What in the world moves you? How do you move the world?
Yesterday I met with a principal at his East Detroit school. Few things ground human relationships like concern for the safety of people who have been harmed or terrified, and you could see it in his face as he spoke about the number one thing his students ask for help with: safety from violence in and outside of school.
You can read about that in the news or a policy report. Hearing it directly from Detroit youth, tasting gunpowder in the air from a recent shooting, or seeing it momentarily tug at a grown man’s composure takes the experience to a different level of reality.
The issue moves him and his staff, he’s doing remarkable things to cultivate a culture of empathy and appreciation to help the most “at risk” youth in the school move forward from within and beyond the city. We’re focused on de-escalation, conflict resolution, and challenge based learning initiatives to help youth embrace and resolve challenges in creative non-violent ways. There’s a bigger vision too: we believe creating a culture that feelingly sees the world bolsters solution-focused entrepreneurial thinking in and beyond the communities we’re part of.
I call that emotive mechanics. We aim to change the way people look at and feel about the world with tangible actions, but we’re guided by a judicious mix of our own emotions and tools for making sense of the world through education. In that sense, we’re emotive mechanics too.
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For those interested, the school is part of the Blanche Kelso Bruce Academy. Some may have heard about the Catherine Ferguson Academy in the news in previous years, these schools are part of the same organization.
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