The HLC (Home Learning Community) is an independent study program situated within Innovations Academy, a K-8 public charter school in San Diego.  Among our many goals for this program, my colleagues and I continually seek to connect home and school in new innovative ways by encouraging families to empower each of their children to create a personal learning plan, and then supporting them in their efforts to use this living document as a guide to inform their daily choices. The challenge this year has been to present the learning plan in a way that makes it relevant to each family’s learning journey, so that they view it as a tool in a life-long process rather than an end product or destination.  We cannot legally require that they utilize a learning plan to participate in our program. We just believe strongly that students and families will naturally want to make use of one, if they experience the benefits for themselves. That’s why for the first time, we have decided to include support structures to encourage families to achieve this goal by creating the space for them to do so.  We designed the process so that participants receive the opportunity to cycle like a continuous loop through action, reflection and revision. First, we start the school year with parent workshops to create the plan that guides the learning choices for the year (action). Then midyear, I co-facilitate another parent workshop with the intention of creating a safe place for parents to revisit their child’s learning plan goals (reflection). Later that week, families meet with me to make changes as needed to the learning plan (revision), before continuing with the rest of the year (action again).  The year ends with another opportunity to reflect and revise; when we complete progress reports that include student, parent and teacher voice in the context of the learning plan goals. This fieldwork reflection focuses on the midyear parent workshop because that meeting afforded me the opportunity to practice facilitation skills utilizing protocols with a group of parents for the first time. I proposed the use of a modified dilemma protocol to my colleagues, because after having experienced its benefit myself for the first time as a participant in the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, I believed that it would address several of the leadership challenges we were facing regarding our goals for the learning plan in the HLC program.

 

Leadership Challenges

 

The adaptive leadership challenges inherent in this change effort require the thoughtful and respectful implementation of support structures for participants. For instance, in order for the learning plan to reach beyond school hours, parents must see its value. More than that, parenting is a full time position requiring deep commitment of heart and soul. As parents, we never feel like we are doing enough for our children. Asking parents to support their child in the creation and implementation of a learning plan can’t be just one more thing to make them feel like they are short changing their children if they don’t do it. There are enough advertisers providing that message. This must be done so that parents feel inspired and supported, not coerced or forced. Ultimately, this means that those actually doing the change must take the lead, in this case the students and their parents. What’s more, it is not nearly as difficult to inspire families to develop a learning plan as it is to encourage them to use it as a tool to hold themselves accountable for achieving their own child’s and family’s goals. “Leadership often involves challenging people to live up their words, to close the gap between their espoused values and their actual behavior (Heifetz, 2004, p.1).” For it to be an effective roadmap, parents need to take responsibility when they deviate from their own goals, and we need to be willing as facilitators to remind them of this. We all make goals and then life happens. The key is to get back on course as soon as possible. Feeling alone only lengthens the time we spend off track. That’s what this mid-year workshop is all about; giving parents the space to share in their struggles and to encourage each other onward. To further the spirit of “we’re all in this together,” my colleagues and I share our challenges with our own family learning plans. See addendum 1. We invite and encourage rather than force them to reflect upon their learning plan and goals by doing it ourselves. By being active participants in the learning plan process ourselves, we provide the opportunity for parents to open up without the fear of judgment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leveraging Diversity

 

Another challenge we face involves bringing diverse people together in the process, getting them to open up and trust as well as listen to each other. That’s because homeschooling is not a cohesive movement of like-minded people, but rather a choice exercised by people of often very diverse backgrounds, differing motivations and opposing philosophies. The leadership challenge remains to help them all see their commonalities, to build bridges of trust and to create a space that affords them the opportunity to leverage their differences equitably. The reason for this as Heifetz (2002) explains, is that by taking into account the “validity of other viewpoints” and by incorporating them into the plan of action, the quality of our own change initiatives will improve (p. 78).  The task remains to establish an equitable environment to help parents see that.

