Jenny Finn "I am passionate about Education...

Learning Forward Podcast 13th Feb 2021

Jenny is the Head of School at Springhouse in Floyd, VA and is committed to designing and activating vitality-centred education to more courageously respond to the world's emerging needs.

Episode #64: Sandeep Dutt in conversation with Jenny Finn, Hundred Ambassador, Country Lead and Academy Member from the United States. Jenny is the Head of School at Springhouse Community School in Floyd, Virginia, where they are reimagining the purpose and practice of education and articulating educational design oriented around vitality and the Earth's wisdom. Jenny Finn’s research, mentoring, and teaching invites people to deepen the relationship they have with themselves to serve the world with greater clarity, courage, compassion, and creativity. Her work has taken many forms including non-profit leadership, trauma and hospice care, chaplaincy, private clinical practice, community building through the expressive arts, and education. Jenny holds a PhD in Sustainability Education and is co-founder of Springhouse Community School in Floyd, Virginia. She sees education as a primary agent to transform culture and its reimagining education in ways that foster the vitality within and around us all. In a candid conversation, she shares how she became a teacher and the fivefold path for educational transformation.

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Sustainability is about simple understandings

School education should not just be about strategy but also about content. As rightly said, a strategy can only help in the process of communication. Content, on the other hand, is about introducing concepts and building knowledge through them to create new knowledge. Resources that enable learning to take place, a technology that motivates the young learner to engage in her learning through collaboration and school architecture that uses space as an instrument for creating a conducive environment for learning. Needless to say that the learner should be an integral part of it all.

The year in the life of a school is very structured and predefined into terms or semesters. We know when assessments will take place, when and how feedback will is provided, what are the instruments for reporting, yet time appears to be the single biggest luxury in the life of all the stakeholders.

It is quite paradoxical when the whole school apparatus is geared to provide a learning experience for the pupils, then how is it that the recipient is so stressed for time. What then is the core need that needs to be addressed? Good grades, recognition, better admissions, are all tangible benefits. What about intangible benefits of education? Ability to remain motivated, manage time, acquiring problem-solving skills, entrepreneurial skills, conflict resolution etc. are skills that somehow get left out in our schooling system. Would it be ambitious of me to state that if we were to invest a little time in developing intangible benefits that we could add more value to the tangible?

Schools must learn to break down the traditional silos that they work in to work more collaboratively to make education more sustainable. If the system does not help in building trust amongst all stakeholders, distribute adequate time between teaching and testing, provide opportunities for knowledge creation and management through reflection then it cannot be termed sustainable.

Sapna Yadav has extensive experience of over 20 years of facilitating students unleash their academic potential. 

At Samaskaara, Mrs. Yadav channels her experience to provide customized Learning Frameworks to students; equipping them with 21st-century skills, to develop their profiles and this allows them the freedom to plan their academic and personal growth. Under her guidance, her students have secured admissions in various reputed colleges such as Yale University, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania in the USA, McGill University, University of Toronto, UBC, the University of Waterloo in Canada, HKU and HKUST in Hong Kong to name a few. You can connect with Sapana by Email sapna@samaskaara.in or Phone 9818108908.

What emerging leaders do differently?!

Source: Harvard Business Review

How will the next generation of leaders shape business? What are their values, and how are they prioritizing the challenges and opportunities before them? Harvard Business Review reported of a survey of 500 students from top U.S. Business Schools wehereby 80% of MBA students surveyed believe that this generation views leadership differently from previous generations.

Young leaders are helping to drive the convergence of the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Majority of them have worked in all 3 sectors and borrowing best practices from all three, young leaders hope to combine their diverse interests to create meaningful impact.

This generation values global work experience, whether that means taking a job at a multinational, working abroad for an NGO, or starting their own venture overseas. Survey respondents had already worked, on average, in three countries, and expected to work in four to five more within ten years of graduating from business school.

Young leaders value the strength of alternate perspectives. 92% agree that increased workplace diversity can lead to better business outcomes—especially diversity in gender, professional experience, and functional expertise. 

Source: Harvard Business Review

This generation realizes that they will never eliminate the trade-offs inherent in the traditional approach to sustainability unless they can find long-term solutions that benefit entire populations, not just wealthy niches. 64% agreed that the majority of corporations will support environmental sustainability and alternative energy over the next twenty years.

Young leaders are self-taught technology experts. Of today's promising technologies, tomorrow's leaders are banking most on the power of mobile: a plurality of today's young leaders see mobile as the critical business technology (40.6%), versus cloud computing (12.5%), social media (10.8%), clean energy (9.8%), and business analytics (9.4%).

Young leaders are embracing new ways of learning. After all, they're preparing themselves for jobs that probably haven't been invented yet. Perhaps that's why survey respondents cited intellectual challenge as the most important reason for choosing a job—significantly more important than compensation or prestige.

Coutesy: Harvard Business Review