Flow…
Source/Author: Adrianne Finley Odell, Assistant Head of School
April 01, 2016
Flow… for me, this word conjures up a stream… an image of a leaf going along in a current of the stream, never fighting against it, rather moving along in a strong, powerful way that is at one with the water surrounding it. This word has also gained understanding as a description of optimal performance in a creative state, or what author of “Emotional Intelligence,” Daniel Goleman, refers to as “alignment between our actions and our passions.”
Think about a time when you were so caught up in an activity that you completely lost track of time and space, where you were immersed in a project with a heightened focus and completely absorbed by the activity for its own sake. It could be anything from planting flowers, to cooking a meal, conducting research or writing an article! You were concentrating intensely and you felt a quiet joy from doing something you were challenged with, yet were also energized by in the process. It was psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who first gained recognition for describing this state of being as “flow.” Through extensive research, he has identified that flow takes place when you are feeling a higher than average amount of challenge and utilizing a higher than average amount of skill. This is also likely a time when you are operating at your best. It is a place of balance where you are performing at the highest level before you are challenged beyond the limit of too much stress, or what Goleman refers to as “frazzle.”
This is a great balance to achieve. A place where one is challenged enough so that one is not bored, yet not frazzled. Great workplaces aim to provide environments that offer their employees opportunities to achieve this balance. Great schools, likewise, provide opportunities to support students to reach this great balance.
Walk through the Shorecrest campus on any day and you will witness students and teachers engaged in a wide array of activities. You might see groups of children playing on the playground, creating new games and fairy tales. You might find a student working through a math problem or science lab—struggling perhaps to get the result she is hoping for. You might find a student engaged in improvisation in theater class. Our teachers understand that students must be challenged. They seek ways to push each student to an appropriate level that drives them to that sweet spot between utilizing their skills at the highest level and providing appropriate levels of stress without reaching the “frazzle” point. Our goal and hope is to help students find that alignment between their actions and their passion so that they might experience the sense of flow, whether it is in art class, robotics, or on the baseball field.
As always, we invite parents to be partners with us to help articulate that appropriate balance that is right for their child and we encourage students to advocate for themselves by talking with their teachers about the activities that excite them and those that challenge them. Developing this self-awareness and self-knowledge will serve them well throughout their lives and perhaps create opportunities for “flow,” which Csikszentmihalyi believes is one of the secrets to a happy life.
