Christmas has been approaching so fast this year, hasn’t it? It seemed like December has been under a time lapse rushing to become history. At the radical redesign studio our thinking & doing caps have been focused on creating the Insights & Opportunities report of the caring project (to be released in January).
One of the many things I have learnt since being at Family by Family is a deeper understanding of the role of the Family Coach.
My previous working life was punctuated by routine. As a high school teacher in Darwin I had a timetable: bells rung, my Year 9 class filed out to be replaced by my Year 10’s, lunch duty in the canteen was on a Thursday at 12.30pm for half an hour, my reports were due two weeks before the end of term.
The fact that I had these structures is not to say, of course, that many days teaching went to plan. Kids would come in to class after a lunch time spent playing football in the monsoon rain dripping wet and riled up, and my carefully scripted lessons would go out the window. Then there was the term where half the boys in my literacy class left for men’s business one week into term, to return when the season changed. Because teaching is all about people, all sorts of human things influence how your lessons played out: kids’ birthdays, how my morning commute had gone, the conversation you had in the staff room before walking into class, how one of your students had been spoken to by their grandmother the night before on the phone.
Similarly, every day here at in Radical Redesign looks different. Recently we have been out and about meeting people in Unley and Salisbury who help each other out. These people might look in on a neighbor, care for an elderly parent or need some help day to day themselves. Some days this has meant standing outside the local supermarket for hours, giving away biscuits and having conversations with people on their way to the car. Some days it’s been heading along to a ‘Knit and Natter’ or Tai Chi session at the local Community Centre. Other days it’s been back in the studio, discussing how folks in the developmental psychology world think about caring. Or going door to door in the early summer sun, talking to people about our project.
Many times since starting at TACSI I’ve found it hard to see what skills from my previous working life I bring to the table in Radical Redesign. I’ve never thought of myself as a ‘maker.’ I don’t know a texta from a Mont Blanc pen. I haven’t ever consciously thought about designing interactions, encouraging thriving behaviors or done recruitment on the street. The stuff I know about is how to deal with teenagers, English literacy, marking, and education policy.
For all of us in the Redesign team, working out how to bring something from our backgrounds in education, business, community development and design to this work, add it to the mix, and then learn a heap of completely new stuff is all part of the process.
But because our methodology is centered on people, I’m beginning to see that there are a lot of lessons from the classroom that I can bring to this work. Like teaching, a lot of Redesign is about empathy, connections, listening and responding. There might not be any bells to signal the start of recess, but being flexible, willing to throw the plan out the window when needs be and wanting to understand what makes people tick are all bits of being a teacher that I bring to this work in Radical Redesign. Getting the Redesign team to call me Miss de Campo would make me feel right at home....!
My first five weeks with Family by Family has seen me go through a huge range of emotions. Excitement has been the first and longest lasting of all of these. I don’t at this stage see this excitement ever leaving me. It is as if I still need to pinch myself that this is reality.
During October the Family by Family team along with our sharing families travelled to Ironbank, in the Adelaide Hills for camp. This 2.5 day camp was an opportunity for sharing families to train and prepare for the link up process with a seeking family.
In a world where can't doesn’t exist anything is possible.
Bring your own. First reflections from another new Radical Redesign team mate.
Permission to feel Stupid.
It’s tough feeling stupid in a work environment, feeling like you know so little about so much. Especially when you haven’t felt so in such a long time.
Read about my first week working as part of the Radical Redesign Team.
The full length Family by Family "Doco" is now online.
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