The Impossible Question of Living Well - A Conversation with Dr. Helen Street

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

I think we all know that our environment, our context influences us to some degree. We all know we might walk into a lovely environment and it has an impact on us. You know, our relationships are important. We have a sort of an understanding that context matters, but the degree to which it matters, I think we really underestimate.

Hi everyone. Thanks so much for listening to this latest episode of the podcast. I'm your host, Tim Logan, and the podcast is produced by Good Impact Labs. Perhaps the secret of living well is not in having all the answers, but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company. This is a quote from the pediatrician Rachel Naomi Raymond that my guest this week quotes in her fantastic new book. Dr. Helen Streete has been banging the drum that living well should be a priority of educational institutions for years. But more importantly, that this is not a question of individual hacks to happiness, as she talks about in this episode, but a fundamental rethinking of how much context plays a role in enabling or preventing possibilities for living well. It's Ellen's second time on the podcast, and I was so happy to be able to chat with her again. She's a social psychologist and educator and has worked extensively with schools around the world for 25 years. She holds a position as an honorary research fellow at the University of Western Australia Graduate School of Education, as well as adjunct research consultant for the Health Department of Western Australia's Centre for Clinical Interventions. She's also the founder and co-chair of the Positive Schools Initiative. Thank you, Helen. Lovely to see you again, a year on since we last spoke on the podcast. And it's, yeah, a great pleasure and amazing to be seeing another book in the world that you've brought out and a great pleasure to be able to read it and yeah, looking forward to talking about it today.

Oh, thanks Tim. It's yeah, absolute pleasure. And I'm so pleased to have the opportunity to chat with you again. Uh, I really enjoyed our last conversation.

Oh, me too. Absolutely. And for people who haven't heard it, go back and listen. It's in episode 111 and it was a lot about your work around contextual wellbeing, which I'm really hoping we'll, we'll touch on cuz I still, I mean, it's an incredibly important idea, but if we think more, a bit more firstly about your most recent book, because I was struck by how quite a different book it is in terms of a, a very personal, very reflective book. And the, the title is The Impossible Question of Living Well: How to Hold on to What Matters While Also Knowing How to Let Go, which gives the listeners a bit of a sense already. But I'd love to start just inviting you to talk a bit about why did you choose to write this? What was it that came up for you that, that really inspired you to write a more, this more personal and reflective book?

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't an obvious choice. I think there probably expectation would have been a follow-on to Contextual Wellbeing, which is certainly will happen, but I felt very compelled to write this, and it's such a big investment. I think it's important to invest in what you— is really resonating with you at the time. Yeah, I, I feel I have so much to say about identity with a background in social psychology. It's such an interest of mine and how that applies to mental health. I wanted to talk about resilience, uh, which I feel is Well, I guess it's a relatively new term that's very loosely used, although widely used, without necessarily much shared understanding. And so to talk about the meaning of that and to bring in some of my thoughts that I've developed from Buddhist philosophy. So I had this whole mix of things I wanted to put together, and it was really important that it didn't become a "this is how to do it" book or a preachy book or a book that sounded like I was living in some sort of academic ivory tower telling everybody how they should live their lives. So I chose to pepper it with a lot of personal anecdotes that I feel support the points that I'm making. So there is a sort of autobiographical air to it, but it's more in relation to lots of different stories. And that gave me an opportunity to show rather than tell, and to also ensure that, that readers and others are aware that I certainly don't feel I've got it all sorted out. And that that my ideas and research understanding comes from a place of vulnerability and imperfection and my own search. And ultimately, I really do believe that story— we know that a picture has a thousand words. I think a story maybe, you know, shares a million thoughts, or is the way that we naturally anchor and understand things and information. So it was also, for me, a good way to try and illustrate more philosophical and reflective points.

Yeah. Amazing. And I think that idea of story, I mean, it comes out so strongly in the book and I would say anecdote almost doesn't do it justice. Story as much as, you know, 'cause they're not frivolous luxuries around the edge, right? Of just like illustrating with an anecdote. They are deep and, you know, sometimes very personal stories that you're sharing. But I think the other thing that I would reflect on just based on previous conversations I've had is how much the stories retain the context, right? And that, you know, again, we'll keep coming back to this idea of context, but so often I think when we start trying to describe an idea or, you know, create a map of an idea, we take it out of the context. But the story holds all of the complexity. And that's, I mean, that's a lot of the work that we've been doing with, with Nora Bateson and her warm data work. I think that's a real, not an insignificant point. So the fact that you are role modeling that keeping the context in by staying in stories is quite interesting.

