Leading through Laughter

 

Leading through laughter has been an implicit practice of mine.  And, I love it when I witness it in others.  For instance, Joe Maddon, manager of the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

On July 9th, The Associated Press ran an article that captured Joe’s joking genius. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/sports/baseball/joe-maddon-keeps-his-cubs-moving-and-guessing.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Joe is not only a master of the unexpected (for instance, once, rather than pulling a pitcher from the game, he sent him to the outfield for one batter while a reliever came in…then he pulled the reliever and returned the outfielder/pitcher to the mound…there was laughter during the infield conferences on the mound), and he also loves to instigate zaniness (as he has talked a few dozen of his players into donning pajamas for the charter flights home from West Coast trips).

Joe says, “[The players] love it!”

Perhaps especially his rookies recognize Joe’s spirit of adventure.  One noted, I watch him when I’m not playing, and it seems like he’s three, four moves ahead of the game…So he’s not afraid to try things, even with the rookies. Just about the first thing he said is he doesn’t care if you mess up.  Like if you’re in a situation where you think you should bunt, and he says hit and it doesn’t work out, he’ll come up to you right away and say, “That’s on me.”

One of Joe’s veteran players put it this way: “Too many guys want to equate smarts with being uptight.  Joe doesn’t.  He just says, ‘Do simple better.’”

And, what is not surprising, this team of players, playing loose and having fun, are leading their baseball division.

It’s an age old athletic adage, YOU PLAY BEST WHEN YOU PLAY LOOSE.

For me, there’s correlating connection, YOU THINK BEST WHEN YOU THINK LOOSE.  In both cases, laughter induces looseness.

Almost always when I’m involved in group discussions, something will strike my funny bone, and I’ll share what I think is the joke.  Almost always if the joke is in fact funny (I don’t always bat 1.000), the ensuing laughter is not a distraction, but rather it is an energizer for divergent thinking…and almost always a new idea emerges, or a new perspective becomes apparent.

It turns out that there’s lots of research on this.  If you’re interested, here are a couple of resources.

“Joyful laughter immediately produces the same brain wave frequencies experienced by people in a true meditative state,” says Lee Berk, lead researcher of the study and associate professor of pathology and human anatomy at Loma Linda University.

The elation you feel when you laugh is a great way of combating the physical effects of stress. When we laugh, our body relaxes and endorphins (natural painkillers) are released into the blood stream.

Maine

Last week we returned from a successful trip to Italy visiting friends and colleagues in Reggio Emilia and facilitating a retreat in Mercatello sul Metauro with Angela Ferrario.  Then we headed straight to Maine.  First to a family reunion of Cadwells...all of Ashley's brothers and most of the spouses and children... about 22 of us.  Ashley grew up going to Boothbay Harbor where his uncle, John Andrews had a cottage right on the water.  The cottage is still there with several smaller guest cottages and that is where we landed...with beautiful weather, kayaking, biking, hiking, and even swimming in the Maine waters. Then, we joined son Chris and our daughter-in-law Leila on a trip further up the coast to Southwest Harbor  where we used to go with my parents when Chris and his brother Alden were little.  This trip, we were lucky to be able to bike the carriage roads of Acadia National Park, and to hike majestic Pemetic Peak overlooking Jordon Pond and Frenchman Bay.  After the hike we enjoyed the famous popovers at Jordon Pond House that I remember eating as a little girl when I went there with my mother.

Over the years I have realized that...the craggy Maine coast, the ocean air, the lichened rocks and trees, the fragrance of bay and rugosa rose, the sweet burst of the taste of field blueberries warmed in the sun... these are all in my bones. Because I grew up here during the very early summers of my life when we would leave the oppressive land locked heat of the midwest and head for the northeast and the coast.  Far away from the city, far away from schedules, and close to freedom and wide open space.  That is what I love so much about returning here.  In Maine, I feel that I return to the part of me that is central, most important and free.

