Craig Vezina Interview with Kriste Dragon, June 13, 2020

Kriste Dragon: What’s interesting about this moment when I think about education, both at the student level but also at the adult level, is that maybe for the first time consciously across the globe we’re faced with the same challenge. And while that challenge is definitely impacting communities differently the challenge is the same, the virus is the same. And so, I think if ever there were a moment to highlight our interconnectedness and our need to work collaboratively across lines of difference this is it. I’m not sure if we’ll take it or not, I mean that’s what we’re all curious and wondering about, but the truth is that interconnection has always been there it just maybe hasn’t been as front and center as this moment presents and I think if utilized correctly it is a phenomenal opportunity to realize our potential as a human living system.

Craig Vezina: If you had to try to describe the perfect sort of combination of character attributes or skillsets for a leader that schools need right now is it possible to try to have an archetype of that?

Kriste Dragon: You know, when I talk to parents that’s when it becomes really clear to me how much we’re all after the same thing. So, when we think about a successful educational experience there’s always elements of content mastery and I think those are necessary and many of them quantitative. So, we should be talking about language and math and skill acquisition and we should be measuring that. But I think what’s fascinating is that in the conversations with parents it also becomes very clear that while necessary that body of work is wholly insufficient for the children they help to develop and for the contributors they hope to produce to the world. And so, the conversation quickly becomes around things like empathy and compassion and curiosity and confidence. And not just confidence to go out and be and do, but confidence to actually take risks, to make mistakes, to learn from those mistakes and to charge ahead. I think that when you start looking at that holistic picture of what we want for our own children and for ourselves you can start to really blow out a model of what we should be doing on the input side of education. So, at Citizens of the World we’ve divided that up into very discreet graduate dispositions, they’re really the human aims but we called them graduate dispositions and we’ve divided them into three categories: the self, together and world. And so, what we’re trying to get out there there are characteristics that are about your individual development, there are elements of relational development so working in small groups or working with others and then there are systems level considerations that we really need to think about. And again, I think this moment, this virus is presenting how little attention I think we give to the systems level and how critical that’s going to be for our path forward. [03:35]

Craig Vezina: Can you talk a little bit about this global dimension because I think for most American schools global competencies or global scope is not necessarily part of the mission. If you could talk a little bit about why that global element is important to you.

Kriste Dragon: As part of our design for our school we talk to 40 different schools I think it was like seven countries, three continents or something like that and we looked specifically for schools that had the idea of global citizenship or global international something in their mission. And we found that a lot of people had, within those contexts, had figured out a way to embed the idea that I am part of a world and I should understand that world. And we think that’s a great start, but I think when I look at the challenges that are facing us as a human community they’re far more complex than that. The complexity of the interconnectedness of systems, the need for children to understand how my actions actually impact people I will never meet because of the interconnectedness of our systems. And then I think actually really thinking about the moments in time when our children are leading that they’ll be faced with decisions that might be good for their many and bad for the whole. And if we know they’re going to face those moments what kind of experiences do we want to be giving our children, what kind of challenges should we encourage them to face and to tackle and to wrestle with to be ready for those moments that they will have when they are adults leading the systems in which they live?

Sometimes I think we can overwhelm ourselves with this idea that we need to infuse the entire world into our third grade classroom, when really children are already leading and they’re already embedded in a context that presents many problems in their real lives. We had a situation where we had a really dangerous street crossing. In order to get to the school there wasn’t a crosswalk. And we engaged the younger elementary kids in the process of advocating for a crosswalk to be placed in front of their school. And the different areas of content that could be embedded within that project were extraordinary, but even more importantly I think at six/seven years old kids are starting to understand not only their agency but the interconnectedness of that decision on the entire community because that school housed actually several small schools and the crosswalk was an issue for people who lived on the other side of the street, not just for people who attended school at the campus. So, those conversations I think there’s no need to wait like that was a problem the kids talked about every day on the way into school and wouldn’t necessarily find its way into the educational curriculum unless we’re thinking about real world connections and problem-solving.

Craig Vezina: That’s a great example. What is the biggest question on your mind around the future of learning or the future of work or just the future?

Kriste Dragon: My biggest question is whether we’ll take this opportunity to realize our potential together. And I think that you really do you have a moment here where we can choose to put aside the things that stand in the way of true meaningful collaboration across the globe and we can do something pretty remarkable for the future of humanity. I’m not sure yet if we will. If I could go back and create a different context in which I was educated, more time on identity development and more time I think specifically for, given my gender, where I grew up in the country, the idea of self-care was something I learned much later in life and I think at a cost and if I could go back to my 18-year-old self and explain how important it was going to be that I was really confident and flexible in my identity and really clear that my responsibility to care for myself was at the top of the list I think that would be really beneficial for the person I am today. [07:27]

Craig Vezina: If you had a magic wand and you could offer anything to young people in education without money or other constraints being an issue, what would you want people to be able to have?

Kriste Dragon: If I had a magic wand I would want there to be an overarching broad shared definition of success. So, I genuinely believe that until we’re thinking about development of the whole person we’re not actually equalizing opportunity in the end game nor equitably addressing issues during the educational experience. So, that would be my answer.

Craig Vezina: I love that answer so much that I want to ask a follow-up to it. So, what are some of the elements of success that you want people to be thinking about?

Kriste Dragon: Three strands of what we call DNA in our schools. So, there is the core academic strand and that’s everything that’s familiar around core content, math, science, history, language. But then there are two other strands. The second strand is social and emotional development and there are real skills, there’s real content there and the more we learn on the science side about the development of emotional capacity I think the more that should be infused into the educational experience. And then we have a third strand that we call different and inclusion. I’m not sure that the skills that live in that third strand couldn’t exist within the social emotional realm so that second strand or back in the first strand of content mastery, but there seemed to be the same stumbling blocks in the human experience around inability to work across lines of difference, oppression of certain communities, of certain kinds of people. And I think that pulling the third strand out our hope is that we’ll finally give it the attention it deserves and move beyond what has been the Achilles’ heel for us I think specifically in this country but across the globe. [09:20]

Craig Vezina: This idea of the richness and diversity was core to Citizens of the World and maybe you can speak a little bit to how that community came together and the richness that you actually saw from it.

Craig Vezina: I had my first child my first year teaching and so two things were true for me: one, I was just getting to understand how difficult it was to provide an educational opportunity that aligned with my aspirations, but I was also looking for a school for my daughter. And so, on the one hand when I had my professional hat on I was in this very narrow definition of success. So, there were these tested measured things that I still value, but when I was looking for a school for my own daughter those tested and measured things we’re still there but there were all these other things, some of them probably not very conducive to measurements and some of them just plain soft and it felt like an integrity flag for me that I would be holding a narrow definition for other people’s children and a really broad definition for my own child. On top of that I really wanted a diverse community, in part because I mixed race and in part because I was living in a community that was very diverse so it felt logical to me that the school in our neighborhood would reflect the diversity of the neighborhood. So, all of those things came together for me as I founded Citizens of the World.

Craig Vezina: And as you saw this community interacting did it fit your vision of what it would look like or were there some surprises or road bumps, speed bumps?

Kriste Dragon: I was very humbled frankly to see how many people were attracted to the idea of Citizens of the World. You always wonder when you open a school like will you enroll? Will you fill the seats? And I think by the third year we had ten to one applications for available seats. We had a waitlist I think of almost 3000 people. It was just fascinating to me and it was very affirming that the vision of Citizens of the World was a vision that was shared by the broader community. I think what became surprising to me was how difficult even with people selecting into a school believing in the vision, how difficult it would be to actually work across lines of difference. And not at the student level, like I actually found the students got there pretty quickly but within the adult communities of staff, faculty, parents, there’s a lot of re-wiring that needs to be done and schools I think are not adequately resourced to consider the broader parent community or even development of teachers and faculty with the attention that those communities deserve.

Craig Vezina: What do you think is the greatest human superpower?

Kriste Dragon: When I think of realized potential I think of this broader definition of success. So, to me the superpower is being able to leverage the content mastery and the application of rigorous content toward empathetic compassionate interconnected means. I think your questions are very provocative and also at a level that I find very comforting because I do think this is a moment where we should be thinking about the why of education and really kind of pull back and re-familiarize ourselves with the true end.

Craig Vezina: If I can ask you a question maybe it’s more parent to parent, again, my kids are still younger but as a parent have you learned some things that have helped you think about education differently than you were thinking as just an educator?

Kriste Dragon: Absolutely. I’ll try to be synthesized here, but I have the gift of ten years between my oldest and my youngest. They’re actually five years to the day the three of my kids. And so, I think that a couple of things are true: one, my first child I had pretty early in my own development as a human and the space in between really provides some time to reflect and readjust. Like there’s consciously and purposely…

I do think this is a moment where we should be thinking about the why of education and really kind of pull back and refamiliarize ourselves with the true end.

Craig Vezina: If I can ask you a question, maybe it’s more parent to parent, again, my kids are still younger but as a parent have you learned some things that have helped you think about education differently than you were thinking as just an educator?

Kriste Dragon: I have the gift of ten years between my oldest and my youngest, they’re actually five years to the day the three of my kids. And so, I think that a couple of things are true: one, my first child I had pretty early in my own development as a human and the space in between really provides some time to reflect and readjust, like very consciously and purposely readjust the way I parent. With my first child my own developing identity was in the water that I was feeding her as a parent and so to break that down to something very concrete I think the more clear we are on who we are the more we can allow our children to be who they need to be. And so, the way we like to talk about that in our house is getting really clear on where I end and they begin and having them do the same. And so, it allows me to take responsibility for times when I’m projecting my anxiety into their life because I’m human and sometimes I do that, but if we have shared language for me to say hey I wasn’t doing a good job of managing where I am and you begin then maybe I can instantly undo some of the stuff that I put into them. So that’s one thing.

The second thing is I was just more tightly wound about freedoms I gave my oldest. I think I wasn’t yet trusting in my parenting skill. I think I wasn’t yet sure of who she was and what she needed and so when I came to that realization it was late in high school we decided to allow her to take a gap year. And she spent a year in India teaching in a government school and taking Hindi and living with a host family and basically had very little ability to contact us for the first I would say quarter she was there. There was an Internet café that she could go to but other than that we went from I wasn’t quite a helicopter parent but I definitely was probably over parenting and I think the gap year provided the opportunity for us to create space that should have been given to her incrementally over time but I hadn’t done a great job of that. And so, that has wholly shifted the way that I think about my younger two and just the runway that I give them to figure out what they want to do and who they want to be in the world and let them make mistakes. It’s a little bit about prepare the child for the road not the road for the child. I don’t think I was clear enough yet on exactly how to create the conditions that I think lead to the things I value.

Craig Vezina: Thank you for that. And as you look ahead, I don’t know if you’re generally an optimistic or pessimistic person, but what gives you optimism or pessimism for the coming years?

Kriste Dragon: I’m generally an optimistic half full glass and overflowing kind of person so I’m finding great optimism in the micro examples of kindness that I see everywhere I go and I’m trying to hold to the idea that challenge can bring great opportunity. And so while I think this is the most challenging moment for the globe that I’ve seen in my lifetime ideally will also present the greatest opportunity for us as a human society. This moment, this global pandemic has presented as an opportunity for us to think really big about who we want to be. I think the core programs that have been within the Pahara Institute are extremely valuable. They should continue, but when something this disruptive happens I think it’s only responsible to step back and say what else? Like what do leaders need? What are they going to need? What is the market not currently providing for them? And so, we’re in those discussions right now when we’re doing interviews across the sector of our fellows there’s about 830/840 fellows from our program and asking them what they see. What do you see in terms of the challenges leaders are facing? What does that mean for the needs they will have? What keeps you up at night when you think about sustained leadership? And we would like to respond with meaningful programmatic offerings that allow leaders to continue to transform the world. [18:09]

Craig Vezina: You were seeing my themes, want is one of the things that’s most keeping leaders up at night right now?

Kriste Dragon: We’re seeing such a stark divided between the folks who are on the front lines who are literally responsible for feeding families right now and folks who are more maybe second line or third line who have even in some cases a little additional capacity and aren’t yet sure how to connect into the needs and provide meaningful support. So, we’re trying to play a role in that coordinated effort. The thing that’s coming up that I think is fascinating, we know that change management and managing change are core to leadership experience and core elements of leadership, I think that they’ve always been in this gray area in my mind not quite technical leadership development but not quite transformational either. And the state of the world I think has expanded the way I think of what’s required to talk about transformational leadership and if we’re not doing change management justice then I think we probably are not truly supporting people in their transformational leadership development. I just don’t know a single person out there who is not both personally having to manage unprecedented change, but then those who are leading I think are having to do that in a nested way that it’s like nothing I’ve seen.