And hopefully bringing them alive with the context, right? And, and trying to emphasize that I'm not a fan of this sort of the 10 hacks to happiness approach to thinking about well-being. And I feel that as much as we would all like 3 key points, that's it, sorted, done, we can walk away, that's not very meaningful and it's not very sustainable or effective. And so I hope that within the sort of the messiness of the stories, really, and the genuineness of the stories, that they illustrate a point, but they also in some ways show that it's not clear necessarily And it's nuanced and it is—

Exactly.

Have a flexibility in your interpretation of everything.

And it, I remember in our last conversation you were chastising me for my original interest in Seligman's 5, you know, the PERMA model and these, these rather individualistic focused wellbeing models, which, you know, of course they're very popular and we, we do often live particularly in the kind of more commercial space in a very individualistic 10 hacks to happiness type world. And that's, that is a real challenge to to counter, I think. So it's really easy, it's much more marketable to write a book that has 10 hacks to happiness than it is to write a book full of messy stories.

Well, it, yes, but it's a bit like, you know, buying the magic beans then, isn't it really? And yeah, it's, it's sold well and it's tempting. And it's not that we can't as individuals do a huge amount to support our own wellbeing, whatever that means, and our own capacity for resilience. But you know, especially thinking about schools, I think that something like the PERMA model, that's when it really becomes a model that I would resist. Exist and push away, along with other maybe more individualistically focused models. Because we're talking about supporting and building healthy systems, and outside of schools, we're talking about supporting and building healthy communities, whether that's a community in your home or your town or your country, whatever size you're looking at. People live with other people, and ultimately our well-being is more about our social stance and abilities than it is necessarily about who we are removed from that.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that's, I mean, maybe that's one of the reasons why it's such an impossible question, right? Your title, The Impossible Question of Living Well. I mean, just to reflect on what you were saying, it's because the nature of the topic is so expansive and it really is about what is a good life and you know, where might you find meaning and purpose in life? And as you say, how do you build resilience and all of those kinds of things? It's a very dangerous territory to start preaching from, isn't it? I mean, in terms of telling people, and you know, we do that in a way in education all the time, telling young people what a good life is, what a successful life looks like, follow these processes and steps and you'll achieve all of that. And so I really appreciated the word impossible in the title. So maybe, yeah. Could you reflect a bit? Yeah. Why, why is it to you an impossible question?

Well, I, I mean, absolutely for all the things you've just said, because it is such a big question and it's not, a simple question. Not to say that there aren't really simple things that we can do to support our well-being, so I don't want to confuse the philosophizing and the understanding of the topic with thinking about some of the simple things in life we can do. But ultimately, I called it the impossible question because it's about how do we answer a question that involves a contradiction, in a way, in that we want to connect as deeply and authentically and genuinely as we can within the context of our lives, within our relationships with other people, within the things that we do, within our sense of place and home. And, you know, we're both talking about our background in Norwich, in Norfolk, yeah, and the connection to that. And we know that these things are really important for how we understand ourselves in the social world and how we live well. But at the same time, if we do all of that, the more that we connect, the deeper that we are connecting with, with everything around us, more authentically we connect, the more we define ourselves by everything we connect to, the more at risk we are of the inevitability of loss and pain and struggle that comes when those connections are threatened or, or fractured or lost altogether. And so in a way, the more that we invest in our wellbeing, the more we are also setting ourselves up for struggle and pain. And that is not something that we can resolve. Life is a constant push and pull of trying to hold on and connect and let go and move forward. But it's not a pessimistic suggestion. I, in fact, I feel it's a relief in a way to accept that it is a lifelong sort of push and pull and there is no absolute answer. But it's almost as if asking the question is possibly the greatest answer of all. And just being able to consider the question is in itself a way of understanding reality and what we need.

Absolutely. And it really makes me think of, 'cause I used to work a lot in wellbeing in schools and often there would be a sense of raising the topic of wellbeing is, we felt vitally important. I'm sure, you know, you and many would agree, but also as you do that, you also raise the possibility of that it throws up things for young people that will need additional support. So then you start talking about what's a counsellor, you know, what layers of support have we got? Because actually, as you say, when you you start going down that road, it's not all rosy and how can everybody thrive and flourish. It can actually throw up a lot of challenges and vulnerabilities. And I think that's a really interesting insight into doing this work in schools is because it's quite easy to stay safe and not really go down that road and just keep it all academic, keep it all about, you know, the knowledge and the skills outcomes because actually that's pretty cold and objective somehow and it doesn't delve into the murky depths of personal and collective wellbeing, except the young people are desperately asking to kind of have those questions raised, I think, in schools. You know, it's just not good enough anymore to ignore the elephant in the room.

Well, yes, I think we, we really understand that. I think every school would understand that as much as you might feel that an academic focus is the core business of schools, no one is going to learn well, to be, do the best they can. To engage in the process of learning if they haven't got some reasonable level of positive mental health, if they don't feel in some way that they have enough genuine relationships cheering them on, some sense of their own competency, some sense of agency and feeling like they're directing their own journey. If you don't have these boxes ticked in terms of being able to lead a self-determined life, a well life, then how are you going to have the capacity to engage? I mean, you're If you have a child in your— a student in your class who's just had a big fallout with their best friend, or an older student, maybe they've just broken up with a relationship, and they're not going to be focusing on organic chemistry and, and history because their capacity is taken up already. So it's not about trying to add on some other aspect of supporting young people. It needs to be part of how we can help young people to create and develop as best as they can be and have the best education academically that they can have.

Yeah, it, it's true. But I do, I do wonder whether the, and may this may be me entirely lost in my own kind of bubble, but I do wonder whether that kind of assumed question that schools really primarily is about academic learning is actually being transcended. I mean, I was listening to last night, I was listening to Mary Helen Imbodino-Jang talking about actually the purpose of education and schooling is not learning. It's human development. And that's an interesting reframe. And she, we talked about it on the podcast that I did with her as well. And I don't know, it just, it, that feels like a quite a different frame in which to be doing this work. And that's one of the reasons I think your work is so powerful and resonant in that space because as soon as you shift the lens, it's not just that the primary focus is academic learning and then the mental health is the necessary support. Port to that. But actually, if the whole objective of the whole enterprise of schooling and education is, is something much bigger about human development, I don't know what that does to these frames.

Well, I think maybe it, it can be all of those things, but maybe it's about broadening. So if we think about school as learning, it's not just learning academic information and skills. Not that I don't, I do think that that is important and almost underrated today. It's also about learning about yourself, about learning about how to get along with others. So it's about learning social emotional competencies, it's about learning the skills of everyday life which are contextually dependent, and learning what matters to you, your values. And so it's learning in a much broader sense, I think, than we may have thought before. But always back in time, I think that a lot of these aspects of learning were still involved in the school process, but they were maybe less talked about, or they were more assumed. They're certainly learning good values and how to get along with others and operate in a social environment. I think it was always part of a successful school community, but it was maybe less likely to be written down per se. It was almost as if, like good manners or social etiquette or the norms of your culture, there was an assumption about that. For me, it's not so much to think about what are schools for, it's more to think about how does that relate to our measures of success and what are we focusing on. In schools in terms of measures of success, and that's where the challenge lies, because I think a lot of schools would say, yes, absolutely, it's about developing the whole person, good people, we want respectful young people who have purpose and meaning, and etc., etc. But then you look at what the measures of success are within the school, and they don't seem to represent that at all.

