Be Just a Little Bit Better #33

Hi WOL Friends!

We all know that being an educator, a teacher, and a leader in public education is hard. So how do we ease the burden of helping each other to continue to grow and be invigorated, to get into our schools and classrooms every day? We turned to an expert in Personalized Professional Learning, Allison Rodman to ponder the question.

Allie wears many hats. She provides support and guidance to districts across the country - and internationally, she helps leaders in making plans and decisions about improving practices and supporting learning in our schools.

I had a great time listening to how she and Olivia navigate working with their peers!

Here are a few takeaways:

1. Be amazed by what is happening in classrooms every day!

2. Olivia and Allie see that the nature of adult learning as reciprocal - it moves in all directions. The complex nature of working with students lends itself to building a community of adult learning to collaborate about success and what isn’t working.

3. Creating a culture for learning is important. PERIOD. FULL STOP! Olivia finds that sharing the pain as well as the joys is important in creating an environment that values practicing together and collaborating.

4. Allie finds that being vulnerable about our own learning, fears, and doubts - allows our colleagues to know they are not alone.

5. When something isn’t working - stop. Olivia, Lauren, and Erin (WOL) realized that their office hours weren’t really helping our teachers - so they took another path and created short bites of Professional Learning. Being able to pivot to meet your people’s needs is important. (Spoonful of Learning).

6. Adults need flexibility and accessibility. Allie talked about how her model changed from all face-to-face to a hybrid model. You can find out more about her work HERE.

Allie provides lots of free resources to help you help your team. You can find them HERE. And look for her new book this Fall

Allie shared her vulnerability about reading and blogs in this episode. Her favorite blog right now is from Larry Cuban. Lots of interesting thinking.

Olivia is listening to Before Breakfast and reading Laura Vanderkam’s Blog. What educator wouldn’t want to think about maximizing their time?

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We are gearing up to host an awesome Professional Learning experience in our new Design Lab. Let us know if you want to hear more about how Storyboarding and Streamlining might reinvigorate you or your teachers. We are having a blast re-imagining our courses.

Have a great week,

Pat