REDEFINING ELDERSHIP: When to Talk and When to Listen

By Bridget Woodbury

I recently joined our Managing Director, Jeff M. Poulin, in visiting folks from the Arts in Basic Curriculum (ABC) Institute. My colleagues collaborated with ABC to design, pilot, and (soon to) implement the School for ABC Leaders, a professional development and continuous education program to cultivate new and existing skill sets within the school leaders towards affecting sustainable change in their communities.

I am entering the project toward the tail end with an eye toward a workbook we will be producing, so I had the opportunity to really observe a cohort of our close collaborators as they debriefed their months-long training. 

In my experience, the folks that get involved with things like this tend to be experienced, observant, and engaged with their communities, so I relish the opportunity to hear from them and these people were no different. Educators ranging from brand new to already retired shared what they need from a learning community. I wanted to share some keen insights — anonymously and in aggregate — from the pilot participants that engage with our fields’ traditional definitions of eldership. 

Anyone can be an elder…

The experienced educators were clear that age ain’t nothing but a number when it comes to eldership! 

Participants were quick to call out student leaders and encourage their colleagues to “empower eldership AMONG STUDENTS” — emphasis theirs.

I was thrilled to hear newer educators extolling the experience and expertise of their predecessors AND to hear seasoned pros share that they have learned a lot from the young folks around them. One educator brought in the language of unlearning and relearning here. Bringing in a new perspective is often essential to spurring dialogue and effecting change, so new ideas from new educators can be combined with existing best practices and effective pedagogy to create the best possible, arts-rich learning environment.

… but everyone needs support. 

Educators and administrators of all ages and experience-levels noted issues with maintaining capacity and raised the need to address the fact that the field is experiencing personnel shortages at record numbers; one participant shared, “teachers are burning out younger and younger” and another added, “diverse leaders are just disappearing.” 

‘It takes a village’ is a cliché for a reason, and that language was present throughout our conversations, but it raised some good questions, too. How do you find the right village? How do you create a village if one doesn’t exist that meets your needs? How can creating the right village help prevent burnout? 

Of course, the group didn’t answer these questions in one day — nor was that our charge — but some consensus formed around grounding. This raised its own questions: How can we frame the work we’re doing in common language, so we’re on the same page? How do we catch folks up to inclusive thinking and build consensus within our own schools? Is this conversation indicative of an overall shift in thinking in the arts & education fields?

I can’t answer all of those questions, but I can respond to that last one with a resounding yes.

We have the opportunity to reframe our thinking…

As one of our participants said, “this is an inflection point for shared leadership.” And that connected a lot of dots for me! The solution in creating a safer, braver space to learn and work is rarely to silence voices — it’s to engage them in conversations.

Perhaps traditional elders — experienced or retired educators — have the best perspective on how to engage with entrenched systems. Newer educators might bring new research around psychology, for example, to the table. Student leaders can share candid feedback from peers, challenging barriers to their learning, and solutions for these barriers. Anyone can read a cool research report or see a news item about a school across the country and bring the ideas and questions raised back to their school. 

Each of those people can accomplish something on their own, but through collective leadership, every individual can contribute according to their strengths and be supported through their challenges. In one context, a veteran teacher may indeed be the right person to lead, but sometimes it’s a student or a new teacher who should be at the helm

This isn’t the first time this idea has come up in our work at Creative Generation:

I thought often of cyclical mentorship in this conversation — and folks raised the concept themselves — some of Jordan Campbell’s writing about the concept could have been a response to our conversation in the room:

There have been multiple occasions when people (both in and outside the arts & cultural education ecosystem) engage in deep and typically impassioned exchanges around this idea of “who gets to be the question-asker and the answer-giver,” as one colleague described it to me last year. They might call it a reframing of our mindset, or write it off as “just a neat idea,” or even describe a mentorship program in a small town that feels novel - but they can never really put their finger on what the secret sauce is that makes it great. 

I saw each kind of comment raised before someone raised their hand to point out that we were all talking about collective leadership — which is collective leadership in action! 

… so we should be brave.

If we do indeed have the opportunity to change how we see leadership, or eldership, or expertise in the arts & education spaces, we should really go for it. 

One educator pointed out that the arts encourage courageous risk-taking. Another pointed out that teachers are “on-stage” every day and can provide an example of performing courageous risk-taking. 

Someone followed up with, “we’re looking at a real world that doesn’t want courageous risk-taking” as we see an increase in book bans and terminations. 

With so many systemic factors and outside impacts to our learning environments, our group agreed that we must focus on what is in our control, whether that’s welcoming students to a planning conversation, or being vulnerable in a staff meeting, or letting someone else volunteer to lead a project.

After my time spent in conversation with folks that are on-the-ground, working with kids, I encourage all of us to find the places where leadership feels good to us — and to notice the places where listening feels better. Those of us that love to lead should decide when to follow. Those of us that like to hang back and feel things out should investigate when they feel confident enough to lead. 

We should expand our understanding of eldership and expertise to include a wide variety of experiences and we should loudly call attention to good ideas, regardless of who had them.