Carolyn McKanders: Building Adaptive High Performing Systems

<p>Dr. Bob Maxfield sat down for a conversation with Carolyn McKanders, author of<i> It’s Your Turn: Teachers as Facilitators</i>, who spent  three days facilitating work with the cohort of Galileo Academy teacher leaders and district superintendents. As a former teacher, counselor, social worker, staff development specialist and administrator, her primary focus is supporting the well-being of students, teachers and the community.  She asks the pivotal question, how do you bring your best self to meetings as adults, because the quality of adult talk directly influences student outcomes. As a meeting facilitator, she shared her thoughts on managing polarities or natural tensions that occur in human systems.</p><p>Ms. McKanders noticed that “as teachers and kids are returning to in-person learning we're discovering some really significant changes and pressures that are being experienced.” In her current book,<i> It's Your Turn: Teachers as Facilitators,</i> she makes the powerful statement which aligns with the podcast series theme: “Never let a conflict go to waste, it's an opportunity to do things that you never thought you could do before.”</p><p>Dr. Maxfield asked her, “What do you see as some of the challenges that have surfaced during the pandemic, some of those truths that were probably there all along but have certainly become more evident, and how do we then not let that conflict and those tensions go to waste?”</p><p>Ms. McKanders responded, “Tensions are not always something bad. They  point us in the direction that this part of the system needs attention. These tensions have always been there. The pandemic painted them with a yellow highlighter so that we could no longer ignore  the huge differences in educational opportunities between affluent communities and economically poor communities. That was always there and now we're shining the light of awareness on it. We're rethinking how do we support students where there are such economic challenges, personally in their personal lives, and also in their ed