Published on February 6, 2025
“Become the one calm person on the boat who shows the way for all.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
In my address to all staff on 22 January, I referenced the concept of “factfulness” (see previous blogpost). I asked staff to review the dramatic attention filters that are their “defaults” when they are stressed, worried or just simply very busy, and then to review the “rules of thumb” which can help keep their dramatic instincts in check. (source) I know for myself it is easy to slip into the “generalisation instinct” and see one issue as symptomatic of a broader problem, or as a leader to get caught in the “single perspective instinct” and believe that there is only one solution. Checking our dramatic instincts helps us be better leaders, teachers and parents. Ultimately it helps us stay open to hearing other possibilities and feeling hopeful. We also have a greater sense of agency – things are not happening to us; we have a choice as to how we choose to see and interact with information that comes our way.
This brings me to my opening quote.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a buddhist monk from Vietnam and I particularly like the quotation above: “become the one calm person on the boat that shows the way for all”. I come from a strong Catholic family and know the power of prayer to calm the mind and soul in order to see with clarity and wisdom. Prayer and meditation help us intentionally slow down our thoughts so we can use our capacity for reason to interrogate what we hear and see. It enables us to ask questions such as:
- What am I feeling right now that might be influencing my perspective?
- How do I know what I am hearing or reading is true?
- What other information might I need to help me really understand what is/was happening?
- Whose perspective might also be useful to hear? How might another person see this differently?
- Where is the information coming from and what do I know about those who have created and/or shared this information? What else might I want to know about them to better understand their perspective?
- How might a person’s perspective or experience influence what, how, when and where they share information?
As a Principal I deal on daily basis with the perspectives of others, and often the person sharing (whether it is a parent, student or staff member) is convinced by the “rightness” of their perspective. As a human being, I understand the importance of validating these perspectives and know that when someone feels strongly about an issue they will fight for it. As a leader, my role is to navigate these different perspectives – using reason and judgement – to determine the best way forward.
Our students need to learn the skills to be able to do this as well. This begins with students understanding when they are motivated by emotion, when their dramatic instincts are being triggered, and then having the tools to step back, pause, take a breath and engage their critical thinking skills.
Now more than ever we need to cultivate calmness and wisdom on a cognitive and spiritual level to help us grapple with the many demands on our attention and that of our children. My purpose in asking our staff to reflect on their own dramatic instincts was to provide that moment of reflection and to help them cultivate within themselves the tools that keep their instincts in check. Why is this important for us as educators? Because our students need us to demonstrate the power of reason, wisdom and “factfulness” so they can learn to navigate the vast volumes of information they are consuming.
When I spoke to staff, I also shared this quotation from Julia Baird’s book Bright Shing: How Grace Changes Everything:
As we embark on 2025, a gift we can give our students is to model the pursuit of reason and wisdom with an open mind and heart. I like Baird’s quote because it speaks to the one of the major challenges we face as a society: we risk retreating from each other and withdrawing from dialogue. It is harder and harder to see great public examples of people with different ideas sitting down together and engaging, with civility, in controversy.
My invitation to everyone in the community is to seek to understand, engage in civil dialogue with people whose beliefs and values might be different to our own, and thereby model for our young people what it means to live a wise life characterised by kindness of thought, words and action. By doing this we “cut each other slack”, “allow each other to stumble” and show our students that they can be the one calm person on the boat who show’s others the way.