Networking and Connecting

The Value of Networking and Connecting

I have been fortunate to attend two very informative professional conferences in the past few weeks. One of them (the ASCD Empower '17 Conference) in Anaheim, California was a large-scale gathering that featured thousands of educators from all over the world. The other was the Annual INDEX School Leaders Conference held in Chicago. At both of these recent ASCD and INDEX conferences, the content of the workshops and presentations was valuable and provided me with several new key ideas and strategies to bring back to Colorado Academy. Even more important, however, were the conversations I was able to have with educators all over the country. That networking often pays dividends well beyond the conferences themselves. I am able to follow up with teachers and administrators either in person or via e-mail and keep the conversations going.

INDEX has been an extremely important benchmarking group for CA for two decades. Consisting of other similar K-12 independent day schools from around the United States, INDEX collects and shares data for these schools to consider. It also hosts annual conferences in which school leaders can congregate and compare notes. I have found these gatherings both extremely useful and pertinent as well as inspirational over the last fourteen years. This year's meeting featured discussions on topics as wide-ranging as promoting positive school culture, seeking out better use of students' scheduled time, considering the future of AP programs, managing enrollment and retention pressures, building morale within faculty and staff, among many others. Michael Thompson was also an invited guest speaker. The next Heads of School and CFO gathering for INDEX will actually take place on Colorado Academy's campus in the fall.

I am pleased to relate that much of the focus in education is similar from school to school and district to district right now, coalescing around the desire to offer students more independence and autonomy in their learning. Part of the motivation is pedagogical: if we can increase intrinsic motivation for students, we will increase both what they learn and their desire to learn it. Another part of the motivation (still connected to the pedagogy) is student wellness. Too many students feel pressured to perform at a very high level, whether they felt strongly interested in the subject matter or not. As a result, many are finding less joy and excitement in their education, even as many schools are offering more and more exciting and innovative choices. So I am pleased to see many intelligent and well-meaning educators putting their heads together and sharing wisdom about how to make diction as relevant and meaningful as possible for more students.