We love to use picture books to inspire conversation around change in our leadership meetings. Recently we tried a new book and loved how it worked.
We used Courage as an interactive read-aloud and gave the group time to notice and wonder as we read it. What is courage? When do we need it? How do we recognize it? After the group had time to turn and talk with a partner, we had them share and choose a big idea to explore together. The group chose to discuss the last line in the text:
Courage is what we give each other.
They connected this idea to a visual we had used to determine where they currently were in the change process:
The group noticed that in this visual of the change process, no one was helping each other. The group added speech bubbles to the visual and revised the actions to show how they could have given each other courage. This then inspired a conversation about how this leadership team made up of teachers, coaches, and administrators can continue to create systems and structures for collaboration.
We loved how the conversation around this book shifted our thinking about the change process. Our conversation began focused on the idea of courage. It ended with ideas about how to create a culture that not only allows an individual to take risks but also encourages a community to support each other in taking risks, learning, and changing. Shifting from how individuals think about change to how to create a culture of change is what we are striving for in a true professional learning community. This book helped us push our thinking and set us up for next steps in the process.
