Workshop Overview
On January 15 and 16, 2009 InnovationLabs convened the third school and community workshop. This workshop was actually four workshops combined into one.
Students
On Thursday afternoon the first workshop focused on bringing the high school students from the Coleridge, Laurel, Newcastle and Wynot school districts together - getting them involved in these planning workshops in a more active and dynamic way. Approximately 240 young people from the four communities participated.
Dr. Hoesing began the workshop by providing the students with some context for the reasons for making changes throughout the four school districts. This introduction was followed by three activites. The first activity gave students the opportunity to explore and document their feelings about what 21st Century knowledge and skills they feel are important to be successful in the future.
The next activity also focused on the future, however this activity challenged the students to build physical models of the ideal Nebraska 2020, the ideal rural community 2020, and the ideal school 2020 (using popular commercial brands as a stimulator for creativity).
The final activity asked the students to provide feedback and input for the School Boards to consider when they came together for their workshop on Friday afternoon.
Community Members
Thursday evening's workshop was open to the community, parents and patrons. Approximately 75 people participated in this evening's activities. The evening began with a tradeshow highlighting some of the projects that have been taking place in the four communities since the workshop last March.
As part of his introduction, Dr. Hoesing showed several videos that highlighted many of the changes taking place in the world around us. These changes provide some urgency for our schools to provide a high quality learning environment while we continue to work together for efficiencies.
The community members then worked in 12 teams - each focused on a project that is already started or will soon start. The purpose of this activity was both to become familiar with the projects as well as to get the community's recommendations on moving forward.
Teachers
Friday morning's workshop gathered all the teachers from all four districts together to look at existing projects as well as to make their recommendations to the boards.
After an introduction from Dr. Hoesing the teachers worked together on the same 12 projects the community worked on Thursday night. This activity had two parts. The first part focused on identifying the actions needed in order to move these projects forward. The teachers were than asked to provide recommendations on decisions for the boards to consider regarding each project.
The final activity asked all teachers to give their input into 8 specific issues for the boards discuss in the late afternoon workshop.
The Boards
The final workshop for this year brought members from all four community school boards together. This workshop focused primarily on 8 specific issues the boards need to make decisions on.
The first round of work focused on getting the participants familiar with the input from the students, community and teachers. This included reviewing the survey results that were administered in all four communities.
The final round of work had the board members working together to make decisions regarding the 8 topic areas.
Real Time Record
This web site is a record of the event in Laurel as it happened - captured in real time and presented here in this web site. The documentation of the session includes the assignments each group was asked to work on and the results they produced. There are photos of the white walls developed by the participants and where we were able to capture them there are short video presentations explaining the work the group did (a few of the cameras malfunctioned and we lost a couple of the videos). The large group conversations were documented in text and images as well. The documenation was captured throughout the course of each day of the session and is chronological (in the order that things happened). The text is not a transcription of the large group conversations. Rather, it represents the documentor's synthesis of what was being discussed.
This record is intended to be a reminder to the participants of the conversations that took place during the retreat, to serve as a stimulus for further conversation and to serve as an artifact of the group's work.
For anyone who was not present at the event reading this, you may lose some of the energy and creativity the participants expressed - and some of the ideas may not translate completely without that context. If you have any questions about the content or anything that is represented here please speak to someone that participated in the process or contact Dan Hoesing at Laurel-Concord Schools.
Images
Photographs of participants and their work are included throughout the Real Time Record. To view a larger version of a marker board or poster, click on the thumbnail image. The larger image will open in a new window.