maple leaf 2-3. School Empowerment

School Empowerment
What Does An Empowered School Look Like?
  • Inclusive
  • Consensus = win/win
  • Self-assessing/self-aware
  • Personal Disarmament = willing to transform
  • Fight with dignity
  • Everyone is a leader {at different times}
    {Scott Peck}
  • Spirit of Peace
  • Community Control = Local Values/Directions
  • Committed
  • Realistic = humility
  • Safe place
How Do Schools Become empowered?
  • Systems "above" the school level are supportive
  • Community believes in school
  • FOUR STAGES all stages are essential to grow through:
    1. Pseudocommunity = fake it
      • allows individuals to make "blanket" statements
      • lack/ignore individual differences
    2. Chaos = centers around misguided attempts to heal/change
      • individual differences in open but trying to "standardize"
      • attack each other
    3. Emptiness = needed to bridge from chaos to community
      • must deal with, and remove "Barriers to Communication"
        (=expectations, preconceptions, prejudices, ideology, need to control, need to heal/convert fix or solve - your way)
    4. Where to from here?
      • community building FIRST
      • problem-solving SECOND
      • to maintain a community requires setting new community tasks and goals

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