Courage Over Comfort

In January, I was asked by CharacterDotOrg to write a piece

on courage for their March Character Exchange Magazine.

If you know me well, you know that I usually say yes,

even when I figure it might really challenge me.

So, of course, I said yes, and then I struggled.

Fear set in, and the voices in my head kept asking me,

What did I know about courage?

But I wrote it anyway, sneaking it in just under its deadline.

We heard in early March that changes would keep them from

producing a print magazine, but that they'd be posting their

series on Courage online for their readers instead.

Then, our world as we knew it came to a standstill.

Not even sure that my suggestions still made sense, I reached out to offer a rewrite or some updates. No, they told me, it was still quite relevant; in early May, it went live. That morning, I received several texts and emails with such kind feedback about my reflections and suggestions.

This week, I found out that changes in their website

have made the post inaccessible for now, so I've decided

to repost it here, in case you missed it or wanted to share it.

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Courage Over Comfort by Barbara Gruener

The year was 1982; I’d fallen for this adorable engineering student named Mike and was giddy with delight when he invited me to go skydiving with him. My parents weren’t as thrilled. But with a little bit of pleading and a whole lot of begging, they reluctantly agreed not to forbid me from getting uncomfortable and jumping out of that perfectly-good airplane. All they asked was that I call them as soon as I had finished and was safely back on the ground.

Our morning of learning went off without a hitch and by 2:30 that afternoon, I was feeling confident, excited, and ready as the instructors loaded my team of four into that small-engine plane prepared for take-off. Nothing could have quite prepared me, though, for that feeling of sheer terror as a hand on my shoulder signaled that we had reached our cruising altitude of 4000 feet and it was my turn to jump. Granted, I was tethered by a rip cord designed to open my chute for me, but I felt incredibly nervous as I tried to remember everything I’d learned on the ground earlier that day.

They’d normalized that disconcerting feeling in the process over and over again that morning, repeatedly reminding us that it’s normal to get disoriented and forget some of our learning once that airplane door opened. Sure enough, my mind had a parachute of its own and I’m quite certain that it jumped before I did because everything I’d soaked up from the training seemed to vanish into thin air as I took that giant leap out of the plane. Instead of arching my back and trusting the process, I panicked and somersaulted into a downward spiral. To this day I’m thankful that I didn’t get tangled in the chute as the rip cord did its job, opened the parachute for me, and facilitated my float to safety.

Once the discomfort of jumping way out of my comfort zone had passed, it was a beautifully-serene few minutes from the chute opening to landing. I felt brave and alive in a way that I’d not known before. And I learned that I need to do a better job at trusting the process.

In his book, The 3 Promises, author David J. Pollay challenges his readers: “Most people sit in the same seat and expect life to come to them. Be different. Change your seat and you will come to life.” Not only did I change seats that day, but I gave up my seat for a whole new point of view. My willingness to choose courage over comfort gave me an experience I won’t ever forget. Oh, and it made it a tiny bit easier to accept our son’s announcement that he would be celebrating his college graduation with, you guessed it, a skydiving excursion.

Let me be clear; you do not have to jump out of an airplane to show courage, but has stepping out of our comfort cocoons ever felt like skydiving to you? What does it look like, sound like, and feel like as we work with intention to courageously change our school’s culture and climate?

It might be helpful to first unpack the difference between culture and climate. According to leadership guru James C. Hunter, culture is made up of our repeated, habitual behaviors; it’s about how we act and what we allow. That’s important because, in the wise words of Hal Urban, what we permit, we promote. Is yours a growth-mindset culture of courage over comfort? Or is it more complacency and compliance? Climate, on the other hand, is the bi-product of culture; it’s how our school feels as a result of the attention given to those daily habits. A warm and welcoming climate, for example, feels like an invitation to pull up a chair and stay at your school all day.

It’s vital for growth not get too comfortable with status quo, but rather that we muster up the courage that it takes to take that leap of faith into what might feel like really thin air so that we can explore exciting new possibilities with our colleagues and our learners. Because if we’re too comfortable, we aren’t growing. And if we’re not growing, we’ll never have anything new to offer.

