Tag: education

Restoring Justis Part 2

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The title of the blog is clearly word play. Part One of why I chose this title talks about the irony of the name.

There’s another reason I chose it. I am trying to restore my family. And I am trying to restore myself. Yes, I married into the name, Justis. When the kids were little, we did a little geo-caching and whenever we scored a find, we’d sign as The Justis League. When I was a teacher, I’d always introduce myself to my second grade class with a cape on, throwing my fists into the air, and singing out, “Mrs. Justiiiis!”

Teaching really took it out of me. There was little patience left over for my family after those 9-10 hour days of performing for 7-8 year olds then scrambling to be ready for the next day of non-stop classroom management, trying to inspire kiddos whose bodies were screaming at them to play to sit through lessons instead. Okay, I didn’t require a lot of sitting because instinctually I knew it was ineffective, but we were still pretty confined to the four walls of a classroom, a lame “learning” environment that requires intense creativity on a teacher’s part to keep kids engaged.

When I worked up the courage to walk away from the classroom in spring of 2014, I spent the next few years trying to be an entrepreneur which meant lots of personal development. Over that same period, I really examined my thoughts on the classroom and education in general, and came to many of the conclusions I share in this blog. Once I started looking for resources to back up my suspicions, I realized I was far from alone in my contempt for the system.

The years flew by quickly and my oldest entered middle school. And things started falling apart. My family felt like it was coming unraveled and the bonds continued to fray in her 7th, then her 8th grade years as her resistance to school grew and my husband and I argued over the wisdom of forcing it. My son had never thrived in the classroom and he was concurrently developing awareness of the mismatch of his nature and the system he was trapped in. Around this time, it also occurred to me that my influence as a mother had waned; that my rant against the mainstream wasn’t falling on deaf ears, but bored, apathetic, or skeptical ears. Yet, here was evidence in my own children of the damage the system wreaks on their confidence and their love of learning.

I had thought I was creating a strong family culture, but suddenly it was painfully clear that we were not the tight knit family I always thought we’d naturally be. My husband and I seemed to be operating from completely different paradigms and our differences were taking a toll on our relationships with each other and the kids. Some intense situations (that I cannot share yet due to lack of consent from my loved ones) brought excruciating awareness that it was going to take far more conscious effort to hold onto my kids. Figuratively, of course. To do so literally would actually push them away.

Restoring Justis became my mission. To help my family back to authenticity, to restore what a family is meant to be—a place of safety and trust where one is free to explore possibilities, to be unconditionally loved through failures, and recovery is modeled with grace and dignity. Okay, maybe that’s a bit idealistic, but it’s the dream, right?

It’s a daily challenge, and I often feel at a complete loss as to how to restore that influence. The book, Hold on to Your Kids, helped me forgive myself a bit. It talks about how society is structured in such a way that it damages what should be our children’s natural attachment to us as their mentors, making it much more difficult to parent than it should be. I also believe that our culture of control and coercion, plus the requirement that we turn over their caretaking to the school system for such a huge chunk of their childhood, weakens the bonds nature intended human young to have with their parents.

So, I try to express gratitude to the universe daily for my children whose purpose it sometimes seems is to challenge every hard-earned tenet of my personal philosophy, to ensure that I walk my talk, to obliterate my ego and force the utmost consciousness of every word I speak, every action I take. I get lots of opportunity to model making mistakes and then taking responsibility for them.

I do believe that parenting is supposed to be pleasurable, and that when done as nature intended, it wouldn’t feel so hard, but I’m making up for too many years of unconsciousness, of lazy parenting. I didn’t think I was being lazy, I just thought I had more time. Things can feel pretty precarious these days; Restoring Justis means tightening the bonds that hold my family together. And it means everything to me.

Remtana – Finale

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Final installment (I think) of the Remembering Montana series that documented my family’s three week adventure, ranch-sitting in the Bitterroot Valley. In our charge were three majestic horses, two sweet donkeys, and two rescue dogs. For additional entries, scroll down and navigate back. Some of these reflections were recently written, but mostly I republished posts I’d shared via social media during our experience. I mentioned a few additional stories that I’d hoped to reflect on and add to the documentation, but so far, the words for those aren’t coming. Maybe those stories will still be told…maybe not.

