By Ilsa Dohmen, Director of Teaching & Learning and Colleen Schilly, Associate Head of School
Each August our newest employees spend three days together for Orientation. This year, we spent a portion of that time off our campus and it changed an employee tradition at our school. This is the story of that change.
It was the first day of Orientation. Eighteen new faculty, staff, and administrators had begun their day learning about Hillbrook’s history, sharing some of their own stories, and touring our campus. After lunch, Director of Teaching & Learning Ilsa Dohmen shared our school’s Reach Beyond Block overview—a time in the redesigned schedule devoted to living our school’s Vision to “reach beyond ourselves and make a difference in the world.” Something you might not know about this new block of time, which happens in every student and teacher’s schedule each week, is that it is collaboratively designed, by teachers and children, to spring from the community connections, passions, and deeply-held values we each already possess. In the spirit of bringing new employees into this creative process, the task was set before them: join a group of three and— using your brainstormed responses to questions like “what’s something you hope your life makes an impact on?”—design an experience that 20 people could do, in two hours, with two vans, and $200. Also, design it in the next 40 minutes.
Ilsa and Associate Head of School Colleen Schilly, had been anticipating this moment nervously. Back in June we had asked, “What if we spent part of Orientation this year doing a Reach Beyond experience? What if the new employees unwittingly designed it for themselves?” We looked at the agenda, shaved five minutes here and there and came up with less than an hour for the design sprint. Was it worth doing? Was there a reasonable chance of success? Take a risk is one of our Core Values… so what better way to model than giving it a try!
Back to August. Six teams in 40 minutes developed and presented six fabulous ideas. Ideas ranged from investigating Santana Row—its development history, its retail offerings, surveying shoppers—to visiting Vasona Creek Park—looking at the range of users from leisure joggers to people experiencing homelessness and asking what public spaces mean to us and how we care for them. We closed by asking people to place a checkmark next to the design they’d be most interested in learning more about during Orientation.
That afternoon, Colleen and Ilsa met to plan for the “doing.” The Reach Beyond design with the most check marks had the central question “How are Hillbrook School’s values reflected in its food systems and services?” The group’s plan included visiting distributors for produce, meat and dairy, meeting with Epicurean Food Services, auditing our food-related expenses, and more. Wow. It met the Reach Beyond criteria—it was inspiring, it challenged learners to engage with real-world experiences and collaborate to make a difference for people and/or planet, it embraced ambiguity, it embodied the Hillbrook Way and our Core Values. And it was going to be hard to pull-off by tomorrow morning. Should we pull the plug? Since we had not even told employees we would be doing an experience, we could use that Orientation time for something else. Perhaps the design sprint experience was enough. But…take a risk is our theme this year.
This story skips the phone messages left, the articles researched, read and dismissed, and the meeting in which we brainstormed how to scale the experience for Friday. These behind-the-scenes moments, in our experience, are also a significant part for the planners of each Reach Beyond block during the school year. But let’s move ahead.
Friday morning, with Hillbrook vans gassed up, cash in-hand, and clipboards with templates prepared, Colleen and Ilsa announced to new employees that we would be leaving campus to investigate the central question of the food-values group’s design: How do my/an organization’s values drive food purchasing choices? We would travel to the downtown San Jose Farmers’ Market. Groups of three would have $20 to spend, or not, however they thought it furthered the pursuit of the central question. Employees brainstormed aloud observations they might make, and questions they might ask vendors or shoppers. Then we got in the vans, counting off, offering reusable bags, and sharing sunscreen.
At the Farmers’ Market, employees split off to conduct their investigations. Head of School Mark Silver, Colleen and Ilsa found themselves in a group, with a clipboard, a little unsure how they wanted to pursue the central question. How do Hillbrook School’s values drive food purchasing? We each had thoughts and examples but none of them immediately felt connected to this experience. So we started visiting booths.
Ten minutes later we found ourselves taste-testing plant-based milkshakes poured by the co-founder of VGN Shakes, Megan. We spent some of our group’s cash on a peanut butter banana shake. It was low in sugar, it was made by two San Jose small-business entrepreneurs, it was served in a compostable cup, and it was made without animal products. Also, it was delicious. Suddenly, we asked “wait, have we made the reservation yet for the first day of school’s typical Jamba Juice order?!” We texted Director of Human Resources Rozanne Schiro, who for the past few years has helped us celebrate the first day of school by serving smoothies after dismissal. What if, instead of Jamba Juice, we served these shakes to employees? Rozanne confirmed the order had not been placed yet, so we ran back to co-founder Megan and worked out a deal.
When we returned from the Farmers’ Market that morning, the excitement was palpable. New employee groups had so many stories to share that we did not tell this one. They brought back: a bean pie and the story of its inspiration by the maker’s political affiliation; three sets of red grapes grown by a large conventional farm, a large organic farm, and a small farm that is working to become certified organic; stories of a multi-generational family’s produce booth; garlic dip and chips and the story of a customer who has been returning to this corner to buy them for nearly 20 years. Employees came back with a mini-podcast they had recorded on-site, they came back with new learnings about farming practices, they came back with connections they hoped to make with students during the upcoming year.
That Friday was a day when the work we’ve done to bring Vision 2020 to fruition at Hillbrook was made visible. Embodying the “Hillbrook Way”, it began with a question. And despite the uncertainty, we just got started. We collaborated to design an experience that provoked us to ask new questions. And we showed our work, by making the unplanned choice to further align our purchases (a treat to celebrate opening day) with our values (being our best for people and planet).
What this employee-led Reach Beyond design sprint delivered is what our Reach Beyond Block & Week experiences show over and again for students and adults: the world is full of possibility, the richest soil for learning that lasts. At the intersection of Vision 2020, highly skilled employees, and Hillbrook’s Mission, Vision, and values (with a sprinkling of serendipity) lies Reach Beyond—an experience that cultivates changemakers-of-the-future who hold themselves and others capable of making changes today.
So, the next time you find yourself waffling between what has been done and what has yet to be, we encourage you to take a page from Hillbrook’s Core Values: take a risk. You might be surprised by the breathtaking, serendipitous reward of asking, “what if?”