Our inaugural #TheEdCollabGathering was a blast! Over 1,200 educators tuned in live from countries all over the world. It was inspiring to see the incredible turnout, read the energized tweets, and watch the inspiring sessions.
In case you feared you missed it… you didn’t!
We are happy to share the archives of all of the streaming sessions!
A special thanks to the amazing presenters, volunteers who helped all of the technology run smoothly, and to all of you for attending (or soon to join in through the archives!).
Final days to apply to yearlong Coaching Think Tanks!
Also at The Educator Collaborative, we are quickly reaching the deadline for applications to our Coaching Think Tanks. Final applications accepted through October 1st.
Coaches from all over have already joined and we invite you as well. As long as you can access the live sessions via the internet, you are welcome to join regardless of your location.
We designed these as opportunities for Technology Coaches, Literacy Coaches, English Coaches, and Coordinators or other leaders.
We know that often coaches and coordinators are the real rocks of their school communities. We also know that in these roles we can often feel alone. Our Coaching Think Tanks aim to create spaces for these leaders to learn together with experts from our team and also from one another.
Groups work together throughout the school year. Meeting online for sessions nearly each month, completing assignments that put conversations into action, and working together online in Forums and sharing documents.
I am looking forward to guest-hosting tonight’s #engchat! It is at 7pm EST. Simply follow the hashtag “#engchat” and include it within your tweets in order to participate.
I am excited to facilitate the conversation not only because I love this community that my friend and fellow The Educator Collaborative member, Meenoo Rami, founded, but because we will be chatting about a topic that is critical to the growth of our students and our schools.
Tonight’s chat is titled:
Family Involvement: Go Beyond Lip Service & Build a Strong School Community
I have become so interested in this topic for two reasons:
One, my own children are in school.
When my daughter began Pre-K over three years ago, I suddenly saw schooling in a whole new light. It has led me to reflect a lot on what I did (and did not do) for parents and families while I was in the classroom.
They believe that one of the most powerful ways to support a child’s education and development is by supporting the education and development of the entire family. Yes!
And they have been doing so, and serving as a hub for other organizations large and small, in amazing ways. I have to say, I fell in love with their work instantly and give a lot of time and energy to their work freely.
So, tonight I invite you to join us as we think about ways that we as English or literacy teachers support family involvement. Though, you do not only need to teach English or reading and writing to join, everyone is welcome!
Here are draft questions for tonight’s chat: click this link. Please do take a look and feel free to comment, revise, or add additional suggestions.
New to Tweet Chats? No problem!
If you are new to twitter chats, or have only been a “lurker” (twitter-ease for people who watch chats but don’t tweet responses), you are welcome to this and every #engchat.
Grumpy tired, new baby tired (hi Kate and Maggie), but-its-THE-WEEKEND tired, and the rest. (Pun intended.)
Right now, though, I’m feeling awesome-tired. The kind where your eye balls are crossing and your every thought includes a blanket and yet you feel like you’ve accomplished something big.
While I won’t really rest until Saturday, at about 5PM, a first big accomplishment of this upcoming weekend is finished and ready to share:
Come check out the agenda, the presenters, the sessions – and while I’m totally biased, I can’t help myself but be oo’ed and ah’ed by the line up.
Saturday, September 20th
9:30AM – 4:00PM EST
Donalyn Miller is keynoting, and there are just too many others (Jen Serravallo) to mention here (Rafranz Davis), you’ll really have to go (Kristin Ziemke) check it out (Kathy Collins) for yourself (Luis Perez) and start making (Sara Ahmed) plans for what you’ll watch live (Kristi Mraz) that day.
The best part, is that—if the internet behaves—all sessions will be archived. So you could actually watch all of the sessions, even the ones you miss the first time!
We will keep the site and archives live for as long as you’d like to keep click, click, clicking on em.
We are so excited to share this with all of you! Thanks for all you do.
The Ray Rice video is a reminder that many people live with the real threat of domestic violence and that we do not know what happens behind closed doors. Domestic violence can happen to anyone.
Please share this link and phone number widely. You may help someone escape danger or even save a life.
If you are afraid, it is not okay and it is not your fault.
