My twenty plus years in schools have taught me many wonderful things. However, one unfortunate pattern is that positive initiatives are introduced and then not revisited. We are making a concerted effort at our school to share with each other when we have meaningful and helpful knowledge from professional development and to revisit ideas and strategies for important items such as those linked to Belonging, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (BEDI) and community-engaged learning.

This latter piece was brought up a few weeks, and we decided to have a look at where things stand. What resulted was a mind-blowing few minutes where we realized that someone on our team had reached out to every organization that we listed back on November 7. Between us, we have reached out to over twenty organizations and individuals to ask about possibilities for educational partnerships, visits from us, visits to us, and Zooms. These are as varied as the upcoming basketball games with High Meadow (thank you, Lisa!) and today’s visit, the first of three, to Caora Farm (thank you, Shira!).

community engagement + PDS = connection