No, it's true. It, it's also a question of the experience itself. And I, this is something I wanted to ask you about because, you know, what does it feel like to be a learner in this school? Or, you know, what does it feel like to be learning in this community? Because I think one of the things in quite a personal section in the book, you talk about authenticity. You bring in Joseph Campbell and the power of myth and how that helped you at a particularly challenging moment. And his quote, a meaningful life is about feeling alive. Right. And yeah. All right. Feeling alive is a pretty generic term, which could really mean anything, but it kind of speaks to something quite deep, I think. And it also is something I spoke to Guy Claxton about on a recent episode about aliveness. So it's something about the experience of learning and being in a school context, because we can very quickly, just like we just have in that previous section, we can very quickly get focused on what are the outcomes of schooling? Is it human development? Is it learning, et cetera? But actually maybe, maybe even that's less relevant. What does it actually feel like in the experience of being a learner in this place? And so I wonder what you feel reflecting on that idea of, yeah, the Joseph Campbell connection, but that feeling aliveness, what does that mean for schools?

What does that mean and, and how can we interpret it in, in maybe more sort of tangible terms? But I, I think again, it comes back to measures of success because if you think whatever it means to develop as a well-competent person, that is what we want to do with schools. But what is that? And if that is simplistically someone who's happy, I feel that we're forever gonna be disappointed and let down.

Yeah.

Because of all the things we've already been talking about, you know, life is, is actually a whole mix of good times and bad times. And, but if we start to think, well, that's something to do about feeling alive, to quote Joseph Campbell, then okay, what does that mean? And it's something about being really present in the things that you do. I think that that would resonate a lot with people. It's something about feeling that you're— you have some sort of congruence or harmony between your— what really matters to you and how you're expressing yourself in the world. And maybe that's how we talk about living an authentic life. So something about being authentic and genuine. It's something about being really present in your life, and it's something about feeling connected and valued within your community so that you are meaningfully aware that you're part of something bigger than yourselves. And all of these sort of ingredients of allowing you to feel your most alive individually in terms of knowing yourself and your presence, but also in terms of your social identity, because you're really conscious if you're part of the bigger social whole, if that is what a good life is, as opposed to just being impossibly happy, then that's how we might need to start thinking about outcomes and success. So it's sort of— maybe outcomes is not quite the right word there, but measures of success. So in that, we can say that a school is successful if— to go back to what you're saying about the experience of being in school— if the experience of being at school allows you to feel that you are developing your authenticity, an understanding of what matters to you, I'm getting to know who you are as an individual and learning the self-awareness and competencies required to feel really present as part of a social whole. And part of that is learning the language, the maths, the science, the facts, the knowledge, the skills of the world around you. But it's more than that. It's about learning about identity and self and impermanence. And that's what I talk about a lot in the book. Is how sometimes we don't really touch on that very much. And maybe because none of us want to die, we don't even like to mention it or even use the word very often. But the reality is it will come for us all. And I feel that that understanding and that discussion can really help us to enjoy and grab the moment and live well. And so these are sort of topics and ways that we could focus on spending our time and energy in schools with an understanding that success looks like somebody who really feels connected with themselves and the world around them in a way that feels good for them. Genuinely. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I completely agree. And I was gonna bring in the idea of change and impermanence, cuz I felt that comes up so often in the book. I love those three things that you, cuz it, I mean, again, as I say, it's easy to get lost in abstract phraseology of feeling alive or whatever, but those three things you've just laid out, I mean, obviously really connect with DC and Ryan's self-determination theory as well. And there's, there's, resonance is there, I think. But really that idea of the quality of that experience of being present and, you know, connected and all of those things you just described is so important. And yet it's often the, the last thing we consider in schools as we're designing learning experiences. I think it's because there's so much focus on the destination, not the journey, right? And, and again, you know, so many clichés in this when we start talking about this, but it's almost like it doesn't really matter how we get there as long as we get there. But actually, where's there? There is no there. When you start talking about change and impermanence, this is about actually what is the quality of your experience in this impermanent life? And why not let's make it as rich as possible, not necessarily as good or as happy as possible. Definitely take that point. But how do we enable that presence in the young people that we're working with? And I don't think we really prioritize that. The way we design educational experiences.

Absolutely. I mean, I think Alan Watts, Alan Watts, even said that it's a real mistake to think of life as a journey, because that seems to give a sense that we're going to end up somewhere, right? But certainly there, I think, to feel at our best in our lives, we want to— it helps to experience a sense of ongoing growth. So everyone, I feel we're learning and growing and expanding our sense of who we are, but constantly. But it's not a path that leads anywhere in particular. Absolutely. And so, of course, I mean, and I think schools do touch on this, but they've sort of misfired in some ways because it's so easy to touch on things and then they get lost in the system that does anything but touch on those things.