> Embarrass you with put-downs? > Control what you do, who you see or talk to or where you go? > Look at you or act in ways that scare you? > Push you, slap you, choke you or hit you? > Stop you from seeing your friends or family members? > Control the money in the relationship? Take your money or Social Security check, make you ask for money or refuse to give you money? > Make all of the decisions? > Tell you that you’re a bad parent or threaten to take away your children? > Prevent you from working or attending school? > Act like the abuse is no big deal, deny the abuse or tell you it’s your own fault? > Destroy your property or threaten to kill your pets? > Intimidate you with guns, knives or other weapons? > Attempt to force you to drop criminal charges? > Threaten to commit suicide, or threaten to kill you?
For all your end-of-summer blues, “why do I have to set my alarm clock again?” shock, and your endless prepping and planning for this first day of school, know that your efforts matter.
In just our home, you have a soon-to-be second grader and a brand-new kindergartner feeling excited for a new year to begin. They are anxious, yet just can’t wait to get to know their teachers.
When you step into your classroom this year, as some of you already have, you will profoundly and forever impact the lives of children.
You are a hero. Really, truly, we should hold a ticker-tape parade in your honor tomorrow. As the sun rises in the morning we should usher you down your nearest main street in an open top cadillac. We should line the streets, waving signs, celebrating the great gifts you will give this year.
This year
you will be someone’s champion
you will forever change someone’s self-esteem
you will touch a family in a profound way
you will help a colleague more than you will know
you will heal a heart
you will grow a mind
you will change another small part of the world for the better.
Here’s to an amazing school year.
Thank you for the gifts you share, the struggles you surmount, and the belief you hold.
It was a dream to develop these cutting-edge ways for literacy and technology coaches to learn together. I am so honored and inspired by the motivation and vision contained in these applications from coaches from all corners. I can’t wait for our team to get to join yours.
A reminder that tomorrow, August 27th, is the deadline for early bird applications.The window closes at 5PM EST …though if you were to slide in within a few hours of that I’m sure no one would notice…
The first batch of applications will be processed and decision letters will go out starting Sept 2nd.
If you miss the August 27th deadline, no worries, we will continue to accept applications until all sections are filled or Oct 1, whichever comes first. Though ,many popular sections are filling, so don’t wait too long if you have top choices.
About Our Coaching Think Tanks
We know that Coaches are essential to a school’s growth. We also know–many of us from personal experience–that it can be a lonely position at times.
We are hoping our Coaching Think Tanks can be a not-too-busy, never-having-to-travel, intimate and rigorous way coaches can learn together across the school year.
They are not webinars, instead they are highly selective, small groups of coaches joining together across the year to collaborate and study.
Only 5-10 literacy and/or technology coaches will be admitted to each group. This is so no one feels lost in the crowd and groups can really become personalized support systems.
We have just 16 New to Coaching and Advanced Coaching sessions to offer, led by me, Meenoo Rami, Kristi Mraz, Brian Sweeney, Kristin Ziemke, and more… Lots of options, but also very limited enrollment, so check it out early.
For each group, there will be
yearlong support
6 live, online, sessions facilitated by one of our team members.
Projects to work on between online sessions to extend conversations into practice.
I’m writing to you from the Happiest Place on Earth, Place Where Dreams Come True, Memories To Last a Lifetime’s neighbor: the Double Ear Infection Bed of Sorrows.
used under Creative Commons lic. by Matt Wade
You see, one of my greatest strengths is getting sick either just before or just during a vacation. Twice we’ve been in beautiful and sunny Punta Cana and twice I have been locked in a room with a fever. Family water park vacation in Wisconsin Dells? Flu. Hey, here we are in Paris! Hey, here are the chills!
I do think a part of this is that I seem to never stop working. Then, when I do let my guard down, even ever so slightly, the bugs I have willed to stay away begin to creep up.
So, two days before our trip to the Mouse’s House I was, of course, shivering with fever-chills and slowly losing my hearing to a middle ear blockage. It ’twas only one ear at the time.
The plane ride down here was easy and pain-filled as one ear opened and the other closed up with the help of some sort of demonic fire sorcery taking place in my head.
I was determined, however, to keep going. Sinus decongestant. Tylenol. Antihistamine. Moving my head at odd angles. The last thing I wanted to do was ruin this trip for my family. And I firmly and steadfastly do not like to bother others.
I Got This. No Really. It’s Fine.
