Dear SRI Practitioners,
Each year, as SRI grows and the Winter Meeting continues to attract educators spanning all levels of practice and understanding of our work, we learn more and more about SRI’s mission to create transformational learning communities fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence.
This year at Winter Meeting we will explore the theme of Exploring Our Assumptions of Equity and Excellence. What does it mean in practice to be fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence? What assumptions do we bring with us to this work? What does it look like when we are living this commitment and doing this work together? What supports us in our efforts to do this work, and what might be getting in our way? We recognize these questions are not easily answered, and will require careful facilitation.
Today, we invite you to do this important work on behalf of SRI. Please consider facilitating a collaborative learning group at the 2017 Winter Meeting in Denver, Colorado.
Facilitating a collaborative learning group at the Winter Meeting will be a rich and rewarding experience. It will also be challenging, and frankly, somewhat overwhelming work! We must be confident in our skills and dispositions toward the work; yet, we must be humble enough to facilitate in subtle, nuanced ways. Like good teachers, we must know how to set the conditions for learning and then, get out of the way of the learning.
Winter Meeting participants are asked to bring with them a piece of work from their practice – either student work, adult work, or a dilemma of practice – for examination and feedback. Collaborative learning group facilitators will:
- Serve as the face of SRI by providing a warm and welcome to those who are new to the work and to SRI
- Help their group coalesce and provide a safe space for risk-taking
- Provide opportunities for reflective discourse
- Support participants’ investment in each other’s success
- Attend to the needs of adults at different stages in their development as participant, presenter, and facilitator
- Make explicit connections between the work participants have brought and SRI’s mission
- Creatively and skillfully manage the time we allocated for collaborative learning groups
- Support group members to make meaning of SRI’s mission and guiding principles, specifically, equity, excellence, and transformational learning.
Participants come to Winter Meeting to be learners in their practice; we wish to ensure they leave with thoughtful feedback, new insights, and a connection between their work and SRI’s mission and guiding principles.
We hope you will carefully consider this important opportunity. If you are interested, please complete the Winter Meeting facilitator questionnaire and email it to Heidi Vosekas at heidi@schoolreforminitiative.org no later than Monday, October 10th.
The Winter Meeting committee will strive to select facilitators that reflect the diversity of our community and to ensure we have enough facilitators to work with the number of expected participants.
You will be notified of our selections no later than Wednesday, October 19th.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us, Marjorie Larner, Dave Schmid, Beth Graham, or Heidi Vosekas.
With gratitude for your consideration,
Winter Meeting Committee: Marjorie Larner (CO), Dave Schmid (CO), Beth Graham (MA), or Heidi Vosekas (CO), on behalf of the 2017 Winter Meeting planning team
