November 9, 2015
Dear SRI Practitioners,
As skilled and knowledgeable practitioners of SRI work, we have had the experience of deeply engaging in the processes and practices that lead to transformational learning. Winter Meeting is a time when we share this significant and powerful work with colleagues who come to learn and grow together in SRI critical friendship.
Participants come to Winter Meeting to be learners in their practice; we wish to ensure they leave with thoughtful feedback, new insights, and having experienced the connection between their work and SRI’s mission and guiding principles.
Today, we invite you to do this important work on behalf of SRI. Please consider facilitating a small group at the 2016 Winter Meeting in Miami, Florida.
Facilitating a small group at the 2016 Winter Meeting will be a rich and rewarding experience. It will also be challenging, and frankly, somewhat overwhelming work! To be in service to others, we essentially put our own work out for scrutiny. 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 in small groups quickly and then, get out of the way of the learning.
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 how being in SRI critical friendship leads to transformational learning. This year at Winter Meeting we will unpack the role SRI plays in education with our focus on our mission and guiding principles, the heart of which is transformational learning. How, when and why transformational learning happens are not easily answered questions. Taking up the role of facilitating this learning in small groups is fiercely important as we work to gain insight into these critical questions.
Small group participants will be asked to bring either student or adult work or a problem of practice. Small group facilitators will:
- Help their group coalesce,
- Attend to the needs of adults at different stages in their development as participants and facilitators of this work,
- Create a safe space for risk-taking,
- Provide opportunities for reflective discourse,
- Make explicit the connections between participants and the work they’ve brought,
- Support commitments made to changing our practice in order to serve more students better,
- Hold participants accountable to invest in one another’s success,
- Creatively and skillfully manage the limited and precious time we have in small groups,
- Serve as the face of SRI in providing a warm welcome to those who are new to the work and to SRI,
- Support group members to make meaning of SRI’s mission and guiding principles, specifically, equity, excellence, and transformational learning.
If you are interested in applying to facilitate a small group at the 2016 Winter Meeting, please click here to read more about the commitment and work involved.
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 Wednesday, November 18th.
The small group 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 Friday, December 4th.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us: Susan Adams, Jen Benkovitz, Beth Graham, or Heidi Vosekas.
With gratitude for your consideration,
Small Group Committee: Susan Adams (IN), Jen Benkovitz (NC), Beth Graham (MA), and Heidi Vosekas (CO), On behalf of the 2016 Winter Meeting planning team
