What is Next for the 744?

On Thursday, February 2nd, Clark Learning sponsored and helped put together the Re-Energize Education Event, one of the largest educational improvement events in San Diego County history.  In conjunction with other sponsors and a core planning team, we helped create an opportunity for seven hundred forty-four educators, students, parents, administrators and community leaders to come together at one time, in one place, and for one reason - to improve public education. 

It was amazing to watch the buzzing interactions as everyone tried to talk to everyone else.  When best-selling author and San Diego leadership guru, Steve Farber, took the stage, it was the moment we had waited to see.  Could effective leadership concepts that help businesses excel also work in educational environments?  Would people see the value?

What happened was deeply intriguing.  The audience caught on to the idea that fear and minimizing ourselves reduces us to frustrated, tired, and negative influences.  But, in opposite thinking, we also realized that taking risks, and maximizing ourselves, thrills us and fills us.  There were some great stories about other educators from across the nation who had taken some risks and found ways to do amazing things.  It was a very inspiring and encouraging moment.

As the evening wrapped up, Steve Farber placed the opportunity squarely in front of all of us.  What would we do to improve education?  As people left the USS Midway the buzz was still being carried out into the night, and people lingered in the parking lot - excited to be talking with others who cared as much as they did.

Going forward, the big question is, what was accomplished?

Well, actually, quite a bit was accomplished... if you know where to look.

People who rarely collaborate began dialogues that require future work and consensus. People exchanged contact information and have the opportunity to do something more, to take the next step and become a united force instead of solitary idealists. We all received a copy of Steve Farber's book The Radical Leap Re-Energized, and as each person reads it and learns something from it, there will be many unseen changes occurring throughout our region. However, most significant of all is the opt-in email list that the attendees signed up for. Going forward, we hope to encourage and enlighten many of them with new opportunities to team up, create a task force, share an idea, use a new teaching method or find some other way to take further action.

The Re-Energize Education Event was designed to be a beginning, and yet it will be up to every one of us to help make something amazing come from it. We still need each other's voice in the choir, and we still hope to attract and engage even more people's voices who never heard about the event.