Let the Good Times Roll

Tuesday night was the kickoff meeting for my fellowship's steering committee. After much schedule wrangling and considering of space, I set on 5:00-7:00 pm on October 7 and at my house. I feel so lucky that I have a big room above the garage that can easily host a meeting of up to 20 people. Having the kitchen allows me to easily feed attendees while having a whole house to work with gives break out rooms without being in a sterile hotel set up or keeping people at school until the evening. Since I was asking those 20 people to give up an evening to attend a meeting, I wanted to treat people well with good food and the opportunity to relax with a drink before the meeting. I'm working very hard to beware my tendency toward perfectionism or overworking and the accompanying stress. So, contrary to the many who asked, I did not spend days in advance cooking. I spent two hours after class on Monday doing prep work and then the day of cooked from about 2:00-4:00. It felt freeing to strike that balance between my and the group's needs. Everyone loved the food and felt the love; and I didn't become a maniac in the process--wahoo!

Now the more important stuff. The agenda was key:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jTqcQtTUXyJlGZIs_4gEr_bvfYMyrcKtwiy0o7ZU9j8/edit?usp=sharing. I wanted colleagues to get a chance to connect with and enjoy each other while processing the big picture of school transformation work and the many, many details that inform and comprise that big picture globally, nationally, in Vermont, and at U-32. Given all the feedback I got, we definitely achieved those goals! Here is a video I created for the meeting. It's DEFINITELY a work in progress and is NOT perfect by any means, but it served the purpose of providing a funneling context down to our individual school. The video is at least a good starting point to keep working on for other meetings:

It was so energizing to see almost a third of U-32 faculty (and one brave student and more to come!) working joyfully and positively on school change work. There was such a cross-section of our school. Most departments were represented; administrators were working alongside faculty (and were very happy about that opportunity, says the feedback); some folks who have perhaps been on the fringes saw themselves as meaningfully part of the collective. I love the magic of bringing people together over a "shared significance" (as Margaret Wheatley might call it). I have so much raw material to collate and really look forward to pulling it all together in a way that advances and makes clearer our work together as a group. One gift of the sabbatical is having the time to really sit with so many ideas, so much information, such varied needs and demands and dreams and strategize in intentional, thoughtfully developed ways how to strike balance between all of it while keeping people and deep learning at the heart of the work.

We were just 15 minutes or so late in a packed agenda. I already knew that I had an ambitious plan and anticipated that we'd need those 15 minutes of buffer time. The cost was whole group discussion and sharing, but I hope to balance that out next time. I'm also exploring ways to harness online collaboration. In the classroom and with colleagues, I've found most online collaboration tools beyond Google apps to be cumbersome and hard to incorporate into my routine. I can't decide whether to dig in and try to make some strategic hodgepodge of Google docs with folders and a slick website or if there should be an app out there with a slick platform to whip this all up for me in more intuitive ways than I can muster.

Anyway, lame ending. I am off to finish letters of recommendation for students and to write two reflection papers for class next week that I will be missing because I'll be in jolly ol' London! See you on the other side.