Finding Our Voice:
If We're So Connected Why Do We Feel So Alone?
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing. (Rollo May)
If We're So Connected Why Do We Feel So Alone?
Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy, and mutual valuing. (Rollo May)
wiI consider myself a leader –I don’t let others silence who I am,” Gabi told me. This is a story about our voice. Appreciative Leadership listens to the voices of others. It creates the space for us to share. Appreciative inquiry stems from a place of deep connection: “I am because you are.” We aren’t alone.
In our classrooms, teachers listen to children, and children listen to teachers, but we, us adults, don’t always listen to each other. We don’t share our struggles. We don’t share what we hope for. In the absence of sharing we make up stories. And the stories that we tell ourselves aren’t always true. Our true stories matter, deeply. Listening matters. We matter. That’s what I learned. My project was about how we value our collective voice: children, parents, teachers. My ask of the community was simple. A tree painted on a wall. An invitation to families and teachers to post their hopes, what they learned, or what they were grateful for, on its branches. Connection happens when we listen. Sometimes, it happens in moments of “small communication”. Sometimes it happens during home visits. This time it took a tree. When I shared with parents what teachers had said they valued “teachers showing us their voices.” When I shared with teachers what parents had told me they said,“ It feels good to know that families care.” Why does this matter? It matters because schools are uniquely positioned to be places of invitation and learning, of sharing, and growing. It matters because when I asked staff what they valued most, they said, overwhelmingly, that what they valued most, was building community. |
Community can’t be built without communication. It can’t be built if we don’t make the space to hear each other’s voices. Community is built when we share our vulnerabilities and hopes. “We’re all learning here, other Moms, other kids —other ways of doing- that's key.”.
And we shouldn't blame lack of connection solely on language or culture. Sometimes we find our voice in a country and language that isn’t our own, but one that is more accepting of our child’s learning challenges. “You say that your culture is better” a parent told me. “You discover more cultures” and you find “it is not as fixed” not “as well as (you) would like it to be.”. Culture can be “for good and for bad”. What if we all believed we have the opportunity to make our school culture what we want it to be? What if we believed that all of us — families and professionals— have our own unique voices, and all of us truly are leaders? Teachers talk with children. Parents talk with children. But children talk with and listen to us both, because they care for, and love us, both. Children are innate leaders in building connection and community. Shouldn’t we be, too? |