Teaching Teachers: Our Newest Ground Breaking Program

No sarcasm here--bone cold deadly serious (and a bit excited) Never had a business class, never studied management--never studied theories of organizational development, but I do get things done. This is how those things get done.

What we do is based on a system that I have used for years and have come to rely on it  more as time goes by. Simple system--I surround myself with brilliant women and I  describe everything that I see going on at the horse lot, both good and bad to them--not in a formal setting but simply in conversation.

And then I shut up and listen.

This morning that is exactly what happened. I told my wife about something that I noticed at the horse lot yesterday. She told me how to create a vitally important program as a result of what I told her.

I told her about Hannah. She is a young school teacher. She is a small school teacher. Several of the students that she brings out to the horse lot are older teenage boys, one or two of them dwarf me. After she was out for the first time with the students Lydia pointed out the obviously genuine degree of respect that she received from the students. The next time she was out I paid a bit more attention to it. Lydia was right--respect and trust---strong, obvious.

Hannah knows horses. Yesterday she got in the round pen with Ta Sunka. He responded to her every bit as well as he responds to me. I told Beth that I thought that the respect that the students gave her and the respect Ta Sunka gave her are quite closely related.

Beth said, "I have your next new program for you to do. Teach school teachers how to use the round pen to learn to handle their class rooms. You and Amanda do it." (My daughter Amanda Browder is a super star eighth grade science teacher and is nearly as charismatic a speaker as I am).

I jumped at the idea and said that even better we will have one of my other daughter's, Ashley Edwards, join Amanda and me in developing the program.  Ashley's experience presenting programs through Road to Repair that use the lessons of the round pen to teach effective communication with people, especially young people, who have been severely traumatized will add another dimension to the program.

This is going to be great.

(Another key component of my non-management  style is that I do not waste a lot of my time hand wringing and planning or seeing if it will be ok with everyone. In fact, I am sure that Amanda and Ashley will be excited about their participation in this program--and I am looking forward to telling them all about it.)