DOWN UNDER: Idea Champions Enters Into the Field of Education
Last year, I spent three months at Al Siraat College in Melbourne, Australia -- a K-12 school -- delivering a wide variety of consulting, training, teaching, and coaching services.
In between each of my month-long residencies, I worked, remotely, with Fazeel Arain, the Co-Founder and Principal of the school, diving deeper into what was possible.
Working with the great people of Al Siraat was a most remarkable experience -- one of the high points of my career. This was not only the first time I had worked with a school (my usual clients are corporations), it was also the first time I had worked with an Islamic organization. (The working title of my still-to-be-written book about the experience? 1,000 Muslims and a Jew).
If you had told me two years ago that I was going to be leading experiential learning activities in a field with 100 Muslim teachers... or teaching 26 second graders how to write and tell stories... or leading brainstorming sessions for 80 Muslim teenagers... or reinventing how meetings happen in an Islamic school, I would have thought you were hallucinating. But that's exactly what happened and a whole lot more -- way more than I can express in this brief blog post.
I hope one day to write about my experience at Al Siraat and share just a little of the spirit, dedication, and potential of the school. Until then, here are the words of Fazeel, reflecting on our collaboration:
"I had a strong desire to introduce a culture of creativity and innovation to our humble school in Australia. Being cash strapped as a new school (and knowing consultants were not cheap), I started following Mitch's blog, The Heart of Innovation. After many years of reading his posts, I finally found an opportunity to invite Mitch to Al Siraat for a short visit to explore the possibilities of what our collaboration might look like. During that visit, Mitch opened my eyes to the fact that anything was possible. We then embarked on a wonderful, year-long journey of culture change, learning, innovation, transformation, and friendship.
The more we worked together, the more I realized that changing the culture of a school is not an easy task. There is no quick path. Culture change requires a long-term commitment and a large amount of visioning, planning, team development, role clarity, creative thinking, clear communication, community building, intrinsic motivation, risk taking, empowerment, perseverance, humor, and just the right touch.
Mitch has greatly assisted Al Siraat in our culture change ambitions which continue to be ongoing. I am very thankful for Mitch's coaching, guidance, inspiration, and support -- helping me and the entire staff of Al Siraat take this much-needed journey, which has only just begun."
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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at November 19, 2018 07:10 PM
Comments
Wonderful experience and learning opportunity to have someone like you amongst us. You made it look so easy. Thank you and hope to see you soon again inshaaAllah :)
Posted by: Shahzad ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 19, 2018 03:51 PM
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