Yeah.

So, for example, growth mindset, um, is a popular theory in schools, but then it's been sort of misinterpreted within a context that focuses on hierarchies and outcomes. And suddenly a child gets a B+ for effort, you know, and we've turned effort into an outcome and point of what it's supposed to be about. Or mindfulness. I mean, I think a lot of schools embrace mindfulness programs and practices because they want students and staff to feel more present in their day-to-day life in school and out. Yeah, of course you actually have to practice the mindfulness for it to work. You can't just talk about it or attend the class. As many people would be aware, the myriad study— it shows some really interesting findings on the lack of effectiveness of mindfulness programs in schools, because you can't just sit down a whole class of students and tell them, we're all going to like be mindful now for 5 minutes and thank you very much. It just doesn't work that way. So we have to think more about how can we take these ideas and incorporate them more into the way we actually experience school life moment to moment, not what we sort of talk about doing for 20 minutes on Monday morning.

No, absolutely. And it, you know, it's it's a kind of a complete active ignorance of the context that they're in to suddenly try and flip and do that, right? But one of the things I, there was an amazing quote, I don't know how Rachel Naomi Raymond you use in the book about pursuing unanswerable questions in good company. That's a pretty good phrase, right? I mean, you know, as in terms of whether it's a journey or not, but that idea of just we're in good company and we're pursuing unanswerable questions. Together. Like, that feels pretty good to me.

Yes, I think the older I've got, the more enthusiastic I am about unanswerable questions, really, or thinking it's just actually, it's really good to have lots of questions and not necessarily need to know that you don't have to answer them straight away or even ever. But the questions in themselves provide learning and an opportunity to explore. So in some ways, it comes back to a need to increase a focus on supporting psychological safety in learning environments so that students and teachers feel okay to ask any questions and to have ideas and different notions, and to talk about things like impermanence and identity and how the meaning of life sort of stuff without fear that they're going to be embarrassed or shamed or get things wrong. So in some ways, if we can really support psychological safety with an understanding of inclusion and equity, that is a huge part of everything that we can do to support wellbeing.

No, definitely. And it's a challenge, a real deep challenge. And I've had quite a number of conversations recently about just how the systems were designed with particular people in mind and not others. And actually that idea of equity and psychological safety for certain groups is much more challenging than for others. And that's, I'm happy to see a lot more work going in that area because it's, it is critically important. Yeah.

I think along with that. There's a need to talk a lot more about risk, and we can certainly build young people's confidence by talking, discussing, being more theoretical or contextually removed when we talk about learning. But to build our capacity for risk, we have to actually take risk, but in a way allows us to feel that we are successfully overcoming the risk and working through it. So, and I think that's— there's quite a lot of interesting research that supports the notion that your perception of the possibility of success influences greatly how productive the taking of the risk is for you in terms of your ability to then manage risks in the future. So simply put, if you think that there's a chance that you can do it, or that you can get through it, or you might be okay but you're just really nervous, then it's generally a risk worth taking, and it's good cheer that person on. But if you feel, oh my gosh, I'm just going to be embarrassed, humiliated, there's absolutely zero chance that I'm going to be successful here, then to cheer or coerce that person into taking action is a really bad move because they're going to be left feeling worse about their ability. They're not going to increase their capacity, they'll look more reduced. So it has to be quite a sort of self-directed journey to navigate risk. But it always requires some cheering on and encouraging everybody out of their sort of level of comfort, for sure.

Mm-hmm.

And it has to be an experience, doesn't it?

Yeah. Well, and, and just with an acknowledgement, as your whole book lays out, that it won't always be great, the outcome, but that's part of the challenge of holding onto what matters. Yeah. And, and learning how to let go, right?

Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't matter how carefully you tread, there will be problems, won't there? And even though many years ago when I was psychiatric nursing, The biggest issue for the people I was caring for was institutionalisation. And that was a negative outcome from people who had taken, I suppose in some ways you could say zero risk. They had never had to make a choice about anything. But then they were left with so little and so many problems because of that. So no matter what you do, adversity will strike. But what you can become confident in is your ability to deal with that and navigate. So as much as you can't lead people to some sort of unrealistic happy ever after, you can lead people to have have confidence and capacity so that they can trust in themselves to be okay, whatever happens. Yeah, absolutely.

And that, that is actually quite a nice segue to the Langer experiment that you talk about in the book, because that idea of the context you are in so significantly influencing what you feel is possible in that space. And I think that's so important, you know, even what you were talking about, about presence, you know, to be present again, what does that really mean? That part of that is responsiveness to the context you're in, what's possible in this space. And maybe you could just describe the Langer experiment, cuz if people aren't aware of it, it's not a silver bullet that of course, and you, you are careful to say that it hasn't necessarily been replicated, et cetera. But it did seem to have some really interesting outcomes that just exemplify that idea of the power of context, right? To influence your perception of what's possible.

Absolutely. So I think we all know that our environment, our context, is going to— it influences us to some degree. We all know we might feel our energy lifted when the sky is blue and walk into a lovely environment and it has an impact on us. And our, you know, our relationships are important. We have a sort of an understanding that context matters, but the degree to which it matters, I think we really underestimate. And so the Langer experiment you're referring to is an experiment done by Ellen Langer He's a social psychologist at Harvard, and it hasn't been replicated in full, possibly because it was such a resource-heavy thing to do. It involved turning this large stately home— I'm not sure what, what the building was exactly— into a hotel set back in time, set back about 20 years. And then a group of men who were, I think, in their late 70s at the time, were taken for a week's stay at this house that had been turned into this accommodation that was set back in the— I think the experiment was done in the '70s, so back in the '50s, so sort of 20 years prior, to the point where they had TV sets showing things that were on at that time in, in black and white, and they had film nights for films that had come out at the time, and old newspapers, and the decor, and everything was set for that time. And people were allowed to obviously bring their own possessions with them, but no photos of current time were allowed. So everything in a way they were transported back in time was the idea for this week's experience. And before they went into the experiment, they were assessed according to a lot of different markers. So there's no actual gold standard test of your age on how well you were doing against your actual age. But there are lots of sort of different markers and they were tested on a whole multitude of different cognitive abilities and physical abilities. And health and different biological markers before the experiment and afterwards. And just, just about every single marker, these people had improved. And Ellen Langer describes how when they arrived, they were told as if they were in their 50s, oh, take your bags up to your room. And she actually commented that she didn't care if they had to take up one shirt at a time because they couldn't carry that any longer. They were just gonna be treated like they were active and able. Even though they were actually quite frail, some of them. And this sort of translated into a real shift in how they actually behaved and how they felt and actually how they, they were functioning at a really sort of physical level. So people's eyesight improved, people recorded as being taller, a spontaneous game of touch football broke out as they were waiting to be picked up at the end of the week. Whereas at the beginning of the week, some of these people could barely walk. So there were hugely significant changes and shifts. Now, of course, we can't say how much of that was in some ways a placebo effect. We can't say how much of it was driven by enthusiasm and how much of it was long-lasting.

Yeah.

It's a shame that we, I don't know where these people were at 10 years later. Were they all living as if they're in their 60s now? Yeah. And did they live longer? But I think even with all of those sort of like caveats in place, it's still a remarkable experiment. So Ella Langer called it counterclockwise, wrote a whole book about this experiment, which really emphasizes just the incredible power of context to create us as people. So this idea that we are born a human being, but we become a person because of how we connect to our context.

Yeah, that's such a powerful example. And I, I, I do think about it a lot, but it does feel very intuitive intuitively true, right? It, it feels, it feels like, as you say, you feel different in different contexts. But I think there's a danger of, of just saying, yeah, of course that's intuitively true, fine. But, but really then taking that into, as you lay out in your contextual wellbeing model, like really taking it the next step and thinking, well, how do we think about and make decisions about the people or the policies and practices, the norms, the physical spaces, that we work with in our schools with that in mind. You know, it's, it's too easy to, I think, to stop at the intuitive, oh yeah, of course that makes sense. But then forget it when you are really making those decisions about, okay, well how do we treat people in this space? What is the physical space that we create? All of those contextual decisions.

