A couple days ago at our start of the year administrators meeting, we had a presentation by Jo Chrona. She was presenting on learning in Indigenous and anti-racist education, and she said something that still sits with me. She talked about how the learning isn’t easy but the real challenge is sitting, and staying, in the discomfort.

This isn’t an easy thing to do. We spend our days as problem solvers. We see the challenges and the issues we face and we tackle them. But systemic problems are not something with a quick fix, and if we have a ‘fix and move on’ mentality, we aren’t really dealing with the underlying issues. If we move away from uncomfortable issues they don’t really get meaningfully addressed. If we don’t sit in the discomfort, we don’t learn or help our community learn.

But it’s not human nature to stay in an uncomfortable place. This needs to be intentional. Being vulnerable and having the hard conversations, rather than trying to immediately make things better, is when we can really reflect, listen, learn, and heal. And of these four things, listening is the most important. If we are fixing, we aren’t listening.

One of the powerful things about staying and sitting in the discomfort is that we only really learn things well when there is a struggle. And so when we allow ourselves time to struggle, to understand the struggle of others, we create the space for deep learning to happen. We create the opportunity for meaningful learning and meaningful change to happen.