I come from a long line of do-this-myself-ers. Partially it is pride, for sure. We feel good when we have accomplished something all by our lonesome. A larger part, though, is that we do not want to make anyone else bother over us. I will more often than not do whatever it is that has to be done just to avoid needing to ask someone else.
I’m often inconvenience-phobic.
I assume that asking puts people out. Annoys them. Takes them away from more important things.
Which is why for the past few days, as pressure ebbed and flowed in my ears, as pain came and went, and as Mickey sounded more and more muffled, I simply took care of things myself. More decongestant, more yawning, more tilting.
Until 12:30AM last night.
When I bolted out of bed with the feeling of explosions in my eardrums.
Now. I did still do-it-all-by-myself at first. I did fumble-tip-toe to the bathroom, got water, took more of I don’t remember what. But finally, in intense pain, I woke up my wife and we figured out how to go to emergency room.
Asking And Being Asked
What followed was a reminder that none of us are in any of this alone.
Not with a double-ear-infection at Disney World, not in our homes, not in our schools. Person after person was reassuring and helpful. From the front-desk, to our cab driver, to everyone at Celebration Hospital (yes. It is called that.).
I know this sounds like the obvious statement of the year, but:
people like to be asked.
I mean, on reflecting, I like to be asked. And when you ask someone to help, and then they do, you both feel great about it.
We each take pride in our expertise, in our ability to create or change or fix.
Now, I’m not talking about being volun-told (the identity of the educators who taught me that one will remain private) or micromanaged. Instead, I am suggesting that I, and perhaps you, can take more opportunities for learning from others and sharing in their strengths.
It is good to do things alone. Even better to do them together.
Starting the Year With Questions
For so many educators, our roles are often assessed as singular: your test scores, your lesson plans, your teacher evaluation, your classroom. While, sure, there may be a place for individual accounting of strengths, we need to be cautious that we do not retreat too much.
We retreat from the help of others when we assume we know it all or not enough, when we fear bothering others, when we think no one understands us, when we becoming unwilling to change, or when we assume no one else will. We can do this to each other as well, we can avoid fellow teachers, assume people’s strengths or limits.
We change this when, simply, we ask:
“Could you listen to this…”
“How did you…”
“Can you show me…”
“Can you help me…”
Even though I’m only about 6 hours into my antibiotic treatment and my ears still feel like they are stuffed with cotton — I know my hearing is improving and ready to listen a bit differently during this school year.
I want to thank the brilliant educator and activist Christopher Lehmann (yes we share nearly the same name – he just has one too many Ns…) for the nudge this afternoon to write about my feelings on this topic. When tragedies like these happen I sometimes find it hard to find the right words, but he reminded me how important it is to share our perspectives, how it matters for the educators we are lucky to call our community and for the children we serve. So thank you, Chris. I needed to be reminded that my voice matters, just like all of our voices matter.
What Do We Teach About Ferguson, MO?
My first draft of this letter was an angry one. Mostly at myself. While the unarmed Mike Brown’s shooting death by the hands of an armed police officer hit me, I also have started to build a pretty hard callus over the part of my heart that aches for young black men dying in our country. It hurts every time, yet I grow bitter that solutions may never come to this national tragedy. I see the lack of government movement, or even care, and feel hopeless.
What I began writing was that I was angry with myself that it took an utterly outrageous scene of mostly white police using excessive force against a mostly black population to snap me back to reality. Shouldn’t I be as outraged over one young black man’s death by an officer as I am over a scene of neighborhoods be covered with tear gas?
Then I came to this: what I know I want to teach about Ferguson.
We do need to talk about what is hopeless. And there is so much to feel hopeless about.
Mike Brown is one of many young black and minority and poor men who die daily in our country from violence–whether from police or from one another. Our prisons are filled with young black, minority, and poor men and our colleges are not. There is so much bad that it is overwhelming. Our national callus grows because to allow oneself to live with the gravity of this reality can feel so hopeless.
We do need to talk about what is hopeless because to not do so is to act as if it is not there.
What I want to teach about Ferguson, though, is not teargas.
What I want to teach about Ferguson is hope. Hope embodied in the people who chose to line up alone the road every day from the day Mike Brown was killed and make themselves seen. There may be reasons yet unknown for why the police violence and journalist blackout spread last night, but one of them most certainly was the desire to silence people who refused to be silenced. Likely even to silence the voices of the black men, women and children and those who stood beside them on those roads. What I want to teach is their story.
