How can schools stick faithfully to their Mission while still paying attention to fine details?

In starting the­ school year, all good schools will seek to inspire students and teachers with more than just timetables and schedules. There are two ways obvious ways to do that. The first is to excite by foreshadowing the individual transformations that lie ahead – because we know that the students at the end of the year are so different to how they started. Looking to older grades can be a source of wonder for some; asking students to imagine the person they aspire to be in twelve months, and to plan for it, is a fascinating task. The second way is to look beyond the individual, to the community and the school Mission. These vary from school to school of course, but the hook of you are needed hardly ever fails to inspire.

In the UWCSEA context, we know:

• what students should d­o (our Five Elements)
• what students should learn (our Learning Profile) 
• how to help students learn best (our Learning Principles)
• how all these connect (our Learning Programme­)

None of these are going away; and we draw on them every single day. But as these things are foundations, they may feel static, like we just do the same things all the time, and there’s no room for deviation. Nothing could be further from the truth of course – these foundations need interpreting each year, by each teacher, for each student. So how can we think about this tension between have an enduring mission and responding to individual need?

An analogy here helps. I have known students who go swimming, race for school teams, who can speak about how they swim, how they train; and what they do to improve. But when I speak to those on national teams, they speak in entirely different ways. They are not students who swim. They are swimmers. They speak and feel about their swimming and training differently; these are not tasks they do – they are part of who they are. And because of that identity, the training, the special diet, the strict sleep regime, the long and early hours in the pool, follow far more easily.

I think the same follows for teachers, and I guess for all of our in our working lives. So here I want to distinguish between

• The fine details: Sometimes called technical work, where we look at tasks, behaviour and things we can see,
• The big picture, Mission-related stuff: Sometimes called Adaptive work where we consider our attitudes, values and identity.

So suppose we see a student push another student, quite roughly. Of course we do not want that to happen. A technical approach might involve punishment, or threats of punishment, calling parents, ensuring closer supervision of the student, and so on. But that’s so limited – because if the threats or supervision are all that’s preventing the bad behaviour then behaviour will re-emerge when the threat has passed, or when the student thing he or she can get away with it. But if we take an adaptive approach whereby we work with the student to change his or her values and underlying attitudes to violence, and indeed to himself as a person, then the change is long lasting, and will transfer over to many other situations. This adaptive work is much harder, much slower and much more profound. The adaptive understanding that others deserve respect, and that there are better ways to solve differences than violence is easy to say, but can take years to get to, and there are many ways it can be achieved. But when it is achieved is makes a lasting difference over a lifetime. That is our work.

Earlier I mentioned the tension between having an enduring mission and responding to individual need; and I think the resolution here is both simple and complex; both precise and maddeningly vague – because it’s a very short answer, and it needs us all to make meaning of it. The answer is that we need to be able to move between technical and adaptive work, intentionally, collaboratively, and as needed. So it’s big picture stuff, combined with attention to detail. Neither alone is enough, and naming the two forms of work is the first step.

This distinction applies across so much of what we so, and I suspect any organisation does. Focusing on adaptive as well as – not instead of – technical work means we look at what we believe, value and aspire to be, not just what we do. Here are two further simple examples, from a range that we discussed at a staff meeting earlier this week. The difference between technical and adaptive work is the difference between education and training, and schools should be in the business of the former far more than the latter.

Ironically, I write about thus topic in somewhat of a technical, didactic way. That’s the nature of a blog post. So let me end by reaching out with a few far more adaptive lines. Poet Andrew Motion wrote, about one of his teachers in a way that reminds all of us in education, what our roles really are:

My teacher, who reached down into my head / And turned the first lights on. / Who gave my life to me, by which I mean / the things I chose and not inheritance / Who showed a quiet voice can carry far / Who took the gratitude I owed to him / and changed it into friendship. Who was kind.

We could do a lot worse than start the year with that kind of adaptive sentiment in mind.