Thursday, December 9, 2010
Intense Moral Purpose
To have an Intense Moral Purpose mindset, leaders must be passionately focused on the quality and equity of education. Leaders must be intensely committed to making a difference in the lives of young people. These leaders need to stay focused on creating success for these students whatever the odds are against them. I believe, in order to make a difference for these young people, leaders need to build emotional connections with students, especially the vulnerable ones. These students need to believe and feel that leaders care for their well-being, intellectually, emotionally and socially. Leaders, I admired were able to make connections with students and consequently make a difference for them. Does the emotional connection have to come first prior to students having high quality learning experiences?
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I believe an emotional connection does have to made before studente will have high quality learning experiences because as human beings our experiences that remember the most are ones that high emotional value. If you think back to your most vivid memories that are usually ones that had a high emotional impact on you. I believe it is the same for learning. If students are engaged it is because they have emotionally connected in some way.
ReplyDeleteI sense an emotional connection supports having high quality learning in all circumstances. I don’t think it is a requirement for high quality learning to happen per se. In some cases it may open the floodgates to learning and in others it may just collapse time and speed up the process. I see a gradient. With kindergarten students the relationship between emotional connection and high quality learning would be different than with graduate students. The lack of emotional connection can foster fear, a sense of not being part of the process, and most of all an experience of not being seen. A good emotional connection supports relaxation, openness, a sense of belonging and a personal validation.
ReplyDeleteI believe the most powerful element of the emotional connection is that of being seen. From my understanding, in the Zulu tradition a greeting upon meeting would be something like, “I see you, John” responded to by “I see you, Jack”. I have personally experienced this process on the Dene or Navaho reservation in Arizona where upon driving to visit a family, we pulled up to the home, turned the vehicle motor off, and sat waiting for the door to open. We waited, in the sun, what I was told was the customary 15 minutes or so until the trailer door opened and were greeted by a member of the family. This stopping and waiting allowed us to come into the presence of the home space we were entering, absorbing and honoring its existence, opening to its differences and mysteries. Many of us may have experienced someone coming into our space and dumping their world into ours without even the glimmer of a sense that we existed, even in our own environment. The experience of being “seen” by someone opens a space that is favorable to high quality learning and creativity.