Last Friday I was lucky, as a consultant at dk2, to facilitate the Digital Leadership: Collaborations & Conversations boutique professional learning conference - with 50 odd educators from 18 schools.
This event was held in partnership with the fabulous school leaders of Canterbury PS.
Since early 2015, dk2 and CPS have been working together on an exciting project called 'Digital Leadership Hubs' where we work as partners to bring educational experts (like Professor Stephen Heppell and Eric Sheninger) to schools to work at the coalface with educators and parents and the wider school community to effect change.
The conference on Friday was the last of 3 exciting events we've worked together on with the CPS team for 2015...but no doubt the beginning of many more to come.
But enough of the promo talk...what did Friday mean to me? Of course, it meant something different to everyone who attended....but here's what it meant to me.
I'll start by wrapping some context around the event.
We began the day with the fabulous educational documentary by One Potato Productions Most Likely to Succeed. We had decided to ditch the traditional keynote after following discussions on Twitter about this new doco. After contacting the producers in the US, we were excited to be one of the first organisations to bring the film to Australia. So the film began......there was an air of anticipation and an open, growth, adaptable mindset by everyone in the room.
5 minutes into the film, I received a text from my son. He's just finished Year 12. He was devastated to tell me that his best mate's mother had passed away that morning: she had only been diagnosed with a terribly vicious form of cancer 4 weeks ago. 2 weeks ago, she was sitting with us at the boys' Valete Dinner celebrating the end of their secondary schooling. I couldn't believe it. As I looked around the hall at the faces transfixed on the film, I was trying to reconcile this loss with what was happening that day.
It's been a month of losses. My dear Dad passed away in October. Although he had been unwell for some time, his passing has been life changing for me. He taught me most of what I know about what it means to be a good man, so my sons can grow up to be one, and what it means to be a leader who truly makes people, and doesn't break them. Every day I miss him - it's as much a physical pain as an emotional or psychological one. And while the fog is slowly starting to lift, the world post-Dad is a new and unchartered one for me.
So, back to the conference.
Here I was, now halfway into the film, trying desperately to compartmentalise.
Then it hit me....what learning can I take from these losses?
Do I beat my brow at how unfair the universe is?
Do I bemoan opportunities lost, lives cut short, the quixotic unfairness of living?
Yes, maybe, for a little while.....but in the end that really doesn't help anyone.
My friend had talked with me that morning about the notion of 'legacy'. He had attended dad's funeral and was commenting on how moved he was to see old crusty war veterans broken in sadness at the loss of a mentor, a comrade.
And that's where the most profound learning from the day came for me - legacy: a bequest; an inheritance; a heritage; a benefaction; an endowment; a gift.
What legacy can we as educators leave our students?
In what state do we leave or change the education world for the students we teach?
How do we make the world better for them so they can make the world a better place when they are leading it in the future?
The first step is to share and connect with each other - because it as as connected educators we can become a powerful PLN and our legacy can be exponentially grown.
It was a great day...but the days for working on making that legacy a reality have only just begun.
