Slow reading of “Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School” by Venet (2024), Part II

In preparation of the next meeting of our book club, here is my summary of Part II of Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School by Venet (2024) (summary of Part I here)!

Part II is on “Equity-centered trauma-informed skills for navigating the change journey”. I am really looking forward to this part, because it feels that after all the problems (but also the vision) were described in Part I, now we get presented with different skills that can help us navigate the process (which — as you might remember — is the point).

Chapter 5: Both/and

We encounter a lot of goal conflicts all the time. I want all teachers at LTH to be able to come to our unit and find someone to talk to about their teaching, AND I want to have uninterrupted time where I have peace and quiet so I can read and think and write myself. I want to highlight great teaching practice to inspire other teachers, AND I want to celebrate every effort that is being made. I want things to change now, AND I need to rest and recover so I can come back tomorrow and the day after. There is often tension between several goals, and often they cannot just be resolved as either/or, or split it down the middle, but the tensions needs to be navigated, leaned into. Which is often really hard work, not just because there are often people that benefit from setting tensions up as false binaries and therefore push that way of thinking, but also because trauma also shapes our brains in ways that make it harder to see things as a spectrum rather than binary endpoints.

A tool that Venet suggests and that I find very helpful because it visualizes that there must be a way to do both/and are “Vent diagrams”. They are Venn diagrams with two overlapping circles, each holding one of two seemingly contradictory goals. But since there is an intersection of the two circles, it suggests that there must be a way to find a way where both exist at the same time, where we can do both/and. And if it exists, who doesn’t love a good challenge of figuring out what is there in the intersection? I think that is the power of Vent diagrams; to trick you into believing that there MUST be an overlap since otherwise the two circles in the diagram could not be overlapping, and thereby to focus thinking on finding ways to move into the area where both are possible, to see how the both/and perspective sits at the centre of two conflicting truths.

I wrote about some more thoughts on Vent diagrams when I first read the book, but for this summary, maybe the main point is to extend an invitation to you to also do your own!

Chapter 6: Everything in relationship

My main takeaway from “everything in relationship” is to resist saviourism. Even if we might feel that we KNOW what the solution to a problem would be (and we likely don’t really), we cannot solve others’ problems by ourselves, they need to be solved in relationship with everybody who is affected. Even going above and beyond what people ask for is not actually helping them, it is putting them in positions where they have to pretend to be grateful for something they did not actually want, that might not actually meet their needs, and being handed “a solution” might further reinforce trauma-induced feelings of lack of agency and control.

Another really important thought, I think, is that replacing a toxic leader with a better one is not a solution, because the toxic leader was just a symptom of the problem, which is the structures that put one person in a leadership position and gives them a lot of power in the first place. So things need to change within the whole group, how the group communicates, how decisions are being made, who gets heard, how visions are developed, and these things need to change in relationship.

Also, we need to stop seeing leaders, or ourselves, or anyone, as more special than everybody else. “Being “nobody special” means we see our connections with other people truly as reciprocal and mutually supportive, not transactional. Holding a focus group or asking for ideas on a survey is not the same thing as being in relationship with them. Too often, teachers feel that they are simply being mined for ideas or comments rather than truly included in the change process.” And I can see why that happens with the best intentions: People “get to give input”, but then some task force or special group gets to drive the change along to be more efficient and get things done. So remembering that we need the relationships, not just the inputs, seems very important.

Chapter 7: Slowing down

The slowing down chapter was really important for me to read, because, as you also see in my both/and examples and probably in most of what I write on this blog, I feel this strong sense of urgency with my work, and to the point that I often work to the point of exhaustion that it takes me several days to recover, which probably makes it overall less efficient than if I moderated better how much energy I spend on work on any single day and then could come back to it on the next. This is, btw, also a common trauma response: Keeping moving with the misguided idea that that will minimise harm; and while that might be good when dealing with a tiger, it is not when working for long-term changes.

