on an epic adventure in a magical part of the world with a motley crew of teachers you’ve never seen before, I highly recommend it. Seek out an opportunity and GO.

Spinning lesson

Spinning lesson

But don’t just go; go with your eyes wide open, your ears on, and your heart exposed. Feel the connections that develop along the way, respond to them, and commit to extending yourself far beyond the point where you thought you would. Open doors, follow someone, go it alone, be still, resist the urge to flee from discomfort, embrace the role of other; play, take part in a ceremony, listen; suspend disbelief. Allow someone to inspire you. Allow yourself to inspire someone else. Take someone in. Cause a storm and then refuse to take shelter when it hits. Let down your guard; dismiss your loyal soldier. Laugh. Cry. Feel. Take. It. All. In. Don’t take the journey; let the journey take you. Let the journey take you.

I wish I had learned this lesson sooner. A few years ago when my daughter Azra was nine, she asked me what she needed to do to get into a world class university. Stunned and concerned, I think I made some bold declaration that she should engage with life without regard for her college resume. Not bad, but if I had known then what I know now, I would’ve added that it’s all about the intersections.

With my homestay family

With my homestay family

If the philosophers are correct that purpose resides at the intersection of your gifts and the world’s greatest need, the most radical personal metamorphoses happen at the intersection of your greatest need and the world’s gifts, and if you don’t seize opportunities to engage with the world, you may never reach those intersections. 

For me, the World Leadership School and Global Weeks Educator Course Exploring Purpose in the Peruvian Andes was all about intersections. I needed to rewrite my story; so Vicki and Tiffani arrived to transform my perspective. I needed to uncover my purpose, so Ross came along to ask the right questions. I needed to be inspired, so the world brought me Ana, Aima, and an impossibly starry night high in the Andes. I needed to let go of some old demons, so I found myself at Machu Picchu. I needed to change the chip, and there was Vidal.

Our group with our homestay families

Our group with our homestay families

I have since returned home and been stunned out of my Peruvian summer reverie by the abrupt and violent “transition” back into the beautiful chaos that is the school year. A little to my surprise I find that I have to actively battle my reluctance to share the full glory of my experience in Peru with my students – because it means so much to me that sharing it broadly feels too vulnerable. But if there’s one thing I learned in Peru it’s that part of leading students to their intersections is showing them my roadmap. And so I force myself to unfold it once again. 

I embarked on this journey hoping to develop some clarity of personal purpose and to learn how to facilitate this exploration with my students. As I sit here in my kitchen just two months after the start of that big adventure, I marvel at the depth of the transformation it inspired in me, tremble at the idea that (for a moment) I considered sitting this one out, and feel overwhelmed by my gratitude for all of the intersections I encountered along the way.

 

Purpose and Reflection

It is June. School is out or almost out for the summer. Educators and students are looking forward to time off to reflect, refresh, and rejuvenate. We have different ways of doing so, but for all of us, it is crucial time away from school that allows us to return in the fall ready for more. Even if we work or attend school in the summer, there is simply an alternate pace to summer, more time outside, a rhythm that invites us to slow down and tune into something besides the busyness of school life.

Last year's ISEEN Summer Institute Crew

Last year’s ISEEN Summer Institute Crew

The first thing I am excited to delve deeply into this summer is the Independent Schools Experiential Education (ISEEN) teacher institute in Santa Fe in mid-June. Educators from various parts of the world will come together to explore what it means to bring experiential pedagogy into classroom practice. Working in small subject-area cohorts, educators will have the chance to share ideas, learn from experienced facilitators, and develop lesson plans that will enhance their classroom practice. All in the stunning Southwest setting. This is the third year of this institute, and if past years are any indication, it will be a wonderful time of conversation, regional exploration, deep dives into classroom practice, and a lot of laughter. I can’t wait!

Our Purpose Logo

Our Purpose Logo

In July I am thrilled to return to Andean Peru, one of my favorite spots on the planet, to spend 10 days with another group of educators from around the globe. This time I will co-facilitate a course on the subject of Purpose — how we discover and deepen our understanding of a significant goal outside of ourselves that motivates us to action. We will use the Sacred Valley of the Inca as our lab to explore our calling, our deepest reason for our vocation: as Frederick Buechner says, “where our greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.”

As we examine our own sense of purpose, we will create ways to help students find theirs. I am looking forward to being with other courageous educators and my friend and collaborator Ross Wehner of World Leadership School, learning about life in the Andes, cultural and educational practices, and ourselves. I predict this experience will be as profound as the one I had last summer on an educator course in Nepal: I really love seeing the impact of this kind of work!

So, whatever your plans are for the summer, I wish you reflection, relaxation, time with loved ones, and whatever you need to re energize you for another year of learning! Take care of yourself, and enjoy every minute.

Bittersweet Transitions

WLS Instructors

WLS Instructors

A couple of weekends ago, Vicki and I attended a World Leadership School (WLS) Instructor Training in beautiful Buena Vista, Colorado. It was inspiring and thought-provoking in many ways (which I’ll get into momentarily), but it also marked the beginning of a big transition for our working relationship. For nearly three years, we’ve traveled to conferences and trainings as a Global Weeks duo. We’ve developed business systems and workflow patterns. We’ve logged countless miles during walking meetings and held each other accountable in our mostly-remote work with schools scattered across North America. We’ve learned each other’s strengths and challenges. We have counted on each other for support not only in our professional lives, but in our personal lives as well.

This trip was different. We went to the WLS training for separate reasons – Vicki to prepare for an Educator Course on Purpose she and WLS founder Ross Wehner are offering in Peru this summer, and me to prepare to instruct my first Collaborative Leadership Program for middle school girls in Belize. The real kicker, however, is that directly after training I started a new job managing women’s global programs for REI Adventures — a decision Vicki fully supported. It probably goes without saying why this transition feels so bittersweet.

Though our work life is transitioning, the GW duo will always remain strong

Though our work life is changing, the GW duo will always remain strong

As we flew to Denver, I was a mixed bag of emotions – hopeful, anxious, sad, excited and the list goes on. The 3.5 hour drive from Denver to Buena Vista was grey and rainy and I couldn’t help but curse the irony of a rainy day in usually sunny Colorado after the wettest February and March in Seattle in 120 years. Immediately upon arriving at the Fountain Valley School’s mountain campus, we were greeted with hugs and surrounded by passionate global educators. For those few days, my worries about the future and my sadness to be leaving Global Weeks in my existing capacity faded and I felt present and connected to the present moment.

IMG_0120

Transition

Fast forward a week and a half and I’m waist-deep in a new job, figuring out new routines and overwhelmed by learning new processes. There are moments each day when I wonder if I made the right call. I already miss our coworking space, our walks around the lake, our understanding of one another. As I was reminded during the training, our comfort zone isn’t where we grow. It’s only when we stretch by putting ourselves in unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations that we learn new skills and capabilities.

During an exercise at the WLS training, a colleague read the following passage as an example of a way to adjourn student programs. I think it’s appropriate to include here, and I hope it helps you as much as it does for me in difficult times. Here’s to learning to fly.


Fear of Transformation

Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I’m either hanging on to a trapeze bar or swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I’m hurtling across space in between trapeze bars. Most of the time, I spend my life hanging on for dear life to my trapeze-bar- of-the-moment. It carries me along a certain steady rate of swing and I have the feeling that I’m in control of my life. I know most of the right questions and even some of the right answers. But once in a while, as I’m merrily (or not so merrily) swinging along, I look ahead of me into the distance, and what do I see? I see another trapeze bar swinging toward me. It’s empty, and I know, in that place in me that knows, that this new trapeze bar has my name on it. It is my next step, my growth, my aliveness coming to get me. In my heart- of-hearts, I know that for me to grow, I must release my grip on the present, well-know bar to move to the new one.

Each time it happens to me, I hope (no, I pray) that I won’t have to grab the new one. But in my knowing place, I know that I must totally release my grasp on my old bar, and for some moment in time, I must hurtle across space before I can grab onto the new bar. Each time I am filled with terror. It doesn’t matter that in all my previous hurtles across the void of unknowing, I have always made it. Each time I am afraid I will miss, that I will be crushed on unseen rocks in the bottomless chasm between the bars. But I do it anyway. Perhaps this is the essence of what the mystics call the faith experience. No guarantee, no net, no insurance policy, but you do it anyway because somehow, to keep hanging onto that old bar is no longer on the list of alternatives. And so for an eternity that can last a microsecond or a thousand lifetimes, I soar across the dark void of “the past is gone, the future is not yet here.” Its called transition. I have come to believe that it is the only place that real change occurs. I mean real change, not the pseudo-change that only lasts until the next time my old buttons get punched.

I have noticed that, in our culture, this transition zone is looked upon as “nothing”, a no-place between places. Sure the old trapeze-bar was real, and that new coming towards me, I hope, that’s real, too. But the void in between? That’s just a scary, confusing, disorienting “nowhere” that must be gotten through as fast and as unconsciously as possible. What a waste! I have a sneaking suspicion that the transition zone is the only real thing, and the bars are illusions we dream up to avoid the void, where the real change, the real growth occurs for us. Whether or not my hunch is true, it remains that the transition zones in our lives are incredibly rich places. They should be honored, even savored. Yes, with all the pain and fear and feelings of being out-of-control that can (but necessarily) accompany transitions, they are still the most alive, most growth-filled, passionate, expansive moments in our lives.

And so, transformation of fear may have nothing to do with making fear go away, but rather with giving ourselves permission to hang out” in the transition between the trapeze bars. Transforming our need to grab that new bar, any bar, is allowing ourselves to dwell in the only place where change really happens. It can be terrifying. It can be enlightening, in the true sense of the word. Hurtling through the void, we just may learn how to fly.”