Forum Activity for @bruce-anderson

Working in the Gap: What does it mean to you?

Working in the Gap

Great conversation. I think of gappers as translators and joiners working the messy middle ground between institutions and communities, and Ive seen them become unnecessary once the involved community and institutions find new ways to talk and work with each other. Its like a parachute jumper working a forest fire. You drop in, do your work, and move on to the next fire line. If gappers have a permanent place in the change framework of a community, doesnt that mean the transformative goals of a gapper have not been met? Thats an interesting idea to me, since institutions tend to want to promote permanent "positions" as a way to promote stability and a safe future for the institution. When is a gappers work done?

Welcoming Schools

ABCD and Education

In order for schools to be more welcoming and connected with their surrounding community, it follows for me that a useful place to start is within the schools themselves.....particularly with the students as a primary source of fuel for efforts. How welcoming are schools for students? I facilitated a day last month with about 80 high school students, representing six high schools in the rural Ottawa, Canada area. They were gathered to discover their common interests in welcoming, and develop action plans for making their schools more welcoming. It is a student organized and led effort, supported by each school administration. At the end of the day, each school group had 2-3 ideas they were going back to begin working on. I am not involved in the follow-up, so can't comment on what has happened yet. What I can tell you is that the students fully grasped the idea of welcoming, were willing to share quite intimate stories with each other of when they felt not-welcome at their school, and eagerly worked together to come up with ideas. I believe part of the reason it was successful was that the students framed the language as "welcoming" rather than "inclusion" or "diversity" or some of the other terms that adults use to define special-interest organizing around welcoming efforts. This allowed all students to feel fully included in the stories, the idea generation and the resulting action.