Now Ashley and I lucky enough to be on North Haven Island.  To get here you take the ferry 12 miles off the coast of Rockland.  As I write, I am listening to a red eyed vireo outside the window.  Soon we will climb Ames Knob and look out on this most spectacular day at all the surrounding islands and the deep blue Maine sea.

The owners write about this place...We believe that there are places in the world that can change the way we think about things, that allow us to deepen our connection to nature and that remind us how fortunate we are.  North Haven is that kind of place.  And on the dinner menu there is this quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay...

I will look at cliffs and clouds

With quiet eyes,

Watch the wind bow down the grass,

And the grass rise.

May we all find such places where we feel most ourselves and most free this summer and always.

Reflections on Mercatello sul Metauro

Our experience last week with Angela Ferrario and the retreat participants in Learning and Leading for the Future was wonderful in every way.  We were thrilled to be asked to lead Session One with Angela and participate in her dream of weaving together cultural encounters and excursions with inspired professional development and reflection in the small town of Mercatello sul Metauro, Le Marche, Italy Palazzo Donati was our home for the week and Luisa Donati our hostess.  Palazzo Donati is her family's villa and has belonged to them since the town was founded in 1235 when seven families moved from their surrounding castles to build palazzi and form the town.  Pointing to a grand facade across the piazza, Luisa said, "That palazzo was my grandmother's and this one where you will stay was my grandfather's."  It seemed like a Romeo and Juliet's story...only theirs has had a happy ending.  It was a joy to spend time with Luisa who orchestrated a beautiful welcome dinner in the main salon of the  palazzo and prepared our breakfast every morning.  She joined us all week long, for example, enjoying wood fired pizza at one of the farms nearby with friends, and visiting the Antica Stamperia Carpegna where six generations of artisans have made beautiful hand stamped fabric.  They showed us one design that they are working on for Eataly.  Luisa and other friends that Angela has made also came along for many meals and events.  In a short time, we all began to feel as if we were a part of the small town.

During the week, Ashley and I both shared interactive presentations to lay the foundation for our work with learning for the future.  Participants entered into dialogue with us and with each other about their school contexts and where they each might help to build on strengths in these areas.  Each afternoon we all participated in creative activities of drawing and also print making to explore the importance of creativity, innovation and design in learning for the future.

This week, Angela is hosting John Nimmo and Debbie Leekeenan and another group that will focus on the timely subject of Anti-Bias Education. We toast them as they begin this evening.  Cadwell Collaborative is enjoying a few days in the Piemonte region of Italy, walking the vineyards and drinking very good wine.  All the best to all of you this first month of summer.

Here's a New Take on Documentation...

We have been working with Buffalo Public School 33 for three years.  For the second year in a row the Albright Knox Art Gallery has asked the school to install an exhibition of student work.  This year's exhibition is titled Art Makes You Think Bigger...an ingenious observation by one of 33's youngest students.  The exhibition features the connections between art and other subjects;  demonstrates the implementation of inquiry based inter-disciplinary projects; and shows the influence of the Reggio Emilia Approach. Last year we created over 30 panels that were installed directly on the bulletin boards of an Albright gallery.  They were well done and well received.  However, when the exhibition was over, it all had to come down...and to reinstall in the school proved to be a burden...mostly because of the lack of bulletin boards in the school hallways.

This year we invented a new technique.  We measured all 28 of the bulletin boards at the Albright and cut boards exactly to size from triplex cardboard sheets (about 3/4" thick and very sturdy).  These boards served as our "canvas" for each project story.  They will be installed directly over the existing Albright boards.

Having this defined and moveable canvas made the composition of the boards easier.  And, we went a step further by creating a sort of template for each board: a poster with a brief narrative of the project with pictures dividing the narrative in English and Spanish; examples of student work with subtitles; and a brief synopsis of New York State Standards developed during the project.