In this chapter, slowing down is reframed from “a waste of time” to making the process more sustainable, but also just plain better, because making good decisions does take time — really observing what is going on, getting all the information we need, thinking through consequences, engaging in conversations to find compromises that more people are onboard with; basically “to proceed with care and caution”. “Staying in a rush when making change can backfire, even when our change goals are admirable. When we rush, our minds use shortcuts to help us be efficient. This is where our biases and stereotypes can come out in full force, because if you want to make a very quick decision, context slows you down.”

Another very important point in this chapter is that an implicit or explicit assumption of how much time something should take is very harmful and ableist, especially when combined with the idea that we only deserve rest after we have completed a task that we had set out to complete. People can and should move at different speeds individually, but collectively, we can still keep the work going, even with urgency. I personally have a really hard time with this, even though it makes sense intellectually, both in myself and others, but I realize that is something I need to work on.

So how can we make sure we slow down? One way is to firstly accept it, and then remind ourselves and each other. Venet gives several examples of how little figurines in strategic places can help. But really, we need to explore the Vent diagram of slowness and urgency. What is in the centre between the two? What does it look like to move slowly but with urgency?

Slowing down needs to happen with care and caution, and with intention. Venet suggests some intentions (and suggests bringing them to meetings as a reminder):

• Slow down to dream and vision, to see how new ideas and challenges fit with the existing vision, to maybe adapt both so that they connect to each other
• Slow down to wonder, to ask questions about the proposed changes. Often critical ones: Who even defines these terms, who didn’t we hear on this, how do we come to a shared understanding?
• Slow down to be relational. This also means giving everybody enough time to process and understand their own position on things before we discuss and come to a decision, to revisit discussions if a decision does not need to be made yet.
• Slow down to feel. Instead of expecting that everybody leaves their baggage and emotions at the door, make sure to give space for emotions and use them also to inform the way forward.

Venet suggests the practice of a “sit spot” — some spot we visit regularly to observe nature and slow down. I guess my sit spot is actually my dipping spot… (or anywhere where I can look at water, really…)

Chapter 8: Working from strengths

“In a functioning change ecosystem, no single person has to do everything, nor should they.” In such a community, people can do what they are good at, at their own pace, to their own capacity. I keep thinking back to my friend Terese’s favourite quote from the book, that all the injustices of this world are somehow interwoven, so by pulling at any little thread is contributing to unravelling the whole damn cloth. So even though our circle of concern might be much bigger and there might be many things that we cannot possibly influence, focussing on our strength and working within our sphere of influence helps make a difference also in the big picture. There is a suggested exercise for how to disentangle the two circles of concern and influence, and a very helpful chart (p. 160f) of different ways to influence what we are concerned about (I go through my own reflections of what those different ways mean to me here). Going back to the circle of concern with a list of strategies that resonate with me feels so empowering, you should really try!

Chapter 9: Tuning in to many streams of information

This is the chapter where we learn the word “coddiwomple”, meaning “to travel purposefully to a vague destination”, which resonates with me a lot as the perfect description of what it is like trying to work with a wicked problem. But somehow coddiwompling makes it sound a lot more fun and lot less threatening…

The suggestion in this chapter is to be very careful with what type of data we use, how we collect it, and how we use it, and to try to do this in relationship. In conversations, through noticing emotions, through listening to the stories that are being told in our community. But also all the professional society meetings, conferences, articles, books, blogs, podcasts, etc that can shine a light on our situations in a different way! But we need to do this in community to process and connect information, and make sure we catch our own biases so we can counteract them. How can we make sure we get all the information we need, and process them the right way? A great example of what the multiple streams of information could look like is shared on Marcus Luther’s blog The Broken Copier.

That’s it for now! Are you excited for Part III already?

Venet, A. S. (2024). Becoming an Everyday Changemaker: Healing and Justice at School. Taylor & Francis. (online access for LU!)