Work to engage!

Most people work hard but many are not engaged

Working hard is not the same as being engaged (slavery is an extreme example where people are obliged to work hard but there is little if any engagement!).

Many – most – teachers work hard, equally many teachers are disengaged (just like many people in most walks of life).

In modern forms of work, working hard is not enough.  In modern forms of work, engagement is essential.  We cannot be curious, adaptable, show initiative, be creative or collaborative if we are not engaged.

We want our children to learn these skills - twenty-first century skills - so they must be engaged themselves for that learning to take place. To engage they need adults to model what it means to be engaged – at least some will not have this modelling available outside of school. Even for those who do, being presented with authority figures who are not modelling engagement undoubtedly has an impact.

We are far enough into the transformation of our education systems (and our society) to know that engagement is a key behaviour that we want everyone – adults and children - to have.

It is non-negotiable for twenty-first century work.

It is hard to become engaged if we are part of the majority who lost this capacity when we were still young.  But it is far from impossible.  It takes effort – hard work – but hard work directed towards building the right capacities.

A first step is making re-acquiring the capacity for engagement a legitimate development activity.

 John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation. At the core of this work is the practice of encounter.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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