#Daring Classrooms
Many of you, like me are strong advocates of Brene Brown’s work. In fact I am in fear of her being increasingly viewed as a ‘fad’ with her recently released Netflix episode. But what I can say is that if you had to wave a wand, and ask me what I would most want to attend in the world in the realm of my work, it would be Dare to Lead accreditation under her guidance.
So I was fascinated to learn that she has just released her #Daringclassrooms hub, which unlike some of her work is completely free/gratis!
My first response was to ask, what Brene could possibly know about the South African education sector, which is often cited as one of the most broken in the world? And it’s true, she lives in America and doesn’t profess to know. But she took it upon herself to go out and ask educators some fundamental questions, which I believe are universal irrespective of where in the world we find ourselves,
“What does support look like? And how can we support you?”
From there, built on the foundation of her 20 of years of ‘shame research’, and then an additional 3 years of researching all models of schools across both public and private schools, she has built an incredible foundation entitled #Daringclassrooms.
Her point of departure, with which I strongly agree, is that teachers (in our country particularly) are some of the bravest leaders that there are. That;
“the work you’re doing matters and it’s hard and important”
and that the fact of which I am most convinced is that, “the revolutions starts in the classroom”.
So as the sister-in-law to 3 teachers, and someone who has immersed herself in the Dare to Lead work,
I thought I’d unpack a little of what is on offer, to make it easier for you, if you are an educator or simply a parent like me.
Everything on the hub is free and everything is built on the principles of Dare to Lead; just specifically for educators
- The free daring leadership assessment – who doesn’t love a juicy online assessment?
- The daring leadership read along resources; this is the application of her Dare to Lead work specifically to education
- Learning lab videos of key issues that teachers brought to #Daring classrooms
- Classroom integration plans: These are set up 2 phases; integration plans for primary and high school. They include the lessons, creative ideas and letters to parents – I’ve included the secondary schools link here
- Posters and quote cards, because we all need a little inspiration;
So what I am imagining is that as educators (or parents), you just don’t have time and that digging into yet another platform would overwhelm your already frazzled agenda.
So here’s my step into vulnerability, and a potential win for anyone who’s got to read this far;
if any educator/HOD/principal wants to partner with me and experiment how we could unpack these tools for your classroom/grade/school, I’d be willing to bring my facilitation and coaching skills to partner with you – free/for gratis.
You’re the expert in education, you know the landscape. I know this work and I know that it can work, particularly when we’re vulnerable and don’t have the road map. The only condition I ask is that you try it out, you experiment with it and we track the learnings together.
What I do know that as great as my two teenage sons’ schools are, they’re not keeping their heads above the proverbial departmental water. They’re not always managing to choose courage over comfort and they’re rarely places where our true selves can be seen. And if we could start here, I know that in time the work places in which I coach and facilitate would be far greater sources of courage and inspiring leadership.
3 responses to “#Daring Classrooms”
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Hi
I’m going to send this to Abi’s teacher!
Love it. Thanks
Morning Karen
A topic that would get many “angry” comments from teachers. “So you want us to do more?!”
Being married to a teacher for just short of 30 years, the pressure on completing the enormous syllabus has never been this great. I’ve experienced the evolution as a spectator since the late 80’s. The volume of work currently crammed into a year see the “good” teachers working after hours, over weekends and some time during holidays as well. Those days of “half-day-teaching-job” plus 4 holidays a year long forgotten. “Something’s gotta give…”
You’re quite right, Coenie, how on earth can they squeeze anything more in! So I think it’s about coming alongside our teachers as I have volunteered to do in this post; to try to offer them support in any ways we can and to do less, in a daring way…