The End of Day 1

As with all of these things, the best conversations are the ones that happen afterthe meeting. Had a lovely chat with a number of colleagues this evening, both during and after dinner, and then got the skinny on the history and development of the whole Partnership. I’m not surprised to learn that this organization has run on the same track as so many others- a group of business and educational leaders getting together to talk about what we want for our kids. (Corporate Council for Critical Skills, anyone?) Seems like we should be sort of settled on the answer to that by now, but I suppose that we each have to come to that realization for ourselves, don’t we? That would be the constructivist way to do school change, anyway…

There were a thousand interesting insights tonight, but the one I’m most struck by is this organization’s unwillingness to engage in the either/or debate on process vs. content. The certainty of their position that this is a “yes, and” conversation is refreshing- and sustainable! We don’t paint ourselves into an ideological corner when we remain open to dissent and willing to discuss all positions. This is the beauty of the process I’m watching unfold, I think.

Finally, I’m excited to discover that the one big question in the room (among a number of the PD affiliates, at least) is “What does this look like in a classroom when it’s done well and systemically?” ‘Cause we know how to do that. I’ve got a number of requests for more information- and one caveat that this work is going to happen large scale and quickly and that we’d better be prepared to scale up our capacity if we’re going to play at this level.

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