Last Day, October 9, 2018:

I know I haven’t updated in a few days. Just me and the animals today. My family left for home early this morning. Really grateful we packed and loaded as much as we did yesterday in the sunshine because we woke up to rain and lots of mud. Got to get out and muck those stalls at some point today, but I think I’d just make a bigger mess if I tried to do it right now. Feeding the horses by myself in the drizzle and sloppy mud this morning was messy enough.

I’ve done years of inner work around the concept of expectations. I used to be a pretty cranky person much of the time because my high expectations of others (and myself) always led to disappointment. This went for experiences too. I’d get an idea in my head of things playing out perfectly, ensuring we all got the most out of a family outing or vacation that when someone didn’t play along as I’d imagined, the dream shattered and I would end up both livid and wallowing in self-loathing, certain I was doing a terrible job of raising my family.

It’s taken me a long time—seriously years of intentional practice—to come to a place in myself that allows for endless possibilities instead of the one imagined outcome, and to realize that each person in my family is an individual with his or her own agenda. Best to enter into situations with curiosity rather than expectation. And then be okay with messy. Life is messy and there’s beauty in the mess.

This approach is helping me to actually know my kids instead of trying to force fantasy kids I made up in my head before they were even born. It helps me to advocate for their authenticity instead of expecting them to represent me as the world’s best mom. Don’t get me wrong—it’s still really hard to disregard the expectations of others that I will control my children and mold them into perfectly behaved citizens. I’ve decided that my job is not shaping, but seeing and acknowledging. Allowing rather than demanding. Not teaching them, but learning with them—always learning.

It was messy getting my family out the door this morning. There were mistakes, meltdowns, and mud. Agreements were made last night that we’d finish the last bit of loading and work together to clean up, but this morning I could tell the kindest thing I could do was to shower them all in love, get them on the road, and embrace the mess that was left.

I implored them to take care of each other as they drove off in the rain toward the foggy mountains (will there be snow?,) eight hours of travel ahead of them. I’ll lovingly clean the messes I insisted they leave behind because it’s the best I can do as they weather the world without me today.

Remtana – Thanks for coming to my TED talk…

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Part 11 of the Remembering Montana series. The boy and I are on a side trip to Helena, leaving behind Hubby and the girl. I mention Freedomhill in this post; this is a project that is currently on hold but that I would desperately like to see come to fruition. As you read this entry, you’ll see why:

the boy took this photo from the car on our early morning drive through McDonald pass to Helena

Day 12, October 1, 2018:

What a Monday! After a 2 hour stunningly gorgeous drive, Adam and I arrived just in time for the Set the Week meeting at the 3rd Agile Learning Center and 4th SDE (self-directed education) community on our 2018 ALC/SDE tour. Cottonwood ALC in Helena, Montana.

The Monday morning Set the Week meeting where learners decide which of the offerings they’ve requested or are offering themselves will make it on the schedule. None of it is required unless an rsvp was necessary to bring in a particular subject expert to teach a class. If not enough learners are interested, the expert just isn’t brought in. Learners often get a say in the selection process of said expert.

In preparation to open Freedomhill Project ALC in Boise, Idaho, we’ve been immersing ourselves in the daily magic that unfolds through implementation of the ALC model of education. Agile Learning Centers are designed to equip children with the skills to take responsibility for and manage their own time. These centers operate under some basic but radical assumptions about humans (taken from agilelearningcenters.org) :

  1. Learning. Learning is natural. It’s happening all the time.
  2. Self-Direction: People learn best by making their own decisions. Children are people.
  3. Experience: People learn more from their culture and environment than from the content they are taught. (The medium is the message.)
  4. Success: Accomplishment is achieved through cycles of intention, creation, reflection and sharing.

