Merging Wisdom Road and School at Harpeth Hall

My new workshop series leverages key lessons from my Wisdom Road journey, and this week I spent a morning with the faculty of Harpeth Hall, an all-girls school in Nashville.  Given the number of teachers who cornered me afterwards, it was a complete success, with none of the all-too-familiar rolling eyeballs of “why do we have to come back early to school in August for this”!

After my presentation summarizing the journey and key takeaways, the faculty broke into small groups and brainstormed a Wisdom Roadmap unique to their school.  The located individuals and organizations that offer experiences, wisdom, and worldviews different than those held by most people in the school community, within several radii of the campus: 5 miles, 30 miles, 60 miles, and “much further but worth it”.  Collectively, we gathered hundreds of possible points of connection representing learning possibilities for students across a wide range of ages, subjects, and work/cultural/demographic groups.

Then the teachers roughed out ideas for incorporating interaction with those community resources into their classes and curricula, focusing on three key elements that I found critical to bridging human-human divides on my Wisdom Road: curiosity, humility, and listening.  Not surprisingly, the ideas they generated support Harpeth Hall’s strategic pillar of Educating Boldly.

In less than an hour, the groups had generated dozens of ideas, sharing some of the best with the whole group.

And here is a huge takeaway: given the opportunity to anonymously vote on the value of these ideas, the results were dramatic:

• “Most of these ideas are good, and students would benefit from them at least as much as they benefit from learning our traditional curriculum.”  90%
• “Many of these ideas are good, but I don’t know what I would cut from my own classes to make time for these activities.”  10%
• “I don’t think our students would benefit more from these activities than from spending those times in our traditional class and subject system.”  0%

After the session, I met a high school English teacher who, over a short lunch break, had already decided how to change her assignments this fall to have students pursue their own interests and passions in the community, and link those to research, reading, and writing!