Labor Begins

Everyone seemed to feel last nights school meeting was very productive. It was the 4 founding families, although all were invited. We agreed to put up our booth at the farmer's market on Saturday, agreed that of the two possible free locations for the school we preferred the old school house on Trace Ridge Road because it would require less construction (and there's only 8 weeks until school starts).

The bulk of the meeting was a discussion of the finances. I shared a simple equation to help us begin to finalize the projected income and expenses so that we can finalize the strategic plan in order to file for non-profit status. The equation is this:

Tuition = total expenses / # of student days per week

We began with the assumption that tuition was $10 per day and then determined which expenses were optional and which were absolutely necessary. Those deemed necessary included utilities, insurance, salary, facilities maintenance, and supplies. We assigned relatively solid estimates to each and discovered that there was a shortfall of about $80 per week.

We then identified several ways to fill in that gap:

• Seek more students (we need 8 more student days, so either 8 students who select one day a week or some combination of students who select 2-3 days per week)
• Rather than have a paid teacher for all 3 days a week, shift the strategy so that the paid employee does all coordination in 1 or 2 days and rely more upon the other parents to share the teaching.
• Plan more fund raising activities
• Plan to compensate the teacher with both dollars and goods or services.

The last option involves a great deal of administrative burden. The acceptable goods and services must be identified up front with a dollar value assigned to each. They would also be considered part of the taxable income and so there would still be some dollars associated for state and federal taxes.

There are still a number of questions to be answered, but I was personally proud and surprised that we are facing the uncertainties and working through the complexity together. I was also fairly surprised that no one suggested we forget about applying for non-profit status. That is certainly something to celebrate because in my mind that was the most often re-visited decision over the past 2 years. We really have come a long way!

Eight weeks of hard labor to go!

The Quickening

Apparently this baby wants to be born! Today our teacher got a call from a woman who has agreed to donate to us a location for our school! I for one had been discouraged by how much time had lapsed since the initial contact, but it turns out that once again I'm uselessly impatient!

The news appears to have given everyone a burst of energy and drive. A fund raising opportunity for this Saturday which had been cancelled is now on again!

I also had the opportunity to do some processing with a couple of the members of our group. It was good to know that people were willing to express having felt slighted and even angry in response to what I shared at our last meeting. It is so absolutely necessary to group cohesion that we learn how to work through conflict. And even though we talked about it conceptually at various points throughout our planning process, up until now we haven't gone there together.

I'm so pleased with our progress. We really have come a long way. I met these people at a local Summer Solstice celebration in 2006. At the same Summer Solstice party in 2007 we had the idea to form a school. Now, at this years Summer Solstice, only 2 years later, we'll be celebrating the fact that we have a location and three more families have joined our coop.

This is the Quickening. This is the time when the baby turns in the womb and is in position to be born. The labor is about to begin!

Struggling to Be Born

Recent changes in the school development project have been tough and really felt like a struggle. When I'm connected to my deepest sense of Purpose I'm certain that my decision is not only the best one for my family but also serves the school.

However, it cannot be denied that my decision is disruptive and jarring to our fragile womb. Is that a positive and neccessary part of gestation, or useless pain? I suppose only time will tell if I've been effective in midwifing the birth of this school. Reminds me of one of my past posts entitled "Life Lessons from my Chickens". A group of people working together to create an entirely new organization is a struggle. It is complicated enough for two people to form a partnership such as marriage, but for four families to become cohesive enough to create agreements based on commitments of time and money is incredibly complex.

And while I have a number of skills and tools to throw into the mix, there's still so much more that is needed for this collaborative venture to produce anything. We have passion and determination, but whether or not this outweighs our fear and uncertainty remains to be seen. I've attempted to create a space where people feel safe expressing concerns and discussing their growth edges. I've attempted to guide people to their growth edges and invited them to ponder the chasm between us and our dream. I've tried to model this by being transparent in sharing my own hopes and fears. I'm even putting myself into this blog, knowing full well that anyone can read this at any time.

Yesterday I gave out a six page list of the action items to be achieved in the next 10 weeks. At each step in the journey there seem to be two choices, either we step up or we step down. I sooooo want to see us step up. But I can't help but think that people might percieve that I have stepped down. I find myself questioning whether I did the right thing. But I don't want to be right, I want to be part of a cooperative elementary school. I want children in one of the poorest rural counties in the entire country to have a stellar education, regardless of the income of their parents. I want to look back at this blog post and smile in a knowing way... and realize that just like giving birth to a new baby, it was the most long, painful, and arduous blessing of our entire lives.

