This past weekend I boarded a plane and headed to Boston with two other board members, Samantha and Diane. Early on in my blogging I stated that I would not mention any board member by name. However, I have permission from them to share our weekend with you. I have struggled with attending conferences because of the cost to the district. November of 2010 I went to Florida for the Council of Great City Schools. I am glad I did because Indianapolis is hosting this event this fall. I decided to attend the NSBA, National School Board Association. I am so thankful that I did! I really needed the motivation and hope that I received from this experience.
We got in Friday night and rushed over to the Convention Center to pick up pick up our info packets. We made it with about three minutes to spare. After that we headed out for dinner. The next three days were sessions, speakers, and more sessions. We listened to amazing students from all very the country perform beautiful music. We tried to attend different sessions so we could gain and share more information. I noticed a pattern in my session choices, and that was Climate. I spent a lot of my time listening to ideas of building board relations. I also decided to face reality and I went to some sessions on Superintendent Evaluations and Superintendent Searches.
In the evenings Sam, Diane, and I headed out. We tried to do as much sight seeing as possible, a fair share of eating, and lots and lots of talking. We talked about our kids, our spouses, our childhoods. We talked about our sessions and shared what we had learned. Mostly, we talked about the board. We talked about what went wrong and when. We talked about if we can help fix it and how. I will share more details soon regarding the sessions themselves. The three of us want to give a presentation to the other board members, and I want them to hear this info first. I can tell you though that wherever we went, education was on our mind. One night the hostess at our restaurant joined in our conversation, well, she joined our dinner. Turns out, she was a public school teacher and works with children with autism. We talked to other board members from all over the country and heard their stories and shared ours. It was such a great experience. These ladies are great. I am so glad I got the opportunity to spend so much time with them and learn so much about them. And mistakes have been made, but we all really truly have children's best interest at heart. We have a respect for one another, and an unquestionable trust. Diane and Sam did not start off well. In fact, they started off very bad. They have both buried the past, and are only looking to the possibilities. As soon as we present to the other Board Members, I will share the session information here.
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