...I'll Be Your Best Friend!

The Cost of Friendship?

Almost daily in my home life, I hear a negotiation going on between the preschoolers I'm privileged to parent.  It sounds something like this: "If you give me that (or go with me, or let me go first), I'll be your best friend!" Even beyond the sing-song-y, self-serving feel behind this refrain, something jumps out at me.  I see a metaphor.  

Schoolhouse Talk

I fear that in education, our unspoken social code will ruin us if we don't address it. The code goes like this: "If I like you, and we've got relationship, it's impolite, gauche, even, to push your thinking regarding the work you do for children."  "Really?" some would say? Really.  It's no different from a good old boy or crony network in any other field.  When we build collegial relationships with colleagues, in many camps it is quietly expected that being "for" our colleagues includes never broaching hard subjects about things like:

• how they treat students
• work ethic/mutual accountability for the work
• keeping promises & carrying weight for the team

...and all manner of matters that humans  in working relationships work through. 

I want to submit to you, friends, we, almost more than other people, should give ourselves a different standard.  Make it our expectation and culture that we'll be courageous enough to have these conversations, respectfully.  The life outcomes of children are at stake.  It's not about adult comfort--it's about us constantly being in a state of improvement for our own sake and theirs. 

Continuous Improvement

In Japan, the business model of kaizen, or continual improvement, was what allowed the nation to develop cars and technology so excellent that they excelled right on past American businesses that settled in their comfort zones and rested on their pre-war laurels.  What if American education had adopted a continuous improvement stance 30 years ago? Where would we be today?

The book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything tells of the drastic drops in hospital deaths which occurred in spaces where staff members were trained to have hard conversations.  Prior to the training, staff would see doctors treat patients without washing their hands, for example, but be afraid to speak up.  The culture of complicity was causing them not to say things that could literally save patients' lives.  But the knowledge they lacked--and what their more powerful colleagues knew but ignored--was hurting someone. Once they learned that liking and respecting colleagues was not mutually exclusive with holding them accountable, things changed.  THIS is what I think education can do!  And it starts with creating our own language.  Stay tuned, because this is on my constant radar, and of course I will share as I hear more and more some of what that language should be...

Love & light,