I get paid to be the member of a team that is responsible for planning, organizing, coordinating, and implementing a self-designed educational model to a group of roughly 30 students who have been diagnosed with a range of cognitive, emotional, and/or behavioral disorders.
Depending on the ever-changing needs of the student body, the school employs between 20 and 25 staff members each quarter. About eight or nine of those staff members (myself included) serve on the leadership council for the school.
One of our duties is to determine how each of our staff members will be deployed. Before doing so, we invite staff members to suggest their own ideas and suggestions, and we invite each student to request opportunities that our staff can strive to fulfill.
As we develop ways to deploy the staff, the council takes into consideration the strengths and challenges of each student, as well as the strengths and challenges of each staff member. We use that knowledge to further the educational plans of the student.
We judge our decisions against the assumptions of our model. While the model was inspired by others, we designed it in-house and then corrected it through both observation and evolution (any change that didn’t survive in our environment…didn’t survive). It’s a process that requires significant time to compute, though it’s less computation and more of an art form; thankfully, our council seeks to honor the muse.
In addition to strategizing and implementing individual educational plans for each student, the council works to expand the potential of the school. We encourage an atmosphere of learning and growth by fostering professional-development opportunities for the staff and welcoming members of the local community to share their passions with our students and inspire the next generation.
At the same time, we work directly with students on almost a minute-by-minute basis, forcing us to divide our attention between strategy and delivery to a sometimes worrisome degree (hence the need to divide the weight of the mission throughout the entire team).
While we have an executive director who acts as the ultimate arbiter, the general give and take of the school’s progress is determined by anyone who cares to contribute. Staff members are invited to attend each strategy session, as are the students (we’ve had several take us up on the offer).
The result is a school that feels less like an institution and more like a living, breathing force that remains open to outside influence and yet confident of its general direction. Participating in that force, allowing its inspiration to move through me and back into it, and feeling its effects on my soul, is a true joy.
It has its frustrations, but the Buddha teaches that all life is struggle; and yet as we all know, our lives need not be devoid of joy. For every frustration we feel as team members, we feel as well the ultimate joy of its release: the deflation of tension, the expansion in coöperation, and the resultant celebration.
Frustration is present, yes, but thanks to the good will of the team members, frustration merely increases our probability of improving the school.
Our team-based approach to running the school allows every adult to connect with students on a regular basis, which reinforces our mission to keep the school student-focused (as opposed to staff-focused). We not only serve as administrators, but as teachers, advisors, and student-transport drivers. We step up as counselors, as first-aid deliverers, and as triggered-student deëscalators. As a member of the team, we must be immune to anything that would stand in the way of our kids and brave enough to jump into the breach to save them.
None of us would be able to do it alone, nor would we want to. We depend on each other and make ourselves dependable in turn.
We wouldn’t have it any other way.