Being present

If you have been following my blog for some time you will know that my mother was diagnosed with dementia in 2016 and as a result of this I moved to the UK to look after her as her mental capacities declined.  I was reading over some of the posts I made from 2016-2018 which were about using apps to both support her and to support my own wellbeing as a carer.  Several of these were mindfulness apps such as Buddhify and Calm, which helped me focus on the present and not to stress so much about the past or the future.  It was interesting to read through Chapter 5 of Elena Aguilar's Onward as the journey Elena describes about learning to be in the present resonated very much with my own journey these past five years.  I too have found that staying in the present can boost resilience and can help us to be accepting about the things that happen in our lives and how we respond to them, rather than worrying about the past or about things that might happen in the future.  

My journey into mindfulness actually started while I was working in India.  Our primary school counsellor offered a mindfulness course to teachers, and ran mindfulness sessions before school.  It was a great way to start the day.  As Elena explains, mindfulness is the "nonjudgemental cultivation of moment to moment awareness."  We begin by noticing our feelings, being aware of their origins, accept what is happening and are intentional about what we do or say next.  There is a fantastic quote here:

Practicing mindfulness is like hitting an internal pause button on the drama of life.

 Often while I was staying with Mum, I would take myself out for a walk, and listen to a mindfulness meditation on Buddhify.  One of my favourites spoke about the sky and how clouds came and went, and perhaps bad weather came and went - but the sky was always there - it was not the clouds or the weather.  In the same way our thoughts and emotions come and go - and we are not our thoughts and emotions.

Currently I try to do a yoga class each week and to meditate each day for about 10 minutes.  I can totally relate to the "monkey mind" which jumps around from one thing to the next, both past and present.  What I've also noticed is that it's become progressively easier to become and remain calm.  

I was really interested to read the research about teachers who practice mindfulness.  They experience lower levels of stress and burnout, report greater efficacy in their jobs, have more emotionally supportive classrooms and more organised classrooms.  It's interesting to note that if you are calm and focused and self aware that it's more likely your students will be these things as well - and mindfulness has so many other benefits such as improving attention, memory and self-control, boosting your immune system, helping with insomnia and the management of depression and chronic pain.

Another interesting section of Chapter 5 is the section about happy people doing better work, and how having "appropriate challenge" makes us happy.  We know this with our students of course, but as a school leader we need to consider this for our teachers as well!

Final thoughts - it was quite fascinating to read that people have about 65,000 thoughts a day.  I did the maths at that's actually 45 thoughts a minute - meaning we have just over a second for each one!  Elena writes:

Thoughts and emotions are visitors who knock on the door of our house.  With meditation we can learn to greet them, acknowledge them, exercise choice about how to relate to them, and then watch them go.  Those thoughts that make you anxious, insecure, irritated or ashamed don't need to stay with you.

Image Credit:  John Hain on Pixabay 

Building a learning community

 

There's a quote about collaboration that I use when leading PYP workshops:

Members of a PYP learning community are open to new ideas, commit to capacity-building, seek a broad range of views, opinions and discussions, and follow transparent decision-making processes. They demonstrate agency through collective ownership, responsibility and accountability for learning and teaching, and transform schools into dynamic learning communities.

I thought about this quote as I was reading Chapter 5 of Onward by Elena Aguilar this morning, and I was thinking about how to best build a strong learning community in schools so that all members of the community feel connected to others, listened to, trusted, believed in and encouraged.  Such a community would be a dynamic place indeed, as we could learn together and try out new things safely.  Strong learning communities are what makes our working life rewarding - and these communities include educators, students and parents.  

Elena starts this chapter reviewing Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, with physical needs at the bottom followed by safety and health.  Further up the pyramid is the need for love, a sense of belonging and feeling esteemed.  Right at the top is the need for self-actualisation and reaching our potential.  She also cites the work of Matthew Lieberman who points out that people cannot meet their basic needs by themselves - we all start our lives needing a caregiver who can provide these - so his argument is that at the bottom of the pyramid should be social connection, as this is what helps us to survive.

