Crowdsource Coffee: Creating Brave Spaces With Staff and Students

About This Event

Crowdsource Coffees are just-in-time conversations about topics relevant to leaders in the Portico community. These conversations are for school leaders to discuss shared challenges and exchange insights about what’s working as they transform the student experience and use inclusive leadership practices with their communities.

Whether with staff or students, we avoid certain topics for fear of conflict or discomfort. When we avoid these tough conversations, however, it can lead to confusion, anger, and distrust. We also lose out on the opportunity to deepen connection and understanding.

This Crowdsource Coffee centered on creating brave spaces with staff and students, in order to build a culture of transparency and trust. How do we plan and structure these conversations? How can we harness the “heat” of disagreement and work toward shared solutions?

Before this event, we encouraged leaders to take 5-10 minutes in advance to read this Toolkit article: 

How to Control the Heat: Quick Ways to Effectively Manage Difficult Topics & Situations

If you only have five minutes or less, think about the following prompt:

• Think of a recent time when you were faced with a conflict or difficulty with a student, teacher, parent, or someone else in your school community. How did you approach the situation? How would you most like to handle similar situations? 

If you have more time, we encourage you to explore the resources below and include them in your conversations: