High school seniors and college students absorb terrific amounts of “outside-in” data and concepts, explaining, describing, and making sense of the world “out there,” much of which is essential and very valuable. However, this “outside-in” (extrinsic) approach to develop our young people often does not tap, ignite, nor harness the value and the heart of students, especially in their “designing” their own lives and careers.
In the VSA “Inside-Out” (intrinsic) approach, students take responsibility for realizing and seeing that their life is quite literally in their own hands. In The Turning Point, a three-day program delivered inside the school year (September, January, and May), they get to see and gut–level experience that they really are responsible for their lives, 100%…..and that responsibility can be an inspired adventure, not merely a burden or obligation. They discover that they have a real, unmistakable say in how their present and future life events will actually go…..as a matter of their word. By “inside-out” we mean what the student stands for: their character, their vision, their values, and their ability to communicate their value in the real, live market place. These aspects of “character” and their vision necessarily require the student to inquire, to really look and generate for themselves, the answers to critical life questions:
What do I, in fact, stand for?
What is a purpose? What is my purpose?
What is a vision?
What is my vision for the future?
What values matter to me?
What am I willing to be accountable for?
What are my core competencies (abilities that each person has)?
What is my “value proposition” for others, especially future employers?
We do this work with them through guided, fun interactions. The instructors evoke and draw out the students’ skills and learning in and through :
Writing
Asking questions that foster discovery
Sharing their own experiences authentically
Listening
Developing their purpose and vision
Committing themselves.
This workshop does n o t displace or replace the learning and knowledge they have done, do currently, and will do. It comes alongside their learning and knowledge to empower and make real and relevant what they are learning about the world. When people get clear on their stand, purpose, vision for their career and life, all the knowledge and learning they do in school becomes more useful, relevant, practical, and real. Some approaches to on-the-court action-learning have successfully included:
• Coaching: The ability to evoke, elicit, and invent new abilities in others (such as emotional intelligence, creative intelligence, social intelligence, practical skills, leadership….. and key personal qualities such as courage, tenacity, resourcefulness, initiative, et. al.) Coaching is action- oriented learning that develops abilities that are intrinsic in all human beings yet are unattended to and thereby dormant. This kind of learning and development is in sharp contrast with more passive, traditional modalities such as:
• Teaching: the ability to transfer information about what is already known from one person to another. Teaching transfers the past and widely does n o t create futures that are not consistent with, more of, the past. This limits greatly the impact that teaching by itself can have on inspiring and equipping our young people to invent, cause, and generate their own lives.
Our teaching, for the most part, at best delivers experts and not leaders or creatives. Coaching can and does.
In “The Turning Point: Inside-Out” we pay particular attention to the “art” of coaching….evoking new abilities, not just adding information. As above, we define coaching as distinct from teaching.
There is more to say, yes ? Please contact Tony at tonys@vsacoach.com and/or leave a comment below. Thank you!
© Tony Smith
this is a good start…..need to know more about how this works, operationally and financially…