I've worked in a number of different schools across Europe and Asia, and for sure the most enjoyable places to work were those that were strong on social connections.  These schools were ones where teachers seemed to stay a long time, and where the students thrived.  I'm still connected to teachers (some of whom are still working at the same school) where I started international teaching in 1989.  I'm also still connected to teachers and students from my time in Thailand - 13 years after leaving that school I'm still getting news from "my" class (two of them recently got engaged, one got married,  and one - believe it or not - is still living in the same city and she has two children who now also attend that school!)

This is interesting, because teaching can be a very isolating profession - you can go into your classroom and close the door and have very little contact with others outside.  However we know that building relationships with peers and students (and their families) is essential, and in addition new teachers need mentors and coaches to support them - this not only helps them to develop their pedagogy but also enhances their commitment to teaching.

When I was training to be a Cognitive Coach  I remember reading a book by Bryk and Schneider about trust in schools.  This is fundamental to building a learning community.   I refer to this work often when leading workshops about collaboration, as it's important to understand that trust is built on integrity (aligning our actions with our words) and on competence.  Studies show that when there is high relational trust among adults in a school, the students also thrive.  When trust is evident in schools people interact with each other in kind ways, they care about each other both personally and professionally, and they believe in the abilities and willingness of others in the learning community.  

How to build a community?  Elena offers the following 4 strategies:

Refine communication - in particular listen.  Be mindful of where your mind is while you are listening - is your heart open or are you engaging in judgement and impatience, or is it that you have stopped listening because you want to jump in and offer advice and solutions?  Elena points out that listening is at the centre of healthy social relationships.  Also important is what she refers to as expansive listening, which involves asking generous questions, and inviting honesty and dignity.

Learn from body language - because non-verbal communication is stronger than our words.  This includes posture, gestures and facial expressions and trust diminishes if there is a mismatch between a person's words and his/her non-verbals.  We know that in general the physical expression of emotions look the same worldwide, but we also know that all cultures have specific meaning around different aspects of body language (when to look someone in the eye, when to shake hands etc), and we need to be aware of this.

Focus on cultural competence - be aware of your own cultural identity and beliefs about differences as well as your unconscious biases.

Address conflict - because if it is not addressed it will grow and spread.  For example gossip can fuel toxic cultures in which even the most resilient people cannot thrive.  Also worth noting here is that not all conflict is unhealthy!  Healthy conflict can be an exchange of ideas, a sincere asking of questions, and a genuine willingness to listen and learn - but healthy conflict can only survive in a situation where there is a high degree of trust, vulnerability and courage.

Finally Elena addresses fear - which she says is pervasive in schools.  Teachers are often afraid of the consequences if students don't score well in tests:  they are afraid they are not doing a good job and are afraid of being criticised.  Many teachers are also afraid that their hard work and contributions are not acknowledged, or that their experience and perspective are not welcome.  Fear needs to be tackled as it has no place in a learning community - in particular it holds teachers back from asking for help because they fear being judged or rejected.  Fear might also be holding teachers back from advocating for the changes that need to be made to transform schools.

Empathy is one of the most important components of healthy relationships.  When community members have a high level of empathy for one another, people regulate their own behaviour and there is more compassion, forgiveness, acceptance and kindness.

Image Credit:  Gerd Altmann on Pixabay

Telling your story

Today, with war raging in Ukraine following the country being invaded by Russia, one very brave Russian journalist spoke out.  Marina Ovsyannikova, who works at the Russian Channel 1 TV news, decided she wanted to tell her story.  In a video she explained that her father was from Ukraine and her mother from Russia. She referred to the Ukrainians as her "brothers" and because it is now illegal to refer to the Russian invasion of another country as a war, she decided to protest on a live news programme because with such strict censorship in the country it was the only way she could get her message out.  She therefore walked into the news broadcast with a sign saying "NO WAR".  She called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a war and urged ordinary Russian people to protest against it.  Knowing what has happened to other protesters in Russia, she is a remarkably brave woman to speak out against what she referred to as a fratricidal war.

