The Business of Believing in People and the Value of Listening

Anthony Cosentino • Cahn Fellow 2020

By opening our hearts and minds and building relationships grounded in trust, shared values, and common goals, schools can be the lighthouses that empower communities to thrive. As lighthouses, schools can unite communities. Our project stems from the hardest lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic that center on a simple, but important core value: relationships matter always. We started by asking questions about how to build stronger relationships, and we came up with several key components: investments in trust, dependability, patience, humility, and care. Most importantly, we learned that listening to others and receiving feedback, especially what we need to hear, not what we want to hear, is crucial to building strong school community relationships.