 

Turning to research to guide my next steps proves helpful in this regard and further illustrates the need for protocols. For instance, though no one in the group would ever deliberately disrespect another family or person, research shows that “the ability of individuals to express their culture is related to the power that certain groups are able to wield in the social order (Mclaren, 2009, p.65).” This social order plays out at the subconscious level in many ways, including the often incompatible conversational styles of different cultures.  In addition, there is no way to determine how much this culture of power impacts or informs the interactions between different parents. Delpit in The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Other People’s Children explains that, “those who are less powerful in any situation are most likely to recognize the power variable most acutely.” (Delpit, 1995, p. 26) The same does not hold true for those with unlimited access to the culture of power. “For many who consider themselves members of liberal or radical camps, acknowledging personal power and admitting participation in the culture of power is distinctly uncomfortable.” When reading this quote a few members of our learning community come to mind who, though world embracing in their vision, belong exclusively to the culture of power. Unintentionally, their communication style often reflects this and could serve as a barrier to effective consultation. And what about the impact of unspoken negative stereotype threats on our ability to function at our best in a group? Steele’s extensive research in this regard reveals that the fear of being perceived as the representative of an entire group can adversely impact an individual’s performance on many levels, whether h/she is consciously aware of it or not.  The research study focused on black college students. However, he goes on to remind us that we are all at risk, because in some way we all belong to a group that is perceived in a negative light by someone (Steele, 1999 p. 3). It’s important to keep this in mind when bringing ethnically and culturally diverse groups of people together.

No matter what the cause, conversational styles clearly differ and unearthing the causes extends beyond the scope of this workshop. Therefore, the intent is not to bring equity issues to conscious awareness, but to minimize or eliminate their potentially negative effects during the workshop. That way parents have the opportunity to authentically support each other in their common mission to empower their children to become lifelong learners. In bringing this eclectic group together, my colleagues and I need to provide the support to “constrain behavior in order to enhance experience (McDonald, 2004, p. 8).” By inviting the parents to join us in this workshop, we are asking them to trust that we will make it a safe, positive experience for them; that we will provide the space so that they can be their best and take the next steps in accomplishing their goals.  

 

The Protocol: Theoretical Connections

 

Protocols provide the simple, yet powerful tool to do this. Not only do they help address the adaptive leadership challenges in regards to “…mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive (Heifetz, 2009, p.14),” but also, they establish that culture of equity at the subconscious level that allows people of diverse backgrounds and lifestyle choices to collaborate and help each other. I have come to realize that they are the bridge that allows people to walk over misunderstanding that often flow from subconscious cultural divides. However, when I first read a protocol that we were to use in a group critique process introduced during my graduate work, I internally scoffed at its apparent rigidity. It seemed so artificial on paper. Then, I experienced the process and realized immediately its powerful impact for authentically achieving positive results for a group. I wanted to bring this tool to our HLC program, because I saw its ability to inspire universal participation. There is a power in the consultative process when all voices are heard. Unfortunately, whether as a result of the culture of power that Delpit outlines or because of the threat of negative stereotypes that Steele’s research unearthed, it remains a challenge to get people in a group to share equally. It might even just be learning styles. Some of us learn by listening and some of us need to talk it out. At any rate, without protocols it seems that we waste so much time misreading each other’s nonverbal cues. Another aspect I have come to appreciate about protocols is their ability to keep the conversation elevated, focused and productive. In the Power of Protocols, the authors explain that “In forcing transparency, protocols again teach us habits that we wish we already had; to take time to listen and notice, to take the time to think about what we want to say, to work without rushing, to speak less, or speak up more (McDonald, 2004, p. 7).”  By fully attending to each other’s perspectives, a group’s consultation becomes more oriented towards a solution versus inadvertently serving the individual participants’ subconscious needs to reenact unspoken perceptions of self.

 

The Protocol in Practice: Adapting to the Context of Our Reality

 

In preparation for the workshop, I considered several aspects of the planning. First, I needed to consult with my colleagues since we were co-facilitating the workshop and they had never experienced a protocol in this context. We did our own condensed protocol and they immediately realized its benefits and potential. Like me, they also saw the challenge of facilitating the workshop with a large group, when no one else had experience with the process. However, we all agreed that with written guidelines, the parents could experience the benefits as well. So, we collaborated to adapt the process to our unique setting. That meant considering three things:

• How to encourage attendance.

• How to prepare parents ahead of time.

• What handouts and written guidelines to provide during the workshop.

