Norfolk, Nebraska :: Oct. 11-13, 2005 :: A collaborative design event involving over a hundred participants who are committed to our children's future.
NOTE: This site is a time-based chronicle of the event. It captures the ideas and activities in notation form. All text is to be read as such, not as a word-for-word dictation.
NORFOLK, NE | October 12-13, 2005. Several of the ESU's in Northern Nebraska (ESU#1, #2, #7, #8 and #17) along with the Nebraska Department of Education kicked off an initiative to engage educators in a process to re-think the high school experience.
Just shy of 100 people representing 19 school districts convened the first conference of a two to three year process. The participants in this workshop represented teachers, administrators, counselors, several colleges, the ESU's and the state department of education.
ABOVE: Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman addresses educators.
During the first day of the conference participants explored many aspects of the high school experience - both the current experience and some possible options for what the high school experience might be in the future. In that exploration participants explored elements of a vision and manifesto for change, different models for what the experience could be, and a process for engaging other people in the dialog as well as managing change over time.
During the second day participants identified nine components for a vision for the high school experience of the future. Each school district then identified what they were already doing in these nine key areas - and developed plans for specific areas they wanted to focus on.
We used Blogger for web-publishing and Flickr for photo uploading to the web; both are free services. Facilitation and documentation by Innovation Labs LLC.
We know what we want to do, but we don’t know if we’re going to get in trouble for these ideas. We’ve given up some learning in order to do some teaching.
I wonder if we’ve developed enough sense of urgency. We’re fortunate to have a governor who has a wife that helps. We can’t compare ourselves to Iowa. There’s our sense of urgency. We have to reeducate him and people who think that way.
It’s people who are trying to relocate to here for business opportunities.
They’re the ones who will have the hiring processes.
A conference such as this confirms for me that what I’m doing is great. When I’m sitting by colleagues who have a grade by each student for every day, I feel a little guilty and that I have to explain myself. So it’s nice to be here.
The networking opportunity here is wonderful. I don’t know if this has been done before and it’s very valuable.
Since we lost the teachers’ convention we lost the ability to do this. It used to be too big.
We thought about having a statewide conference like this once a year. We haven’t emphasized it a lot but you’re making a 2 to 3 year commitment. It will take some time to sprout and it will need to be nurtured. It might also be helpful for the ESUs to have their own meetings like this.
We will be different tomorrow morning.
When I saw the 19 presentations, I saw nothing that would negatively effect our assessments. Nothing here will lower our test scores. If we do all of these things, there is nothing that will affect their ability to find a verb in a sentence.
In most of our conferences, we usually hear what other people think we should do. We’re not very reflective as a community. We’ve done a lot of thinking here.
If the students see the teachers and be in classrooms that are innovative, the students will be more innovative too.
If you get a staff member who is innovative and give them a pat on the back, that ripples out. Put it out in the paper and get recognition for this. It’s an important part of keeping it going. In terms of the conferences, people don’t come just for dialogue. How do you get people to show up without a well-known speaker?
We had 100 people show up here just with an invitation. We had 3 people from as many districts as we could with as many kinds that touch different parts of the system.
The invitation came from people who were a part of the conversation. This applied to me personally and that is what brought me to this. It doesn’t matter what the leadership is at the principal level. If we make changes that are good they are sustainable even without us.
What is your take on the direction of what we can do?
I have thought about this systemic change in education for many years. The way we do our work, we don’t tell people what to do. Our job is to figure out how to ask you the right questions so you come up with the answers you need. The 9 areas you came up with are all leveragable to make a difference. You’ve started the ball rolling and that’s the most important thing. If you can continue the conversation with your students and your staff, that will be the most valuable thing you can do. You need to make it okay to have those conversations.
Do not spend an inordinate amount of time to get everybody on board. If some people see that if they resist and nothing changes, some people will resist just for that. You want to do some level of this wherever you have influence. You want to do this as an experiment wherever you can and see how it goes. Growing up sucks. Take charge of the time you have. Pay attention to what you want to learn. Don’t be too timid.
If someone wants to work on purpose I have something that might helpful.
Learning is more important than anything. We have the opportunity to model what learning means. We can have curiosity, enthusiasm and really going for being a person who inspires others to learn. It’s a personal thing. We need to ask ourselves if we’re okay with not knowing, with trying things without knowing whether they’ll work or not.
No one had any doubt that we could get our staff to buy into the ideas we had. Trusting our kids to do what they can is something that seems to be in us.
As an assignment if you would go back to the students you interviewed and share your experience here and see where that conversation goes.
I would like to say that I’m very grateful to Rhonda for making this happen.
