The Learning Brain

Drop Everything and Go to Asheville

I honestly think this has been the busiest week of my year. 

Over the weekend my colleagues and I were working hard to finish up our “projects” for the PLP Professional Development program we’ve been engaged in throughout the year. For those of you who are interested, PLP is short for Powerful Learning Practice. It’s a company started by Will Richardson and Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, both rent authors and gurus in the field of #edtech. They’re message is along the lines of Tony Wagner’s: that schools today are not preparing our students for the work they’re going to be doing in the world beyond the walls of their schools. 

Of the many I lessons I learned from my second year through this experience, the #1 is that leading, organizing, and coordinating a group of 12 educators from different departments in my school is nothing short of impossible. I thought I would take some lessons from my outward bound experience, but it wasn’t a group receptive to creating a community of learners collaborating toward specific goals. 

Everyone at our school is so focused on their job, which is admirable, but it’s sometimes at the expense of creating small communities of educators as learners, a goal which drives my motivation as a  

Challenges aside, we managed to get out act together at the 11th hour, get our team wiki page up and running, and finish the presentation for our project. On Monday and Tuesday we had final webinars before the culminating event yesterday (Wednesday).

So week continues and I’m in Asheville today, heading to Table Rock — where I’m finishing up the North Carolina Outward Bound Educators Initiative. More later.