Alex Owens

03/05

Proposal and Reflection

The Dream

Someone recently asked me, Why is community important? And to be honest, I sat there
dumbfounded as I scrambled for the closest answer. It took me a few awkward seconds filled
with ahs and ums to find the answer.

After months of talking about and researching community development, I never came across a
question this direct. Community, with all its attachments and amendments, seems to be at the
center of everything we do in education. Community of learners. Community of diverse families.
Collegial Community. We use that word over and over to convey an important sense of
togetherness and unity, but we take for granted that fundamental reason why a community is
important. The question in its most simplest form had real merit and it stayed with me
throughout this last course.

A tight knit group, both in and out of school, yields tremendous benefits. I have had an
impossible time defining that word community for the last couple of months. From geography to
pedagogy, every person, expert, and professional uses the words with a different context and
for a different purpose. As I have been consumed by answering what is community, I have yet
to really articulate why community is important/

A healthy community can serve as a positive collection of resourceful individuals all willing and
able to contribute to the larger group. Whether through a cup of sugar or a life long friendship, a
community is a network of various exchanges that strengthen (or potentially weaken) the
relationships between its members.

My dream has been to create a program and space that helps to foster those important
relationships. Not necessarily a school for just youth, instead I dream of a more open center for
positive and creative social interaction. I simply do not think there are enough safe yet unique
places for us to go to meet new people, share our own experiences, and learn new skills. I dont
there are many places where communities are mixed, introduced, shared, and reimagined. My
dream is building that space for adults and youth, of many different communities, to use. Think
of it as an incubator for both creative ideas and community development.

In chapter 6 of her Power of Their Ideas, Deborah Meier talks about the benefits of small
schools. A loud and clear advocate, she claims that small schools serve as the ideal training
ground for democracy, where students and faculty can have both the time, flexibility, and
familiarity to best discuss and deliberate on important school issues. Out of this process, a
culture of collaboration and trust forms, making everyone in the school, from adults to youth,
more accountable. Meier sums up this convincing argument at the end of the chapter by stating,
Small autonomous schools are, when all is said and done, a way to reestablish for us all, adults
and children, the experience of community, of conversation, of the stuff of public as well as
academic life (Meier 2002, 119) I completely agree that small schools can serve as
communities in practice, but I also wonder how we can make that same experience and
conversation more far reaching? Is it possible to take the warmth and positive energy of a
small school like HTH and share it with the rest of the community? Is there a better way to apply
the different principles that make HTH not just a small school, but a space equally committed to
the overall improvement and development of the surrounding community?

My overall dream is built upon those questions and is colored by those possibilities.

The Reality

Inspired by Chip and Dan Heaths Switch, I realized that to pursue this dream at HTMCV I first
need to talk to folks to gauge not only feedback on my own dream, but to also ask both students
and teachers about their own. In interviewing various people, I tried to listen for and identify a
couple of bright spots that I could build off from. As the Heath brother describe in Chapter 3,
finding those significant bright spots can often reveal positive solutions to larger problem and
without that perspective, we run the risk of analysis paralysis. In order to stopping spinning our
wheels around dreams and to truly enact positive change, we must find clear direction through
the positives that already exist. With that in mind, I went out to talk to different folks and found
two clear bright spots to build off from.

Bright Spot #1- Exhibition Success HTH schools do a great job inviting the community to see
and experience student work during exhibitions. Hundreds of people from the community come
to see our student work and participate in the celebration of their creative efforts. However, in
focused conversations with students, many acknowledged that there are not many opportunities
to engage and interact with community members, even when considering exhibition. To them,
exhibition serves as a one way interaction centered solely around their work. And often, due to
the sheer size of a Festival Del Sol or all village exhibition, even that time to connect and share
can be cramped. The students claimed that there is no neutral ground outside of projects,
clubs, or sports that allow for people to come together and positively interact. Although
exhibition serves as obvious bright spot, many articulated its immense potential and room for
growth.

