I recently had the pleasure of teaming up with two of my inquiry-pals, Trevor Mackenzie and Kimberly Mitchell for a ‘fireside chat,’ hosted by Toddle. As always, the conversation with stimulating and affirming and, hopefully, helpful for the audience who had posed some fascinating questions for us to discuss. At one point in the conversation, Trevor explained the way he anchors his practice in his five personal values. It was one of those moments that gave me unexpected pause to ponder … ‘hang on, when did I last do a ‘values check’ on myself?’
We talk a lot about the importance of schools articulating their values and how these values help form principles that underpin actions, but it has been a while since I had stopped to think carefully about my ownvalues as an educator. If I had to identify the five that anchor me as an educator, what would they be? And have they changed over the years? And what difference would it make if I was more explicit and transparent about those values when working with teachers? And, most importantly, do my actions when working with teachers and kids reflect those values?
I found it really stimulating to ponder these questions over the weekend and thought I would take a moment to share the five I finally settled on. These values guide me as an educator with an inquiry stance. They guide me but I know I don’t always successfully honour them when I should, nevertheless, naming them might help that strengthen my actions. I am thinking about my values being like the roots of a tree: anchoring me, growing over time, nurturing me and intertwined with each other.
Curiosity
This will come as no surprise given my passion for inquiry, but I really DO think I hold this value deeply in my life, both in and out of education. Valuing curiosity helps keep my mind open to possibilities. It helps me approach interactions with questions, it promotes a healthy (I think) scepticism and encourages me to keep learning and stay humble. If I truly value curiosity, I welcome learners’ questions and I remain intrigued by their ways of seeing the world. If I value curiosity, I design learning experiences to cultivate that curiosity in others. If I value curiosity, I remain curious about myself as a learner and a teacher, hopefully always open to discovering new ideas and ways of thinking and being prepared to shed what no longer serves me and my colleagues well.
Connection (with the natural world and with people)
This is a big one, and one I think many educators share. For an inquiry-based educator, it is our willingness to build strong connections with learners and to each other that fuels our practice. Inquiry does not work well in an environment where people feel they need to keep arm’s length from others, rather it is unashamedly dependent on strong, authentic relationships that deepen over time. In order to sustain these human connections, I need to ensure they are authentic and they are nurtured. Ironically, having thousands of on-line connections can reduce the quality of those connections nearest and dearest to us or even give us a false sense of ‘being connected’. I think I have been made very aware of how strongly I value connection on returning to onsite work with staff and kids and experiencing, once again, the way true connection fuels our teaching souls!
My connection to nature is where I find personal renewal and purpose. This is an easy value to talk about but a more challenging one to truly live in practice. If I value connection to nature, I need to honour that connection in my everyday life, in my teaching, in decisions I make as a consumer and in where I choose to spend my time. What I do know is that without re-connecting with the natural world on a regular basis, I feel depleted. This is one value I am trying to consciously strengthen in my conversations with teachers, the resources I share and my work with children. Talk that needs more walk!
Integrity
The older I get, the more significant this value is to me. I wonder if it would have made the top five list in my early career? I doubt it. There are so many threads woven into the concept of integrity, but I think the rise and rise of social media in education has a lot to do with the need for this value in my life. More then ever before, material is being produced, shared and sold without acknowledgemen or substantial research. The internet is awash with shiny, shallow offerings produced for (and by) teachers that look tantalizingly engaging but lack little substance or credibility. I think this value helps me to be discerning and maintain a focus on quality wherever possible. In many ways, valuing integrity helps me honour the other values. Am I truly living these out or simply talking and writing about them? To value integrity requires courage. It means calling our injustice when you see it, it means asking hard questions around the planning table even when it feels uncomfortable, it means staying ‘above the line’ and resisting the temptation to compromise your beliefs for the sake of a smoother or easier process. I feel it when I fall below the line – we all do – but the more conscious I am of where that line is for me, the better teacher I can be.
Depth
I struggled to find the right word for this one. But it really is a guiding value. When I am working with teachers and with children, my aim is always to get beyond the surface and to find time to dig more deeply into whatever we are thinking about. Over the years, I have come to understand more fully, the power of space, time and silence to nurture reflection and to remind myself to look, listen and think more closely and more deeply into whatever I am exploring. Give me a substantive conversation over a worksheet any day and loosen me from the shackles of ‘covering’ rather than uncovering. I have come to value the inevitable complexities that emerge when an idea is given time and space to reveal itself to a group. Rather than be alarmed by confusion, tension or uncertainty, I think experience can help us lean it to the fog, and stay with it knowing the view will be all the more clear and profound when it lifts. When I am in the presence of educators unafraid to go deep, I know it brings out the best in my own thinking and helps me encourage young learners to deepen their thinking in the classroom.
Creativity
I think this core value is one of the reasons I was attracted to teaching in the first place! I adore the creativity of being an educator! It was this value that I also think drew me to inquiry all those years ago. There is nothing more compelling, for me, than working with teachers and children to design experiences for learning and to witness the amazing range of ways that learning can be expressed. Because I value creativity, I need to design experiences that allow learners to communicate in a myriad of ways. Because I value creativity, I need to stay open to different ways of seeing. Because I value creativity, I need to ask questions that nurture it in others .. What if? How might? How could? Because I value creativity, I am disinclined to use scripted materials, programs, pre-planned units or any ‘cookie-cutter’ activities. Teachers are amazingly creative people and deserve the freedom to design for learning in response to what they see and hear in their students. Creativity brings ‘alive-ness’ to teaching. Creativity brings joy.
So, there they are. At least there they are right now: curiosity, connection, integrity, depth and creativity. They are the amongst values that brought me to inquiry learning and the values that underpin the ways I approach it. Of course, like any of these kinds of lists, it is impossible to really ascertain what your ‘top’ are – I may re-read this tomorrow and think that the other contenders (authenticity, humility, playfulness, beauty, agency…) should have made it onto the top 5, but the exercise alone is such a useful one.
I am so grateful to Trevor for his prompt and hope that by sharing these thoughts with you, I may prompt a similar reflection. Exploring our personal values and sharing them with colleagues seem to me to be paramount to effective professional learning. As has been said by many, one of the reasons behind failures for ‘innovation’ to be sustained in classrooms is when the personal values of the educator is in conflict with the spirit or intention of the innovation. If you strongly value ‘compliance’, for example, (a valid value particularly in some cultures) then approaches that are all about nurturing agency will be harder to implement.
So, what are your top five? Do they successfully guide your practice? How do we manage ourselves when our core values conflict with the school’s values? When was the last time you did a personal values ‘check in’? What might others assume you value from the way you teach and interact with children, colleagues and parents? Have your values as an educator changed over time?