About a year ago, shortly after our new Executive Director, Forrest Leichtberg, joined our team, he noted how remarkable our culture was, as compared to other work environments he had experienced.
He suggested that we conduct Culture Meetings to support and enhance our team culture. What a great idea! If you peek behind the curtain, what do Culture Meetings look like at FTC? Read on!
One of our core values is Walking the Talk. What that means to us is that we do our best to actualize the skills we teach in the classroom, both in our team and in our lives. This is imperfect, of course, because we are all human, and thus learning and growing every day (another FTC value – lifelong learning!).
In our culture meetings, we practice one of our core skills each month in an experiential breakout session with other team members. In our prison workshops, we work together in groups of three (“trios”), but sometimes in our small team the numbers don’t quite work, so we do duos instead.
Our educational model is what we call experiential learning. Consider learning to ride a bike… you can read all about how to ride a bike, watch a bunch of videos of people riding bikes, and even imagine yourself riding a bike. But until you get on the bike and ride, you won’t really learn. Our educational model is like that.
“I am reminded of how valuable these introspective processes can be and how much transformation I can experience in the scope of 30 minutes. And how I need to keep doing the work.”
– Bonnie Paul, Ph.D., Co-Founder & Director of Education
This month, we brought the Appreciating Diversity process to our team. We had just done an Appreciating Differences workshop at Valley State Prison, and with all that is happening in the world, we decided we could all benefit from this exercise.
Other topics we’ve covered include setting intentions for the New Year, exploring pro-activity, sharing our personal missions, and embodying our values, among others. There’s something so special about pausing in our work lives and spending a couple of hours getting to know our team members as people and sharing deeply about our lives. All to the betterment of us all!
Curious? Join us for our next Intro Event! Click Here!
