The Systems Work

Today, in Portland Public Schools, we start planning for the year. It's a great time to think about our systems. So enjoy this episode. It's one of my favorites. -Desmond Show Notes: 03:05- Desmond- "The book I pull from heavily is Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows ... and Systems Thinking for Social Change by David Peter Stroh" 03:36 Desmond- "Thats when the lightbulb went off, Oh! that's why I'm good at systems thinking because its about the inner connection between all things." 04:22 Desmond "The only way we can understand and conceptualize this stuff is by creating separation between ourself and the system and the different components of it. But the reality is that the separation only exists in our understanding of it, not in the lived day to day experience of it. Thats the hard part... when we begin to think about systems..." 05:37 Desmond "When you here the term (systems thinking) Whatever comes to mind for you is essentially what your operating with... When we think about systems we often think about it as something separate from ourselves. We often thinking about the conglomerates of corporations and institutions, bureaucracies and school districts....the problem is that we start to think that the part is the whole. We start to think that our experience is the only experience, that the system is in charge and has all the power." 07:18 Desmond "We separate the mind from the heart, and the mind from the body but it's all one body. We separate them to have different kinds of conversations, but we don't have a practice to brining them back together and having conversations about how they relate to each other as a whole system." 09:24 Desmond- "Its important to understand: The system is the map and the map is never the terrain...." 11:51 Whats the relationship between systems and culture? 14:03 What is the purpose of our education system? Desmond- "I'm gonna give you a quote from Thinking in Systems- The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinate of the systems behavior. I don't have a straight answer for you about what is the purpose of the education system. Because it's the least obvious part. You get what I'm saying? I know what I think the purpose is and that's what I teach from. But is what my purpose of education- human being development. " 15:20 Desmond "If I had a false dichotomy choice between giving a student all the skills in the world vs. Know who you are. I'm going to go with the know who you are." 16:08 Take two BARS guided mediation. Breathe Align Relax and Shine. 18:15 Jesse shares how the education system doesn't value the knowledge of self by how the system is set up. He shares story of the power of Step Up Camps. "I learn more about my self in those five days than a whole school year." 23:22 Desmond- "When I get excited about systems thinking is because Oh this explains how the system is fundamentally human because it becomes hypocritical at some point... " 26:26 Colleague clip- Sam "I think we need to blow the whole thing up. I think the way we educate our students is preparing them for either jail or becoming robots. Just the way that we make em line up, sit and not say anything in class. All that is preparing you to be a worker and not a boss." Not said in the episode but this quote makes me think of another quote by Buenaventura Durruti “We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest