There were 4 Plenary speakers and many breakout sessions. The theme of the conference was ‘Partnerships for Personalization: Leading and Transforming together’. Most of the presentations are posted at http://www.bcssa.org/fallconference.html.
My plan is to blog about what I have taken from the conference and bring this to the district as a trustee, hopefully influence some change.
I observed collaboration as a predominant theme. Collaboration as a small school district seemed to be more successful district-wide than in larger districts who had more school-wide and some joint-school success. School-wide change was most successful when collaboration was a true co-creation process.
Daniel Wilson was a Plenary Speaker of the conference speaking on collaboration in learning communities. Through graphs and examples obtained from his work in the field of social-psychology, he showed how collaboration between team members of a extreme sport competition were the most successful in navigating their tensions when language, behavior and leadership roles were flexible. When language (body or words) was aggressive or authoritative then those teams were always the losers. The most successful teams were those that had true collaboration with the use of questioning statements Success also came from sharing of leadership when new leaders were recognized for their skill, performance at a task, or ability to fill in the regular leader was exhausted and couldn’t maintain the leadership role.
He also stated that 70% of true collaboration happens from informal conversations with colleagues and the other 30% is formal. So, water cooler conversations or beers after work do make a difference.
I have often sat in meetings thinking that we are being unproductive because we are following rules and structure and if we all stood up in a group and dropped the pretense then perhaps true conversations would ensue. I think those statistics affirm that my intuition is right.
A breakout session that I went to was the "Village of Attachment: Developing the Whole Child." This came from SD#41 Burnaby (see their presentation here) The vision is that every child be in a nurturing relationship with an adult. They have expanded the word family to include a network of adults that work to bring out and guide children so that they have a purpose. Through finding commonalities they engage children to begin conversations and eventually relationships. Through these relationships the adult pulls out the child's reasons for purpose in life or their ‘spark’ to quote Peter Benson. A spark is a characteristic that gives them a purpose to life or motivation to do something. Their spark does not have to be what they eventually become or do for a profession, but it is developed in them.
This process is also transfered to adult to adult relationships. Whether within schools or districts it is about recognizing what we (individually or collectively) are good at and utilizing it to help improve us. This is where collaboration can be effective in openly recognizing our strengths and weaknesses and collaborating with someone who can help us where we want to improve. David Hargreaves (plenary speaker) spoke of this form of collaboration being practiced in Britain with teachers but it failed where it was mandatory. The key was to survey and see where our educators felt they wanted to collaborate and improve. Because making yourself vulnerable is part of the process, it needs to be kept transparent to avoid implying that any individual is incompetent.
It is my perspective that the 2010 school closure process had gaps in collaboration that has resulted in leftover tension that I hope will be addressed as the board starts conversations around strategic planning and an extended management and finance committee to discuss the budget. In order to collaborate there will be social tensions, but how we navigate the language, roles, vulnerabilities and competencies will result in co-creations that will result in a new placed trust and district wide visions. A village of collaboration and attachment is my optimistic vision.
A breakout session that I went to was the "Village of Attachment: Developing the Whole Child." This came from SD#41 Burnaby (see their presentation here) The vision is that every child be in a nurturing relationship with an adult. They have expanded the word family to include a network of adults that work to bring out and guide children so that they have a purpose. Through finding commonalities they engage children to begin conversations and eventually relationships. Through these relationships the adult pulls out the child's reasons for purpose in life or their ‘spark’ to quote Peter Benson. A spark is a characteristic that gives them a purpose to life or motivation to do something. Their spark does not have to be what they eventually become or do for a profession, but it is developed in them.
This process is also transfered to adult to adult relationships. Whether within schools or districts it is about recognizing what we (individually or collectively) are good at and utilizing it to help improve us. This is where collaboration can be effective in openly recognizing our strengths and weaknesses and collaborating with someone who can help us where we want to improve. David Hargreaves (plenary speaker) spoke of this form of collaboration being practiced in Britain with teachers but it failed where it was mandatory. The key was to survey and see where our educators felt they wanted to collaborate and improve. Because making yourself vulnerable is part of the process, it needs to be kept transparent to avoid implying that any individual is incompetent.
It is my perspective that the 2010 school closure process had gaps in collaboration that has resulted in leftover tension that I hope will be addressed as the board starts conversations around strategic planning and an extended management and finance committee to discuss the budget. In order to collaborate there will be social tensions, but how we navigate the language, roles, vulnerabilities and competencies will result in co-creations that will result in a new placed trust and district wide visions. A village of collaboration and attachment is my optimistic vision.
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