Page 18 - EdViewptsSpring2021

Leading and Listening

for the Future

By Dr. Bonnie Lehet, Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership,
Rider University

With darkness comes light experience just endured? And with that health. This status quo story wants to
and with light comes clearer recognition can something creative get back to business as usual. Chaos,
the contrary narrative, may demonstrate
come from this past experience?
vision. While change is difficult, it Leaders must communicate clearly a lack of agency and willingness to
may be especially confusing in times on good and bad days, for typical and heal. In educational change efforts, this
of disruption such as the impact of unique reasons, and with purpose that is may be viewed as a path of barriers.
recent challenges – the pandemic, mundane and extraordinary. In crafting Finally, the quest narrative focuses
racial injustices, and an insurrection a message, Arthur Frank’s (2013) view on the possibility for the future. In
on our Capitol. School systems have of a "wounded storyteller" as "anyone changing systems, this path includes
responded to the sudden need to adapt, who has suffered and lived to tell the voice, purpose and agency for change.
but what happens next? Do the systems tale" may provide a helpful context (p. Using the quest narrative as the natural
snap back to what was or break through xi). Whether exhaustion, grief or actual leadership path forward may find
to another model for being? A leader's illness, some level of recovery may resistance from some members of the
intentional message and path may follow the events that have transpired. system, especially if others see the path
drive the system’s direction once the Frank offers three storytelling narratives through a restitution or chaos lens. Two
darkness lifts and the pressures shift, – restitution, chaos, and quest – that contexts may offer reason to listen in
but once students and teachers return serve the purpose when asking what this effort – abundance and systems
to their classrooms, will there be a comes next. Restitution, the preferred thinking, both enabling ideas to flow
recognition of the potentially traumatic narrative, is about fixing and restoring into the future.

Educational Viewpoints -16- Spring 2021