Entry #46: The Zen of
facilitation -- and beyond

My books and materials are all moved out and my keys have all been turned in to the office. My new office is almost set up, unless you count all those papers that still need to be filed.

Yesterday I got a map of the feeder patterns of our Cluster. There are 12 schools: George Washington High; Shallcross, a disciplinary school; Baldi, LaBrum and Rush, all middle schools; and seven elementary schools: Comly, Decatur, Fitzpatrick, Anne Frank, Greenberg, Hancock and Loesche. Greenberg is a K-8 school, but all the others feed into the middle schools.

Today I met with the Cluster Leader and she began to give me a sketch of the schools, their programs, and their potential needs in the upcoming year. The secretary gave me the school improvement plans for the twelve schools on Wednesday. I also received an updated list of the administrators for each school. I even got to meet a few principals and small community leaders at a meeting.

I'm starting to get a picture of this area, but there are still huge gaps in my understanding.

I'll read the plans, I'll even review the test scores which just arrived, but I won't get a sense of the school until I see it in action. A school without kids, a school without the teaching and learning, doesn't seem much like a school at all.

I'm suddenly reminded of the old John Sayles' film, "Brother from Another Planet." In the film, Joe Morton plays an alien who lands at Ellis Island. The immigrants are long gone, but Joe can hear them and feel their pain, their fears, their confusion, when he touches the surfaces that they once touched.

I wish I had that magical, alien touch. I wish I could touch a child's desk and understand their experience. I 'd like to feel the teachers', parents' and administrators' experiences, too.

I need to understand the culture of each of the 12 schools. How long will it take me to develop a working understanding? How can I get a reasonably full picture without taking the whole year to observe, interview and interact?

Since I already know that time is a precious and valuable commodity in the life of a school and its members, how will I make it worthwhile for folks to spend time on me?

Should I share my thinking, my questions, my entries? Will this kind of sharing build a bridge with people or separate us further? If people know I keep a public diary will they clam up? Will I become suspect? Making my work public has become reflexive for me. I have learned much in, and from, the process, but everyone hasn't had that experience...hmm.

Last year I was asked to write about my view of my son's experiences as a first-year teacher. I declined because I knew that he might not be comfortable with that level of exposure, especially since we probably wouldn't totally agree on the implications of his experiences.

I am going to use that same rule of thumb in my writing this year. I think I need to focus on issues which I contend with as a learner/facilitator. I cannot afford to slip into a fixer mode in my thinking or my writing.

My desire to prove myself in a new position will need to be continually balanced against my conviction that teachers and students don't get "fixed" from the outside. My impatience with the system, my sense of urgency, will need to be held in check, lest I burn bridges that will be needed later in this leg of my journey.

The Zen of facilitation -- and beyond

Last week I was involved in a new coaches' training where we read two articles about facilitation. The first article was called, "The Zen of Facilitation" by Joellen P. Killion and Lynn A. Simmons (Journal of Staff Development, 13.3, 1992). In the "Zen" article there is a clear and consistent distinction made between training others and facilitating.

As I reread this article it struck me that training was very much like the teaching models that require clearly stated, measurable objectives, which are written on the board at the start of each lesson. As an undergraduate, I learned to write those objectives, but it was always a struggle. I recognized the benefits of structure and focus, but I knew that the good stuff, the excitement of teaching and learning, would lay in the somewhat messy process where real people, big or little, connect with knowledge and each other.

The article states that in trainings we "move from the known to the known"; in other words, we dispense information that we already know to others who may, or may not, want to know it.

The piece then goes on to contrast facilitation as "moving from the known to the unknown." Facilitation, according to these authors, "creates a nurturing environment for individuals to achieve whatever they are comfortable achieving in an undefined time frame."

The philosophy of this article is liberating. It allows for learning differences, it recognizes that none of us has the answers, but it can also be rather irritating if carried to its logical extreme.

Given the needs of our students -- needs in the here and now -- we cannot afford to operate in an "undetermined time frame." If folks attend a seminar or a workshop, they have an expectation that they'll leave the session(s) with something they can use fairly quickly.

So how do we achieve a healthy balance? How do we, as facilitators, guide groups and individuals, in order to foster independence without falling into an "anything goes" mode?

In an effort to explore this dilemma we also read a second article, "Constructivist Facilitation: When Zen is Not Enough" by Nancy Mohr. In this article, the author acknowledges both the strengths of a group which charts its own way, and the limitations of participants, who have a limited time together and are not a group beyond their attendance in a particular setting.

Ms. Mohr recounts the experiences of working in groups with "top down philosophies", groups that embodied the "you can't trust the customer" perspective. She goes on to trace the next phase, the reaction to the first, as being " the overly democratic stage." A stage where the leader relies on "the wisdom of the group" when the group has not yet been developed.

Finally, she discusses the development of "communities of learners". In this section she refers to a book called, "The Constructivist Leader" by Linda Lambert et al. In this book, constructivist leadership is defined as "the reciprocal processes that enable...participants in an educational community to construct meanings...that lead toward a common purpose of schooling."

Nancy's article resonates for me. It speaks to the need to plan carefully while building in respect for the participants and their experience. The article also recognizes the "see-sawing nature of shifting roles." For example, as we strive as facilitators to adapt to the needs of the group, we will still need to remind folks of time constraints and sometimes we will make mistakes.

Becoming facilitative means taking risks, taking risks means making some mistakes. A few years ago, as a new coach, I was upset with myself when I recognized mistakes which I'd made and I spoke to a more experienced colleague about my frustration. She told me to practice the art of forgiveness, toward myself and toward others.

I have never forgotten my friend's advice. While I continue to make the mistakes that go with the territory of taking risks and pushing the work, I now understand that I can expect my colleagues to respect the context in which the mistakes were made.

I'm not saying mistakes should be taken lightly; in fact, I think they should be explored as the "windows on the mind" which Frank Smith describes in his work about literacy. I'm just saying that guilt and frustration slow down the process, they don't inform the work, they don't serve our needs.

Having said all of that, I know that I will need to revisit these lessons of facilitation and forgiveness often, as I approach my new job and my new colleagues.

[Editor's note: Deb will continue her diary during the coming school year. We're looking forward to sharing the adventures of a brand-new staff developer who's committed to making her work collaborative and substantive. Deb will also serve as co-moderator of the new MiddleWeb listserve, which will begin early this fall.]


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