Absolutely. And the depth to which it's actually going to change people in terms of, for sure, in terms of how they feel, you know, this is a lovely room space, but also But at such a more profound level than that, in terms of their confidence, their ability to engage, their sense of competency, their mood, their abilities. I mean, I'm, I've become a huge fan of Deborah Eyre's work in the UK, who does a lot of work looking at high performance outcomes and the different factors that support high academic performance and really adding a lot of weight to the idea that people do well at school because their, their needs are met within the context of their life, not because they are born, you know, gifted or rise to the top no matter what. And so yeah, I think we need to pay more attention to context at every level, but also to really realize that we can shift and change context and consider how it's impacting people and what we do about that. But I don't think we can overcome it. So we can't simply tell people to not pay attention to it or not worry about it, or, you know, don't worry, you're in the bottom group, you just do your best, or don't worry, you've never won a prize because I believe in you. You can't just rise above it because you are it, you're part of it. Yeah, you can't separate to it. So we have to pay attention to it. We can't just ignore it. It's not just some sort of icing on the cake, it the substance of who we are.

Yeah. That's something that's coming up again and again in current scientific research, current thinking, current zeitgeist and conversations. Exactly that, that we are as much constituted by our context as we create the context. You know, there's, it's this, this dance between the two things. And I just to say, if people are interested, I interviewed Deborah in a previous episode. And so I, you know, I really appreciate her work as well, particularly We talk at the end, I think, about tinkering. She has this interesting idea about tinkering, just kind of playing as we work in complexity. But yeah, no, I agree that, and again, in a way it's been around quite a long time in education, the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy and the labeling. I mean, sociology of education, you know, of course it, it makes significant difference to our young people, what our expectations are of them. But I think this is a broadening of that insight is that, it also makes it, as you say, and at very deep levels, an incredible amount of difference what kind of space they're in, both physically and psychologically or energetically, or, you know, whatever your flavor of, of the way you like to read a space is.

Well, if we sort of like thinking about like tying in with what we were saying about if you see a successful life as a life in which you're fully present and engaged and et cetera, et cetera, then this is really what, what we're trying to do within a healthy context. Isn't it? And if you can create a context where the students in your classroom are fully present and aware and engaged, they're going to perform well, aren't they? They're going to do great things. And it's not to say that we aren't all born with individual differences and with different aptitudes and different leanings, but nonetheless, given time, patience, support, healthy context, I think that most people can achieve really great outcomes. And I feel like I'm on almost a personal mission to say that the idea that you would be at school and be told very clearly that there is this special gifted small percentage of people who are just going to outperform you and therefore needs— and need some sort of special support in that process is— how demoralizing is that? I mean, what sort of context is that for the other 95%? I always feel it's like a case of you sit in the assembly and the person who's already just performed really well is getting up on the stage to be congratulated for getting an award, you know, which they're going to be taken out for dinner for getting and being congratulated for, and on it goes. And all the attention is on that person smiling and beaming and feeling good. And so we think, oh, then what's wrong with it? But we're not really looking at the audience, are we? And wondering, how does this context impact them? But there's so much social pressure to be a good sport and approve and cheer on people who are given a lot of acclaim, we're sort of really silenced into not protesting.

Yeah, it's really, as you say, it's really difficult to disagree with. I mean, you know, we're supporting young people to thrive and flourish. Yes. And are we doing the same for all of all young people? Well, maybe not always, you know, and that's a, that's a hard truth, right? The myth of meritocracy and all of this, it goes very deep, right? Right back into the context that we're in.

But, um, well, I've become very interested in change of late and the process of change, because I do see again and again schools that really love the idea of contextual wellbeing, love a lot of the ideas we're discussing today, but they, they really stall or struggle to translate things into practice. And, and as much as change involves adopting new ideas and approaches and moving forward, it also involves a letting go of the way things things were. And I think that it's a really hard ask to let go of some of these practices in schools that are so deeply ingrained, not just from people's professional experience but from their personal experience, from their childhood, from their family experience.