This story set the scene as I was reading the next chapter in the book Onward for the PYP Bookclub.  Actually this chapter was more about the stories we tell ourselves, and how through empowering stories we can create optimism, however the protest on Russian TV resonated with my reading because one of the things we are challenged to do is to "tell the story of what is happening.  If you don't, other people will do it for you and you might not like their narrative."

So let's have a think about the stories we tell ourselves now .... Elena Aguilar writes "If you want to shift the way you feel, you must shift the way you think".  This is not so easy to do, especially as many of us engage in unhelpful, distorted thinking - and these patterns of thought are difficult to see because they are habitual - we have thought like this for many years and so we are not even aware of them anymore.  Examples of distorted thinking include black and white thinking (the sort of all or nothing thinking where there is no middle ground), jumping to conclusions without knowing all the facts, having unrealistic expectations, excessively focusing on the negative aspects of a person, situation or experience, seeing worst-case scenarios and personalisation of any negative thoughts (thinking "it must be my fault").  Basically if we want to abandon these stories that don't serve us, we need to craft some new stories or mental models that we want to live in.

The first suggestion for doing this is to try using affirmations - to push your brain to form new clusters of "positive thought" neurons.  For example you can tell yourself that difficult times pass and that you will get through this.  You can tell yourself that you are valuable.  You can tell yourself that every day you are becoming a better teacher.

Another suggestion is intention setting where you make a statement about how you are going to experience something.  For example you can tell yourself that you are going to be kind and patient, or that you are going to be listening carefully in collaborative planning meetings.  Setting an intention tells you how YOU want to be in a situation and that is something that you do have control over.  There is a wonderful quote shared in this chapter from Rebecca Solnit:

A free person tells her own story.  A valued person lives in a society in which her story has a place.

Returning to the start of this blog post, we do need to consider stories being told and the truth behind them.  For example throughout history people have told dehumanising narratives to disempower others - a good example of this is the colonial powers who crafted stories about the cognitive inferiority of the inhabitants of those places they colonised as a way of justifying their exploitation.  Stories are being told right now about people in Ukraine being neo-Nazis as a way of Russia justifying invading their country.  Destructive dominant narratives silence the stories of others.  In the example of Maria Ovsyannikova, she now says "I'm ashamed that I allowed myself to tell lies from the television screen."  In Russia right now, true stories about the war are being silenced, discredited and destroyed.  However, there is hope.  Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tells us that stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that dignity.  Listening to the stories of others can be an act of solidarity.

As a coach I'm asking myself what do I do when I hear viewpoints in coaching conversations that I disagree with.  How can I listen to these stories with an open heart and an open mind?  How can I attempt to understand why someone believes something that I know to be false?  In fact Aguilar tells us that we don't have to agree, we simply need to listen to what a person thinks and to be curious about where these beliefs come from.  

Within schools there are lots of stories and lots of areas where people disagree.  Examples include what to teach, how to teach, what is worth assessing, how best to manage student behaviour and so on.  Generally we are not good at talking about these things that we disagree with.  However we do need to examine some of these assumptions about schools and also we need to be aware of the stories we are telling ourselves.  Every time we interpret an event we craft a story.  We can choose to craft a story that boosts our resilience or we can choose to tell a story that depletes it.  As Aguilar writes, "the stories we craft predict our futures, encapsulate our legacies and impact our resilience.  You have a choice, so tell powerful stories."

Listening

 I'm still playing catch up with ToddleTIES.  I wan't able to attend the Masterclass session Being known, loved, safe, and successful - The role of collaboration in inclusion by Ochan Kusuma Powell and Jennifer Wong-Powell because of the time difference - but how great that I could listen to it today instead.  So much of this resonated with me but I was especially interested in this slide where Ochan explained about the Chinese word for listening.  

I love the way the Chinese character is broken down into so many of the important parts involved in listening - using your ears to hear what is being said, using your eyes to see the body language of the person who is saying it, giving your undivided attention to the person speaking, using your mind to think and using your heart to hear.  

