Help everyone!

It is the only way to face up to an uncertain future

How can we best help another? By paying attention to them as a person with needs that we may suspect they have but will not know without giving our full attention - attention that is free of our own agenda.

I was talking with a friend about a young teacher whose focus in a primary setting is to (re)engage her difficult students.  Her starting point is to say that the problem is not with the student but with her own assumptions and expectations about who the child is and how they should be responding.

She has found that when she can move beyond these constraints, she can successfully bring these children back into more normative behaviours for their age group – curious, sociable, funny.

We are facing a genuine existential crisis as a species.  To overcome it we need leaders at much higher levels of consciousness than those currently in place.  Our best chance of achieving this in the long run is by ensuring that our young people develop without the artificial constraints placed on them by the stories we hold in our heads.

How do we ensure that every student feels valued, listened to and cared for, and presents their best selves in response?

 Starting today and for the following four weeks I will be posing a question to think about over the coming summer break.

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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