In fact, Brené Brown, researcher and expert on vulnerability, shame, courage, and trust, emphatically believes that, “You can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you cannot have both.”

Have you ever heard that children are to be seen and not heard? Long before we knew much about CASEL’s all-important Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) competencies, it was a commonly-accepted mindset that students were to be respectfully and silently soaking up their teacher’s knowledge. That’s how it worked; instruction was informational and transactional, but it wasn’t necessarily engaging or relational.

That is, until psychologists like Brown started suggesting that there might be a better way than the way we’ve always done it, that we talk with our students rather than at them, that we collaborate with one another, and that we allow them to lead us into the future. Yale Professor Dr. James Comer punctuated this transformational ideal with his reminder that no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship anyway. It was time to courageously fly into the wind to understand that building relationships is every bit as important as delivering content. We would all benefit from stepping out of our comfort zones into the unknown. And while it seemed like a small step, it has become a giant leap toward how we view school today, as a place where everyone is a learner, where students, staff, and stakeholders alike respect one another, build healthy relationships, and strive to be a better version of ourselves tomorrow than we were today not only in academic growth but also socially, emotionally, physically, psychologically, personally, and spiritually.  

Consider these seven small but huge changes that we can make to lead with courage:

1. Foster student voice. When I think about equipping and empowering, this Winston Churchill quote resonates: Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. Sitting down and listening to one another is tough work that takes persistent practice. One of my favorite ways to connect a school family is through Class Circles. I’ve seen this done is so many different ways; the Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is a strong way to start the day and their model for Closing Circle is a reflective way to end the day. But whether you get trained in this model or home-grow what works for you and your school families, connecting eye-to-eye, knee-to-knee, and heart-to-heart truly can be the most important thing you’ll do for culture and climate each day. Then, when conflicts arise, and we know they will, resisting the urge to send your students to the office and instead giving them the opportunity to make amends and fix what they’ve done through Restorative Circles will change the way you look at, approach, and feel about discipline.   

It takes courage for educators to ditch the sage-on-the-stage mindset and instead empower our students, then getting out of their way so that they can lead. It’s in those caring circles that children can practice using their voice not only to be heard but to listen to one another, not to respond, but to understand. So many social skills can be strengthened by carving out this intentional time to connect.

2. Empower with choice:  Another courageous step out of our that’s-how-we’ve-always-done-it comfort zones asks educators to let go of the reigns a little. A creatively effective way to do that is by giving our students choices. Whether it’s whom they work with, what strategy they’ll use to solve a problem, or how they’ll present what they’ve discovered through their research, student choice builds capacity for ownership and efficacy. And while they may not have much say in the content they’ll learn, one powerful way I’ve seen teachers giving students a choice about how they’ll learn is with alternative seating options. When educators model flexibility by giving up the big desks that tended to serve as a barrier between teacher and student and instead teach from a standing mobile desk or use no desk at all, it creates a warm, welcoming climate where students feel more closely connected. Add in some alternative seats, whether it’s scoop chairs, yoga mats, standing desks, floor pillows or wobble seats to allow students to choose where and how they’ll optimize their learning. Provide them opportunities to serve in the classroom with jobs, like social media intern, watt watcher, technical engineer, paparazzi, etc., and watch their willingness to engage explode. Throw in other creative ways to help them get comfortable, like earning shoes-off time, and prepare to be amazed at their eagerness to cooperate and collaborate, to learn and grow.

3.  Nurture a growth mindset. In 2006, Carol Dweck wrote Mindset, a bestseller that would change the way educators everywhere looked at how we grow kids. In her research, Dweck found that people hold two types of mindset: Fixed and Growth. A person with a growth mindset believes that intelligence can be developed so she embraces challenges, gives best effort, learns from feedback, becomes inspired by other’s successes, and believes that intelligence can change with hard work.Conversely, a person with fixed mindset believes intelligence is static and therefore he may avoid challenges, give up easily, ignore feedback because he sees it as criticism, feel threatened by other’s successes, and try hard to appear smart or capable.

