Purpose Summit 2019

At the beginning of last year, we had a professional development with Ross Wehner of World Leadership School.  I posted about it here.  This year I attended the Purpose Summit held in Boulder, Colorado at the historic Chautauqua Cabins.

 

We had community agreements to 1)disconnect to be fully present, 2) decenter by taking risks, and 3) re-envision via new perspectives.  “The biggest problem growing up today is not actually stress; it’s meaninglessness.” by Dr.. William Damon, Director of Standord Center for Adolescence.  My ideas for my purpose:  To share resources so that students and teachers can learn.  Or to share resources and connections so that others develop a global perspective.

Stanford defines purpose a stable intention that is meaningful to self and beneficial to the world.  Wehner suggested reading Dark Horse by Todd Rose.  We discussed the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl.  Frankl discusses the fact that those who concentrated on hedonic needs, perished first.  We need to ask students what are their skills that they can use to impact the world.  Help students understand what their purpose might be.  Ask thee students to answer: Who am I?  and How do I connect?  Ask the teachers what do humans need to thrive?

Can we get our schools to look at students as the agents of change?  What community partners do we have.  Stanford did interviews to determine that high school students are 24% goal driven, 24% disengaged, 32% dreamers, and 20 % purposeful.  My five cards were Making Connections (investigative), Seeing Possibilities (artistic), Seeing the big picture (artistic), Building Relationships (Social), and Discovering resources ( investigative).  You picked the ones that I don’t remember learning, people observe me doing well, or sometimes I get lost doing.

Daren Dickson was there from Valor Collegiate. He has a background in mental health.  He introduced the Circle Process which is to introduce your name, your feeling, your work and your neighbor.  Dickson’s purpose is to empower our diverse community to live inspired impactful lives. Dickson feels that schools are responsible for developing the whole child and the whole adult (teachers). Their motto is about being vulnerable and getting rewards with connections.  We have the capacity and need for connections.

Aaron Griffen from DSST explained their values.  We all want to matter, have a voice, and make an impact.  When you live a life of purpose, it is a journey. There is value in knowing students’ names and pronounce them correctly.  Acknowledge your biases in your purpose.  How does my bias show up? What do I do to overcome my bias?

Susan Freudenburg from Winchester Thurston uses the phrase “City as Our Campus”. Their school was founded on the idea of “Think also of the comforts and rights of others”. They have formed mutually beneficial relationships with community partners.  Learn Passionately, foster community, embrace diversity, break boundaries, and make changes.  As they try to be a city as their campus they try to do it in different levels: Moment, expedition, project, unit, year long study, course, residency.  They bring in a lot of guest speakers.  Goals are to bring student to learn about Pittsburg, to interact with community in order to understand diverse stories, equip students with new skills and knowledge through authentic learning experiences, provide teachers a co-educator model and partner with community.

Phu Tranchi of Oakwood School started his session by showing the Pan Seared Scallop with Peas video from a cooking show to demonstrate the precision of teaching and the engagement of students.  Their students and teachers speak about the mission.  They believe that privilege and purpose can create change making.  Community service is for other people.  Community engagement is with other people.  Using UN SDGs to determine what is the cause of issues.

Ask teachers “What will this learning experience be like for this child in my classroom? ” Think of your extreme user – sample of OXO – inventor had a wife with arthritis so he designed kitchen tools that were comfortable for her but they ended up being comfortable for all.  Create an extreme user with identities, interests, happiest at school, plans for the future, frustrations at school.  Make sure to get at the transfer of knowledge “Now What?” If you are a teacher, you are a learner.  What is a school?  It is a ecosystem – it needs to be interdependent, balanced, diverse, harmonious, and built on relationships.

IDEATE: defer judgment, encourage wild ideas, go for quantity, build on other ideas. Warm up exercise: name as many junk foods as you can. How might we help disengaged students find purpose in learning so they can be their authentic selves and achieve their own academic goals.  We created a HACK – which is a method of modification that can be used to help people develop creative solutions to existing or future problems.  You can’t have engagement without purpose so we used an Experience Map to create an experience.

At the end we each created a PechaKucha.  Here are some takeaways from that. How do we live our values?  They should not be a marketing tool!  How are the teachers and students impacting their world.  If we are not wholly developed adults we can’t teach students. Fun Icebreaker with staff could be post it with one word about that person.  Could be skills we have. Very empowering for the staff.  Batten Leadership Program starts with understanding self and others and ends with affecting change.  Not leaders for tomorrow but Activists of Today.  WE can’t look at the past we must look forward.