When I worked in development and marketing, I often attended a useful conference held by CASE which stood for “Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.” But we called it, “Copy And Steal Everything” because that is what we did. We came together to share ideas and then we went back to our schools and copied all the good stuff we had learned.
And I believe that was the point.
“Networking” is not a common school word, but according to Bianca Miller Coles in her Forbes article “10 Reasons Networking is Essential to Your Career,” networking allows those in similar jobs to up their creative game. “Like-minded people that have been able to share ideas have strongly developed their intellect to foster growth in their career path and unleash the creative talent in them,” she writes.
There is no doubt: coming together promotes collective and individual growth.
We have seen that over and over in our professional learning cohorts - we bring people together who have similar but not identical jobs and create the formative and generative space for them to exchange ideas, ask questions of us and each other, get advice, and come away to a greater ability manage change and problem-solve in their schools.
Everyone gets stuck from time-to-time and support from a non-evaluative group who “knows your pain” is tremendous. We design our cohort meetings so we are listening to the group, and introducing ideas and approaches that move people forward.
And, we hope you copy and steal everything!
Book Bag Learning facilitates Professional Learning Cohorts for divisions heads, department heads, principals, heads of school and program leads. Go to our www.bookbaglearning to learn more about us and what we do for educators!
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