Five years ago I was able to attend a conference in Plano, Texas (remember going to conferences?). I was part of a team my college selected to attend the Continuous Quality Improvement Network, known as CQIN. Conferences have always been a mixed bag for me. I have attention span issues, and my thinking tends to diverge from others so I feel left out. But this group included our president and multiple vice presidents, so I went humbly as dean of my division. The theme for the conference was change management, and we learned about a change management framework from a group called ProSci, and actually a few years later I attended more training from the same group to be certified as a change management practitioner. Like, I said, my attention span is a challenge, but I do remember they said change management is about helping people to change. Not a bad take away for two separate weeks of training:), but what I really remember from CQIN was the other speaker who did a keynote, Margaret Wheatley. Dr. Wheatley is a legend in studying organizational behavior, and I was excited to see her speak. But, she was dark on that day in 2015. She said she had essentially given up hope on a broken system. She told stories of working with military leaders and the unique culture of care in the military. But mostly, she told us things were bad and likely to get worse. There was no program to learn and adopt, like ProSci, she just challenged us to be "Warriors for the Human Spirit" and to create "Islands of Sanity" inside the broken system we operate in. As we worked through the rest of the conference, we didn't do much with Margaret's information, because it wasn't easy to put in a 4 day workshop. We focused on action steps and future planning, and occasionally mentioned her speech felt unusual, and we weren't sure what to do with it. Of course, I never fit in anywhere, so I was provoked, inspired and challenged, and even 5 years later I can't stop thinking about what she asked us to do. It applies to poverty-informed work, and it applies even more in these current times.
The pandemic has reduced much of what we do to a series of choices which feel like choosing the least bad option. It is frustrating to know whatever we do has consequences we might not want. Regular readers know I think we are in the business of providing paths to social mobility through education. Now we have to see if we can find safe ways to do our work. We have to decide about online courses which might exclude just the people we are trying to be there for versus creating face to face learning environments which have obvious challenges as well. It's frustrating, and whatever we choose to do is easy to criticize. My college tries to work in a deep culture of caring, but the stress is real, and I can feel it throughout the college. I know it is even more true for students trying to figure out what to do next. My daughter chose to transfer and move home, and my son will be attending high school online in September. Some students will choose to step away for a year and hope to return when the world reverts back, but we know not everyone can do these things. We know not everyone is safer at home, and pursuing a post-secondary credential is their best bet to change their lives. So much is out of our control, and it can be overwhelming. Dr. Wheatley's call to create Islands of Sanity seems more timely to me than ever.
As poverty-informed leaders who are also feeling overwhelmed, working to create islands of safety and sanity is vitally important right now. The current circumstances have robbed us of much of the bandwidth we use to plan and look ahead. We are being forced to react to ever-changing circumstances, and long-term planning can feel kind of pointless because what happens next feels so far from our control. Astute readers will observe I just described circumstances very familiar to people in the crisis of poverty. In an odd way, this has leveled the playing field in some respects, although I won't pretend having middle-class resources doesn't create options others do not have. The point is we have an opportunity to learn from the people we serve and the lessons of the day, and take care of one another in real time. When I speak at workshops, one of the common critiques I hear is people in poverty make short-term choices instead of choosing what serves them in the long term. I view it differently. I see people making the best choice they can in difficult circumstances. Sound familiar? Doesn't wanting to feel ok, even for a short-time, sound pretty good right now? We can create islands of sanity, in a world which seems out of control. For many of us, it's the first time in a while we have felt this out of control, but I remind you again, many of the people we serve feel a lack of control over their future most of the time. It is corrosive.
So, what do we do? Well first realize you cannot control everything happening right now. Accept your sphere of influence, and create islands of sanity within that sphere. Maybe it means taking extra time with a coworker. Maybe as a leader, it means finding the pieces of a work load that can wait. With so much to do at work, I find myself jumping directly to business in meetings, but a co-worker reminded me starting with "how are you" will create a sense of connection when we are all pulled apart. I hear faculty planning flexibility in their return plans. Reducing stress about attendance requirements and due dates feels like creating a small island of sanity to me. As one of my faculty said "if a student learns it on Tuesday, or they learn it on Thursday, the point is they learned it." Just a small island of comfort like that example may create the space for a student to reduce anxiety and persevere when they are dealing with children at home learning online, job insecurity, and all the basic needs insecurity they faced long before we heard of COVID19. Can we take our own anxiety and realize the person we are facing is carrying the same burden? What does it look like in practice? I think just-in-time support (a primary tenet of poverty-informed practice) is all about creating an island of sanity in the midst of chaos and stress. I think patience, flexibility, and grace to one another will create islands for each of us and let us continue in these difficult times. Over the last several years, when I present to college faculty and staff about the immediacy of the issues facing our students, one of the most common questions I get is should we give our own money to students. My answer is always the same. I remind people not to do things which will get them in trouble and money is a deeply personal issue. I then share I have often given funds to students who presented need. I also know the funds weren't always used in ways I would choose, but they were my attempt to create a small island of sanity, and a touch of safety. Poverty-informed practice says we love our students. What would you do for someone you loved, especially if you had all the tools to do it?
I spend a fair amount of time on social media (shocking I know) and one of the things which hasn't sat right with me since March are the posts I read from people whose lives look at lot like mine, and they extol the virtues of this crisis and how it made them connect with their family and slow down. I have reacted negatively because my brain gets trapped in thinking of the people who are being crushed by this thing, and I get angry at what I viewed as willful blindness. I am feeling more forgiving today. I see those posts and those thoughts as an attempt to create an island of sanity in a sea of chaos today. We are overwhelmed and experiencing uncertainty and fear. What I'm asking of each of us is to not retreat just onto our own island because we can. If you are one of the fortunate folks who is still working, and/or working remotely, or see yourself as learning wonderful lessons about simplicity and minimalism during these times, good for you. Just don't hide there please? It is my greatest fear this pandemic will pass, and we will have had an opportunity to learn what it really is to take care of one another, and we will miss it because we will choose to protect what we have, rather than be warriors for the human spirit and create islands of sanity for those who need it (which is everyone by the way). At that CQIN conference in 2015, the one activity we did do with Margaret Wheatley's presentation was to create a shield with a crest to represented our attempt to be warriors for the human spirit. Our team struggled with what to do (including me I hate art projects), but we settled on on emblazoning our shield with the word "safety". We also had a little fun with the Men Without Hats "Safety Dance" song, but that is another story for a bunch of people from the 80's. In these current times, our little activity resonates with me again. The system feels broken, and maybe it is... for now. But we can be warriors for the human spirit, we can take care of one another, and we can create islands of sanity to allow ourselves to feel safe and see a future better than the past we came from. I ask you to commit with me to creating those islands however you can, and don't fall trap to retreating and protecting just yourself. Create those islands where you can, and rest on the ones others create for you. That is a path forward, even when we can't see all that far down the road.
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