Worth a Listen, Look or Read #12 — Behold, Something Greater Than Yourself!

Jeff Ikler here for Kirsten Richert with our weekly “Getting Unstuck” mini feature: Here in about five minutes, we extend the idea of this week’s podcast with some related content that we feel is definitely “Worth a Listen, Look or Read.”

The idea

This week we chatted with Yasmeen Robbins, an Instructional Review Consultant for the North Carolina Department of Instruction. https://bit.ly/2VI1mGz Her role takes her from one end of the state to the other where she engages with many an administrator. And she frequently hears from many of them how isolating the work can be.

“Oftentimes school leaders are working in silos. You're going at a rapid pace. You're encountering issues that so many other principals have encountered, but you only know what your district knows. If only we had the opportunity at a moment's notice to ask the question, ‘Hey what are you doing about _____ ?’”

So, like the great change agent that she is, Yasmeen decided to do something to alleviate some of that isolation. She co-founded the non-profit organization “Rebrand NC Education,” a forum that brings administrators together to discuss and address common issues. She’s also been working on an app for the past two years, the “Principal Pipeline,” to help administrators get answers to questions that other administrators might already have wrestled to the ground.

Taking the idea deeper

Yasmeen is all about connecting people, enabling collaboration, and growing community. Her unspoken mantra could very well be “Alone, we are strong. Together, we are stronger.”

Maybe because of COVID’s impact on the social and emotional health of educators and students alike, and maybe because schools are already starting to reopen, I found myself lingering more than a little on the importance of connection, collaboration, and community. For some reason, the iconic scene from the mini-series “Roots” came to mind. It’s the scene where Omoro holds his new infant son, Kunta Kinte, up to the star-filled night sky and exclaims “Behold, the only thing greater than yourself!”

Well, that sounded like something Yasmeen might say: “Alone, you are a single light. Together, we are a blinding light!”

And speaking of connection

Allow me a related story. I am a fly fisherman, and occasionally I pop into an online forum where anglers can pose questions and get answers from fellow anglers. Think of it as the fly fisherman’s’ version of Yasmeen’s “Principal Pipeline.” A post that popped up recently referenced a video, which I’m sharing below.

Yes, the video is about a fly fisherman, but if you watch the short video, you’ll see that he’s so much more than a fly fisherman. And his message is about so much more than fly fishing.

(Note: if you’re listening to this at Apple Podcasts or another station, you’ll need to come to my website to see the video: https://www.queticocoaching.com/blog. I highly recommend it.)

OK, maybe getting this video right now was the universe’s way of keeping the message of “connectedness” in front of me — that we are all inherently linked together in a community.

So, in the spirit that we can benefit from content not typically associated with our work, I offer the video as a bit of inspiration to educators who are returning to what can often be an isolating occupation and what may again be a challenging year. It’s also very appropriate for anyone returning to work in an office.

My hope is that you can stay in “it” together.

“I appreciate working for an organization that really approaches things by working on common interest; working on things that bring us together especially in a world that's increasingly divided politically and under a tremendous amount of pressure — pressure from climate change, pressure from disease, pressure from human population in different places. And some of those things are still really big things but they're a lot less scary when we're together.” — Dr. Rene Henery

Putting the idea to work

Who are your go-to talking partners? Who haven’t you reached out to for a while? What’s a question or situation that’s rolling around in your head for which you could use a sounding board?

Also “Worth a Listen, Look or Read”

Finally, as administrators, teachers and support staff head back to school for what could be another tough year, it’s my hope that they’ll remember that they are “miracles” of the variety expressed in this song. Click the picture to listen.