Tag Archives: networking

You Can Never Network Too Much

A brief observation before heading out to the first full day of the CoSN Conference. Yesterday, I had the chance to meet with a group of other state leaders. There was lots of learning but the best came as a round table discussion around various practices. We all had something to contribute; we all had questions that needed answered. The facilitator was smart: she saw the good sharing and, despite blowing up the agenda, she let it keep going, finding places where information could be shared via email instead of face to face. I know teachers don’t always have that option, but sometimes it’s worth giving up our agenda for the good of the group when the learning and sharing are more powerful than that curriculum and content.  It’s also a lesson for professional developers out there: create a structure for learning that includes opportunities for the participants to ask and answer the questions around the content. You, the trainer, don’t have to be talking all the time.

The title of this post, by the way, isn’t original to me: it comes from a colleague in Virginia who made the comment during a recent meeting. We have so much to learn from and share with others when it comes to how we are chipping away at the wicked problems of education.