Steady on Their Feet

An interview with Courage & Renewal Facilitator David Hagstrom, by Courage & Renewal Facilitator Karen Noordhoff

In these times, many folks are experiencing discouragement and despair.  How does Courage & Renewal work encourage hope?

It’s very clear to me that school leaders, along with teachers and clergy, need this work now more than ever. In this time when they’re being required to massively cut budgets, while also being asked to “leave no child behind,” paradoxically almost every school leader I know in a Courage to Lead series says something like this: “This is still a hopeful time.  I feel optimistic about myself and my work and the people I work with.  I have a feeling that as result of being in Courage to Lead, whatever the challenge, I am—we are—going to be able to survive.  In the midst of very tough times, we’re going to figure things out.”  

Courage work offers teachers, school leaders and clergy opportunities to return to the reasons they became a teacher, school leader or a clergy person in the first place.  And, in fact that’s what happens. When participants reconnect with their vocations, they regain their “voice.”  It’s not an exaggeration to say that when one finds one’s voice, it’s pretty close to thrilling.  In the school visits I make to Courage to Lead participants between retreats, I hear school leaders saying, “Here in the midst of immense financial woes in the district and at my school, I feel surprisingly steady on my feet.”  “Because I have such a strong sense of who I am in these dangerous times, the parents of the kids in this school listen to me with a sense of deep belief.  That helps stabilize our school community.”

Tell us about your introduction to Parker and to Courage & Renewal work.  How has this work changed you?  How has it changed your work?

I met Parker several times in the 1980s, but the conversation with him that truly invited me into Courage work occurred in 1998 when he visited Lewis & Clark (L&C) College in Portland (Oregon).  I distinctly remember a dinner at L&C colleague Sabra Bradshaw’s home when I inquired, “Parker, I work with school leaders and I just think that there’s a version of Courage to Teach that would really meet the needs of these leaders.”  To my recollection, Parker agreed (“why don’t you give it a try”) and there began the work I called ”Courage to Lead.”    

Almost immediately, I became a Courage & Renewal facilitator and got involved in an L&C Ford Family Foundation grant through which Gloria Gostnell, Caryl Casbon, and I offered Courage to Lead across Oregon, especially for rural school leaders. I also developed a course called “Leadership and Learning” for L&C principals-in-preparation based on Courage principles and practices.  All of this was occurring at a time when Courage work permeated the L&C graduate school of education.  We felt like pioneers.  

I’ve changed over the past decade of Courage & Renewal work with school leaders, teachers, and clergy.  I had thought I was a good listener, but I’ve become a much deeper listener.  I had always tried to find stories that would help school leaders connect with their true selves, the ache and agony and the joy of their work. Now with the use of third things—poems and music, plus stories—the school leaders and I have been able to look at their difficulties and stuck places “at a slant.”  Doing so gave them, and me, much more meaningful access to and clarity around the tough stuff that they were dealing with.  

What does Courage & Renewal work offer to teachers?  To educational leaders?  To clergy?  What are the common themes?

I think Courage work gives teachers, school leaders, and clergy access to a safe place that makes it possible to re-connect with their true selves and the reasons they came to such work in the first place.  Whereas my major focus has been school leaders, what I hear from all three groups is great appreciation for a safe place.  A big surprise for me occurred with clergy in San Francisco; almost to a person, they declared, “we have no safe place and we have no one we can talk to.”  I think that’s true for teachers and I know that’s true for school leaders.   

Our Courage practices coax a person’s soul out into the open.  A person’s “soul work” may not be apparent to everybody in the circle, but when the space has been made safe, people can get in touch with what’s really important. It’s ever so helpful and hopeful in a situation where the responsibility of the job weighs heavily and the general response of the public, supervisors, and co-workers is often negative, full of blame and projected fear.  

People love our Courage Touchstones.  They rejoice in a safe setting where there is no one trying to fix them, where they are truly welcomed, where everything they say is held in confidence.  It’s a treat, a relief, a balm for their wounds.  

What are you working on now?

I’m coordinating four retreat series for school leaders in Oregon—Portland, Eugene, Central Oregon, and one specifically for superintendents statewide, serving as facilitator for three of them.  I’m also working on a writing project focused on the times when school leaders bring their true selves to work.  

As I try to find fiscal support for these series, I’m so aware that in these times, many potential participants are holding back their individual financial investment in this work, even though they want and need it so very much.  So, here in Oregon, we’re determined to have funding help from at least two sources in addition to the participants’ fees. We’ve applied for an Oregon Community Foundation grant and are in the process of asking community members and parents to partially sponsor a participant.  These approaches give the greater community an opportunity to show strong support for education. The participant ends up feeling that they can afford the series and, just as importantly, they feel that the wider community is supporting them.

Photo by Karen Noordhoff.  In addition to being Courage & Renewal Facilitators, Karen and David are also husband and wife.