Memes

Still reading the Goleman book on Social Intelligence. It's chock full of pertinent ideas--for education and for life. This morning's read was about memes. Memes are ideas that get passed from mind to mind. They gather power when they are associated with strong emotion. Strong memes like "democracy" or "cleanliness" cause us to behave in certain ways. Memes create a sort of unconscious scripting that guide our actions. Our brains attune to certain cue words that prompt us to act accordingly.

All of this set me wondering about current memes in our school. Our kids get community. It permeates our culture. I hear community cue words in their speech--relationships, connected, others, respect, support, need, care, team, partner, family. I see community in action as they respect each others' ideas, ask for and offer help, show concern for others' struggles, make decisions together, solve problems together, play together.

Our kids get ownership. I hear them say "We don't do that here." They use phrases like "my project," "my learning," "our school." They talk about the importance of choice. They welcome visitors into "our space." It was relatively easy to make that happen this year as it was our first year. These students were building a school from scratch and most of them came from places in which they were unsuccessful. They had a vested interest in creating something good and there was always an underlying fear that it could be taken away. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in year two.

Our kids get passion. Their speech is sprinkled with the cue words interest, care, need to know, motivated, real. They know that their work is strongest when they are genuinely interested. They encourage each other to choose projects that they care about. They recognize the difference between learning that grabs them and learning that is hoop jumping.

So what are the memes that we want to intentionally create this year? Biggest on my list is empathy. It would be easy to assume that since they get community, they are naturally empathetic, but that's just not the case for all of them. I have several kids who have bought in to the concept of community because they know it's what we're built on and they want to be here. Intellectually, they understand a need for community, and externally, they fall in line, but internally, their needs still come first. These students of concern rarely put themselves in someone else's shoes--the only relevant concerns are their own. They are pretty up front about "looking out for number one." Knowing their backgrounds, this is understandable, but needs to change. They came a long way this year. Goleman gives me hope that sustained emotionally nourishing relationships have the power to reconfigure patterns in the brain.

I just talked about all of this with my partner teacher and she is in agreement. She would also add something about work ethic and challenge. We're going to give that some more thought.