Folkehøjskole, Gap Year, and First-year Experience: Leading for Social Movements (original) (raw)

2019, Thinking Matters Symposium

One day, a man set his heavy sack down and rested near a traveler who also had a heavy sack at his feet. To the other says one, “Oi, I’m tired. I just don’t know what to do with all these hammers.” In response, the other says, “Oi, as am I. I just don’t know what to do with all these nails.” As organizational leaders, how often do we find ourselves so close to a solution? Demand for degreed citizens is on the rise and higher education is changing. Our response to this challenge is a social movement and the way we are going to get through this is with relationships, story, strategy, and action (Ganz, 2010). A higher education administrator sat to lunch at a regional conference next to an experiential educator and said, “Boy, am I puzzled and I just don’t know how to increase our enrollments and impassion my students to engage them in their academic futures.” To this the colleague said, “Boy, me too and I just don’t know how to increase our numbers and inspire my participants to keep going and ride their momentum.” A social movement begins with identifying the untenable situation to which we have a claim. Building the relationships between change agents, telling our stories, creating a strategy, and putting it all into action is how we create the conditions to change lives. Are we sitting next to our solution? Cite this: Flowers, S.M.F. (2019, April). Folkehøjskole, gap year, and first-year experience: Leading for social movements. Paper presented at University of Southern Maine Thinking Matters Symposium, Portland, ME.