The philosophy, rooted in sound research about human nature, aims to preserve young humans’ internal loci of control, creativity, and self-esteem by not reprogramming them with punishments and rewards and ranking them according to how their abilities compare with the average.

Instead, children are trusted to gain the knowledge needed to thrive in the current culture by pursuing their interests, thereby learning content in a much more efficient and effective manner–when it is relevant to their pursuits. Adult facilitators are present to guide when conflict resolution is necessary (using non-violent communication) and to assist young learners to develop resourcefulness and intentionality.

These centers each evolve an intentional but unique culture through a process of rapid iterations when issues need to be addressed in the communities. The children brainstorm and test solutions until they master new practices that meet the needs of all. It’s an amazing process to witness and leaves no doubt that children are people, capable of much more than we typically give them credit for. The opening of self-directed learning centers is picking up momentum, quickly becoming an international movement toward a more hopeful future for all.

the boy spent most of his time while we were indoors at Cottonwood in this maker’s studio where he designed and made a masking tape shoe, learned how to use a sewing machine and made a pillow, and also made a miniature helicopter with a working propeller — he asked for an adult to assist him once and show him how to operate the sewing machine

My 12 yo boy knows that as one of the founding learners, he’ll get to heavily influence the culture at Freedomhill Project and he’s collecting ideas from each of these visits so he can advocate for his vision for the center. He’s also making amazing new friends and becoming part of a growing network of savvy youth who, I’m confident, will be better prepared for an unknown future, with fiery spirits intact, and the 21st century skills (so often lauded in education policy agendas) to actually adapt to whatever that future may look like.

Do I feel strongly about this approach to education? Yeah, you could say that. A meme my daughter has been saying often, “thanks for coming to my TED talk.”

The trouble with being smart…

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Some of us thinkers were branded as smart when we were young. This is a devastating label for many of us. Here’s why…

I’m going to tell you a story to demonstrate. I was a second grade teacher for many years. I was lucky to have an amazing teaching partner who wanted to collaborate with me to find ways to transfer the ownership of our students’ learning away from us and onto them.

We created a rather brilliant approach to spelling that was really more about students learning how to use data to set and accomplish realistic goals than it was about learning spelling patterns. This was when I got a real sense of the damage done to those kids we laud praise upon for being smart.

The system worked like this:

We’d start each week with a pre-test of spelling words. All the words on the test contained a particular spelling pattern or 2-3 related patterns. We’d then correct the test together in class and the students would then use that information to create their own spelling list to study for the week. Any words missed on the pretest had to go on the student’s list, but beyond that they were free to pick from a curated list of words with the focus spelling pattern(s).

The words were presented in three columns, and I explained that the words in the first column were the simplest words and the easiest to master. As you moved across the columns, the words became more complex, likely becoming more difficult to remember. There was no additional guidance and the students had the freedom to pick whichever words they wanted (beyond those they’d missed on the pretest) to create their unique list.

They had several activities they could use to practice their words and at the end of the week, the students would pair up and test each other on their customized lists. We’d then graph the results of that test and analyze the data.

If you missed one or two words, you’d probably created a “just right” list for your level, with enough challenge to learn something but not so much that it was overwhelming and more than you could master. If you missed three or more words, you’d probably chosen words that were too difficult for you and next time you might consider choosing simpler words. If you consistently missed zero words then your list was probably too easy, and next time, you may want to challenge yourself with more difficult words.

(The graphs were also great to show trends over time, and we could use this data to adjust the student’s approach accordingly. Truly, this system was brilliant. I credit my teaching partner who was amazing to work with though she eventually wanted to move away from this because she felt it took too much focus away from spelling. I was more like, “fuck the spelling! This is real learning.”)

Now of course, there were always two to three smart kids in class that consistently chose the most difficult words and still aced the test every time. How to differentiate for these kids and make it more challenging? Well, they were encouraged to pull out the dictionary and find even more complex words that still contained the spelling pattern.