For the Good of the Order

Last night we had another school meeting and I got the opportunity to share the news which I described in my last post. In short: I shared that putting my own kid in public school for kindegarten this August would allow me to better serve the development of the school.

We were out there at the park with our 8 kids running amok until 10 pm because we had two new families at the meeting and I wanted to wait until after they left to share the news. I didn't think it would be fair to "stir the pot" with brand new families in the mix.

The news was jarring and it took time to process. I feel exhausted this morning. I keep replaying the night and wondering if I really did the best I can do. I felt like I was talking loud and emphatically, and that speech pattern makes me wonder if I was being fanatical and arrogant. And as the group rehashed some of the last meeting's conversation it occurred to me that I'd had a very different experience of the conversation than the others had. Of course, that is always the case... but it highlighted to me that having my own son on the enrollment list amplified my drive and pushiness for some of the specific details of the strategic plan. Having my own son's needs in the equation limited my ability to really hear the needs of the emerging order.

I believe that people can realize their dreams if they are willing to face their fears and work hard. I've proven this to myself numerous times. My husband and I are persistent, we know that success requires a willingness to fail frequently until you get it right. None of us have ever formed a school. For me there is great beauty and great learning in the trying, in the trials.

I like to think that I have organizational skills for a reason and that my Purpose has to do with helping people realize their dreams by organizing group efforts. Forest is a bright kid and he's going to learn no matter where he spends his days. Now that he's "taken care of" for this school year I can be clear about acting for the good of the order rather than acting out of self interest. I feel emboldened to lead the process. I feel like the gap between the present and August 24th will close quickly and there's much work to do. I'm already forming action items and lists in my mind, and now I'm comfortable playing manager and bringing more accountability to the picture. This is what the emerging school requires and I have the skills to play the part. For the good of the order.

Feedback and Resistance

I'm playing in several systems right now. In some cases the systems are 100 years old and I'm analyzing and intervening in service to a larger cause, such as various US Forest Service units at the national, regional, and Forest levels. In other cases I'm co-creating entirely new systems such as a cooperative elementary school and a new Forest Service Enterprise Unit called Organizational Development Experts (ODE).

In doing so the concepts of feedback and resistance come up frequently. First let me clarify that I'm using the term feedback from the Systems Dynamics perspective: feedback is an iterative process which generates the form of the system.

I left our last school meeting feeling angry and frustrated. I wanted to just let go of the entire effort. It seemed to me that the other people in the group were unable or unwilling to accept my donation of money for start-up costs such as filing the 501-3c (non-profit) paperwork. In my anger I realized it was futile to create a school based on fund raising and donations if the people who comprise the school are not able to accept or even ask for gifts of money. I took it as feedback that the group was just not ready to realize its dream.

Due to time and circumstances, I didn't get the chance to communicate any of this to anyone else in the group. And that's surely a blessing because as it percolated into my flesh I gained several more understandings. First, as the anger wore off I felt devastated and sad. I work hard to make positive changes in the world. In exchange for working hard I receive a salary which more than covers our basic needs. The earnings, then, afford me the opportunity to create even more good in the world by engaging in various activities such as switching to renewable resources and supporting the local economy and community. I felt like it was all a waste and that the effort was worthless if I couldn't share my abundance in our efforts to provide children and families with an excellent educational opportunity. For several days I grieved over this.

The grief turned to bargaining and I began to grope for ways of realizing this dream. As the facilitator of the strategic planning process, I feel like its my role to help the group take the steps needed to implement the vision and mission which we created over potlucks and amidst the din of laughing children. I thought of things I could say or do in order to nudge or even push people beyond their growth edges.

Finally, I've found acceptance, and here is what that looks like today. I've accepted that the group is not ready to realize the dream we created over the past two years. More importantly I've realized that they've been trying to tell me this for the past six months and I couldn't hear it because I was in denial. The truth is that the rest of the group is quite comfortable reaching for a smaller version of the dream, taking baby steps toward the larger dream. The truth is that we never really did lock in on one solid vision. My family came to the group with different needs and experiences than the other three families. Our central value for our kids education is that they need socialization, and so we were originally leaning toward public school. The other three families had always leaned toward home schooling for reasons of their own.

My husband and I have decided that this fall our son will start kindegarten at public school. Now that we've taken our kids out of the equation I can re-align myself with the needs of this group. I'm still dedicated to helping them realize their dream. I'm still dedicated to helping each and every person who is part of the cooperative achieve their best and highest purpose. And now more than ever I'm available to be present to the fact that being a servant to these people and their dreams means allowing it to emerge and unfold at its own pace.

It turns out that this time I was the resistance, and so I surrender in service to the greatest good.