Helping Chidren Learn Self-Awareness and Self-Reliance

Kids don't get very many chances to find out about themselves or choose for themselves at school. They wake up and get put on a bus at the ass-crack of dawn, often spending more than an hour commuting to school. When they arrive, they sit in assigned seats in carefully arraigned rows to prevent them from interacting overmuch with their friends. They are shuttled silently and in a line from a class on one subject to another, with a mental costume change expected promptly, and no idle chitchat in transit.

If they're lucky, they get to choose their own seats at lunch. For some kids today, even their recess has become a dirge of walking on a track like a donkey in a smithy. At the end of the day, they ride in assigned seats on the bus home. Rich kids then get paraded about to all sorts of classes, lessons, or clubs, finally arriving home to waffle down some dinner and do an hour or two of homework that may or may not be useful in academic, social, or developmental ways.

No matter what we teach in schools, and whether or not it directly relates to the life our children go on to live and the adults they become, this system is bad, wrong, and broken.

I had the opportunity to go to an alternative style elementary school in Philadelphia called Project Learn (PL). While PL had many flaws, and I would not suggest it as a viable model for large-scale use, there were several aspects of it that gave me an opportunity that every child deserves. We should do our best as a society to create the kind of environment that PL did so that every child can have these opportunities:

At PL, while everyone "knew" what grade people were in, classes were referred to based on the teacher's name rather than the grade level. Instead of an impersonal fact like date of birth determining  grade, a combination of age, maturity, and acumen were used. Because most of the homerooms had children from more than one year, and quite a few students stayed in the same homeroom for two years before moving on, it was impossible for the bullies to tell if a student was matched with a homeroom teacher because of symbiotic temperament or academic proficiency.

Likewise with academic classes. Math classes happened at the same time school-wide, and students were placed in a class based on their abilities. This was an incredible choice that allowed PL to teach all classes at much higher levels than in a typical school. They did this with language arts as well.

As a school teacher (and this was at the current 6th ranked school in the country mind you) I found that in each 22-child sections of science I would have huge disparities in ability. A teacher is forced to either let the smart kids get bored, or let the dumb kids not learn. What ends up happening is a lame reduction to the mean where teachers hope most kids get it, stress about the ones who don't, and try to give extra challenges to the smart ones without turning them into pariahs.

A final choice that PL made, and one that I believe would make the most difference if adopted by more elementary, middle, and high schools, was an elective course structure. Starting in 3rd grade, students got to choose several elective classes based on their interest (and the teacher's offerings). The whole school did electives at the same time, and many (but not all) of the elective classes involved students of different ages. There is so much going on here that is beneficial, but here are a few highlights:

Children getting to choose a class increases their buy-in and agency, giving them invaluable practice making decisions and sticking to them for a semester. Working in a class with students of other ages lets younger ones model their behavior based on peers who have matured, and lets older students pretend to be adults and practice leadership.

Teachers love electives. Electives give teachers a chance to share their passions with students, explore new ideas and topics, and design new curriculum. This keeps their lessons in their other areas fresher, and constantly broadens their knowledge base; allowing teachers to model the process of learning for their students. Job satisfaction is also increased because teachers often get stuck in a rut. Many elementary schools are feudal. Career teachers slowly accumulate gravitas and authority as they build political factions around them and compete in a zero-sum game with other tenured teachers. Electives uproot this by encouraging change, adaptation, and giving teachers a constantly random set of students to teach.

Electives also give more legitimacy and accountability to pursuits that would often be placed in "clubs" at the middle school and high school level. I personally participated in and loved the school newspaper elective.

A school administrator could also develop an electives slate that catered to a regional or local need. I can imagine an incredibly effective course offering in a blue-collar town that helped prepare middle and high school students for vocational jobs by giving them a chance to learn what options they were most passionate about. Likewise, in a school district with high teen pregnancy there could be electives focused on things like childcare or parenting.

In order to become more self-aware and self-reliant (both values that I ascribe to and believe to be an integral part of the American Dream), we need to do a better job helping our children learn and practice those skills. If a student never gets to make a choice, and is often held back/left behind in regimented classes, they won't learn to dream.

A Retrospective Resolution - Carrying Around Luggage

Last year my New Years' Resolution was to make use of Scott Arizala's wisdom about unloading buses. As a camp director for years he had been frustrated by the lack of coherence and organization at his camp as kids arrived on buses and their stuff was carted to their cabins. While the kids were doing get-to-know-you activities and eating dinner, the bags would all be brought to cabins. One or two kids would "lose" their stuff for hours every week.

Scott hated how unwelcome it made the kids feel when they walked into their cabin and couldn't find their bag. For years he would remind staff on change day to be careful with the bags, but would spend his day all over camp while someone else coordinated the bag moving. It all changed when he got in the face of one young counselor who had made a mistake and the counselor cheekily replied: "If you care so much about the bags, why don't you do it."