The first week these smart kids got to strut over to the bookshelf and pull out the dictionary, they were always so excited! They really had a great time finding longer, more challenging words and I loved seeing them so engaged rather than bored. Often, on this first go around, they would choose words that were too difficult and would be devastated when they missed several on their test. The following week, they’d use the guidance the whole class had received and look for words that were a bit simpler. If they missed one or two of these, they’d usually be done with the dictionary.

These smart kids would go back to the words they knew they could ace every time (usually because they already knew the words.) The dictionary would remain on the bookshelf during spelling because it challenged their very identities and made them feel less smart. These kids had fixed mindsets and when learning was too difficult, they gave up because it meant they were no longer elevated above effort due to their intelligence.  

What an eye-opener! And I couldn’t help but be reminded of all the activities I avoided as a child—and as an adult if I wasn’t sure I’d be good at it right out of the gate. How I spent years not allowing myself to be a beginner at anything, or if it was at all challenging, I’d abandon it quickly. Being labeled smart makes you risk-averse and gives you a fixed mindset.

Here’s a simple explanation of fixed mindset vs. growth mindset:

People with a fixed mindset avoid challenges, because it makes them feel like they’re not talented or smart. They lose interest when the work gets hard, and they give up easily.

Those with growth mindset seek and thrive on challenge. They want to stretch themselves, because they know that they will grow and learn. “This is hard. This is fun.”

https://medium.com/leadership-motivation-and-impact/fixed-v-growth-mindset-902e7d0081b3

So which are you? The risk-averse smart person or the person invigorated by challenge? Can you see how most classrooms create and reinforce this damaging identity?

So you want to be smart…

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Let’s talk about the word, smart. What do you feel when you say or hear this word? I dislike this vague but cruel word very much; let me explain.

Yesterday, my daughter (who like me is a lover of precise language) said to me, “I think I’ve figured out the difference between the word clever and the word smart. I think clever refers more to problem-solving and smart…”

I cut her off. I know, I really need to stop that, but I have lots to say about this little awful word, and I jumped in and said, “I think the word smart is used to … elevate people.”

And she said, “I think it’s meant to put other people down.”

“We’re saying the same thing.”

“Oooh, you’re right!”

Forever, we’ve used the word smart to refer to people who have academic intelligence—the intelligence our society values above all others. If you get good grades in school, you’re smart. (Never mind that grades are inherently biased and often reflect the teacher’s preferences for certain students or have been skewed with “extra-credit”. Ugh, a post for another day.)

If you’re good at information recall, even if it’s useless information, you’re smart. If math formulas come easy to you, you’re smart. Oh, and of course, the more “education” you have, the smarter you are. If you have an advanced degree, you have unequivocal evidence that you’re smart. If you’re a college professor, you can wear your job like a badge of smartness. If you’re an engineer, well same goes for these guys, right?

And if you’re not smart, what are you? Are you the opposite of smart? Yikes. But that’s how kids in school feel when they don’t demonstrate academic intelligence. I want to scream every time one of my children say, “I’m dumb” or “I’m just stupid” when they don’t know something—often knowledge that they’ve not had the opportunity to learn yet, or just something unnecessary to their lives so they let it go from their memory bank. (Which is actually smarter? A brain that purges irrelevant information or one that recalls useless details at will?)

There are so many ways that people can be intelligent and frankly, other types of intelligence are much more likely to lead to a satisfying and meaningful life than being academically gifted. I don’t want to stereotype engineers, and I definitely know this doesn’t apply to all of them, but they have a reputation of not being particularly savvy when it comes to social skills. And those professors are famous for not having real world skills. Sorry, professors.

So what about those clever people with sharp wit that make us laugh but flunked out of school. Are they smart? I guess they could be considered “street smart” but that definitely doesn’t carry the same value in our culture.

What about the fast food worker who makes stunning art in her spare time? Is this a form of smartness or do we reserve that word for the educated elite, and call this woman creative? Because creative and smart are not the same thing, right?

How about the stay-at-home mom who juggles the care of two small children, cleaning, meal planning and shopping, bookkeeping for the house, and still manages to organize weekly social gatherings with her friends. That takes some serious energy, organization, and determination. Does it take smarts? Do we value her contribution to society the same way we value a college professor?    

