[In]Distinct Chatter Kevin J. Ruth

In this episode of [In]Distinct Chatter, host Dr. Kevin Ruth speaks with Bridget McNamer, Founder & Chief Navigation Officer of Sidecar Counsel (www.sidecarcounsel.com). Bridget discusses the male-centric extant paradigm of leadership and leadership development, sharing with us how the existing 'Rules of the Road' came into being, and how that paradigm needs to be re-imagined and re-oriented. The entire leadership adventure has additional dimensions for women leaders. This path has been largely shaped by men, and the scope of the leadership roles reflect that, as do societal norms about what leadership ‘looks like.’ Women taking on leadership positions can ably fill these roles, and also have the opportunity to shape them in ways that reflect their innate strengths and realities, create new norms around leadership, and lead to even greater success for all members of these school communities (hint:  men benefit too!).

Host Dr. Kevin Ruth speaks with Liz Free (CEO & Director, International School Rheintal, Switzerland) and Nancy Squicciarini (Head of Community Relations, International School of Luxembourg) about Women in Education, the new special interest group from ECIS. Learn the rationale behind bringing the group into existence, discover some surprising (to some) research, and hear how this special interest group is creating impact even in its earliest days. There is so much work to be done on the gender gap, and this is the group to help make that happen! 

Author, speaker, and consultant Jennifer Abrams (www.jenniferabrams.com) speaks with Dr. Kevin Ruth about her latest book, Stretching Your Learning Edges: Growing (Up) At Work. Excerpt below:

As educators, we speak of the importance of being lifelong learners. The concept of already ‘being done’ with learning assumes that we are fully cooked and ‘complete’, yet the time of adulthood can be one of tremendous growth and development emotionally, psychologically and cognitively. Schools can and should be places where we learn, mature and develop as those who work and teach within them. We should always be on a learning edge in many aspects of our lives and to stretch and to engage with that edge should be a consistent practice – where we learn and unlearn.

Stretching at your edges requires work. This is what we mean by you finding your “learning edge”— working to see more, to hold more. It is acting out of your zone of proximal development—working on skills you are close to mastering (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).

Listen to the principal of the British School of Jakarta, David Butcher, share his school's journey into the MIT Compassionate Systems Framework since 2018. As shared on the linked MIT site: "In education, where interest in social and emotional learning (SEL), mindfulness, and systems thinking is growing, we find both an opportunity and a need to develop models of thinking and teaching that prepare students to better understand and respond to the systems to which these issues belong. We draw from established SEL models, together with developments in the emerging field of complexity science and the study of systems, to establish a framework—what we call a “compassionate systems” framework—for building a cognitive and affective foundation for global citizenship. This framework conceptualizes compassion as an essentially systemic property of mind: to cultivate compassion is to be able to appreciate the systemic forces that influence people’s feelings, thoughts and actions." Does this framework work with any curriculum? Where might a school or a larger ecosystem begin, if it wanted to engage in this kind of work? Does it work with inquiry-based approaches only? How about with direct instruction? This and much more in episode 2!

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was an Austrian poet and novelist. A collection of ten letters, now known as Briefe an einen jungen Dichter (Letters to a Young Poet), was published after his death. This tome speaks to me as an educationalist and educational leader; the first letter in particular is quite powerful, when considering one's leadership journey. In this episode, Dr. Kevin Ruth reads an excerpt of the first letter in the collection, providing a framework that asks listeners to consider poetry, writing, and a 'work of art' as exemplifying what leadership is all about. In that vein, Rilke's words make us pause and reflect on our journey, irrespective of the stage of our journey. It is the inaugural podcast for [In]Distinct Chatter.