The Systems Work

Today, in Portland Public Schools, we start planning for the year.

It's a great time to think about our systems. So enjoy this episode. It's one of my favorites.

-Desmond

Show Notes:

03:05- Desmond- "The book I pull from heavily is Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows ... and Systems Thinking for Social Change by David Peter Stroh"

03:36 Desmond- "Thats when the lightbulb went off, Oh! that's why I'm good at systems thinking because its about the inner connection between all things."

04:22 Desmond "The only way we can understand and conceptualize this stuff is by creating separation between ourself and the system and the different components of it. But the reality is that the separation only exists in our understanding of it, not in the lived day to day experience of it. Thats the hard part... when we begin to think about systems..."

05:37 Desmond "When you here the term (systems thinking) Whatever comes to mind for you is essentially what your operating with... When we think about systems we often think about it as something separate from ourselves. We often thinking about the conglomerates of corporations and institutions, bureaucracies and school districts....the problem is that we start to think that the part is the whole. We start to think that our experience is the only experience, that the system is in charge and has all the power."

07:18 Desmond "We separate the mind from the heart, and the mind from the body but it's all one body. We separate them to have different kinds of conversations, but we don't have a practice to brining them back together and having conversations about how they relate to each other as a whole system."

09:24 Desmond- "Its important to understand: The system is the map and the map is never the terrain...."

11:51 Whats the relationship between systems and culture?

14:03 What is the purpose of our education system? Desmond- "I'm gonna give you a quote from Thinking in Systems- The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinate of the systems behavior. I don't have a straight answer for you about what is the purpose of the education system. Because it's the least obvious part. You get what I'm saying? I know what I think the purpose is and that's what I teach from. But is what my purpose of education- human being development. "

15:20 Desmond "If I had a false dichotomy choice between giving a student all the skills in the world vs. Know who you are. I'm going to go with the know who you are."

16:08 Take two BARS guided mediation. Breathe Align Relax and Shine.

18:15 Jesse shares how the education system doesn't value the knowledge of self by how the system is set up. He shares story of the power of Step Up Camps. "I learn more about my self in those five days than a whole school year."

23:22 Desmond- "When I get excited about systems thinking is because Oh this explains how the system is fundamentally human because it becomes hypocritical at some point... "

26:26 Colleague clip- Sam "I think we need to blow the whole thing up. I think the way we educate our students is preparing them for either jail or becoming robots. Just the way that we make em line up, sit and not say anything in class. All that is preparing you to be a worker and not a boss."

Not said in the episode but this quote makes me think of another quote by Buenaventura Durruti “We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that.... We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.”

29:25 Jesse reads lyrics from the third verse J Cole's song High For Hours- What good is takin' over when we know what you gon' do? The only real revolution happens right inside of you

30:47 Desmond "It gets to this idea- policy created racism, racism creates racists ideas, racist ideas reenforce racist policies, and what we have to remember is the people who created racist policies weren't necessarily operating with the racist ideas, since they hadn't been invented yet, but they were operating with the human condition. They were operating with self interest and that balance that we all play with: doing for self and doing for others. We convince ourselves that doing for self is doing for others... convincing ourselves that our we are doing the policy for the greater cause... we start to tell stories about how other people are less than human.

34:08 Desmond- "one of our greatest powers and our greatest weaknesses as humans is story. I came to realization about how stories are a weakness because stories have a to have a beginning, middle and end... We use stories understand the system around us and to understand ourself. Stories are simulations of reality."

36:26 Desmond "Map not the terrain... I have a story of my life, story of what my classroom should be. Something comes in that's not a part of that story. Instead of changing my story, because that's the harder part to change- stories are powerful. I ignore and push out the part that doesn't fit."

37:33 Colleague clip Same- "Kids are the most adaptable people in the world. Whatever we say we're doing we're rocking with it. Whether its courageous conversations this year, whether its RJ. Whatever, they're going to adapt. Its adults that push back on all that stuff."

38:40 Desmond "Thinking about the systems work we can do to bring more equity into it. How does our system bring in normally marginalized folks?... Marginalizing folks are marginalizing themselves. It's the systemic result of how we do things. So do we then rethink our systems to bring in folks that are normally left on the outside, that have been pushed out of the story by default. Not by intention by the lack of attention to the normal experience..."

39:50 Desmond breaks down what happens when teachers try to take on a strategy without doing the work to embody... Teachers revert back to old habits and the same story.

40:40 Jesse "Doing the inner work is changing the internal systems by receiving the work from the outer systems. Whats working and not working?"

42:10 What are systems for? What is education for? To serve the needs for the people apart of the system.

47:29- Desmond uses an analogy of NBA draft to apply to the education system. Teams/schools at the bottom should get the first pick for funding.

50:00 Desmond "Where do we begin this work? We begin were we are... We seek to understand more than we do now... We can begin making decisions that are more aligned with the whole..."

50:41 Colleague clip- Sam- "I think emotionally for the people in power they don't have the capability of doing that. Of admitting wrong. Because, its just like going into RJ the first thing you do is identify what happened, who was affected by it, what can we do to make things right, and how can we keep things right. The key part of it is taking accountability and responsibility for what you did in that situation. And I don't think our education system in the United States is ready to take accountability for what they've done. And you can't fix a problem if you've never admitted it to being a problem."

54:15-Desmond "A lot of these episodes, these themes, is a lens for analysis of our experience to maintain the curiosity and openness to act towards equity. Once we close off from that and go into strict self preservation mode we default to status quo... Then we do the harm of the status quo."

54:46- Colleague clip-Sam- "What you like you don't hurt, what you feel a part of you take care of. If we get to a space, you like your teacher, you like your classmates, - that's from learning each other. Thats why the whole community circle process is so important. You get to know each other on a level- not just as my classmate or my teacher. Because you're less likely to hurt who you like. Once you feel a part of the fabric of your school you more likely to police yourselves. "

55:20 Key Words and Phrases Freestyle edition: capitalism, it' s all connected, cliches, revolution, blow it up, stake holder.