Aloha Kākou, thank you for visiting TeachingWithAloha.org,

We’re in a time of transition here as you might have guessed, seeing that our last postings were done during December of 2009.

Dean Boyer, who previously had been our Mea Ho‘okipa here, had received one of those fabulous offers too good to refuse, and I sincerely wished him well, immensely happy about his well-deserved good fortune. Unfortunately, I was not able to continue with this site within its intended focus on education and the teaching profession without Dean’s active involvement.

Therefore, here’s what’s happening as the “constants and changes” I refer to in my post title:

Teaching with Aloha™ is being brought into the fold of my Workplace Aloha School and Managing with Aloha University — at least for now. You can read more about those teaching entities over at Say Leadership Coaching via this link.

Though we will not be updating this blog for the time being, Teaching with Aloha™ will continue with “bringing our Universal Values of Aloha to the Art and Heart of Teaching” as our tagline says above in the blog banner, for it is the only way we aspire to teach in my Managing with Aloha family of companies. In doing so, we will no longer focus on education and academia as an industry, but on teaching as a more inclusive and far-reaching verb: “Teaching with Aloha™” will refer to what all teaching is: the sharing we can do as we impart our skills and knowledge to others, helping them grow as they thrill to the learning experience. Our ‘classroom setting’ will remain the nineteen values of the Managing with Aloha philosophy.

If you have a subscription I hope you’ll hang onto it as the best way to receive future updates. There may be a day in our future where TeachingwithAloha.org returns as a newly independent entity, and when it does, you’ll then be among the first to know about it!

Meanwhile, you might consider a subscription to my blog as well: Joining the Ho‘ohana Community over on TalkingStory.org remains the best way to keep up with me. I’ve just posted an update of sorts today which will get you caught up there:

A Ho‘ohana Talk Story: April 2010

These links (all at Talking Story) may also be of interest:
You will see how passionate we can be there about learning!

1. About Talking Story and The Care and Feeding of your Talking Story Subscription
2. Learning Managing with Aloha: 9 Key Concepts
3. Values are the Bedrock of Hard Reality
4. We Learn Best from Other People
5. When Learning Gets Overwhelming

Mahalo nui loa. Thank you so much for being part of the TeachingWithAloha.org community. I look forward to seeing you over at Talking Story where we Ho‘ohana together, Kākou, in our learning and co-teaching.

With much aloha,
Rosa

Workplace Aloha Coach and Author Rosa Say

Our Language of Intention

TWA Glossary Entries:
Learning: A human superpower
Teaching: Enabling and growing the learning superpower
Teaching Ho‘ohana: A teacher’s value-driven intention with learning the art and heart of teaching

Source: Why Choose Aloha Values?

Read the story behind the book: Imagine having a Thought Kit
Get your copy from the Kindle Store, or on Smashwords.com

Have you tried the Daily 5 Minutes?

The Daily 5 Minutes is a new conversation you give to someone else as a gift – a listening gift from you. When you offer to “Take 5″ with someone, and they’ve been let in on what that D5M invitation means, you are saying,

“For the next 5 minutes I am here to do absolutely nothing but listen to you, and respond to you if you would like me to. Within the next 5 minutes, there will be nothing in this world more important than my listening to whatever you might have on your mind: I want to hear from you, and I want to know more about what you are thinking about, wondering about, and feeling.”

It’s a beautiful thing.

The Daily 5 Minutes originated in my workplace laboratory nearly two decades ago, and since then it has proven to be wonderfully adaptable in a variety of different settings – including your school classrooms.

I’ll bet you can imagine why teachers love it so much.

For you to be a listener, someone else has to do the talking.

When you introduce the Daily 5 Minutes practice to your students, they have a role to play as the receivers of your gift: They have to agree to do the talking. I know how difficult that can be at times, getting them to do so. However once they get started with the D5M, they warm up to talking to you in an amazing way, for a circle of comfort is created between you.