What about the person who never goes to college but instead busks in busy city centers with his guitar and his voice, moving from place to place, discovering that he prefers the simple things in life and forgoing the social norms for this vagabond lifestyle? What do we think of this guy? Do we throw a few bucks in his guitar case because we think he’s smart?

But we all seem to want our kids to be smart. Really?! Why? It’s a values thing. We elevate smart people and pay them more if they make it through education. But being smart has its pitfalls. More on this in a few days…

If only I could write like her…

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I’ve been pretty good about working ahead and scheduling for Sunday so I could remain unplugged one day of the week. Unfortunately, this week got away from me and here I am, Sunday morning, hooked up to the internet, breaking one promise to myself so as to keep another and publish something every day for sixty days.

So I’m going to share an essay from Carol Black. Oh, if I only could write like her! I reread this essay this morning trying to pull the most profound quote to share with you, so you’d be compelled to click the link and read the whole thing. I got caught up again in her beautiful prose that wrenches at my emotions.

Every essay she writes is heartbreaking and beautiful. Every paragraph is so elegantly persuasive; it feels impossible to choose just one passage to pull out and highlight, so know as you read this teaser know that the entire piece is equally compelling:

When we first take children from the world and put them in an institution, they cry.  It used to be on the first day of kindergarten, but now it’s at an ever earlier age, sometimes when they are only a few weeks old.  “Don’t worry,” the nice teacher says sweetly, “As soon as you’re gone she’ll be fine.  It won’t take more than a few days.  She’ll adjust.” And she does.  She adjusts to an indoor world of cinderblock and plastic, of fluorescent light and half-closed blinds (never mind that studies show that children don’t grow as well in fluorescent light as they do in sunlight; did we really need to be told that?)  Some children grieve longer than others, gazing through the slats of the blinds at the bright world outside; some resist longer than others, tuning out the nice teacher, thwarting her when they can, refusing to sit still when she tells them to (this resistance, we are told, is a “disorder.”)  But gradually, over the many years of confinement, they adjust.  The cinderblock world becomes their world.  They don’t know the names of the trees outside the classroom window. They don’t know the names of the birds in the trees.  They don’t know if the moon is waxing or waning, if that berry is edible or poisonous, if that song is for mating or warning.

Here’s the entire article: On the Wildness of Children.

Educating Freedom

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Some good friends of mine, a tight-knit family with parents in human support fields, both working with adults who are struggling to function (imagine that) were telling me how difficult it is to drop their 5-year-old daughter off at kindergarten. She screams and resists and they pretty much have to drag her into school.

Red flag? I think it should be. Yet, we’re brainwashed into believing there are no other options. This is what kids are supposed to do. They go to school where they’ll learn everything they need to know to function as human adults in our society, right? So what is it they need to know?

Historical facts and dates? They’ll forget those. How the world works? I learned everything I know about physics when I became a second grade teacher because I’d forgotten every little bit of science I learned in school. How to read? When I was a third grader, I sat silently terrified, surrounded by “big kids” in a sixth grade reading class because I had already discovered a way to escape my life in highly engaging chapter books and devoured them voraciously. That’s all I remember about “learning to read” in school—oh, and that I was “smarter” than my classmates because of how quickly I sped through the colors of the SRA reading program. Algebra and geometry? What I learned in my high school algebra class was that I hated math; in geometry, I developed my social skills by convincing the kid behind me to let me cheat off his work so I could avoid my creepy perv of a teacher’s hand on my waste when I went up to his desk to get help.  What do you remember learning in school?

I’ll bet you remember learning how to sit still and raise your hand when you wanted to speak. I’ll bet you remember paying careful attention to the bathroom policy so you’d know how long you’d have to hold it. Or maybe, you remember coming up with clever ways to convince your mom you were sick so you could stay home. I remember thinking if I took the thermometer out of my mouth when my mom was out of the room, the reading would be off enough that she’d have to keep me home—clearly all that science was paying off!

