CircleBridge bookChapter 1: On the Road with Scott & Sharla
Scott and Sharla trace the experiences, conversations, and partnerships that shaped CircleBridge. Their road time becomes a space for reflecting on practice rat
Chapter 2: Building a CircleBridge
CircleBridge joins three interdependent supports: intercultural development, the Courage & Renewal Touchstones©, and the Circle of Trust© approach. Inner work p
Chapter 3: Supporting Every Student: Kendra’s Story
Kendra’s story centers on responding to students’ circumstances and individual needs. Her professional journey and her encounters with cultural difference revea
Chapter 4: Bridging Divides: Shawn’s Story
Shawn explores the tension between inclusive values and cultural biases in the surrounding community. Leadership can reward harmony, yet smoothing over differen
Chapter 5: A Spectrum of Differences: Kiera’s Story
Kiera’s story examines hospitality, political differences, communication preferences, and the relationship between personal and professional growth. Her growing
Chapter 6: Boundaries and Becoming: Mia’s Story
Mia’s story explores the difficulty of remaining open when relationships or communities cause harm. Her experience of judgment toward her family brings the tens
Chapter 7: Intentionality: Theresa’s Story
Theresa’s story follows leadership in settings where her voice and authority could be undervalued. Intentional communication, resilience, and a trusted circle o
Chapter 8: Data, Values, and Connection: Richard’s Story
Richard’s story connects emotional responses, boundaries, structural barriers, and a professional strength in working with data. Finding a way to advocate that
Chapter 9: Curiosity: Sandi’s Story
Sandi describes the cultural grounding of her upbringing, her adjustment to a new community, and her growth as a leader. She learns to attend to who teachers ar
Chapter 10: Family, Service and Cultural Connection: Daniel’s Story
Daniel’s story places family, service, cultural roots, and community connection at the center of leadership. Trust grows through consistent actions and relation
Chapter 11: The Intercultural Development Continuum©
The Intercultural Development Continuum© describes Denial, Polarization, Minimization, Acceptance, and Adaptation. The authors use this framework and the IDI to
Chapter 12: Touchstones© for Connection
The Courage & Renewal Touchstones© offer practices for welcome, presence, invitation, respectful truth-telling, honest questions, wonder, inner listening, silen
Chapter 13: The Circle of Trust© Approach
The Circle of Trust© approach combines a shared third thing, individual reflection, smaller groups, and a return to the whole circle. Participation remains invi
Chapter 14: The Wolakota Project
The Wolakota Project centers Indigenous Elders’ voices in learning connected to the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings. Video storytelling supports access w
Chapter 15: Teachings of Our Elders
Teachings of Our Elders extends the work into North Dakota through collaboration among Elders, educators, and state leadership. Its development requires attenti
Chapter 16: The Green Siblings Project
The Green Siblings Project expands a familiar public history through family perspectives. The stories of Ernest Green, Treopia Washington, and Scott Green illum
Chapter 17: Blue Deer Learning
Blue Deer Learning documents an educational community and teacher pathway connected with Texas A&M International University in Laredo. Relationships and a share
Chapter 18: Walking the Bridge
Walking the Bridge gathers the personal stories and foundational projects into a call for individual, professional, and collective action. Connection requires c
Inner work
Examine the stories, assumptions, and reactions you bring to a relationship.
Relational trust
Build trust through presence, consistency, listening, and respect for personal agency.
Storytelling
Encounter a person’s experience before reducing it to a category or conclusion.
Denial
Notice differences that may be outside your usual experience.
Polarization: defense and reversal
Notice judgments that divide experience into “us” and “them.”
Minimization
Use common ground while attending to differences that still matter.
Acceptance
Recognize meaningful patterns of both difference and commonality.
Adaptation
Shift perspective and behavior in response to the actual context.
IDI profiles and debriefs
Use assessment as an opening for guided development and reflection.
Welcome and presence
Create hospitality and bring attention to the person and the moment.
Invitation, not demand
Offer meaningful choice about personal participation.
Speak your truth respectfully
Use your own experience without taking over someone else’s meaning.
No fixing, saving, advising, or correcting
Listen in ways that preserve another person’s agency.
Honest, open questions
Ask questions that invite discovery rather than conceal your answer.
Turn to wonder
Meet a strong reaction with curiosity about others and yourself.
The inner teacher
Pay attention to your own responses as a source of insight.
Silence
Allow time for meaning to emerge before filling the space.
Deep confidentiality
Honor a person’s control over where their story travels.
The third thing
Use a shared poem, story, image, or object as an indirect invitation to reflection.
Transitions and boundaries of the circle
Name when reflective listening ends and practical business begins.
Learn About and Learn From
Pair content learning with reflection on personal meaning and responsibility.
Cultural protocols and partnership
Learn how respect is practiced in a particular relationship and community.
Hidden voices and narrative agency
Ask whose experience is missing and who gets to interpret it.
Structural barriers and purpose
Connect belonging with changes to the conditions of participation.
An undivided life and relational accountability
Bring your values into the commitments you keep.
CircleBridge book resource guides
Browse readable chapter, concept, lesson and training resources, with direct links throughout the CircleBridge learning network.