Capacity Building

Capacity: How much can we hold? What is the capacity? Can we really increase the amount we can hold/the capacity? OR are we to re-phrase and say shift or change the content...when the glass is full must we spill out a bit to add something new or different? Click here for some interesting ideas on Capacity Building in Education.

Remembering Forward an intriguing notion (Carson, 1992) that implies that perhaps with practice we can accomplish more; that by imagining the end-product, what is to be accomplished we can create the road-map to successfully attain the goal(s). hhhhmmmm lots here to think about, essoteric and yet tangible, simple yet complex ...my mind is cycling dizzily and I must leave these thoughts for now, hopefully return later with more.

Learning Communities: funny how for most of my professional life I've tried to build professional learning communities where people (mostly teachers) would share, collaborate and learn together and yet finally as I read "How Are Professional Learning Communities Created? History Has a Few Messages", by Bruce Joyce (Sept. 2004, Phi Delta Kappan) EUREKA! It hit me... Who wants collaborative work? NOT teachers, "many people selelct teaching precisely because schools are workplaces of high isolation." WOW I've been trying to change people who don't want to change! This actually validates my constant frustration as I've often felt less of an educator and more of a sales and marketing person trying to sell my ideas. Not very encouraging however, knowing that the true challenge is not to educate others on HOW to create & nurture Learning Communities but to ENCOURAGE and MOTIVATE teachers to a shared belief that the creation Learning Communities will help them accomplish the universally shared goal of better student learning. hhhhmmm add to this the finding of Michael Huberman and Matthew Miles as cited by Bruce Joyce in "How Are Professional Learning Communities Created? History Has a Few Messages (Sept. 2004, Phi Delta Kappan) that "commitment follows competence" that "many teachers need to experience cooperative professional inquiry before they will commit to it." NOW, knowing that my challenge is to change someone's belief and culture AND that "selling" it to them will not work before they have the skills necessary to conduct themselves in the "new culture", how am I to accomplish my goals???