Mindblown

“Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.” Andre Gide

Effective listening is big. My definition isn’t comprehensive but it sure involves; inviting, hearing, noting , acknowledging (and eventually acting on) the voiced thoughts, concerns, ideas, moans, whines, shy observations, table-thumping-opinions and sane/insane, innovative/regressive suggestions of all parties involved in, and affected by, the system or structure we’re considering making some changes in.

In education we’re always ‘consulting’. Whenever some new ministry document emerges, or we change a word in some school policy, we wave a handful of A4s under parent noses and ‘consult’. We’re expected to and we’ve been doing it that way for years. However, (brace yourselves for a startlingly insightful observation.) here it is:) simply because we attempt to do it often, doesn’t mean we do it well. It doesn’t even mean we attempt to do it well. Unfortunately… effort does not always equate with effectiveness” (a useful report card comment).

Let’s consider a few seat–squirming examples of our common consultation processes …

1.Send out a Survey. Compose a few questions during staff meeting (spend an hour arguing semantics) and attach ‘survey’ to this week’s newsletter.
Survey Rules :
Not too many questions (we don’t want to confuse anyone),
Multiple choice or Tick Boxes (we don’t want to risk getting answers we weren’t expecting).
Yes of course, we’d like some comments (in the 3 cm generously allowed at the bottom of the sheet).
We’ll also provide class checklists, so we know exactly who’s returned their response (and, thus who really cares) or, we make responses anonymous (and then compare handwriting samples – yes, teachers are often so starved for feedback that we need to know who said what).
Results: After daily reminders, thinly veiled threats, and some pleading at assembly 30 -85% of forms are rummaged for, peeled off fridges and returned. Management teams spend hours after school sifting responses into generic piles and decoding eg. “– can’t read this, make it a ‘No”. Someone makes a table and reports results statistically to staff and BOT. Done. File results away until next ERO visit.

2. Hold a Parent Meeting. Popularly Wednesday or Thursday night, just after any Class/Camp meeting. 7 pm start, in the library (optimists tend to use the hall – although the staff toilet is often a large enough venue).
Parent Meeting Rules:
1.Essential to have more staff than parents present (Note: teachers -to- parents ratio is often better than EOTC guidelines).
2. Some kind of powerpoint must be endured.
3. Every syndicate/department leader must say something, whether they have something to say or not.
Parent Meeting Results: A week’s extra work and anxiety for every syndicate/department leader. One parent holds the floor with discomforting questions & a handful of weary parents suffer in saintly silence, comforted by the knowledge that they’re exceedingly virtuous for just turning up, and if they can just wait this out , the kids should be asleep by the time they get home.
The effectiveness of the meeting is often measured in numbers present, or ,when numbers are embarrassingly small, that affirming comment from Mrs Someone who likes what we’re doing. Tick box and breathe sigh of relief.

Aww heck.
The above examples are corny and trite but the bottom line is we can do this better. If we want to gather useful information about the systems we labour within, we need to provoke open and honest dialogue. We need to provide real and rich opportunities to listen to, and confer with, ALL parties affected. That’s everyone –Not just mum and dad, but the entire community ie. everyone in our community that is affected by the outcomes of our education system. Categorise them if you must, but I can’t think of anyone that that doesn’t affect …and accepting embarrassingly small representations of each group doesn’t count as effective.

So … let’s try doing it differently.
Let’s provide richer opportunities for those involved to;
1. Carefully consider the issues involved,
2. Access information relevant to informed discussion about those issues,
3. Convey their honest opinions without fear of censure, or judgment about the perceived quality of their response; their age, education, employment or personal standing in the community,
4. Be heard by those who intend to truly identify, analyse, evaluate and act on their expressed concerns.
5. Be actively involved in the identification, analysis and evaluation of the information.
6. Be actively engaged, as partners in learning, in strategic planning designed to implement ideas.
7. Be actively engaged in ongoing evaluation and review programmes.

If we discount professional arrogance and ‘hidden-agendas’, as reasons for our somewhat superficial consultative processes (although these have been hinted at… . What are we left with?
Apathy ? – “Why do we bother, we just get predictable responses from the same ones .
Ignorance? “So what’s the point of asking them anyway?”
Expediency? “Let’s just get it over with quickly, tick the boxes and move on to some kind of action”.

Oh dear. We question the relevance of consultation, struggle with it’s implementation and criticize the appropriateness of it’s outcomes. But … done well, effective consultation can lead to more community ownership, commitment to vision and implementation, and sustained involvement over time – which is exactly what we’re after !

We need to develop “a strategic, integrated and more personally involving approach to consultation and participation”. The best models seem to come from local government, and although schools can’t afford to pay for consultants, we can certainly begin to experiment and follow more widely accepted principles of community consultation.