6/21 eminutes

eMinutes: Monday, June 21st:

We haven't seen one another since April, and this is our first of three days in June and . . .

OMG: Road work, will I be late? Where's the coffee pot? The coffee? Why isn't the computer lab opened? Why doesn't the log-in access code work? When will the tech guys get here?

SIGH . . . eight o'clock hit us like a ton of bricks, but all is calm now, everything worked out. We started on time. We got to work. We chose to laugh and reflect, revise, and rewrite - a fitting beginning to our RWP ISI journey this summer.

After re-introductions, we began with response groups.The ISI leadership team, Rachel, Mary Ann and Stefanie explained that we placed teachers in response groups of three, balancing gender, teaching levels, and school/district sites. Each group met to go over the inquiry paper, using the fishbowl response procedure presented by Susan Bennett in April.

Break time: Conversation, coffee, half 'n half, date bars, oranges, juice, laughter

Sue presented her Workshop on Workshops. We did a quick write reflection on in-service, presentations and workshops we attended and wrote about what worked and what didn't work. We shared our ideas with a partner. Then we read two articles about Inquiry Workshops. As a group we made a list of our guidelines for RWP workshop.

Some of the workshop guidelines we found important:

• participatory
• cooperative environment
• flexible
• rely on participants knowledge and experience
• theory at fore front
• teacher voices at center
• immediate pilot testing of idea
• specific and in-depth
• varied activities
• time for participants to think and reflect
• relevant and applicable
• engaging
• game changing and innovative
• acknowledge and value diverse interests

Sue then gave each participant time to think, write, and begin to plan a workshop. She ended with a resource review.

Tracy, our Technology queen, took us next door to the computer lab and showed us how to use our RWP ISI 2010 Blog! Yes! We have our own blog! Organized, useful, a work in progress. We also have our own Facebook group which Tracy showed us.

Lunch break: We got lucky in foggy Humboldt County and the sun came out. And more luck - our meeting place is surrounded with tables, benches, and manicured grass. We got our vitamin D (and sanity) fix while munching, chatting, relaxing.

After lunch there was a coaching demonstration. Mary Ann was coached by Rachel and Stefanie on new workshop she is developing about access to technology. The participants read the RWP brochure on coaching, observed the discussion between Mary Ann, Rachel and Stefanie, and wrote about their insights, reflections, questions.They discussed what they saw and how they felt about presenting their own workshop.
Some reflections from participants:

• Mary Ann's workshop had a clear focus from coaching
• the coaches asked questions to help Mary Ann clarify her thinking
  
• coaches respected Mary Ann's knowledge and inquiry
• non-threatening format
• coaches were supportive
  
• coaching seemed like a conversation

Then the teachers met in response groups to discuss their own workshop topics.
Committees met to plan the Wednesday potluck, organize housekeeping and the morning social.

The day ended with a (sunny!) walk to the RWP and HSU library to gather resources for individual research.

by Stefanie Watson