Finding the Flow in School

Most often it is very difficult for an educator to find time to read, as during the school year our time is filled with kids, planning, assessment, and the many other items that fill our days. And yes, we have lives outside of work where we play important roles as moms, dads, friends, etc. During the course of a school year, when the profession is done correctly, there is very little time to read. Despite this fact, educators should work as hard as they can to try and find the time to read for personal growth. I find that each instance I create time to learn, I grow. I'm in one of those times now as I just finished the book Drive by Daniel Pink, which hangs its hat on the surprising truth about what motivates us. This should be a studied topic for every educational leader - to discover what motivates teachers...and for teachers to discover what motivates kids. I'm focused on this at the moment, not just because of the book, but because I'm in a position to watch classrooms work, to watch buildings work, to watch the looks on students' faces during the course of their days, and to talk with educators about their current work. I worry about all of it, and it's a good worry.

Not to get into "book review mode", but my absolute favorite word and sections of the book discuss the word flow, which can be translated as people "forgetting themselves in a function". You might have a gamer in your family, who can hold the control and play the game for hours. You might have a fisherman, whose time at the lake is spent in serenity and focus. If you're a fan of athletics, you've seen someone get into a unique place for a few hours and accomplish something you couldn't believe. If you know an artist, perhaps you've watch them get lost in their canvas and hardly realize anything else is occurring. In flow, people live so deeply in the moment, and feel so utterly in control, that their sense of time, place, and even self melts away. How often do we see this in school? As I was making my way through Drive, the question of "can we do this in school?" surfaced consistently. Can we support and develop the mindset for our educators to get lost in what they are teaching? Can we support our students so that subject areas fly by and they can't wait for the next day? Instead of students having their favorite periods of the day, can we put something in place where flow is a consistent part of their day and every period is incredible? It may seem a bit utopian, but the attempt to get to this place is really the journey that should be sought. It's the quest of getting to a better place in our buildings (for staff and students) so that school days are looked at as opportunities to experience something foundational, incredible, and impactful. One may never get to the perfect school day, but the quest to get there is where we find the reward.

As a building principal, I would often be in a difficult place with a student and/or that student's family. He or she would encounter a really difficult situation in school and be facing consequences, and sometimes the behavior was appalling. I have enough stories at this point in my career and some of them would absolutely shock the average citizen. They wouldn't be able to comprehend "that happened in school?" or - more importantly - that student had become "this" person. In many of these situations, I would go back through the student's permanent records and take a look at their history. When I did this, the same thing stood out every single time - their school pictures. At the top of the manila folder would be the happiest Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, etc. smiling picture, but somewhere along the lines that turned into an unhappy school picture. Life, school, age, etc. took that creative, young, inquisitive mind to someone who was no longer capable of smiling at school for a picture and wanted everyone to know that they were unhappy in the building. Those situations were difficult, because there was NO engagement and school was not the place it could have been for that child. The building no longer was a place of flow for that child. I can't help but hope that school CAN be a better place for these kids and that school pictures can be a smile for 13 years.

The challenge in these types of situations - for students and for educators - is that the necessary enjoyment-based motivation, flow, ability to act with choice, turning work/school into play is extremely difficult in 2021. We've been told for nearly 20 months now what we must do and have been given little decision latitude on what we want to do or what we can do. We certainly are getting back to it, but we are now going to have to pick up the pieces of a very difficult time period for education. It's all going to begin with perhaps some of the most difficult work we've ever done as leaders to listen to people and to consider their thoughts about school. We are going to need to welcome people's curiosities about their own rooms, their own busses, their own buildings. In addition, our students are going to play an important role in telling us what's important to them and what they want to learn...what they like. Leadership will have to reach out in a new, supportive way and discover what motivates teachers and student in their work. That's extremely exciting to realize there's so much work to do.

Pink firmly believes this: Making meaningful progress in meaningful work is what motivates people. It's not a guess or a question; it's a researched finding. I'm thankful that he has spent years studying this and can help us all head into what's necessary in our work in making our schools a place of discovery and flow. I need to stop typing now, as there is much work in front of us.