The exciting part of this process however, is that all 28 pieces will be reinstalled directly in the school hallways...where they belong.  In fact, as we composed the panels on the large cardboard sheets, we installed them in the halls, much to the delight of all the students...as it should be!

BRAVI School 33 students and teachers!

Does Beauty Hold the World Together?

Lately, every where I turn, I see the tender, gentle, spring world taking shape around me.  In Vermont, spring comes slowly amidst cold days, and gray days like today.  Yet little by little, the earth turns green and the trees and shrubs move from bud to flower to leaf.  We live in an old apple orchard that is now a cloud of pink and white fragile blooms.  In our orchard, we live on a hill overlooking the Scholten Family Farm, 400 organic acres where we watch 80 Dutch Belt cows graze.  The Scholten Family makes Weybridge Cheese for sale in local markets and beyond.  Now, the fields are plowed and the cows are out. As I watch spring unfold, among other things, I have been listening to National Public Radio's weekly broadcast, On Being, where host, Krista Tippett interviews all kinds of people.  Two of my recent favorites are with cellist, Yoyo Ma, Music Happens Between the Notes, and Nobel Prize winning physicist, Frank Wilczek, Why is the World so Beautiful? In some wonderfully connected ways, Yoyo Ma and Frank Wilczek are speaking about the same things.  What we can't see that holds us, curiosity and vulnerability, knowing and not knowing, being present, and that all life is in constant movement and change, while certain fundamental things remain the same.

These ideas remind me so much of Vea Vecchi when she speaks about poetics and aesthetics.  Ever since I have known Vea, she has quoted Gregory Bateson who defines aesthetics as "the pattern that connects."  Rather than being something pretty or pleasing, even though it might include those things, aesthetics points to the fabric of life that holds the world together...the unseen, the seen, the in-betweens, the visible and invisible, the emotions, the sense we make of things, what we are naturally drawn to as humans, and the great mystery of the universe that we inhabit.

What are these "patterns that connect" in the world and inside us?  I think of architect, Christopher Alexander whose research shows that all human beings, when given a choice, will  choose a light filled room rather than a dark one, certain timeless decorative patterns over others, and a wide array of other features.  He wrote about this in his book, A Pattern Language.  Another fascinating aspect of being human that scholar Rhoda Kellogg has researched, shows us that children all over the world, from the beginning of human history, have made marks with sticks in the sand, hands in the mud, pencil on paper in instinctual gestures of circles,  lines, dots and mandalas.  From the time we are very young, we are reaching out to the world to make marks, make patterns and make meaning, to see what we have made reflect back to us who we are in the world.  And then, there are the universal patterns that artist, Sabra Field describes in Cosmic Geometry, repeating patterns in the natural world, microscopic to cosmic, that humans have repeated since the beginning of history, in the man made world in design, art and architecture.

I wrote a blog post several years ago where I quoted some of a TEDx talk that Vea Vecchi gave in Reggio Emilia, Italy.  I quote Vea again here as her words and ideas strongly connect to the themes of this post.  These words seem particularly relevant and meaningful in our world right now .

The atelier (or studio that is not only a central place but also a way of working throughout our schools) has brought many materials and techniques, but also has illuminated a need, not only for children, but for human beings to communicate in a way that rationality and imagination travel together.  We believe in a multiplicity of languages that are integrated and not separated.  We believe that this makes learning and understanding more rich and more complete.  Poetic thought does not separate the imaginative from the cognitive, emotion from the rational, empathy from deep investigation.  It lights up all the senses and perceptions and cultivates an intense relationship with what is all around us.  It constructs thoughts that are not conformist.  And this creates two important elements: solidarity and participation, both of which are the foundation of democracy. To conclude, we believe that identifying and researching beauty and ethics is the indispensible foundation for a livable, sustainable future that everyone speaks about but that seems so difficult to bring about.  It is only with an intelligent heart, with courage and with vision that we can proceed.