by Emily Tymus Ihrke, Editor in Chief, gcLi; Director of PK-12 Ethical Leadership Program & Middle School Learning Specialist at University School of Milwaukee in Milwaukee, WI
This season we are grateful. We think about how we might be filling the hearts of others and most certainly how they fill ours. We consider how our work gives us purpose and sustenance, and how we’ll find and make light in the months ahead.
One of the terrific lightmakers in my own life has been the gcLi. It’s brought so many wonderful people and ideas into my world. It’s brought joy, hope, laughter, and possibility.
My gratitude for the Leadership Lab has only increased each time I’ve had the opportunity to attend. My life has been forever changed because of it.
Thank you for being a part of the gcLi community. Thank you for the important listening–and leading–you do.
Emily
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As published August 3, 2021
Lead First By Listening, Then By Doing
Twice now, on the last night of the Leadership Lab, I’ve listened as Jim Carney has sounded the chime. The entire group has walked away from each other, outward from the circle, and I’ve felt my sandaled feet, wet from the grass. The chimes have continued to sound, on the beautiful hillside at Fountain Valley, and I’ve been heartsick, walking away. Heart full, too though, with hope and wonder, yet not quite sure how I would do what I knew I must: do that something to make the world better… for my students, for my colleagues, for my school, and for myself.
The power of the gcLi Leadership Lab is difficult to put into words. For all of us who return to our regular lives after a week in Colorado Springs, we are changed. Most certainly for the better. Yet it’s almost impossible to explain to those who have not attended the Lab what exactly has happened to us. We stumble, looking for exactly how to sum up the professional and personal experience we’ve had. We can’t find the right words, so we fill in the spaces with words that are not quite right. At least that’s what’s happened for me.
But maybe the best thing to do is to not speak. Maybe the best thing to do is listen.
On the first night of the Lab, too, we begin in a circle, and there as well, we listen for a connection. In that exercise we wait, we choose (and we probably hope to get chosen): we listen as other participants describe elements of themselves, and we think, “Maybe just maybe, they could be right for us… Maybe they could become our buddy?”
And all week long we listen, too, to the faculty, especially to Jeremy Lacasse, model beautifully the act of listening and receiving feedback, and most certainly when we go back home, we do the same.
We know, in our own lives before and after the Lab, too, that listening is critical in our work as classroom teachers, and as school leaders. We know in our families and in our homes, that listening is an act of love. We lean into this work. We do it, when we’re at our best, generously and naturally.
And on the final evening of the Lab, after Jim’s most gracious telling of the origins of the gcLi, we walk together to the hillside. The faculty deliver to each participant the diplomas, and we take each others’ hands. If you’re like me, as we untangle, and unbecome… and the chimes sound, and you feel at-once, both incredibly full and unbound, it’s almost too much.
That listening together is what we have for that moment and for eternity.
And we go out, as one and as many. To make something great.
Ready to listen, I propose, and then, only then, to do.
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Emily Tymus Ihrke is the founding director of University School of Milwaukee’s PK12 Ethical Leadership Program and a middle school teacher. Forever in love with a place called school, over the past 28 years, Emily has taught in public and independent schools, in upper schools and middle schools, in English classrooms, school libraries, and the learning center. She has been a coach, mentor, department chair, and dean, and her professional life has been enriched by presenting at the national and state levels, and serving as a faculty consultant to the College Board and the President of the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English. The best thing she’s ever had a chance to do is be the mom to her daughter.