Note:  there is no symbol for mouth!  Listening does not involve thinking about what we are going to say next!

Feeling emotional

When I reflect back on my journey as a coach, I think the most important lesson I learned was to paraphrase the emotion that someone was experiencing, before paraphrasing what a person has actually said.  I've used this over and over again in my daily life as well as professionally, so that it has become part of who I am.  The reason it is important is because you have to first acknowledge the existing reality of a person before you can coach them to move forward.  It allows you to express understanding in an empathetic and non-judgemental way.  Only after acknowledging the emotion that a person is feeling, can they be liberated enough to move forward.

This brings me to Chapter 2 of the PYP Bookclub reading Onward by Elena Aguilar.  Here she talks about understanding and accepting emotions because this allows you to see where you can - and cannot - influence a situation.  It helps you to let go of what is outside of your control.  As a coach, one of the things I find difficult still is not getting caught up in the emotions of others.  At times we have to hear difficult, even traumatic, testimonies, and acknowledging a person's feelings about these is the first step to helping them to explore their own emotions.  

Elena writes about how emotions are reactions to an event.  She describes the 6 part cycle of an emotion, which I'm summarising below:

1. An external event happens and this can also trigger internal thoughts and memories.
2. You interpret the event - your mind makes sense of what has happened.
3.  The event and your interpretation lead to a physical response in your body.
4. Alongside this physical response, you feel an urge to do something.  You may or may not act on this impulse.
5. You may act - and at this point you may also feel out of control of your behaviour.
6. The original emotion starts to affect other emotions, thoughts and behaviours.  You might need time to process the original emotion, or perhaps a secondary emotion is triggered.

Here's the thing - learning to identify where you are in the cycle is important because you can interrupt the cycle at any step.  Although emotions feel incredible strong, we know they are also temporary.  Resilient people can rebound quickly once they understand the emotion is temporary and that they are in charge of the cycle.

Sometimes emotions are regarded as positive or negative, and even more important culture can determine how, where and when emotions can be expressed.  A person's age, gender and race can all lead to other people interpreting these emotions in different ways.  In fact our emotions are not either good or bad - however the way we respond to our emotions can cause problems.

There has been a lot of interest in emotional intelligence over a number of years.  This can be defined as self-awareness (recognising your own feelings), self-management (deciding how to respond to emotions, social awareness (recognising the feelings of others) and social management (forming healthy relationships, managing conflicts, collaborating etc.).  Emotional intelligence is learned:  we can all learn to understand our emotions and develop strategies to respond to them.  However one of the first things we need to do is to actually identify our feelings and name the emotions.  When I was training to be a Cognitive Coach I remember hearing that there are 4 main emotions: sad, mad, glad and afraid - and that all other emotions are greater or lesser states of these.  However emotions are hard to define because they are so complex and multi-layered, and they come in waves and varying intensities.  In Elena's book she has a list of emotions in Appendix C where she breaks down the emotions into 8 core emotions: fear, anger, sadness, shame, jealousy, disgust, happiness and love.  The lists with the longest labels for these 8 are sadness and happiness, however it's interesting to know that of the 8 core emotions there is only one set that seems positive.  As a coach it's important to be able to name emotions.  For example I might say "you are feeling anxious" and the person I'm talking to might reply "no, actually I'm terrified" which is a stronger intensity.  It is only once we name the emotion that we can made a decision about what best to do.

When I talk to teachers, especially after 2 years of disrupted education, I hear so much about how teachers are tired, stressed and overwhelmed.  Interestingly, these are not emotions in themselves, they are indicators of emotional states as they are the symptoms that arise from emotions.  The danger is that stress, anxiety and depression can turn into burnout, where teachers feel exhausted, apathetic, frustrated, angry and depressed - a dissatisfaction with teaching or life in general.  It's important to deal with this.  We need to boost our resilience through taking care of ourselves, for example sleeping more or taking more time off.  Emotions that stick around too long can turn into moods, and moods can turn into emotional problems such as depression or anxiety, when teachers feel they have little support.  Research has shown that about 10% of teachers suffer from depression.  This not only creates stress for the teacher, but also negatively impacts the climate of the classroom and so also impacts the students.  There are more long-term impacts on health as well - more headaches, indigestion, insomnia for example - and we know that stress has a role to play in the progression of many medical conditions.  Pay attention to how you feel physically - it will be mirroring how you are feeling emotionally!