Absolutely. And I mean, it's— we're very good at adding. I remember Will Richardson wrote a very characteristically angry post about this, that we're very good at adding new things in but we're very bad at taking things out and letting go of things in education, right? We just keep adding more and more and But actually it's very difficult in education to say, well, actually maybe that practice is not serving us anymore. Maybe we'll stop doing that. And I agree. And that, and in a way that's, well, that's the subtitle of your book, right? It's about how do we let go of things, acknowledge what matters, but also learn how to let go. So yeah, maybe we can wrap up with a, how would you advise school leaders or teachers or communities to, to lean into that idea of letting go?

I think to firstly to understand it is a really difficult process and it comes with some sense of loss and grief. As much as we want to— the ideals of something new, it involves time, the taking the time to redefine yourself and your position and who you are in this, in a changed world. So it involves patience, it involves the opportunity, and I think it's really important to give staff lots and lots of opportunity to express how they feel about the loss of what was and how they feel about moving forward. So allowing people to express discomfort with grief, sense of loss, uncertainty, um, even anger at change— I think that has to be a really important part of the process. Change takes a lot longer than we want it to, and realizing that, um, generally speaking, change in schools is led by people who already identifying with the new way they would like things to be. Yeah. And so it's very— it can be really frustrating for them to not understand why other people aren't feeling fine. So let's not mistake speed for progress. Um, to make sure that staff feel supported— if they, for example, it's one thing to say we're going to have a really relational approach in our classrooms, we want to be less controlling and less coercive and more compassionate, more relational, but do staff have the skills for that? Are they supported in building those relationships, especially with students who maybe have different value systems to them or who are very challenging. So change always needs to come with listening, with support, with upskilling people, with opportunities for people to express themselves, and ensuring that you have buy-in, because otherwise you're going to race ahead and put something into a place that will be resisted or only half delivered or just appear in little pockets. And then it's suddenly gone and we're back to how things were. It's too important to rush.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I, I think sometimes people's identity, professional identity is wrapped up in the practices in the way that they've been. So letting go of that also means a letting go of a part of you if you've been in charge of that part of the school life or whatever it is. And so there's, I agree with you about kind of allowing people space to express some of that. Because otherwise it will never stop because we'll just keep letting the things happen because we don't want to offend that person or upset that community or, but actually maybe it's not, it's not broadly the context we wanna be creating. Yeah.

I mean, I, I like to take a really appreciative approach. I think that's so important. I, I'm a huge fan of, of appreciative inquiry and David Kuperider's work because it allows people to feel more confident about the process of change and seeing it more as growth and development. And you would hope that if you are good in whatever profession you've chosen, but say as an educator, if you are a great educator, then you are one who is changing.

Yeah.

And I think that I would suggest that a, a great educator would look back 10 years in time and think, oh gosh, I wish I'd done that differently. And if you're looking back 10 years and thinking, oh, I'd do exactly the same today, I don't know that's such a great thing because that sort of shows a lack of growth. And development. So I think that we have to be less scared of change and see it as— it's not a sign that you're failing as a professional or that you, you're not good at what you do. It's quite the opposite of that. I also think it's really— the more that you can build cohesion in the school and good communication, the more that change and growth will happen as well. So it's also part of that whole process of getting buy-in and listening and understanding has to be working to build staff cohesion. And very often you'll have silos in a school, and you'll have the wellbeing group might be quite distinct from the other groups, or even, you know, large schools will have separate staff rooms, separate, not really that in tune with what other departments or other years, however they're divided, are doing. So it has to be building cohesion and being inclusive. Absolutely.

No, absolutely. And yeah, what is the ecology of communication, to bring another phrase that Nora uses in— there was a great conversation recently that I watched about the ecology of communication. I think that's a really powerful idea. How do we think about that in a school? What's possible to say? What's not possible to say? Who am I in these spaces? I think it's, it's a really important idea as you create that communication or kind of, or not create, but respond to that communication landscape to try and support. So yeah. Amazing. Thank you, Helen.

You have so many quotes and so many, so many great people.

I get to talk to lots of cool people. It's true. But thank you, Helen. It's yeah, definitely pursuing unanswerable questions in good company is what we've just been doing for the last hour. So thank you. Thank you so much. Beautiful.

Oh, thank you so much, Tim.

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