If this is the first you have heard of the Daily 5 Minutes, take a look at this article I just posted on Talking Story earlier today: 5 Minutes/ 3 Values/ 9 MWA Questions Redux

Here is an excerpt on the “3 Values” part of it:

In the classes we personally present at Say Leadership Coaching, we teach the D5M in connection with three values, Ha’aha’a, Kākou and ‘Ike loa;

Ha’aha’a is the value of humility and thus it helps us to be open to what we can receive from others, being willing to have them connect with us, and affect us in a transformational way. Being humble is never lowly; it is accepting others from a place of strength and confidence in one’s self-esteem.

“Humble managers see with their ears.” Learn more about D5M-ing your Decisions: See with your ears. We managers don’t have all the answers; we find them. We also find stories.

Kākou is the value of inclusiveness and it promotes the “language of we.” Thus, we think of Kākou as the value of effective communication. When communication is Kākou, it connects everyone in an organization, so everyone is “in the know.” Think about it: Even Following is NOT a Passive Activity

‘Ike loa is the value of learning and knowledge, and in using the Daily 5 Minutes, you will get to know your staff exceptionally well while simultaneously improving both your listening skills and your relationship with them. You will discover the knowledge which resides in other people, and believe me, We Learn Best from Other People.

At the end of the article, you will see this announcement, and it may be something you decide to take advantage of as well: Do not delay, for the it is a free alpha and the registration will close promptly at midnight November 2nd in your timezone:
Ready, set, alpha! — Find out more about how the D5M habit-builder alpha works
Another Step Forward | Ruzuku is here. — Learn about Ruzuku (my alpha partner) and see some screen shots

Aloha, it’s Rosa. I am writing for Teaching with Aloha today, to ask you to enroll in a critically important goal with me.

I ask you to get involved in whatever way you can within your own circle of influence, even if that ‘circle’ is as small and tight as the realistic coaching conversation between you as teacher and one of your students. I’ve been talking to many of them, and they are feeling very alone. Many are not turning to their parents for help, for they are watching them struggle in battles of their own.

Our Common Goal: Successfully Transition Students from School to Work

Your circle of influence is actually much bigger than you may think.

We, in both education and business, must forge a better partnership in aggressively achieving our common goal. We must join forces so we in business can better welcome the students you graduate, effectively integrating them into our working communities quickly and smoothly.

This transition, from a place of early learning to a place of Ho‘ohana at work, does not happen as successfully as we need it to happen. If we use present U.S. employment numbers as a measurement, it does not happen for nearly half of those who graduate:

“46% of those aged 16 – 24 in the U.S. population do not have jobs – this is their lowest level of employment since records were kept in 1948.”
—from BusinessWeek, The Lost Generation by Peter Coy

This statistic is unacceptable, and even more alarming? Many anticipate it will get worse.

The youngest members of our workforce are struggling to belong. Those of you on college campuses everywhere are feeling the over-crowding as students of all ages retreat back into school: Students once eager to graduate now parlay their available finances (and bulging student loans) into the educational dabbling that is not passionate learning, but a purposeful delay tactic:

“My daughter is in a great college and is scared to death of graduating because she knows there’s not really a future for her even with a degree.” —Shannon Esposito

“I have a cousin who is becoming what I call a professional student. He keeps switching majors because he is terrified of graduating.” —Chris Chartrand

Here is half of a fictional account I wrote for Talking Story this past Friday: It was a juxtaposition between someone with a healthy Sense of Workplace (what I have been calling the healthy sense of place defined by Ho‘ohana work) and this young man. Sadly, I keep hearing that this is not fiction at all…

The time ticked as 11:03am at the bottom corner of his computer screen.

That maddening restlessness moved him to slam his laptop shut to hibernate – again. He didn’t even bother closing any of the tabs, not caring if the machine struggled to understand the abrupt interruption or not.

