Look around…
Here are some sights and resources if you are looking for inspiration.
The job is never over; it simply changes from one task to the next. What I’m looking for, I suppose, is balance, and that is a moving target. Balance is not a passive resting place—it takes work, balancing the giving and the taking, the raking out and the putting in.
~Robin Wall Kimmerer
Here is an overview of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s visit to Guilford College on March 1, 2023.
Systems Ecology
In the chaos of the present moment, I have found inspiration in the words, thinking, and approach of Nora Bateson. In the midst of this polycrisis she acknowledges uncertainty, embraces complexity, and foregrounds the importance of relational responses. She uses the meadow, not the situation room, as the operative metaphor. We need to connect rather than isolate and move towards holistic understanding. Check out this Small Giants podcast: Nora Bateson on Systems Thinking and the Meadow Crisis and this Future Learning Design Podcast: Warm Data in Education.
Like so many of her writings, the essay “Leadership within the Paradox of Agency” brings into the focus my experience and perspective. Whereas previously I might have described my leadership style as collaborative or responsive, this essay suggests several additional frameworks: mutual and interdependent.
Coming Soon:
A poetry salve
The Great Turning
Sinners…
M. Kathryn Shields, Ph.D. 