Inquiry Inventory - 5/11/22

Here at The Human School, a big part of what brought us together is a deep love of reading and learning. We commit, as part of our learning journey, to sharing our week’s reading with you and what influences our thinking and learning.

Each week, you will see a post with what we’re reading, a quote, and an insight from that reading that leads us to deeper thinking.

To learn more about what we are reading, please take a look at our Connection Catalog.

Impact Networks by David Ehrlichman

“Network leadership is rooted in trusting relationships, collaboration, and shared power; it is adaptive, facilitative, and grounded in the wisdom of living systems. Network leadership is also distributed—anyone can demonstrate network leadership, from wherever they are, in many different ways. This more inclusive understanding of leadership inspires self-organization and provides a source of creative potential that makes networks such a powerful vehicle for innovation and change.”

We live in complex, often chaotic times. Hierarchy can’t be the only way forward. We need both hierarchy and networks.

In networks, there is a reframing of leadership. As in the way we frame our leadership mindshift in the Objector Compass point: Lead from anywhere: Navigating from leadership is a title to leadership is a choice by anyone to take action.

Interested in digging into networks and how they can be catalysts for impact? Visit the Converge website and check out their video. Good, thought-provoking stuff!

—Randy

Driving with the Brakes On: Why Are We Trying to Do Liberatory Practices within an Authoritarian Paradigm? by Jal Mehta

“In general, I find that it is easier to change by focusing on the next step rather than contemplating the size of the mountain. But in this case, I think it’s important to acknowledge the magnitude of this shift: changing the way in which we see young people, revisiting assumptions about the importance of control for learning, and rethinking deep assumptions about race and class.

That said, change is possible.”

Often, we can get overwhelmed by the size of the change we want to see. We know systemic change is huge, and it can feel insurmountable. However, the start should always be with our stakeholders, being curious, and making space for agency. Through those avenues, we can take necessary steps to move forward within this system while simultaneously pushing against it. As Mehta notes, there are plenty of places where this contradiction exists, but by taking small steps in modeling what our values are within the current paradigm and being curious about the ways our ontology might exist now and in the future, we can work to slowly break down the walls of the system with each step we take, each choice we model, each moment of agency we make space for, and we can start moving toward what we believe education should be.

—Rachel

The Elements of Choice: Why the Way we Decide Matters by Eric Johnson

“You might think that choice architecture is only useful for large institutions. Yet we often structure our own choices, whether they’re about jobs, mates, moves, or other important life choices. The tools in this book might help you to understand when to search more and when to stop, how to label attributes, and in general how to select good plausible paths and assemble helpful preferences. As you do that, you might realize that the designer, you, has a great deal of influence on the chooser—in this case, also you. It suggests one ultimate observation on how to use choice architecture, a paraphrase of the golden rule: Design for others as you would like them to design for you.”

The idea that we can intentionally design for choice and that we can design for human driven choices is in strong alignment with our Inventor Compass point. As we design our ecosystems for agency, voice, and choice, more human choices, more deeply personal choices are not only critical, but foundational. This text helps us to better understand choice architecture and help us to better understand how much choice we really have in the world (and how dehumanizing that can be) and then to better design choices in alignment with our beliefs about placing humanity at the center of all design.

—Chad