What was the use of having the newest and most expensive mac Apple offered when it was so pathetically poor at holding his attention? He’d begged for it as the only graduation gift he wanted. What a waste of money. What a wasted wish.

It was too early for lunch, so that wasn’t his urge; he felt a far different hunger. Still, he walked to his fridge and grabbed a beer; it would dull this confusing boredom as it always had the past few months. He wondered how much longer it would work, for he couldn’t afford the hard stuff. Just as well. Whatever.

Summer had become autumn. It was beautiful outside, with the leaves turning color and a new crispness charging the air and quickening the pulse. His shades were drawn though, and he didn’t notice any of it. Didn’t see it, didn’t feel it. Not anymore.

Worse than the boredom, the nagging, brutal guilt suffocated much of whatever else he’d once felt. It consumed him and all his attentions nowadays; he just couldn’t concentrate on anything else. He was supposed to be an adult now. He was supposed to go to work every day, listen to some boss, pay taxes, contribute to society and all that crap. A college degree, graduating summa cum laude no less, hadn’t helped him one damn bit; he had done all he could to find a job – any job – and there was nothing. Nothing.

Pride wasn’t in his way – that feeling went away a long time ago and he’d gladly flip burgers, haul trash, anything; the lack of possibility was the problem. If it was still there, he no longer could see it. He could barely force himself to get out and keep looking. This morning was one he hadn’t, and he was getting alarmingly close to stopping altogether.

You play by the rules, get good grades, stay out of trouble and do everything your parents and teachers tell you to do, then the economy tanks, you can’t catch any break at all much less a decent one, and life sucks.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

This is what Peter Coy called the “scarring of a generation” in that BusinessWeek feature:

“The freshness and vitality young people bring to the workplace is missing. Tomorrow’s would-be star employees are on the sidelines, deprived of experience and losing motivation… Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.”
—The Lost Generation —The continuing job crisis is hitting young people especially hard—damaging both their future and the economy

I want a happier ending for this story. I know you do too.

I have described one such better scenario in the rest of this story if you care to read it: Hibernation 2009 on Talking Story, and there are many more possibilities. All we have to do is proactively create them.

Last week, I wrote Share your Sense of [Work] Place as my Call to Action for managers everywhere, and I suggested several ideas they can get started with. I published it on Talking Story, on Say “Alaka’i” at The Honolulu Advertiser (where Dean weighed in with some thoughts), for our Managing with Aloha group on LinkedIn, and I continue to tweet and talk about it to any/all who will listen. I am not going to stop. I fully intend to work this into my presentations to come as I continue to bring the Managing with Aloha mission to managers and leaders poised for action.

This, is your Call to Action. What ideas can we in the Teaching with Aloha community initiate and make happen?

What can you do?

1. To start, email this page to every teacher and every business person you know. Stumble it, Digg it, Tweet it… do whatever you can to share it, enrolling others in our common goal.

2. Take the links I have offered within this posting, and get familiar with this crisis – for that is what it is – and get emotional about it, for it affects you directly. Talk to others affected (it will not be hard to find them) and put the faces of your community on this issue.

3. Help us get a conversation going right here: What ideas can we talk about, and share with each other?

4. Start a conversation in your own circle of influence, and within your other tribes, and make this goal-setting, and goal-working actively happen in your community wherever it may be. Be a leader: Activate your own team.

5. Offer your mentorship to students who should be poised to enter the workforce (refer to Dean’s mentoring series): They often have a difficult time speaking to their parents about this, retreating from them instead, for like the young man in my story, they feel they should be on their own now.

6. Partner with the business people in your community. Teach them about the Sense of Workplace concept. Work together.

7. Let Dean and I know how else we can help.

Mahalo nui loa. Thank you for reading, and for getting involved. I know we can affect the change we need to see happen.

We Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.
With much aloha,
Rosa

Workplace Aloha Coach and Author Rosa Say

Photo Credit: Working Late on Flickr by Thomas Rockstar