LM Oct.2018

Building Confidence

Through Community Engagement

Genetically, neuroscientists would advocate that the brain, by design, is geared and wired for oral communication. When working to make meaning in the world, the brain gravitates to the spoken word, intonation and familiar vocabulary. When presented with an unfamiliar topic, the brain actually inserts understood concepts in an attempt to make meaning of foreign concepts. This explains miscommunication, misunderstandings and even fabricated versions of the truth. Given this organic gravitation to oral communication, it is easy to see how school culture is filled with oral history. It often tends to out-travel and outweigh written history. The daily operations of a school can be complex in nature. School budgeting, school code, tax levies and other legislative parameters create a linguistic system unique to educators. In this case, the brain of a non-educator might default to oral history to make sense of school decisions. For example, most educators have heard people state, “The only reason they want my kid in school is to generate money.” This rationale is the oral history version. In reality, educators seldom think about general state aid when it comes to attendance and are truly focused on the impact attendance has on learning. By Carol Kilver, Superintendent, West Prairie CUSD #103

This complexity impacts the relationships between schools and their communities. So what is a school district to do when oral history overpowers on a single issue or multiple topics? What if the oral history is serving as a barrier hindering strategic planning to support capacity and growth? For the West Prairie School District, this meant embracing the oral history and moving to a place of vulnerability—a place where vulnerability represents a place of courage over a place to be feared or to be exposed. This courageous vulnerability involved going to a place of transparency to determine how the oral history would accept new details and facts. Transparency needed to determine if the voice of the story aligned with the vision and mission of the board of education. Everyone in the educational arena understands the power of the critic. Given changing demographics, shifting financial resources and aging facilities, the West Prairie School Board understood the need to step into the public arena and create a storyline in a new and meaningful way. This step into the spotlight involved providing strategically prepared doses of current information for the community regarding the district’s current state of affairs. Along with this information, the West

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