I’m writing this post at the end of first ever day and a half long retreat of the Innovation Network. We had the opportunity to come down to North Bay Adventure Camp and use their guest house for our retreat.
There’s something incredible about getting away into a new environment to give everyone freedom to fully immerse in ideas. Yes, when you have eight principals all away from their schools, the reality of the cell phone is always there, but overall, everyone felt “away” and able to focus on the work at hand.
I had two goals for the retreat – One, I was hopeful that we could create the conditions by which every school would have the chance to dig deep into a challenge they were facing. And two, in leveraging the wisdom of the room, we would get the chance to really deepen our commitment to being a learning network together.
We used the National School Reform Faculty protocol Consultancy for the bulk of the day’s work. Consultancy is a really powerful protocol that creates the space for a deep dive into a challenge or dilemma that someone is facing. It really requires folks coming together in a safe way, because you are asking people to ask probing questions of each other and asking people to listen without defensiveness to critique and ideas. There has to be some real trust in both process and people for it to work well. We used some nice ice breakers to get into the work, and the fact that this group has been working together with a common mission of creating schools that are authentic, empowering, caring and modern really created the space for us to enter into the work.
Each iteration of the consultancy takes about 45-50 minutes to go through, and as the facilitator, I can say that there really has to be a premium on following the process so that the consultancy stays focused. It can end with the presenter walking away with a fresh lens on the problem and a lot of ideas to try to solve it. For us, it also meant a day that started at 8:30am and ended at 8:30pm with working lunch and dinner (and a two-hour break in the middle of the day to learn more about North Bay and to go on a truly insane ropes course that was every bit the bonding experience you’d think it was. (6th graders do that? Dang.)
The day was exhausting and awesome. And everyone agreed that we accomplished both goals. And it’s energized me to figure out how to better use our monthly network meetings when we come together once a month back in Philly.
And importantly – we did it ourselves. We used smart resources from other places. We shared some readings, we used ice breakers that we learned from other folks, and we agreed to use a protocol that can feel a little forced the first time you use it. But we didn’t assume that someone was going to come in and solve our problems for us. We agreed to be our own best resources for each other, and that made all of us better, not just because of the trust we gained, and not just because we all were able to see how the problems everyone was struggling with had application in our own schools, but because there’s something amazing about learning together, solving problems together, and gaining belief and trust in the idea that if we just keep asking hard questions together, we can come up with the answers we need together.
And when adults can do that for one another, doesn’t that reinforce how important it is that we do that with our students as well?
cross-posted at practicaltheory.org/blog.
Chris Lehmann is the founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy, a progressive science and technology high school in Philadelphia, PA. that was recognized by Ladies Home Journal as one of the Ten Most Amazing Schools in the US and was recognized as an Apple Distinguished School in 2009 and 2010. Chris was a 2014 winner of the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education and has been honored by the White House as a Champion of Change for his work in education reform. In June 2010, Chris was named as one of the “30 Most Influential People in EdTech” by Technology & Learning Magazine. Read more at his blog, http://practicaltheory.org/blog.