A focus on growth mindset helped us refocus the lens through which we look at mistakes; the process became more important than the product, and mistakes became something we celebrate (FAIL = First Attempt In Learning) instead of something to be avoided at all costs. It takes courage to trust the process and let each another free fall for a little bit before our parachutes open to guide us safely back to where we belong.

According to Dweck, we are all a hybrid of both, vacillating between the two mindsets. As such, it’s important to teach about mindset so that we know when we’re operating with a fixed belief that we could benefit from unlocking which potentially could keep us from realizing our future’s full potential.

4. Disrupt autopilot: Research tells us that we are on autopilot about 47% of our day; consider those routine rides to-and-from work and you’ve likely experienced the “How did I even get here?” phenomenon. How much better could we be were we to take back some of that autopilot time and replace it with intentional practices. Let’s start with breathing, for example. Did you know that we take between 17,000 and 30,000 breaths per day? How many of those were intentional for you today? In the practice of mindfulness, seizing the magic of our breath is touted as an easy way to free our brain from distractions, calm our anxieties, bring us back to the present, and help us regulate our emotions. Sound too good to be true? Let’s take five deep cleansing breaths right now and see. Breathe in through your nose slowly and deeply for four counts, using this mantra Inhale courage. Now pause for three counts before slowly and deeply exhaling for eight counts with the mantra Exhale chaos. Pause for three counts, then repeat four more times. I’ll wait. Now that your brain is relaxed and wide-opened to possibilities, think through ways that you more mindfully unwrap the present with the people in your presence.

5. Teach emotional literacy. If you’re like me when I was just starting out, it was not on my radar to teach my students about emotions and help them regulate. I was hired to teach Spanish and we had a lot of vocabulary to cover and so many verbs to conjugate. As a result, when someone was emoting beyond the excitement of learning to speak another language, my default setting was to write them a pass to the counselor, then encourage them to hurry back because I had something fun planned for today’s class. Sigh. If only I knew then what I know now. But fast forward to today, when we hear psychologist Flip Flippen remind us that we have to capture their hearts before we have their heads. It takes courage to show empathy and sit with someone who’s crying with sadness or screaming out of anger or trembling from fear and to just be while they feel you convey the message that “I see you. You matter to me. I get it. You’re not alone; I’m here for you.” Disconnected children can become discouraged children; how you show up when they’re lost and floundering matters so much more than any content you may or may not get to that day. Take time to validate their feelings and teach them strategies to help them navigate the storms when uncomfortable or overpowering feelings threaten to cause turbulence in their lives.

6. Care-front concerns. When conflict arises and it’s time for a courageous conversation, one of my least favorite but incredibly important things to do, changing what I need to do from a confrontation to a care-frontation helps create a win-win. We don’t have to agree with what’s going on, we simply want a chance to express how we feel about it and arrive at a mutually-acceptable, agreed-upon solution to the concern. Since what we focus on, we get more of, make it a practice to clear the air by speaking the truth in love when problems arise.

7. Practice self-care. Doesn't it seem counterintuitive that we are advised by the airlines to put on our own oxygen masks before assisting younger children with theirs? Doesn’t feel like the most courageous thing to do, does it? And yet, if we can’t breathe, how is it that we think we can help anyone else catch their breath? Author L. R. Knost once said that self-care doesn’t mean me first, it means me, too; to that I would add that it’s not meant to be a reactive luxury but rather a proactive necessity. We simply cannot serve from an empty vessel. So, grab your favorite journal and pen and jot down those courageously-decadent strategies that you promise to build into your daily rituals and routines moving forward so that you have the strength that you’ll need to hold the hearts of our most precious natural resource, the children in your care. 

Sound a little too much like skydiving to you? Take a deep breath, relax, and remember Bruce Lee’s words: Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in the presence of fear.

You’ve got this! Forge ahead despite your fear; I can’t wait to hear all about how life-changing it feels the next time you answer the call to put courage over comfort.