Although I have been in education for a number of years (okay, maybe decades) and can remember many ‘wins’ during that time, the past two and a half years have afforded me one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.
I have the privilege of working with a fabulous team of people whose goal is to provide low-cost to no-cost professional development to a large group (approximately 1500) of educators from across several school districts.
Yes, each year we plan a one day conference for teachers, teacher assistants, support personnel, principals, and central office administrators for eight school districts. Doesn’t that sound exciting?
While the actual conference days have always been a tremendous success, the rewarding part for me was – and continues to be – the ongoing collaboration with my brothers and sisters from different districts.
The team consists of central office administrators from each of our eight school districts. Our duties and titles are varied, but we all work directly or indirectly with providing staff development and training to the educators in our respective districts.
Pulling off a Collaborative Regional Education Workshop (CREW) event required more work than one might imagine. Discussing topics, scheduling, creating session proposal forms, creating registration forms, and assigning rooms are a few of the tasks the team tackled.
Make no mistake – this team worked. Yes, we laughed, too, but unlike most meetings that I attend, we actually accomplished work during the time we were together, as well as between our meetings.
(Don’t pretend you do not know what I am talking about. I know you attend meetings where nothing is accomplished, or even worse, meetings that could have been handled with an email or a shared document).
But despite the sometimes difficult and always time-consuming work, I realized I was enjoying the work we were performing, and I believe that the other team members were, too. We all knew our vision, we sincerely wanted it to succeed, and we divvied up the work. Our team was cohesive, and best of all, we even liked each other!
Central Office administrators grow blinders sometimes. Not because we want to see only what is in front of us, but because we rarely have the opportunity to see or work beyond what is right in front of us. Working with the CREW planning team allowed us to see and hear how our colleagues from other districts handled specific situations or issues.
Most of us have regional meetings that we attend, so we do find out what other districts are doing, how they are meeting a specific challenge. The difference between those regional meeting experiences and the CREW planning team experience is the CREW work was truly a collaborative effort.
Instead of coming together, listening to information and continuing with our individual work upon returning to our school homes, we collaborated on a joint project, which provided us with a sense of belonging and ownership.
I value every member of the CREW team because each is willing to dig in and do what is necessary to make the event successful. A volunteer was quickly found for every small, boring, or seemingly unimportant task. We were all ready to help with whatever needed to be done.
Most central office administrators likely studied the topic of dysfunctional teams while in graduate school. The CREW team is what we should have studied instead. It is by far the most productive team that I have had the privilege to join. We had no egos, no dead weight, no slackers with which to contend.
Perfection it was not. It was definitely not pretty (but what real work is?). Sometimes we were distracted by the work we left on our desks. Frustration occurred because some of us are sequential thinkers, and some of us are random thinkers. Occasionally, we forgot what our task was and did someone else’s task (guilty).
But I can’t remember a single email that was sent to the group that did not receive responses. I remember members encouraging each other when the stress of pulling off a one day conference seemed overwhelming. I smile thinking of the times when I received that encouragement from others on my team. But I never doubted that we would be successful with this conference. The commitment of the team was rock solid from the beginning.
Our CREW work could be an exemplar for the continuous improvement process.
We have a common goal, and we have data from the previous year’s event. We discuss the data and the different aspects of the plan, develop strategies to accomplish various tasks, and adjust our plans when necessary. Each of us bring different perspectives to the table, and each of us provide various resources from our respective school districts.
The CREW planning team is a highly functioning professional learning network (PLN), although I doubt any of us really identify ourselves as a PLN. This work is such a rewarding experience for me because I am a part of a working group whose members are ALWAYS positive.
Don’t get me wrong – we do not have our heads in the sand. We run into some problems (like our caterer not realizing we needed a vegetarian option for lunch until the last minute), but we handle them without losing our equilibrium or enthusiasm. We just work hard together and enjoy (most) every minute of it.
Do you belong to a formal or informal professional learning network (PLN) or community (PLC)? What is the goal of your team? How functional is it? Please share with me the comments section!
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