It has been a powerful few weeks for us as we continued the vital work we are facilitating with one of our Australian clients, The Victorian Department of Education.
It is a project designed to bring change — a change in mindsets and a resulting change in practices. We are investigating the ‘why’ behind the things we do as educators and seeing if that reflects the current global mindset.
Our program design emphasizes listening, connecting, questioning, authentic experience, researching, and, most importantly, the kids. The same kids who currently grind their way through school with the aim of doing the same at university.
What might happen if we challenge the hierarchical structures embedded in education? How might we question the identities we have taken on and see if there are other possibilities available? What might be possible if we shifted from a teacher-student model to a co-learner model? What is possible if we tipped the singular discipline approach in the bin?
To do this, space is needed to stop and listen. Listen to the kids, listen to the world, and listened to ourselves. In this, we enact empathy. Empathy for ourselves to better enable empathy for others to create the space to be. This emerging space is where we create collectively.
At EnRusk, we are calling this “The Space of Connected Empathy.”
In this space, we discover a connected resolve, courage, ambition, and new knowledge. When we listen, we might realize that authentic learning is about solving real problems. We are talking about the real problems we have created for the kids — climate change, systemic racism, and so on.
These were the problems the amazing 22 education specialists were working on, began prototyping, and testing ways to do just that.
I could not have been more proud of the EnRusk team, those of us that worked in the back end, and those who facilitated in the last few weeks.
Using Zoom, Miro, Google Docs, Trello, pens, pencils, laptops, traditional wall chart paper and, loads of coffee the EnRusk team, situated in NY, Denver, Texas and Arizona tightly bonded with the teams in Melbourne Ballarat, Bendigo and multiple other rural sites in Victoria to work as one team of co-learners to see what might be possible if we approached education in this way.
