Thankyou Lorraine & team for organising such a worthwhile meeting.The agenda for the day went like this:
"What is a Learning Community"
"How do we develop it?"
"What are the barriers?" and
"What do we want to sustain?"
This culminated in the development of Action Plans - "Towards Sustainability"
You can read more on Lorraine's blog & pick up files from Centre4
I enjoyed the day because we talked all day long! It was great to have such a focussed exchange of ideas. And the big focus of the day was Sustainability - for many of us third year clusters - sustainability after the contract. Out of all the regional meetings we have hauled ourselves around in the last 3 years i really wish our whole team had been at this one. Our team have started talking about 'sustainability', read Mel's research & floated ideas around since this time last year but we have not actually formalised any 'where-to-next' plans.
I know from having read Mel's work that sustainability is not a carbon copy of the 3 contract years - it is not about continuing on exactly the same (Ha - who can afford to without the funding...). It may not even involve a 'cluster' or the cluster as it previously was.
The key questions for me are "What do we want to sustain?" (& why) & "How are we going to do this?" Things we need to talk about at our next cluster meeting.
OK another key question for me (as it was for other facilitators of 3rd year contracts) was "What am i going to do next year?!"
3 comments:
OK another key question for me (as it was for other facilitators of 3rd year contracts) was "What am i going to do next year?!"
I am not surprised that you and other Year three_ers are thinking about your future (un)(e)mployment - "Knowing stuff" has many different contexts - most of us start with self knowing then move to collective knowing, organisational knowing and ultimately if we think long enough to societal knowing
Is an interesting "thought experiment" - for if we do our jobs well we should be without value to the cluster after 3 years - along the lines of "when we make something ours - we diminish the prominence of the originator" stuff - sustainability rhetoric.
I am working on becoming a sock whisperer - at the end of the contract - or possibly earlier - life is deliciously eccentric and unpredictable - is why it is great to be alive - will trade professional experiences that build expertise in sock whispering at ULearn06 in Christchurch
I always thought that if i had done a great job then i would make myself redundant - and i have already seen quite a change over the 3 years where my time now is not so much in demand as it was "oh you don't need me today? that's fine i'll go & write another milestone."
It is exciting, unpredictable - like dancing on the shifting carpet but also a little scary when u are the sole breadwinner for 3 big kids who never stop eating & also live in an area that maybe has not as many interesting opportunities as the bigger centres. But i believe we make our own opportunities - where one door closes i will build a new door and in the virtual world that i spend part of my time in location should not be so significant - i hope... :-)
oh - also look forward to seeing u nxt week in ChCh. You can bring me into the sock whispering fold :-)
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