I remember getting antsy when someone else turned a test in ahead of me because it meant I’d lost the race and someone else might be “smarter” than me. I learned that there’s only one right answer and not to ask too many questions. In high school, I learned really well how to fly under the radar, how to be invisible, how to cram for tests the night before so I could get away with ignoring my homework. I learned exactly how little I could do to still graduate, so I guess I learned efficiency?

I also figured out the best time of day to leave campus and walk across town to my boyfriend’s house. (Though there was that one day my dad randomly drove by and I was busted!) I learned that my hair and make-up mattered and that my wardrobe was insufficient. In fact, once when a boy was picking me up for our first date after I had agonized for hours about what I could wear, he looked me up and down and asked if I could change. I learned that the best way to get through high school was to be in the popular crowd, yet I never seemed able to quite break into that. The next best way was to always have a boyfriend, whether I really liked the boy or not.

So what did I really learn? I learned that using my resources was cheating, my worth was determined by how well my teachers liked me, needing others was bad, my thoughts and feelings held no weight, attractive people did better in life than nice people, that my gut was not to be trusted. I learned to please the adults who were always right and that authority figures had total control over my life.

I learned that anything I studied could be forgotten after the test, mistakes were punished and there were no do-overs, failing was to be avoided at all costs. I learned to study my teachers so I knew exactly what they wanted and just how little I could do to keep their favor or at least not attract their contempt.

And I learned what freedom means. It means giving up control over the majority of your time so you can have the freedom to buy a house and toys. It means busting your ass to build someone else’s dream so one day when you are old, you can stop working and be free to finally figure out what your dream is. It means sacrificing your childhood and your sense of self so you can appreciate living in a free country where you get to watch other people live their lives on reality TV.

There’s a powerful reason that five year old girl screams when she’s dragged into that classroom. Children know what true freedom is…and what it isn’t. Alarm bells are ringing in her head and heart; she recognizes that environment has no real interest in who she is and its sole purpose is to suck away her one and only childhood and educate her how to be in this free world of ours.   

Broken

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Ha! So, I am looking for work. I really must create additional income for my family. The pressure to do so is taking a serious toll on the climate in my home and there’s so much more I could whine and complain about when it comes to this topic, but if I don’t comply and get a job, my family will likely fall apart. (I believe getting a job may just be the impetus that breaks us, but the other way—where I stay home and try to be the culture keeper of a culture my family rejects while our financial resources continue to diminish—is definitely not working.)

If you’ve been in the job market lately, you know securing a position is a crazy hard task, requiring considerable hoop jumping and clever tactics just to get noticed.  I actually have a couple of offers. And they’re both really fucking with me. They are as follows:

Being the youth program director for a non-profit that connects families of children with mental illness with resources, offers programming for children with mental illness, and works to educate around and de-stigmatize mental illness.

Counseling people seeking to take advantage of their employer’s EAP (employee assistance program) and SUD (Substance Use Disorder) program, ensuring they know how to navigate the system and receive the support they’re seeking.

Good God. I blog about how we’ve been broken by our education system, and the only jobs I can get considered for are those that just put bandaids on the wounds we’ve created with our mess. I don’t fix broken shit. I know this sounds callous, but it is seriously at the bottom of my Strengthsfinder profile. “Restorative” is number 34 out of 34 themes, meaning it’s something I should avoid because it sucks the life out of me. Besides, we’re not really “restoring” anything! We’re jimmying fixes to plug the dike as long as possible before our collective broken conscience obliterates the instable wall that’s barely holding it in check these days.

What’s my sweet spot? My strengthszone if you will? Working with people to recognize and maximize their strengths, with people who are motivated to discover and live their best lives, in systems where people view the world through a lens of possibility. Maybe we can start taking the wall down intentionally and systematically, dealing with the fallout little by little and restoring human nature to the social stewardship that actually honors each individual for meaningful contribution instead of coercing compliance to the capitalist gods.

I like to think my natural role is to create environments that don’t require mental illness labels and/or don’t contribute to mental illness. Mental illness diagnoses, imo, are usually an indicator that the person didn’t conform to social norms and the oppressive environments we’ve designed OR they’re traumatized by them or by families in which the parents were traumatized by them. How about instead of destigmatizing mental illness, we prevent it?!  

Addiction is a maladaptive coping mechanism for attachment voids created by broken systems (including dysfunctional families.) We wouldn’t need to treat so much addiction, if we would recognize the cultural dismantling of unconditionally supportive communities and work to reinstate them.

If we could recognize the culpability of the systems we’ve designed in the creation of mental illness and addiction, we could potentially slow the momentum we’ve created toward humanity’s fall from grace. But what do I know?

In the meantime, I guess I join the giant triage crew—the industry that makes hordes of money on the needs of the broken masses. Question is, do I take the more instable job that allows me some autonomy and creativity offering at least the illusion of freedom? Or the more boxy job with secure pay and benefits? I hate this decision. I truly fear that either way, my own diagnosis is nigh.

I’ll take a shit sandwich, please.

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Do you still have nightmares about school? Last night, I dreamt I was sitting in a classroom as an adult, and I was supposed to be there as some kind of support staff, maybe a speech therapist? Anyway, the teacher was assigning some reading passages with comprehension questions, and I busted out, chanting, “This is dumb, this is dumb, this is dumb,” or something equally silly. In the dream, it seemed much more intelligent, yet also clearly petulant and ineffective. The teacher and students looked at me with disgust, clearly annoyed at the disruption, but other than that, my protest fell on deaf ears.

I woke up and wrote another scathing post about education. I realized that’s all I’m producing right now and may be portraying myself as just angry and cynical. So I thought I’d schedule that one for a later date and try to write about something a little less depressing.

Let’s talk a moment about the culture of Strengthsfinder 2.0. I love this assessment, mostly because I love how individualized it is and I love what I call “labels for good.” Most personality tests have 16 possible boxes to place people in and anyone who follows my blog knows how I feel about boxes. Is there such a thing as a box phobia?

Whoa!! I just realized a weird contradiction in myself. I always claim to hate metaphorical boxes, yet I am an obsessive collector of actual boxes. I have the strangest aversion to getting rid of any type of potentially reusable container, be it square or otherwise. There are numerous shelves in my house storing unsightly stacks (though nested whenever possible!) of empty boxes of various sizes. Hmm, what does it mean?!

Okay, climbing back up out of that rabbit hole. Maybe that’s an analysis for another day.

First things, first. When you ask someone what is meant by strengths and weaknesses, typically that person will say “strengths are what you do well and weaknesses are what you’re not good at.” If we broaden the definition of “strengths” we can start imagining a very different world. In Strengthsfinder culture, strengths are those activities that make you feel strong, they energize you, and have the capacity to put you in flow—that creative state where you lose yourself and all track of time in the doing. And the opposite, your weaknesses, are those things that drain you, that suck the life out of you, those things you desperately wish others would just do for you.

Now we may or may not be talking about your talents. Typically your strengths are also your talents, but you’ve probably engaged in activities you were naturally good at and had them drain you. When this is the case, I encourage people to really explore the context of the activity. Why, where, when, and with whom you do the activity often matter and can totally destroy something that could actually bring you much joy and energy.

And on the flipside, there can be things you are obsessed with that you’re not at all good at. If you’re energized by the learning and driven to push through the tough times (or willing to eat the “shit sandwich” that goes with learning that particular skill as Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in her book, Big Magic,) then consider it a strength!

I’m not going to get into the details of the Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment and all the many reasons I love it, and I think it’s important to share than I am not affiliated with Gallup and thereby not incentivized by them to promote this personality assessment, but I consider myself an evangelist because I am passionate about the culture around it.

I am passionate because I can imagine this world where more people have spent their childhood free to discover and engage in their strengths. Using these discoveries to guide and motivate their activity choices and explore possibilities for lifestyles that keep them in their strengths zone. How different would this world look if more people figured out how to make meaningful contributions that kept them in this zone? A world where when we met anyone new, we were looking for the unique contribution that person is here to make (instead of what’s wrong with them that needs fixing?)