Although I mentioned earlier that most of the emotions listed are negative, it's important to recognise that there is often a good reason for this:  in fact as humans we often benefit from negative emotions as they can motivate us to act, solve problems and also tune in to what others are feeling.  Emotions also help us to build and maintain social bonds.  Over the course of a day - let's say a working day for teachers - hundreds or even thousands of decisions are being made.  Every decision we make can either boost our resilience or deplete it.  Our resilience will determine whether we bounce back from adversity or not.  Therefore understanding our emotions will help us in deciding our options, to put our energies into what we can change and to accept what we can't change.

Photo credit:  Gino Crescoli on Pixabay

Streamlining the curriculum for the modern learner - What to cut, keep and create

I've been enjoying some great ToddleTIES session today as well (yes - I know I've also been leading a workshop but I hopped straight onto the ToddleTIES platform afterwards to catch up with all the learning there!)

This afternoon I've been listening to Heidi Hayes Jacobs who has been talking about streamlining the curriculum.  She discusses how learning has changed as a result of the pandemic and now that most of us are back in schools again there are some ways we can respond to what happened over the past 18 months to 2 years: 

1.  Recover - catch up.  In the UK this seems to be the main thrust at the moment.  Just this week in the news there have been reports about learning loss - with some areas of the country being harder hit than others by the achievement gap.  The government's response has been to employ catch up tutors - but evidence is showing that this is not proving to be very effective.

2. Refresh - take onboard some lessons that we learned and continue to use them.  One example of this could be the way we have embraced new technology.  We don't need to go back to the same-old, same-old as before the pandemic because we know there are effective new way of reaching our learners that include technology.

3.  Reset - have a good think about what have we learned and what is no longer relevant in the curriculum - as Heidi says, it's bloated and cumbersome and much can be cut or at least cut back to create room for what is really important.

We can't just keep holding on to what we are used to.  Streamlining is essential.  It's not just cutting out, but we streamline to make the curriculum more efficient.  We need to decide what to cut out,  what to cut back, what to consolidate, what new to create.  Not everything is necessary in the curriculum.  We should cut back on many things,  though obviously important technical and cognitive skills should be kept.  We should also consider how we can bring in the voice of the students as we are thinking creatively about what needs to be in the curriculum - especially how to do make it relevant for them.  We cannot keep adding on new things unless we cut out, cut back and consolidate.

One important lesson from online learning is that parents don't really understand the curriculum documents or even the instructions sent home during online learning - curriculum and lesson planning should be more manageable for teachers and should be understood by both learners and their parents.  Therefore, Heidi argues, curriculum documents should be written in language that students can understand including "I can" statements for the learning goals.  We need to ask who the learning is for - it's for the students - so we need to consider them as the audience when we write.  We need feedback from both parents and students on our curriculum documents - in particular if students don't know what the target is they can't hit it!  By having them give input into the curriculum they can participate in their own learning and self-monitor their progress.   They need to see where they are going and understand how they are going to get there.

Image credit:  Maki on Pixabay

Better coaching conversations

What an absolute joy to be in the ToddleTIES session with Jim Knight.  Just sharing a few screenshots here and will post about my thoughts later.

The future is created by children, it's not waiting for them to walk in.

Wow!  I've been involved in a school visit all day today, but have just found time to join TIES and to participate in the Learners without borders - possibilities of a new education session by Yong Zhao.  Yong explained that we have learned a lot from the Covid legacy and one important we have learned is that teachers can change.  Educators have transformed themselves as they switched from face-to-face to online learning.  We know that we can respond to emergencies and we have experienced new learning possibilities and new ways of communicating with colleagues and parents and students.  But here's the question: how can we learn from this and use this experience to intentionally design a new form of education?

Yong Zhao explains that we have a dead curriculum and we impose it on all our children - if they don't succeed we blame both the teachers and the students - but we need to ask ourselves if the curriculum standards and assessments are truly valuable for all children.  We need to question the idea of a curriculum.

He mentions that it is not enough to have talents - you need something to trigger that talent through your experiences.  We believe we can teach children anything, but how good can they become at everything?  We are all different and we have talents in different areas, as well as different personalities and desires, diverse life experiences.  What works for one child may not work for other children.  This is the problem for education with one curriculum.  We imagine the curriculum will get children ready for the future - but there is no evidence for this: the future is created by children, not waiting for them to walk in.

Our education does not prepare students for the future - it is for them to create a future - and we want them to be good creators of our future.  Children are naturally intentional and diverse and then they come to a one size fits all curriculum and this doesn't work.  Governments and organisations are working hard to impose the same thing on all children at the same time so that they reach the same level by giving them the same knowledge and skills.  However many of our assessments create borders - creating "good" and "bad" students.  We need to think about assessment being short-term and it may not capture what we want our children to learn.

Looking at data, it's not just a question of scores on tests, it's also a question of confidence.  Asian students often outscore American students, but they have less confidence and less enjoyment with their learning.  There are different ways of driving up test scores, but these methods may well be hurting the education of the students as they may lose interest in education or lose confidence in themselves.  In fact, PISA scores have a negative correlation with entrepreneurship, and high PISA scores have a negative correlation with life satisfaction.  This is not where we want to go long-term.  

For example you may have "productive failures" where students cannot do something now, but may be able to do so in the future.  PBL, for example, builds collaboration, creativity and resilience.  It won't give as quick a hike in test scores as direct instruction, but in the long-term the skills transfer into the future.

You need to question education.  You need to recognise there are multiple outcomes (some are short-term, some are long-term). There are instructional outcomes which are not the same as educational outcomes - students may memorise facts but may not be curious.  There are also cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes, for example whether you can do something or whether you want to do something.  

All children are natural learners.  They are divers and are intentional.  We cannot have the same curriculum and tests for all children as they need self-determination:

Autonomy - They need to be responsible for their own learning, and we as adults should help and support them and create opportunities.  Students are capable and agentic, and they cab do a lot.

Mastery - Do students feel they have control over their learning and that they can improve?  Students need to believe that they can learn.

And don't forget that learning happens in relationships.  

Last year Yong Zhau wrote the book Learners Without Borders.  In this he challenged us to think about flexibility in the curriculum: it should not be imposed on all students but instead maybe only 1/3 of the curriculum is useful in this regard.  Another 1/3 of the school's curriculum can address the school's unique context.  But what if we let students decide the rest of the curriculum?  Can we learn globally and work out what the borders are for all children?  Can we change the role of teachers, and having children spending their whole times in grade levels with others of the same age.  Can we apply flexibility to the curriculum, testing, school time, facilities, the roles of teacher, and the roles of students?  

Learning online has become normal for students as a result of Covid.  We can expand the territory of learning and it's important to consider what education we can recreate post-Covid.  We should not be misled by the notion of learning loss - instead we need to meet students where they are psychologically, socially, emotionally and cognitively.  We should be paying attention to all educational outcomes not just test scores.  We want students to own their own learning - with confidence, curiosity and resourcefulness - they are partners who can design learning.  We should not forget the value of remote learning - many children are very happy with this and many kids thrive in this environment.  We need to build schools back better.  

We must favour our children over curriculum - children are more important than prescribed curriculum - they can learn something if are interested enough later.  Currently we are forcing kids to learn things that may or may not matter,  By doing this, we disregard their diversity and purpose.  We must pay more attention to each individual child.  We cannot just see a classroom controlled by the teacher as the only place to learn.  Educators should become organisers, curators of learning resources in a situation where ALL learning needs to be done by children.  We live in a global world and children should participate in a global environment to learn from and with anyone globally and to learn for anyone globally too. Learning has to be purposeful.  It is always ongoing.  Our job is to become a human educator and to grow with our children.  

