Edreach Group

A serious question. How much of an accomplishment is it to be a part of these programs? How much better was I than the next biology teacher just because I wrote a more creative lesson plan? They didn’t see me teach. They didn’t ask my kids about me. They didn’t look at a portfolio of accumulated work over many years, they looked at a single lesson plan. Yet I was an Access Excellence Fellow-something to be proud of, but something to examine critically, and take it for what it was worth.

Ultimately, a career, and a lifetime in the service of others will not be measured by an accumulation of badges, but by those that you have served over those years, and their accomplishments.

Educon is described as “both a conversation and a conference”. Although I don’t want to romanticize Educon as a learning event, one of the things I appreciate the most is the nature of the presentations. They are indeed conversations. Dialog and open thinking are essential to the “structure” of the sessions. And, often, the conversations spill over to the hallways, the stairways, the meals, and of course, in virtual spaces. Back to the quotation above, it resonates greatly on a number of dimensions. The essence of its message to me is that innovation happens as a result of continued open exchange of ideas in conjunction with intentional and serendipitous expansion of one’s learning network. It is this open and networked exchange of ideas that leads to the creation of new ideas.