Finding Camino time in our everyday working life
I write this sitting in the beautiful landscaped gardens of Torre Do Rio in Caldas de Reis, Spain. I am one of the very fortunate people who works at a school that recognizes the need and value-add of providing sabbatical time to its leader as a means of providing some genuine reflection and recharge time. I am well aware that for many valid reasons, such an opportunity is not always available to those who lead in schools.
This reflection has come about as part of my journey along the Portuguese Camino. In Western history, the Road to Santiago was one of the most important routes for pilgrims and for cultural exchange. All the countries in medieval Europe actively contributed to its creation, and in fact there is a little of every nation in it. The Road to Santiago was a crucible where a person's emotions and thoughts came together and where the Western Spirit was born. Today it is still used as a journey of both personal, and in many cases, spiritual reflection.
I know that on return to the everyday operation of a school, the Camino will be a fond, but ever fading memory, as the everyday, so called 'urgent' matters, again take hold of my psyche. The fact that this happens is simply a normal bi product of our modern work place. As such, as a leader I believe one has two options. Either totally succumb to the ever-increasing barrage of requests for immediate resolutions, thus allowing this to rule ones modus operandi, or to create an environment that one knows is more attuned to engendering reflective thought and creative solutions. In other words, leaders have to prioritise when and how much time they allocate to be able to 'think' and not simply become consumed with the desire to 'do'.
The seduction with 'doing' is that it is highly visible, measurable and can generate immediate praise; an understandable human need in the vortex of work. On the other hand, taking time during the normal work day to reflect, read or contemplate, can be viewed as being nonproductive and something of a luxury.
If one studies the most successful companies throughout history, a common thread will be that their leaders were not just doers, they were thinkers; they spent time to reposition their company in times of challenge, they challenged the status quo of their industry and were not personally seduced, nor just rewarded simply for 'doing'.
In the modern workplace, it is critical to somehow build a culture of reflection, particularly in schools, where the norm is to respond to work via ringing bells, constant student and staff movement, in what are sometimes ridiculous bite size grabs of 40-60 minute blocks called lessons. This is especially so in senior school structures. At no other time in a student's life, unless they also become teachers, will they work in such isolated bite size moments.
Unfortunately, the historical structure of schools, based on solving problems in a period of an Industrial Revolution, still permeates today. Even the challenging and at times lucid, controversial and thought-provoking ideas of Ivan Illich, emanating from his 1970 series of essays in 'Deschooling Society' appear to be destined for the backrooms of educational reform.
The challenge, in essence, is that we are all products of what we understand as being the best way to transmit 'learning' via the institutions we know as schools. As such, it is very hard to envisage new models and structures of learning because we assume that given we all attended schools, it must have worked. Hence, it is simply too challenging to consider or admit that what we currently accept as the best model of transmitting knowledge via mass education through schools, may in some ways have its course. Could it be that we could experience a far more enriching educational experience via a different approach to the traditional school?
Maybe it is simply too hard to re-conceptualise schools. Could this be because educational leaders are so busy doing the same thing at a greater pace, that we do not take the time to truly envisage genuine educational transformation? Instead, we keep pursuing the repetitive cycle of cosmetic educational reform, which, not dissimilar to a New Year's resolution, feels good in the short-term and things appear to look different, but ultimately all returns to normal once the challenge becomes too hard to sustain.
Maybe the solution resides in building a culture where educational leaders have time to think, reflect and reimagine a new and bold future for our schools; not simply to repeat a model that was premised on a very different world so many years ago.
It is the role of all leaders to find a way to build in a Camino style philosophy, or simply be happy to continue delivering what is comfortable, but not necessarily what truly leads to deep, meaningful and sustainable lifelong learning.