In our last edition of the UnSpeakables Project, my colleague, Greg Bamford, wrote a piece about the tension that exists between adult well-being and adult comfort. If you haven’t had a chance to read it, I highly recommend you click here and take a look. Greg makes the point that in schools, we sometimes confuse discomfort associated with change with the neglect of our personal health and wellness, often caused by the glorification of busyness. The two things are different and have drastically different effects on our physical and mental wellbeing and on how we feel about our work. While discomfort can be productive, chronic unhealthy habits can lead us to burnout, anxiety and sickness.
We can’t help but wonder if adult “comfort” may be a thing of the past - but this doesn’t mean the end of adult wellbeing. In fact, it may be the opposite. As we get used to being uncomfortable, it will be more essential to attend to the aspects of well-being that we can control - getting sleep, eating well, moving our bodies and connecting with other humans. We will need to prioritize these conditions for ourselves, for the educators in our community and even for our students, in order to have the capacity to manage the VUCA environment we will be living with for the coming years.
The foreseeable future is going to demand that we, the adults in the community, hold ourselves and each other capable of doing more and being better than we think we can do and be. We are going to have to find the joy, pleasure and reward in doing really hard things. The future is not going to be a rapid return to normalcy, and it is going to require us to be more adept at managing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
The future is going to challenge educators and our identity like never before. Feeling like an expert and being a knower have been the hallmarks of educators. What is our value to students and families if we don’t know the answer, if we don’t deliver knowledge, and if we don’t look like we have it all figured out? Our identity as the knowledge provider and content expert and the predictability of the classroom experience and even the curriculum itself has been a major source of comfort for teachers and school leaders for decades. COVID, the divisive political climate, a national reckoning around racial injustice, and climate change events around the country form the backdrop to our new context. Can we ever go back to the classrooms of yesterday? The answer is clearly, no.
Three summers ago, we created a program called UnMastered. The primary goal of the program was to build discomfort muscles in the participants and to help participants wade into ambiguity and uncertainty and build capacity to hold themselves in “a productive range of distress.” The program was online (yes! pre-COVID) yet highly personal, experiential and place-based. Participants read, watched and listened to materials that challenged their assumptions and, well, made them feel uncomfortable. They also had the chance to pursue comfort challenges that were visceral and ratcheted up the discomfort. We encouraged them to unlearn and question their practices as teachers and learners.
UnMastered 2021 is open for registration and we are seeking participants who are wanting to build their capacity to manage ambiguity, complexity, volatility and uncertainty. UnMastered is a degree in creative disobedience that will challenge participants to form deep connections with fellow changemakers and develop the collaborative superpowers and emotional competencies to lead their teams or key initiatives forwards. In the summer after a year that has tested us all, we will employ a special focus on leading change in the post-COVID landscape.
This four week summer program centers on personal transformation. A 40 person cohort will experience 4 collaborative challenges over 4 weeks. Each challenge will build the capacity in the participants to practice radical collaboration, cultivate healthy group life, and facilitate change in their community. Each participant will leave the experience with an action plan to realize a critical initiative for their organization, along with a renewed set of habits, mindsets, and skill sets for moving groups to reach their fullest potential. New this summer is the opportunity to get a credential from the Rejection Academy - L+D’s department of Disappointment and Inadequacy and Embarrassment, a.k.a. “The Die Lab” - where all of our hopes and dreams go to die. Here we learn to fail in a way that does not prohibit curiosity. It’s getting “failure fit” one rejection at a time.
UnLearn. UnMaster. Unspeakable. UnComfortable. UnCertain. If you are noticing a pattern here, you are onto something. It is what we at L+D like to call the “Power of Un” - the ability to grapple with opposites and with tensions with finesse. It is also letting go of how you have always done things - one might say UnDoing - with a little less fear and loss aversion.
If you are looking for an extraordinary program that will allow you to make huge leaps in your own leadership and build your discomfort muscle, join us for UnMastered this summer!
And just a reminder,
L+Doer's Unite Members get 15% off of registration. If you are a member, celebrate. If you aren't, then join!
And just a couple of other things to tempt you !
Next Friday, learn from an UnMaster!
Erin O'Connell, an amazing educator
from The Pennington School for a conversation about what is next for schools in this VUCA landscape. Erin was a member of the first UnMastered Cohort and she is currently a L+D Fellow. She will be leading the
Monthly Conversation Series on Friday March 5 at 10:00amPT/1:00 ET.
"As we find ourselves in the deep snowbanks and cold temperatures of February, many of us may be feeling stuck, longing for a pre-pandemic world. We know even as we dream of returning to “normal”, a new normal will be required of each of us and of our students, teachers, and institutions. Let’s begin the necessary conversation of “what’s next”, sharing, what we have learned about schools and education, and yes, ourselves. Together we can imagine and begin to sort out, all that we have learned."
And we are now accepting applications for the
Leadership+Design Fellowship. The
Fellowship is a chance to join a diverse cohort of seekers, mavericks, and questioners for a year of learning, collaboration, and creating the future of teaching and learning. Check it out!
