{"id":657,"date":"2018-04-27T11:13:53","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T18:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/?p=657"},"modified":"2018-04-27T11:17:12","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T18:17:12","slug":"reflecting-on-reach-beyond-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/2018\/04\/reflecting-on-reach-beyond-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaching Toward Tomorrow, Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ilsa Dohmen, Director of Teaching & Learning<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just finished reading Susan Cain\u2019s fabulous book <\/span>Quiet<\/span><\/i>: <\/span>The Power of Introverts in a World that Can\u2019t Stop Talking<\/span><\/i>. After our most recent Instructional Round focused on the question of how introverted children experience our classrooms, I was eager to find more content on the subject. The book is a delightful mix of cultural history, medical science, and personal narrative centered around explicating the mistake we have made by devaluing our quieter, more reflective community members, encouraging them to see their sensitivity, their reserve, and their thoughtfulness as deficits to be exorcised. <\/span><\/p>\n

At a time in our culture when paying deep attention, listening, and cultivating respect and attention for people, places and ideas different from our own seems at an all-time low, Reach Beyond Week was a bright spot for me as an educator. My own group explored the neighborhood of downtown San Jos\u00e9 and asked what its future might be as a city poised for growth. We met, listened to, and asked questions of experts and influencers who gave generously of their time, including former Mayor Tom McEnery, Executive Director of San Jos\u00e9 Downtown Association Scott Knies, Homelessness Response Team Leader Lorena Diez, Mexican Heritage Plaza Executive Director Tamara Alvarado, President of Swenson Development Case Swenson, Local Color Founding Director Erin Salazar, Groundwerx team member Corinna, KIVA San Jos\u00e9 Program Operations Intern Jake Blas, and P-BID President, and longtime downtown business owner, Chuck Hammers. After a couple days collecting these people\u2019s narratives and perspectives around downtown, our group sat in a math classroom on-campus to ask ourselves, who did we meet and <\/span>what mattered most to each of them<\/span><\/i>? What did this person tell us about San Jos\u00e9, about themselves, about their work, that reveals what matters to them? And how (relying on skills like close-listening and note-taking) do we know?<\/span><\/p>\n

My takeaways from the week were myriad, personal and professional. One takeaway, that students also voiced, is that city planning has tremendous complexity and people see issues (like pensions, homelessness, parks) from very different angles. There weren\u2019t easy answers to our questions and no solution seemed likely to be equally supported by all the people we met. <\/span><\/p>\n

The second big takeaway, for me, was a real broadening of what it means to \u201creach beyond yourself and make a difference.\u201d In our week, we saw countless examples; each person we met was working hard on something that matters to them, and having a huge impact on their communities. Almost none of these looked like community service as typically structured in schools. Instead it looked like meeting with people around the neighborhood, being informed about local issues, writing to government officials, creating a club, running a business in a particular way, supporting an initiative by speaking on its behalf, mindfully using public transit, bringing a mug to avoid plastic water bottles, attending certain events. These actions, mindsets, and practices did not look like add-ons to their lives or jobs but like ways of living and working. I was reminded throughout the week of all the ways our day-to-day choices affect others, and how those small impacts ripple out to create cultures with an impact that resonates. I was reminded how personal these actions can be, how unique to each person\u2019s particular strengths and values. Most of all, I was reminded that each of us is constantly reaching beyond ourselves and making a difference in the world, whether we are intentional about that impact or not\u2014our impact-behaviors are not separate from our other behaviors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Susan Cain writes in her conclusion of <\/span>Quiet<\/span><\/i>, \u201cWe know from myths and fairytales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a lightsaber, another a wizard\u2019s education. The trick [for an individual] is not to amass all the different kinds of available power, but to use well the kind you\u2019ve been granted.\u201d At Hillbrook, our students come with all different powers\u2014of perception, of action, of reflection, of persuasion… The impact they have on the world will look different, and it\u2019s already begun. The better we understand as adults all the ways we each make a difference, the better we will be at helping students see how they also make a difference, not only when they grow up, not only through opportunities created and managed by their school, but all the time, right now.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ilsa Dohmen, Director of Teaching & Learning I\u2019ve just finished reading Susan Cain\u2019s fabulous book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extraordinary-educational-experience","category-reach-beyond-week"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}