So for the rest of the summer and all the years since, Scott has directed camp from the parking lot on change days. Personally welcoming every camper, and making sure no one's stuff gets lost. It may be a little trickier to deal with problems that arise with just a radio and a quick wit, but the kids feel welcome.

The lesson he taught (and I tried to internalize) was twofold: As a manager you have limited time, you can't be in charge of everything, and have to balance which things you do based on what needs to get done and what will give you satisfaction to complete. Secondly and more importantly, you will get better results from people if you realize that they may not care about the same things you do and calibrate your leadership accordingly.

Scott had many solutions available to him, and likely tried some or all of these:

• He could have added an object lesson to his staff training by having several of his staff's possessions get "lost" en route to a staff trip and then getting them to talk to the rest of staff about what that felt like (thus increasing staff motivation to do a good job with the bags). 
• He could have created or helped another staff member create a more organized method for bag moving - like drawing chalk lines in a grid on the pavement for each cabin (thus adding agency to a staff member). 
• He could have organized the registration communication with parents to include a request for color coded tape/ribbon on each bag depending on the child's cabin (thus showing parents his camp cared how their possessions were treated). 

In the end, he chose to take charge of the task himself. This past year, I tried hard to listen to myself when I got bitchy and either take charge of the project or task that was making me upset, try out an alternate method for fixing it like mentioned above, or let it go.

(Get Dirty to) Validate Your Staff's Roles

Lots of managers badmouth the jobs their staff do. You can draw a direct line from how much the boss validates the staff jobs to how motivated the staff are to do their jobs.

If a manager believes any job is 'beneath' him or her, then the staff won't want to do that job. If a manager believes that the hardest, dirtiest, most complicated task should be their own, then staff will aspire to do the hardest, dirtiest, most complicated task they can. If a manager attempts to use their authority to rest, do less, or have privilege, then the staff will seek to rest, do less, and have privilege. 

At camp this is really easy to see and to avoid by action. One tactic I use all the time that works wonders (and is fun to boot!) is to play with kids. If you make it a habit to play with the kids as often as possible as an administrator at camp, then not only does that validate the counselors' role of playing with kids, it helps them visualize what it means to get really good at their jobs - most administrators became administrators because they were really good at the "lower" job. In some jobs and roles it's not practical to go do the work of your entry level staff, which means you have to be much more cognizant of the words you use to describe their role and job, as actions speak much louder than words.

A second valuable tactic for this at camp (and I recognize not everyone would choose this one, but you could pick your own gross/stressful job that you happen to enjoy) is that most days I would jump down in the kitchen and help out a counselor who had the chore of doing the whole camp's dishes. I love the machine efficiency of using an industrial dishwasher, and knew that the dreaded dishes was often something that a new counselor had a lot of apprehension about. If I stepped in and helped out, something they thought would be a drag on their day and take up part of the coveted Rest Hour would instead be done in 20 minutes with little fuss. Knowing your boss has your back, gets your apprehensions, and is willing to get dirty to make sure you have a good day builds loyalty.

Using Biases to Win

Whether you're preparing for a meeting, changing your organization, or attempting to corral unruly employees/campers, you will be much more successful if you make use of people's cognitive biases. People like to feel street smart. They like to feel important. They like to believe that they have understood what is going on and have made an informed, intelligent choice based on that comprehension.

If you set things up cleverly, you can take advantage of this and are more likely to get people to choose whatever results you want. In addition to getting the result you desire, you are also giving people a feeling of agency, which enhances their buy-in and perseverance.

For a few marketing examples of decoys, check out this blog post. For a comprehensive and easy to read list of cognitive biases, read this.

I have often found that you can blend together a bunch of biases to get things going your way. Before you jump to some kind of "wow that's manipulative" conclusion - check yourself - this is how we do things all the time, I'm just talking about being more deliberate and increasing your effectiveness. If you genuinely care about people and want the best for you/them/the institution, then you're not being manipulative, you're being effective. Here are a few examples I've found useful over the years:

• I take really good notes for each staff member's exit interview each fall/winter. This helps people feel like they are important and that they have a say in how things go.
• Once I have a library of notes, I make sure to quote people to each other as often as possible. This means frequently re-reading the notes and is a time commitment, but people can imagine you quoting things they've said to others, which ensures people feel like they have agency and importance. It also makes people want to be mentioned in the future by you so they will focus more and try harder to impress you or be memorable.
• If I had an idea of a change I wanted to happen, I would ask a bunch of people what they thought about it. After the first person, I would be able to use the quote method mentioned above too! When I instituted the change later on, no one would question it, as most of them had already had a chance to express their opinion - and their opinion was tempered and massaged by the fact that I chose to quote peers whom they respected who agreed with the change or peers whom they didn't respect who disagreed with the change.
• People prefer to be happy - if you emphasize positive aspects of something in a way that expresses how long it will make them happy, they will be more likely to believe you. Since we start and emphasize that "Camp is for the Camper", I will also often mention how what you do with kids this week will stay with them for the rest of their lives. If your extra little bit of effort today results in lifelong positive changes for a kid, you are likely to put in that extra little bit of effort.
• People will take risks to avoid negative outcomes. If a counselor is worried about their cabin  not getting along or meshing, they are much more susceptible to suggestions that involve creative solutions. This doesn't work for positive outcomes, if a counselor is optimistic about being able to get their cabin back on track, suggest things that involve less risk. This logic works exactly the same when dealing with a camper - if they are afraid of not making friends they are willing to take more risks to get friends, if they expect to make friends, they will be more likely to respond to suggestions that don't involve as much social risk.
• Say it in a new and inventive way and people will remember it. Say it with a pun or a rhyme or an unusual physical flourish and it will be embedded in people's memories.

I think I'll have to do a series of posts moving forward digging deeper into how we use cognitive biases in a variety of ways and settings. Most social interactions are filled with overlapping biases, and people who are aware of and make use of the biases in themselves and others are powerful and effective.

Insulate Your Workplace

There are many variables in the world around us. From the social and interpersonal to the physical and environmental, there are thousands of factors that we keep balanced throughout every day of work and life. If, for even a minute, we stopped to consider all of the variables we are juggling, we would become unstuck, so our brains do a good job of hiding all of the calculations and action-reactions going on all the time.

I think that one part of why I enjoyed working at camp so much is that the number of variables shrinks so much that we are able to control more of what goes on around us and choose consciously what we want to do.

For children (who are by necessity discovering the world around them and placing themselves one lego block at a time into  an unfamiliar and scary world of variables) there is often little control over most environmental and social aspects of their lives. They don't get to choose their classmates, classes, classrooms, meals, homework, or often much else at all in a normal day.

At camp we let them choose, for hours a day, what to do. Obviously we are limited in some things based on the number of campers and sandbox property. However, the self exploration embedded in our mission statement and daily living provides a great guidepost for how you can motivate your employees in a non-camp setting.

As a manager it is important to give your employees a chance to do meaningful work with people they like. Sometimes there are jobs and chores that have to happen regardless. But there is almost always something for which it makes sense to give latitude to employees for how they pursue the ultimate goal. I would recommend using this type of framework to figure out if something can be made into an insulated work space for self-exploration, realization, and ultimately motivated accomplishment:

1. Agree on the starting point - meet or brief working group on where you are now.
2. Give benchmarks that you require, whether timetables for completion, details about reporting progress, or important components that are required for completion.
3. Agree on the substance of the final goal.

Make steps 1 and 3 as specific as possible. The more latitude you can give your employees in proceeding in between, the more empowered to explore how they work want to work. When they feel that they are responsible for a meaningful task and have the agency to make decisions within a framework that is provided, they will respect your authoritarian outline whilst working to keep pace with peers and impress their superiors with the product.

Personal Kryptonite and First Impressions

One of the most successful millennials I know explained to a group of us that her professional kryptonite is incompetence. She further defined that to include people who don't try, saying that when someone is trying hard, she can work with them to improve. Getting people to try is the hardest and most important aspect of management.

While she was being a big sarcastic and bombastic, it got me thinking a little bit more about how our personal preferences influence the way we get our staff to be intrinsically motivated to perform at their best. First impressions are key, both for the employer and the employee, and it is important that we stay true to ourselves in how we present in those key moments, otherwise we will create unsustainable personas that people will soon see through.

If you, like my friend, truly value competence, make sure that is communicated through your attire, body language, and opening words with new employees. You can do this for any value you have. You should also make use of your physical surroundings.


Assuming you have succeeded in engendering your intended values with an intentional first impression, you still have to actively create an environment that continues that value and regularly use implicit and explicit methods of keeping that value around.

One of the most important values to me is working hard and working efficiently. One way I like to show to my staff at camp that I value those two things is that I will try to identify whatever task in a given situation or project will be the hardest or most complicated or involved and publicly work on that task whilst teaching staff (and campers since I know the campers will one day be staff so it's never too early to get them competent). Since a large portion of jobs at camp are dirty or gross, this often means doing my best Mike Rowe imitation and getting dirty.

You don't always have to get dirty, and you don't always have to do the hardest task publicly, but showing your staff that what they are doing matters and is not beneath anyone is a powerful method of motivating them, since it validates their effort and allows them to picture themselves transitioning from their entry level job into a manager or executive. The new CEO of JC Penny, Marvin Ellison, is a paragon of this executive virtue, and it's paying off.