Photo Credit - Gerd Altmann on Pixabay

Self-knowledge is true power

 

Various happenings in my life are telling me I need to devote more time to coaching:

• First of all, as mentioned in a post last month, I'm going to be mentoring the European cohort of The Coach.  This will last for an entire academic year and I'm excited to be a part of this to bring coaching to more schools.
• Secondly, our latest PYP Bookclub book is Onward by Elena Aguilar which is focused on nurturing resilience in educators.  I truly believe there is a lot in this book that relates to coaching.
• Finally, today I was contacted by a colleague from India to let me know about Positive Intelligence, a course for coaches.  I'm interested to explore how this can be a great addition to the work I'm already doing.

Going back to the book Onward, I've been reading through Chapter 1 which is entitled Know Yourself.  Over the last few days I've been mulling over this chapter, in particular how teachers who really know themselves see that their behaviours constantly reflect their values and beliefs.  These teachers know what they are good at and what they love doing, and because of this they can navigate the challenges they face when times get tough.  Elena argues that it's the hundreds of little choices we make every day that help us to cultivate resilience.  Our self-knowledge helps us build stronger relationships with others, and by playing to our strengths, our energies are more wisely channelled towards our purpose.

When I lead PYP workshops I often start by asking teachers about why they became - and why they stayed - teachers.  This question taps into those deeply held values about education.  Our core values can often be traced back to our families and include things such as compassion, responsibility, hard work, justice and so on.  It is our values that both drive us forward and also anchor us.  It's only when we act in alignment with our values that we experience integrity.  

It's not only people that can have values.  I often talk about how the IB programmes are driven by the values of the IB mission statement.  Schools also need values that are articulated and lived.  These values will connect all those who work and learn in the school - they will be found in the school's mission statement and should encourage people to take action.

Another aspect of self-knowledge is our personality, which is different from our values.  Values can change and develop throughout our lives, whereas our personalities rarely do.  Understanding our personality is as important as understanding our values because it can illuminate areas where we need to learn and grow.  Being aware of our personality is also important in understanding how we relate to others - conflict can arise with people who have very different personalities from our own.

Another section of Chapter 1 refers to our sociopolitical identity (the social groups to which we belong).  This includes race, ethnicity, gender, class background and so on.  Our identity has been part of us since birth, and it also plays a huge role in how we relate to others.  Being aware of our identity can also help us see our beliefs and values as cultural constructs and it helps us recognise that these beliefs and values may not be universally shared, and may in fact be very biased.  

Elena challenges us to find our strengths and the things we really love to do.  Being aware of our skills helps us to make better decisions and it also helps us to recognise whether or not our skills are being utilised in our current roles.  She tells us we should not ignore our areas for growth, but she recommends we start by considering our strengths because working with our strengths will get us through challenging times.  By knowing our strengths, we will then be able to address the things we need to learn.  It will also enable us to look at what we are doing in our current role and perhaps to consider taking on new roles, based on what we are good at and love doing.  We all know of people who have been nudged up the career ladder, leaving behind the classroom role and students they love, and then find themselves deeply unhappy and dissatisfied in their new roles - this is because the new roles are not ones that fit their strengths and aptitudes.

Finally we need to consider culture (I've already written extensively about The Culture Map by Erin Meyer which was a fantastic book for opening my eyes to why people do things differently).  Culture is the way we do things - for example how we collaborate with each other, how we give and receive feedback, how we make decisions and so on.  

So, we need to consider all these aspects of ourselves to truly gain self-knowledge.  Elena writes, "The better you know yourself, the clearer your purpose becomes .... when hard moments come your eyes will be on the prize - on fulfilling your sense of purpose.  When you need to make decisions and pick your battles you'll be anchored in and emboldened by purpose."  Resilient people, she writes, are firm and clear on their purpose.

Photo Credit:  John Hain on Pixabay