SWIMMING

Through intentional reflective thinking students spend time thinking about the results of their actions, they figure out why some efforts work while others do not. Not only do they reflect after the fact, but they can bring this reflective frame of mind to the problem at hand and develop their skills of future planning. As coaches we recognize that every inadequate answer is adequate in another context... and inspire children to pursue no single vision of excellence but design something new from all the resources available for their creative imagination and discoveries.

One of our goals is to create a dialogue-like environment in class. We never required students to raise their hands to speak. Instead we sit in a circle and let the conversation flow through us. Over time and with consistent practice, students learn that it is ok to wait for someone to finish speaking a thought before they jump in. By giving each student a predictable space to express itself we eliminate the urge to speak and create a culture of listening and meaningful consensus.

It takes time and deep commitment to go beyond the platitudes about teamwork and create an environment of ongoing collaboration and collective thinking.

By mastering the reflective frame of mind students learn to collaborate by acting as a learning community that constructs shared understandings through sustained dialog.

Learning partnerships foster profound learning by building meaningful consensus, acknowledging one's inadequacies, posing one’s own problems. This creates an environment where trust, vulnerability and shared vision become the foundation for risk taking, humour, compassion and the presence of a moral purpose. We co-create meaning by listening to each other’s stories as we are each the authors of our own lives.

Thinking systems enable us to see the big picture, the small details that make it up and the way parts interact over time. Through the use of thinking systems our coaches provide students with multiple thinking tools. These tools assist problem-solving through a creative and indirect approach and help with the understanding of complex issues. Through the use of thinking systems students develop their ability to identify the cause, sequel and consequences. This improves their planning skills, adaptability, resilience and their capabilities to obtain the desired results.

The process begins with this deceivingly simple question. What do you want to create? Can we ask young people this question? At first children will not know how to answer. They will tend to say what they think adults want to hear. But if we persist, eventually they will realize that we really want them to give us their answer, not the answer we wanted them to tell us in the past.

When children get into the habit of defining their goals, visions and aspirations, they are developing a true skill - a skill that young people need to learn if they are to master their life building process.

When we teach students to think, we are interested not only in the answers they know. We want to closely observe them when they don’t know the answer. We inspire students to solve an unknown, challenging problem by using all of the capabilities we think of as intelligence: reasoning, insightfulness, intellectual perseverance and creativity. When children are able to connect action and interaction (cause and effect), they no longer see fragmented parts, people, events, problems and themselves as separate and unconnected. They feel greater compassion for others, they see themselves as part of the situation and become resilient and less are likely to blame.

With a foundation of curiosity, hopefulness, and knowledge about how to collaborate about complex issues, it is natural that our students mature to dealing with larger community issues while building a vision from their hopes and dreams.

We empower a community of lifelong learners and inspire students to build their vision from their hopes and dreams and become a creative workforce that solves real life problems.