Constructive Dialogue Workshop Series

Join us for a three-session interactive skill building workshop for the Park parent community!

Tuesday, October 29, 6:30–8 p.m.
Tuesday, November 12, 6:30–8 p.m.
Tuesday, November 19, 6:30–8 p.m.

Facilitated by Simon Greer
Location: Lower School Multipurpose Room

See more details below the registration form.

We hope you will join us at Park in working together to develop the skills and experience in engaging in constructive dialogue across differences.

Society is facing a difficult moment when it is hard to talk across and about our differences in constructive ways. Many of us find ourselves drawing increasingly narrow circles and surrounding ourselves with people who think like us. And, at the same time, whatever circle we are in is becoming more and more convinced that those in other circles are impossible to understand, and maybe even unworthy of our understanding.

Let’s take time to connect, to build community, and to listen to one another.

Last spring we welcomed Simon Greer (Park parent; Founder + President of Cambridge Heath Ventures) to work with our faculty and staff in a session devoted to active listening, and we piloted a Constructive Dialogue program with our parents. We found both sessions to be highly impactful and immediately set forth making plans to provide a program for the Board of Trustees fall retreat (earlier this October) and an expanded program for our parent community.

This work is not about dismantling what we believe. There are real principled disagreements about the nature of our challenges and the solutions. Our work is to take those differences seriously, and grow our solutions and relationships through constructive engagement with those tensions.

Together, we will practice acting on those values and beliefs in a way that demonstrates curiosity about those who we disagree with, reflects our humility about the complex world around us, and affirms the humanity of the “other” — values that we center and promote at Park. We will build skills, challenge ourselves to learn new ideas and content, and embody what courageous conversations, constructive tension, and deep diversity of thinking looks like. And in doing so, we will model for our children that if we can do that, so can they.

We hope you will join us.