Practicing Connection

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In this episode, co-hosts Bob Bertsch and Jessica Beckendorf talk with Lisa Sapp and James Yracheta about a collaboration between Malmstrom Air Force Base and the Great Falls (MT) School District to provide military-connected kids access to the Transitional Kindergarten program. In addition to providing early childhood education, the program helped military families with their child care needs.

Lisa Sapp is the school liaison and James Yracheta is the former Child and Youth Services Flight chief at Malmstrom AFB. Lisa and James shared insights into how the partnership with Great Falls Public Schools got started and the factors that helped it thrive.

Links

• Transitional Kindergarten pilot program takes off
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Many of us tend to take a linear approach to program development. We develop a program, implement it fully, then evaluate it to see if it worked. However, making small adjustments, aka iteration, is an important part on innovations.
Bob Bertsch shares a practice to help us build our capacity for iteration by helping each of us get more comfortable with the process.

Links

• The Science of Well-Being course
• The Cabrera Lab podcast
• Planning Change: A Case Study on Cooperative Extension’s Contribution to Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement in Educational Programs
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Research has shown we have a negative bias against creative ideas because we are uncomfortable with uncertainty. Implementing new ideas means change and change brings uncertainty, so we dismiss new ideas before that uncertainty arises.
Bob Bertsch shares a practice that can help  us  deal with that uncertainty by seeing that all ideas, even ones that lead to awesome innovations, start out as bad.

Links

• "A Beautiful Amble" by Bjørn Peterson
• "The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas"
• Adobe Kickbox

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Getting to a shared purpose as a group often requires digging a little deeper than usual. Jessica Beckendorf talks about the chaordic stepping stones, a  helpful tool for going below the surface with a group, and shares four questions that can help groups work toward a clear statement of purpose together.

Links

• "You don't have to be local" by Derek Sivers
• "Keep Going" by Austin Kleon
• Stepping Stones for Designing Impactful Work: Part 1
• Stepping Stones for Designing Impactful Work: Part 2
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In this episode, hosts Jessica Beckendorf and Bob Bertsch delve into the heart of community recovery with their enlightening discussion on the "Come Back Better" approach.

Discover how you and your community can navigate the challenges of our rapidly changing world by harnessing the strengths and assets within your community. Gain valuable insights from their exploration of real-life stories and collective practices emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic response.

Learn how to:

• Foster inclusive practices that prioritize equity and justice. 
• Adopt a growth mindset to navigate challenges and drive positive change.
• Embrace persistence and iteration in crafting effective solutions. 
• Cultivate action networks to address pressing community issues collaboratively.

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Separately, mindfulness practice and character strengths practice have been shown to improve well-being. Recent research has shown that combining these two practices may have even greater benefits. 
In this episode, we continue our conversation about character strengths, a strengths-based approach to identifying the positive traits behind our thinking, feeling, and behavior. 

We discuss Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice, which synthesizes character strengths and mindfulness into a single practice, and Jessica Beckendorf guides us through an activity from Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice.

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Much of the conversation around character strengths focuses on their positive aspects, but there are some contexts in which character strengths can lead to negative outcomes. It’s all in how we use them.

In this episode, we continue our conversation about character strengths, a strengths-based approach to identifying the positive traits behind our thinking, feeling, and behavior.

We talk about how character strengths can lead to negative coping strategies and emotional states, and Jessica Beckendorf guides us through a practice to help us avoid using our strengths in ways that lead to negative outcomes.

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Character strengths are your unique pathways to those positive goals people pursue in life. They can help us amplify positive things in our lives, like self-acceptance, autonomy, goal progress, and more.

In this episode, we continue our conversation about character strengths, a strengths-based approach to identifying the positive traits behind our thinking, feeling, and behaviors. Jessica Beckendorf guides us through a practice for leaning into our character strengths.

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Finding your character strengths can help improve your life and emotional well-being, as well as meet the challenges and difficulties you are facing. 
Some frameworks and assessments for identifying our strengths focus on workplace performance, but Character Strengths can be applied to any situation, leading to positive emotions, engagement, meaning, positive relationships, and accomplishment.

In this episode, Jessica Beckendorf, tells us more about Character Strengths and guides us through a practice to help us find our strengths.

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Amy Rodick, Director of the Office of Military Family Readiness and Policy in the Department of Defense, joins the podcast to talk about the informal and formal network that help military families thrive. As an Army veteran and military spouse, Amy brings a unique perspective,  sharing real-world strategies for service providers to successfully engage with the Military Family Readiness System at the local level. 

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