“You have to fight for your time and space”: Meet Member Lior Schenk
In this series, we are spotlighting our community members. In the Adaptive Space, we make room to receive the insights our community members have to offer. This series is where we will discover each other’s gifts! We will be spotlighting one story per week. Please engage with our star of the week by participating in the conversation below.
Next, we’re so excited to introduce member Lior Schenk! An avid teacher, reader, scientist, and thinker, we are so grateful to have him in our group! Lior is new to Theory U and the Adaptive Space, but is excited about engaging with the material and meeting others in the hub who share the same mindset.
Name: Lior Schenk
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Affiliation: Environmental Charter School
Superpower: Synthesizing connections
Describe how you stumbled across your professional path.
When I first started college, I was an art major — I wanted to go work at Pixar. Then I took an art class and thought “oh no, too unorganized.” Then I followed what my girlfriend, Eileen — who is now my wife — was doing. She was a neuroscience major and I thought that sounded pretty cool, learning about the brain. And I just loved learning about learning. I was so fascinated by that, I ended up joining a neuroscience education outreach group that I was involved in my entire college career. I eventually became the president of that group, called Interaxon, and we would go to schools all around San Diego and teach kids about the brain.
One of my favorite hands-on topics was the neuroscience of music. I would actually take my violin and play scales for demonstration. Those experiences really got me interested in getting students to feel the same sense of awe and wonder that I felt when learning about science. That’s what got me into becoming a teacher, becoming an educator. It just felt so resonant to me.
Who was the first person who believed in you?
Probably my wife. I’m really grateful to Eileen because she helps me pursue and fight for what’s important. I’m the kind of person who’s always lost in all these big ideas, and it’s hard for me to get my feet back on the ground. She helps center me. She trusts me in such a way that whatever dream I’m chasing — as long as it’s a real one — she’ll support me in it.
How do you define success for yourself?
I would define success as having a sense of harmony at the end of the day. Especially in a field like teaching, it’s easy to lose yourself in the job, or to feel like you’re working endless hours for little pay. Sometimes at the end of the day, you just feel like you’re being beaten down by the system. Teachers and educators are usually the most idealistic sorts of people because they want to teach the next generation. They have a creative spirit and transformative aspirations — and they sometimes end up getting abused and professionalized systematically. So for me, to be successful in the profession of teaching is to be able to navigate these systems and at the end of the day, still retain my spirit and feeling of being whole.
Give us a typical day in your life.
Before COVID, it used to be that I would wake up and drive bleary-eyed over to school with my little thermos of coffee in hand. But now I’m able to rise early, usually between 7 and 8 and just go straight over to a cemetery nearby where it’s nice and quiet. There are trees, there’s greenery, and I can just immerse myself in nature. I’ll either do a little bit of walking or running or listening to a podcast, or I’ll go find a quiet spot and meditate for half an hour. I’m trying to increase this, by the way — this is on a good day. The best way for me to start my day is by meditating early on, so that I can do some intention-setting. The rest of the day tends to be a blur. I’m pulled in so many directions, from teaching classes to planning to prep and meeting after readings, it’s really easy to get sucked into it and to end up hunched over a computer screen. One thing that’s been really nourishing to my schedule has been the solidarity circles. That’s not every day, but being able to practice that stillness and listening has been really powerful.
What is the most important skill that you’ve developed along your path?
Maybe design thinking. I’m the kind of person where forming connections and associations comes really easily to me. I’m able to find complexity in lots of things, and often wonder about a lot of things. That can also be kryptonite for me, because I can easily go down a dozen rabbit-holes on Wikipedia.
What has been the greatest challenge that you’ve encountered?
The biggest challenge in the day-to-day and also in the grand scheme of things, for me, is staying centered. It’s hard to sustain oneself in their profession and in the world when everyone is constantly trying to stretch us out. It’s challenging, being able to find enough space for oneself to achieve stillness and intentionality. You have to fight for your time and space.
What has been your greatest reward in the choices you’ve made along your path?
Having that feeling and sensing that my work matters. In the day-to-day, teaching a lesson and spending time with young people…this stuff is fulfilling. Also, I’m really grateful to be working at a school that is intentional about honoring humans. The government of our charter school is really great because they are more human-centered in the way that they do things. I’m really happy to be working on my career at this school, in contrast to another school where it constantly felt like I was drowning.
What’s a story that exemplifies you as a person?
After I finished grad school, I entered the world of teaching with so much hope, so much energy and zeal. I had a vision for what my teaching career would look like. But then I started my first year teaching in a very large, bloated urban school that was prone to the challenges that arise in the public education system. I wanted to do powerful, project-based learning, and even though I was assigned a role where I was told that I could do that, I felt very pressured to teach off of a curriculum that clearly was not working for me or my students.
Actually, I was in a revolving-door position of like, five teachers that came in and out year after year after year. And the one before me would apparently break down crying every week. I was so stressed out. I would talk to other, jaded teachers in department meetings and ask “How am I doing?” and they’d say, “Well, you haven’t cried yet. The last one cried all the time.” And actually, her last name was Joy. It was so poetic, in a way, that I was trying to bring this style of teaching that was joyful and I just felt that everything was so depressing, so oppressive. Where’s the joy? And as I was thinking this, slumped in my chair, dead tired after all of these lessons that are falling apart, a student from the previous year walked into my room looking for his old teacher, and said, “Where’s Joy?” And I just kept thinking, “Where is joy?” And that was a moment that really stuck with me.
What do you hope to learn from this community of peers?
I’m really interested in learning about systems thinking and how to put that into practice. I’m here because I had this growing vision for what schools could be and look like. And I know that it requires this shift in the way that we think about things, and I think that systems thinking is a really powerful way to get there. If we are able to think more outside of ourselves and more about the spaces that we’re in, then we could have schools and spaces that are more equitable, more truthful, and more just.
How do you find ways to center yourself amidst the pandemonium of your daily life?
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