In the “Five (or more) Questions” series, we ask authors a few questions about their new book, and then a few more about themselves. Today’s interview is with Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe, authors of Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools.
Eerdmans: What makes Flourishing Together a unique contribution?
Lynn Swaner and Andy Wolfe: We are living in a time when it seems almost everything works against flourishing in schools—whether financial pressures or limited resources, overworked teachers and leaders, societal rifts related to inequality and injustice. Flourishing Together asks what a distinctively Christian vision of educational flourishing might look like, and then works to answer the question through the lenses of theology, research, and practice. This integrated approach makes the book different from most others, but so too is its goal—which is not to “fix” what’s “broken” in education, but instead to re-imagine our schools as places where students and adults can thrive, in the midst of the challenges that we face. Flourishing does not mean that everything is going well in our lives at all times! Instead, flourishing looks a lot like the trees described in Jeremiah 17:8 (NLT), which are “planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.” The book includes case studies of schools both in the US and UK that are flourishing in the midst of the “heat” and “drought” facing our educational systems, both before and during the COVID pandemic. Drawing on the uniquely international dimension of the book, our goal was to offer leaders and teachers the encouragement they need, now more than ever, along with rich theological reflection, practical application, discussion questions, and team activities that will help awaken us to new possibilities for flourishing.
E: What are some of the most prevalent misconceptions about education/student success/learning?
LS & AW: We have asked hundreds of leaders and teachers across the world to describe what it means for students to flourish. And to a person, educators know flourishing “when they see it”—in students who are exuberant in their learning and are growing socially, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. But one of the most prevalent misconceptions is that somehow students flourish in a vacuum—meaning their flourishing (or lack thereof) is completely disconnected from what’s happening with the adults in the building (the teachers, leaders, staff, and also the community in which the school is situated). And much research, which we detail in the book, shows this couldn’t be farther from the truth; the flourishing of students is intricately connected to the flourishing of the adults around them, and vice versa. If we are to have flourishing students, we also need educators who love their students and their craft, and who are ever improving as professionals and serving well together with colleagues. We need schools whose shared energy, creativity, authenticity, and hope overflows and blesses their communities. And ultimately, we need to replace reductionist views of the purposes of education, reflected in shallow definitions and measures of success for which our societies have settled, with a more robust vision for flourishing in schools. Our schools need to be places where there is an ecology of flourishing. And as reflected in the title, Flourishing Together, this vision of interdependence is at the heart of the book. And if we hope for our educational systems to recover from the current pandemic, we need to focus all the more on the flourishing of adults, alongside students, in our schools.
E: How did you meet and why did you decide to write this book together?
LS & AW: We first met as part of an international group of educators who traveled between the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, to visit each other’s schools, speak with leaders and teachers, and listen to students (the group’s learning around educational transformation and innovation is shared in a previous book, MindShift: Catalyzing Change in Christian Education). It was through this journey of mutual learning that we discovered our common focus on educational flourishing (Lynn had conducted extensive research on flourishing schools for the Association of Christian Schools International in North America, and Andy had been working with networks of schools in the UK around vision and practices for educational flourishing). Our decision to write this book together really was in line with our view of flourishing—anything that is worth doing, cannot be done alone. We felt that if we went through the process of writing a book on educational flourishing together, not only would we be modeling that vision in practice, but also we could draw on the collective thinking and practice from our own contexts to develop something much richer than if we’d gone it alone. And even since the time of writing the book, we’ve seen increasing international interest and collaboration around the question of educational flourishing. We’ve had the opportunity to share this work not only in the US and the UK, but also virtually in Australia, and this fall in-person in Canada and virtually again at various international conferences and venues. If anything, the pandemic has brought a sharpened awareness around the need for every sector, including education, to think more deeply and take redemptive action around creating communities where people can flourish.
E: What challenges did you face in writing this book from opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean?
LS & AW: We wrote the book in the first three quarters of 2020, during the start of the COVID pandemic. In fact, we last met in person during the MindShift group’s UK trip back in February 2020, and then the world essentially locked down shortly after. With the help of technology, it actually wasn’t the distance that presented a challenge in writing, but it was more our daily grappling with the crises facing our schools, communities, and countries. Both of us work with thousands of educators, so even just walking alongside them during the pandemic, while advocating for students in the public arena, was all-consuming. But the pandemic really brought the question of what it means to flourish, especially during times of extreme challenge, to front and center for us. If we couldn’t write a book about educational flourishing and have the major concepts and themes—about our collective purpose, relationships, well-being, learning, and resources—hold true during the “test” of a worldwide pandemic, then that book wouldn’t be worth much in the end result. Because the reality is that we need a vision of flourishing in the midst of the “but not’s” of our lives, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4; we need a vision for how we can thrive in schools, when we are “pressed on every side by troubles… we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed” (v. 8-9, NLT). So although the book is not explicitly about education during the pandemic, the book was very much formed in the crucible of that challenge for us as educators and leaders.
E: What advice would you give to aspiring teachers?
LS & AW: Our advice for aspiring teachers would be the “3-Cs”: they must be called, connected, and committed if they are to flourish (the 3-Cs language is from the Church of England Foundation for Educational Leadership’s core leadership document, “Called, Connected, Committed”). By called, we mean in the sense of the word “vocation”—that there is a goal worthy of teachers’ work, one that is deeply meaningful and for which they are well-suited, and one that will produce fullness in their own lives as they pursue it. But in order for this to be realized, teachers need to be connected—meaning that they are not individuals working alone in their classrooms, but rather are part of a web of relationships and reciprocal actions between leaders, teachers, staff, students, families, and others who engage with and in the school community. And finally, it is crucial to view teaching not only as a profession, but also as a process—one to which we must be fully committed. We can think of the challenging student who returns well after graduation to say something like, “I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but what you taught me has helped me become the person I am today.” Hearing these words in the future is predicated upon a daily, relational commitment to students in the present, not giving up on them—and just as importantly, not giving up on ourselves as educators or our schools as communities of learning. And when our students, our schools, or we ourselves fall short—which we promise will happen, with frequency!—being called, connected, and committed will give us the strength to dream, reimagine, and strive for greater flourishing, together.
Flourishing Together: A Christian Vision for Students, Educators, and Schools is available for purchase at Eerdmans.com, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, and Christianbook.com.
Lynn E. Swaner
Lynn E. Swaner serves as the chief strategy and innovation officer at the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), where she leads thought leadership and research initiatives including ACSI's signature Flourishing Schools Research. In her previous work as an education faculty member in higher education, she conducted research and published on well-being, adult learning, and student development.
Andy Wolfe
Andy Wolfe is the deputy chief education officer (leadership development) for the Church of England. He has national oversight of the Church of England Foundation for Educational Leadership, which runs programs, networks, and research focused on leadership development. Previously, he worked as a senior leader in a large high school, where he oversaw the development of teaching and learning and the school's Christian ethos.