What if we were energized by and valued for our work purely because we discovered our zone? Would we care as much about keeping up with the Jones’s? Would we have the same levels of anxiety and depression? What about lifestyle diseases? Or even cancer?

We know that stress is the culprit in most illnesses of all types. Wouldn’t a culture where we have meaningful work (that I would argue can be found in any field) that calls on our strengths and keeps us highly engaged, lead to reduced cortisol levels, increased empathy, increased intuition, increased creativity and innovation? How could it not?

There’s a movie coming out soon, Self-Taught: Life Stories from Self-Directed Learners, (the Kickstarter Campaign) that I cannot wait to see. In it we’ll meet adults who spent their childhoods outside of the mainstream schooling complex, adults who weren’t reprogrammed through years of “education.” I’ve been a member of the Alliance for Self-directed Education for awhile now and I finally have hope that such a world can exist—if only we have the courage to step away from what we know to try a different way.

It’s a huge cultural shift to imagine and we’re nowhere near the tipping point, but there’s still rapidly growing communities who can see this world also. They’re out there. And thanks to modern technology, if you’re truly ready to free your children and your family, you can find one–or create one. Are you ready?

I see dead people.

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Truly, I think we’re in the Zombie Apocalypse. It’s a perfect metaphor for our current society of people reduced to mindless producer/consumer states. There’s a general sense of discontent along with ridiculous rates of anxiety, depression, and chronic disease conditions and yet people accept this fate with little resistance, moving unquestioningly through the prescribed path to becoming one of the living dead: go to school, get good grades so you can get into a good college so you can get a good job so you can attract a mate, get married and have children, buy a house, fantasize about vacations and retirement, spend evenings numbing out in front of a screen, live for the weekends, you know the recipe.  

If you read my post, You’ve Been Schooled, you’ll find a list of ways that our school system prepares us for this bleak, depressing consumerist future. Children are reprogrammed to suppress their intuition and deny their own needs for play and self-discovery, never developing the strong sense of self needed to create satisfying and meaningful lives. They graduate from a system that directed nearly every minute of 10,000 hours (and this is without college) of their lives up to this point, disabling their own internal compass and ensuring compliance with our consumerist culture.

I believe humans come wired for contribution, each with unique strengths that support the whole. We’re driven to create and innovate, with bodies that reward us with feel-good chemicals when we’re engaged in those behaviors that call on our natural talents and when we lock arms with our fellow humans to maximize our resources. Ongoing movement throughout the day, generosity, and a sense of purpose are all natural parts of being human, so why aren’t most of us living a lifestyle that reflects this?

Because we’ve all been schooled. Broken like wild stallions. The human spirit is much stronger than it would appear these days, but how is one to resist the slow, steady reprogramming toward external drivers? Rewards and punishments, baby! Mandatory coercive schooling over a long period of time will break just about anyone. Soon a body wants to do nothing if there’s no external reward. We seek the “juice” through other means when our grades fail to provide dopamine hits; social media and video games become the drugs of choice for those who don’t conform well to the authoritarian paradigm of school.  

Most five and six and twelve year olds want that damned gold star. They want to please their teachers and be seen as competent. In fact, according to self-determination theory, along with autonomy and relatedness, a sense of competence is imperative to our psychological well-being. What happens when you don’t get these needs met? Depression, anxiety, addiction.  We end up creating an attachment void that gets filled with virtual or chemical substitutes for authentic connection.

This is nothing new. I’m just one more outraged voice among many who see the wreckage and fear the future of a world filled with sheeple. Why hasn’t there been a revolution?! To demand change requires courage to leave the mainstream, imagination and innovation to create new ways of doing things, risk-tolerance to try those new ways knowing we’ll fail many times before we get it right and others might mock us. Courage, imagination, innovation, resilience: all natural human traits that we’ve sacrificed to our “education.”