Flashback... Do I Still Walk This?

I loved my cup that I received at the end of our first year! Yes... a coffee cup but it was personalised with a quote just for me. I loved the quote that was on it, even more so once I researched it and found Sir Ken's Blanchard's thoughts around collaboration. 

Stating that "No one of us is as smart as all of us," Ken Blanchard teaches us three aspects of successful collaboration: 

1. Vision Alignment: if you meet someone who wants to accomplish something, and you want to accomplish something, the experience is meant to be dynamic; 

Don't let anyone limit your vision, if you want to achieve something go for it. Share your vision, align your vision with others and you are more likely to achieve it. This does make me question myself: how well aligned are we at school and how can I help to ensure that we are collectively on the same page? 

2. Learn from others: rely on the different skills and experience people bring to the table; 

Sometimes the most interesting collaborations occur when the people working together bring very diverse experiences and ideas. People bring different skills and different ideas to a collaboration. How do we ensure that the team's different skills and ideas are firstly, known, secondly acknowledged and thirdly, valued?

3. The Why and the How: "essence" and "form" are the two characteristics of a solid collaboration. The essence must come first. 

The essence and form aligns for me a little bit to our beliefs/ principles (driven by values) and the practices. Blanchard suggests that if a group is driven by form they will be bitten by the essence. This is a bit like us - if we allow ourselves to be driven by practices, we will lose sight of the important stuff; our beliefs and principles. 

Collaboration is a strategy to achieve our essence, our beliefs, our values. 

We have 'found' each other at SPS because we all believe that education is changing and needs to change. We are here to give to education not to get from it.

Are we?

"Reach out to other people... Learn from other people... work with other people...."