Megaphones came out to stop their stories from being told. But they stood.
Then arrests came out to stop their stories from being told. But they stood.
Then riot gear and guns came out to stop their stories from being told. But they stood.
Then teargas and tanks came out to stop their stories from being told. And we all stood.
This to me is an essential lesson. Do not be silenced.
I think we too often feel hopeless because we feel there is little any one of us can say or do to make a difference. So then we stop saying anything at all.
What we must teach our children, and each other, is that standing up to tell the story is the most critical step. Saying the wrong you see or feel is the beginning. When you stand, you invite others to stand, too.
Talk about what feels hopeless. Then, teach towards hope.
First, a huge thank you for the amazing support and response for my new organization, The Educator Collaborative. I’ve received tons of emails, tweets, and in-person congratulations.
It reminds me how important compliments are for everyone. I won’t lie – all the hours, meetings, emails, and programming really bogged me down at times. Having someone say “thanks” could change those clouds in an instant.
I have to remember the power of that and make a point to thank others, daily.
Now the News: Coaching Think Tanks
Now the fun to share!
Just yesterday we announced our new Coaching Think Tanks for 2014-15.
We know that Coaches are essential to a school’s growth. We also know–many of us from personal experience–that it can be a lonely position at times.
We are hoping our Coaching Think Tanks can be a not-too-busy, never-having-to-travel, intimate and rigorous way coaches can learn together across the school year.
They are not webinars, instead they are highly selective, small groups of coaches joining together across the year to collaborate and study.
Only 5-10 literacy and/or technology coaches will be admitted to each group. This is so no one feels lost in the crowd and groups can really become personalized support systems.
We have just 16 New to Coaching and Advanced Coaching sessions to offer, led by me, Meenoo Rami, Kristi Mraz, Brian Sweeney, Kristin Ziemke, and more… Lots of options, but also very limited enrollment, so check it out early.
For each group, there will be
yearlong support
6 live, online, sessions facilitated by one of our team members.
Projects to work on between online sessions to extend conversations into practice.
Thanks to all of you for making the launch day of the “Big News” feel so amazing.
As many of you now know, yesterday I publicly announced the new organization that I founded and direct. We’re called The Educator Collaborative.
We are a think tank and consulting organization working to innovate the ways educators learn together.
Our motto:
Collaboration Creates Opportunity.
This has really been a hands-on, labor of love for me. You can read more about this at my Welcome message I posted yesterday.
Our Consultants are my dream team. I nervously asked each one and I was delighted when they said yes. Each is an amazing educator in his/her own right and we are even stronger together. The Educator Collaborative is happy to arrange their, or my, consulting services or speaking engagements with your school or organization.
We have two online homes that I built from scratch (picture me in front of the computer screen for hours learning how to use website plugins and code), I hope you love them as much as I do.
The first is our main professional site. Here you’ll get to know us, our services – both in person and online, sign-up for our mailing list, and when our online offerings open up you can access registration here as well.
The second, sister site, is our exciting new social and networking website for teachers. Called The Educator Collaborative Community, it is a place to collaborate with teachers from across the world on education topics. Within one day of launching our membership on that site is already nearing 100 and continues to rise. People are posting questions, sharing answers, and forming discussion groups.
We intend to go beyond a typical online forum… innovation is what we do after all… Part of vision is to help educators use online tools for collaboration in newer, more personal ways. In this instance, we are launching soon a monthly series where we will take some of the most popular topics, groups, and people from the Community and bring them to a broadcast collaboration space. Sometimes it will be through a live broadcast hangout, sometimes through a virtual conference call, or other ways we hope to discover. We will take the hottest topics and bring our experts, experts from the field, and some of you on to discuss them live.
Naturally, you can find us on twitter (I mean, it’s me you’re talking about): @TheEdCollab and you can use the hashtag #TheEdCollab. We’d love to have you follow.
I am so touched by the positive responses over the last 24 hours. I know there are many places you go to learn, connect, and share, and we hope The Educator Collaborative will be one of those places for you.
Thanks for all you do for our profession, for your colleagues, and for your students.
We designed these as opportunities for Technology Coaches, Literacy Coaches, English Coaches, and Coordinators or other leaders.
Christopher Lehman 