The Personal and Professional
A work environment can either be therapeutic or pathologic. Positive, successful organizations must be or become therapeutic for anyone associated with them. Some of the rationale for therapeutic organizations is that the alternative magnifies and transforms personal struggles into organizational weakness. And we all, everyday, teachers, students, administrators, parents, staff, vendors, school psychologists, visitors, ad infinitum, bring our personal struggles with us.
As I reflect on more than 60 blog entries so far, much of the story of the learning/growing process that is lost in the sterilized public debates about educational institutions is precisely the interplay of the personal and the human among the organizational and professional. It is one of the advantages of studying history, a deep understanding of the human, irrational, and arbitrary in events both grand and minute. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in his Letters to his Son, we should be grateful for knowing that Alexander the Great burnt down great cities not out of rational strategic cleverness, but out of impulsive drunkenness.
Education is one of the more "interpretive" enterprises, like health care and psychiatry, where the object of the process is ourselves. That makes it intensely slippery and vulnerable to all the slings and arrows that flesh is heir to. Divorce, illness, tragedy, joy, loss, alcoholism, marriage, aging, strength, weakness, fear. All are shadows and influences daily. I have seen teachers struggling with radiation treatments for cancer play the role of health and strength to continue teaching. I have seen students under radical radiation, chemotherapy and surgery demand daily tutoring at their hospital bedside to keep up with school. I have seen divorce turn an exemplary professional into a barely functioning worker. I have seen the joy of birth or marriage shine from classroom doors. I have seen alcoholism and psychological damage cripple careers. I have seen recovered alcoholics bring profound wisdom to everyone they touch. We all have seen it.
Professionalism is a role, a player that struts and frets daily upon a stage of duty and responsibility. Often we do it well. Sometimes we can't do it at all. Sometimes students play their student role. Sometimes their life just comes spilling out on everyone. And the way an organization is structured and functions, and how it integrates the personal, can make it a therapeutic place that helps mend wounds and melt hurt. Or. Or it can be structured and function in ways that make the personal a weakness and turn life struggles into pathological damage. Social places can do both at different times as well.
The challenge is not only to acknowledge the personal behind the professional costume, but to plan for the personal struggles and weaknesses as a part of a compassionate and healthy workplace. Schools are the contemporary public forum, a keystone in civic society, and the public has a professional responsibility to create and protect those places.
But it won't happen using a business model and measuring widgets.
[See 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ]
As I reflect on more than 60 blog entries so far, much of the story of the learning/growing process that is lost in the sterilized public debates about educational institutions is precisely the interplay of the personal and the human among the organizational and professional. It is one of the advantages of studying history, a deep understanding of the human, irrational, and arbitrary in events both grand and minute. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in his Letters to his Son, we should be grateful for knowing that Alexander the Great burnt down great cities not out of rational strategic cleverness, but out of impulsive drunkenness.
Education is one of the more "interpretive" enterprises, like health care and psychiatry, where the object of the process is ourselves. That makes it intensely slippery and vulnerable to all the slings and arrows that flesh is heir to. Divorce, illness, tragedy, joy, loss, alcoholism, marriage, aging, strength, weakness, fear. All are shadows and influences daily. I have seen teachers struggling with radiation treatments for cancer play the role of health and strength to continue teaching. I have seen students under radical radiation, chemotherapy and surgery demand daily tutoring at their hospital bedside to keep up with school. I have seen divorce turn an exemplary professional into a barely functioning worker. I have seen the joy of birth or marriage shine from classroom doors. I have seen alcoholism and psychological damage cripple careers. I have seen recovered alcoholics bring profound wisdom to everyone they touch. We all have seen it.
Professionalism is a role, a player that struts and frets daily upon a stage of duty and responsibility. Often we do it well. Sometimes we can't do it at all. Sometimes students play their student role. Sometimes their life just comes spilling out on everyone. And the way an organization is structured and functions, and how it integrates the personal, can make it a therapeutic place that helps mend wounds and melt hurt. Or. Or it can be structured and function in ways that make the personal a weakness and turn life struggles into pathological damage. Social places can do both at different times as well.
The challenge is not only to acknowledge the personal behind the professional costume, but to plan for the personal struggles and weaknesses as a part of a compassionate and healthy workplace. Schools are the contemporary public forum, a keystone in civic society, and the public has a professional responsibility to create and protect those places.
But it won't happen using a business model and measuring widgets.
[See 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ]
posted by curtis @ 5:02 PM
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