Bright Spot#2- Parent Involvement My talk with Melissa Daniels, director of High Tech Middle
Chula Vista, also illuminated the willingness among the CV faculty and staff to engage with their
families and community. From POLS to exhibition again to community oriented projects, Melissa
highlighted the many ways in which HTH tries to connect with parents and families. The desire
and mission to better connect with the adult world and community is intentionally built in to the
HTH cultural fabric. Although that effort often rests in the academic work of HTH students,
Melissa and other staff have been thinking of other ways to try to engage HTH families. Citing
recent coffee talks every months, Melissa and staff have been trying to invite parents into the
discussions around our model and progress as a school. We are having those discussions as a
staff, so how can we better solicit parent input and ideas on those big discussion. Although
these early efforts have been limited, they are growing and I find that commitment as a positive
bright spot.

There is real opportunity for my larger dream to better align with these goals. In doing so, I am
organizing a small step and event to address the need for more community engagement down
in CV and to continue the steady progress already initiated by current faculty and staff.

A Proposal

So, with my dream and those bright spots in mind, I want to organize a program that both
showcases student work, but also makes that exchange reciprocal and inclusive. The program
needs to not just represent student work, but use their work to generate meaningful
conversation. Along with our students, this program should also attract and engage our parent
community in order to further bring them into the HTH culture.

In mid- April, along with the rockstar 7th grade Linnik/Macalaguim team, we will be hosting a
community dinner at our Village Garden. After months of working to further develop the garden
project, we will host our dinner to not only showcase the students effort, but to also generate a
different conversation around food, nutrition, and community. The main feature of the dinner will
be the Villages new outdoor brick oven (currently under construction) and we will serve DIY
pizza as our main course. The program will consist of two substantial parts that apply to our
dream:

1) Pizza- Each table will be assigned a student chefs at each table both to introduce available
local ingredients and to help prepare pizza for the oven. Although our garden will not yet be
ready to harvest, we are currently working with Suzies Farm to acquire fresh ingredients.Each
table will make their own pie- an essential part to not just breaking the proverbial ice, but also
reinforcing the individuals benefits of cooking.

2) Conversation- With the pizza in the oven, our student leader will also facilitate table
conversations around food and local community needs. Our 7th graders are currently invested
in a documentary project investigating what students in the community choose to eat on a
regular basis. The conversation will not be about presenting facts or again showcasing student
knowledge, but instead about asking questions and engaging participants at the table. What is
your favorite food? What was your favorite meal? What do we like to cook? These questions,
although unrelated to any serious community issues, will be more importantly used to break the
ice and generate a dialogue that can be later expanded to include the deeper issues connected
to the 7th grade project

Later, we will use those smaller conversations to facilitate a larger group share out about our
community and more specifically, food access. Although the details of this activity and
facilitation are yet to be determined, they will be facilitated by our student leaders and will be
designed to encourage a different discussion among their fellow students and families.

For that night, we will hopefully create a small slice to my own dream and provide a space for
students and their parents to cook together and talk together.

The Step

This is a big endeavor and will obviously entail the cooperation and support of many people.
The most important step now is to build a coalition of partners and collaborators willing to both
design the program, collect necessary materials, and get community members to the dinner.
Stealing a page from Ronald Heifetzs Leadership on the Line, we must think politically in the
upcoming weeks to find partners both in and out of the HTH network to support our program
and create positive momentum. As Heifetz puts it, the benefits to local partners are immense:

Partners provide protection, and they create alliances for you with factions other than
your own. They strengthen both you and your initiatives. With partners, you are not
simply relying on the logical power of your arguments, and evidence, you are building
political power as well. Furthermore, the content of your ideas will improve if you take
into account the validity of other viewpoints (Heifetz and Linksy 2002, 78)


Although a bit obvious, this is the a crucial step to making this community dinner happen. Aside
from my running partners Kyle and Edrick, I also need to reach out to leaders in the other
schools (HTHCV and HTe) to find potential collaborators that will support the larger cause.
However, I must also keep in mind the trap of only working with the willing, described by
Susan Johnson in her essay Overcoming the Obstacles to Leadership. Although I want to
build a strong coalition, I need to pursue those voices that may not be as supportive or
enthusiastic about the dinner. By doing so, I will gain a more honest perspective about the event
and the inevitable obstacles that will arise.

So far, there have been many conversations, but not enough progress made or commitment. To
do so, I need refine my approach and better supply the why.

Although I heard much enthusiasm for this developing proposal, I also recognized some
apparent obstacles in organizing the event. Schools are busy places and to add another thing to
our overflowing plates will likely be met with some sighs and groans. How do we get folks to our
dinner outside of normal hours? How do we get students there if not required by grade? How do
we get parents involved if not an exhibition? How do we get community partners not yet
involved with the school? These are all questions that need to be addressed in the design and
preparation of our program, but first we need to craft and then articulate our reason for WHY
this dinner. Much like the question at the top of this, why does this dinner matter? Why should
we put in the work and energy to organize?

In his Seven Secrets of the Savvy School Leader, Robert Evans writes that although school
leaders always need to articulate that crucial why, it often causes distress. Change, or a new
program in this case, often rock the status quo, which in turn potentially perpetuates a feeling of
loss. Here, even a simple idea like a pizza dinner can encourage that sense of loss time or
energy. Another event to plan. Another HTH date to schedule. In order to combat that sense, I
need to provide a clear statement as to why both this dinner and this initiative is important. As
Evans writes, Without [the why], there is no readiness, no motivation to change (Evans 2002,
47). Our program needs more detail and development. Our students need to be more prepared
and included. Potential partners need to be collected. However, in order to do those things well,
we need to develop the why to motivate the important players and to bring them on board. This
will be our crucial first step.

The Growth

With that said, I took to heart chapter 11 of Farsons Management of the Absurd. This year, I
have been more conscious of my skills as a listeners and have tried to improve them when
possible. Although this will prove to be a life times work, the reading reminded how important
listening is to not only this specific effort, but community work as a whole. Without it, not only
could I potentially miss out on the brilliant ideas of my students or the obstacles laid out by my
colleagues, but I also will be forcing my own isolated will and vision on the community- Farson
articulates this by stating,... when we really listen, so that we understand the other persons
perspective, we risk being changed ourselves. Similarly, listening to others means having to be
alert to ones own defensiveness, to one ones impulse to want to change others (Farson 2002,
62) In organizing, it is too easy for us to become focused to our original intention and vision. It
will be important for this event and beyond for me to remain committed to my intention or
original goal, but flexible in its execution or practice. That is the balance of any effective leader.

In developing the why, I need to be conscientious of developing that not just for people, but with
them as well. Whether that means inviting students in the discussion or actively planning this
program out with teaching partners, my dream will hopefully become our vision for this
community dinner. In organizing for that change, I hope to again address the question posed at
the beginning of this reflection and hopefully find an answer that portrays community as not only
a product of proximity.

Instead, community can serve as a means to an ambitious goal and a unified front working
collectively to do positive work. Even if only over one slice of pizza.

Work Cited

Evans, R. (2010, January 5). Seven secrets of the savvy school leader: A guide to surviving and
thriving. John Wiley & Sons.

Farson, R. (1997, March 13). Management of the Absurd. Simon and Schuster.

Heath, Dan and Chip. (2008) Switch. Crown Publishing Group.

Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2002). Leadership on the line: Staying alive through the dangers of
leading (Vol. 465). Harvard Business Press.

Johnson, S. M., & Donaldson, M. L. (2007). Overcoming the Obstacles to Leadership.
Educational Leadership, 65(1), 8-13.

Meier, D. (2002). The power of their ideas: Lessons for America from a small school in Harlem.
Beacon Press.