We decided that to encourage attendance, we needed to make it a meaningful experience for the entire family. Therefore, we scheduled a welcome back time with a light breakfast to allow families who hadn’t seen each other over the long winter break a chance to socialize. Also, we provided workshops for children, so that they could spend meaningful, joyful time learning with friends in a supervised setting. We chose workshops with the children’s interests and learning plans in mind. That way, we figured they might do some of the work of encouraging adult attendance! In order to help parents mentally prepare ahead of time, we sent out some tools via email ahead of time. During the protocol, we provided a packet that included written guidelines on color-coded paper for easy reference during our whole group introduction, feedback forms for them to share written thoughts with each other and a facilitator’s guide to be used by the timekeeper, a job we encouraged them to share. In addition, we included a copy of the “Head/heart/gut” graphic organizer as a reference for our opening reflections. This was adapted from a tool that my colleague Jill Keltner used with her own students, one that I found useful with my younger students as well. Parents also reported that they found it to be a helpful visual aid to facilitate conversations with their children. After all, the ultimate goal of this learning plan is to empower the student to become the leader of his/her own learning in whatever capacity fits with each family’s learning style. At school, I facilitate the conversations with the children about their learning plan, but how it gets implemented at home enters the parents’ domain. After breaking up into groups of 3 or 4 for the protocol, we convened as a group to close the loop together. In closing, we asked for exit cards to receive immediate feedback. A couple of months later, I sent out an email survey for another opportunity to receive feedback about this workshop experience, now that parents had more time to process the experience and reflect upon its effectiveness.                                           

Learning from Experience

 

Overall the feedback from the exit cards and from my own observations (Addendum 3) was positive, encouraging and helpful. It afforded me the opportunity to reflect some more not only about the usefulness of protocols in the pursuit of finding solutions, but also about the ways that I can improve my own facilitation skills. According to the exit cards, groups that followed the protocol the least had the least positive experience and were the most impacted by cultural misunderstandings. To address the challenge, I plan to host a few fine tuning protocols between now and the next parent workshop, not only to get feedback for my own work, but also to train parents so that more people in the larger group have experience with the process. In addition, when I reflected upon my observational field notes from the day, the most challenging aspect for parents was resisting the need to “fix the problem” for each other. I wonder about the value of introducing the tool of constructivist listening that Julian Weissglass presents in the article, Constructivist Listening for Empowerment and Change. It so clearly honors the inherent nobility of a person because it empowers the individual to “construct personal understandings, and use his or her full intelligence to respond creatively to situations (Weissglass, 1990, p.356).”  It might help parents if I sent some information out ahead of time for their reflection. At the very least, I will spotlight the concept more when introducing the next protocol workshop.  In fact, I like the idea offered by one participant of creating a chart to post during the next workshop that will anchor our thoughts on constructivist listening and the power of the protocol.  Over all, the hardest part to facilitate was closing the loop afterwards. It is difficult to examine our own questioning process. I’d like more practice with this myself. And with families, I think understanding the constructivist listening model needs to come first. In the end, utilizing exit cards and journaling observations proved vital to making plans moving forward with this process.

 

In closing, some of the greatest learning for me has been the opportunity to improve my skills at supporting amazing parents in such a vulnerable situation. Our culture doesn’t encourage people to admit that they are not perfect in every aspect. When viewed through this lens, it becomes clear that parents really had to take some risks when opening up to each other during this workshop. To observe people willing to learn from each other by sharing their challenges inspired me.  I appreciate the trust they demonstrated that the environment we created would support them. Several participants mentioned feeling apprehensive ahead of time, but hopeful and empowered afterwards. Although I believe in the power of unity by leveraging our diversity, I have also witnessed the challenges such an undertaking involves. When planning this workshop, I even had moments of hesitation, because in all honesty, not everyone in this learning community remembers to advocate for their beliefs and viewpoints respectfully. Sometimes, they just feel so passionate about a topic that they inadvertently come across to others as disrespectful. At those rare times, it helps me to remember that people are inherently noble beings. “Situations, more than individuals, are what produce the difficulties, even though it almost always looks as if it is the individuals who are fouling up (Farson, 1996, p. 130).” A mark of good leadership then is not to fix people, but to remove obstacles and to create situations that allow people to realize and demonstrate their full potential. When we build bridges of understanding to foster relationships, then we learn from each other, gain insights from new perspectives and effectively face challenges together. Strong leadership then means demonstrating the courage to bring differing perspectives to the same table for consultation, while creating the supports that bring forth the best in each person. The protocol provides an effective tool that empowers a group to gain the most from their diversity by providing a common framework to accomplish this lofty goal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Delpit, L. (1995, excerpt). The silenced dialogue: power and pedagogy in other people's children. New York: The New Press.

Heifetz, R & Linskey, M (2002). Leadership on the line. Harvard Business School Press: Boston.

Heifetz, R. A. & Linsky, M. (2004). When leadership spells danger. Educational leadership, 61 (7), 33-37.

McDonald, J, (2004). The power of protocols.

Mclaran, P, (2009). The critical pedagogy reader: New York.

Steele, C. (1999) Thin Ice: Stereotype threat and black college students. The Atlantic, August 1999.

Weisglass, J. Constructivist Listening for Empowerment and Change. Santa Barbara, CA: 1990.