During a recent lunch with a colleague, we discussed the post-COVID educational landscape. While many aspects of school life have, like a stretched rubber band let loose, snapped back into familiar routines, some have not. In my life as an educational leader prior to COVID, I enjoyed the professional cadence of frequent Twitter chats, role-alike/regional organizations that met in-person to collaborate around the latest legislation, innovations, or crises, occasional Friday happy hours with colleagues, and attending conferences to see how others conducted school life in another part of the state or country. As we discussed these differences, my colleague mused, “Where have all the communities gone?”
To a degree, some of these communities have reconvened. But based on several conversations I’ve had recently with peers, many have not.
With the possible exception of the early, desperate months of COVID educational triage, I think educators need each other now more than ever. Challenges such as reshaping the in-person tech-heavy landscape (or what could be called the remote learning hangover), walking through the mine field of recent innovations (we see you ChatGPT), and dodging political bullets that seem to come from every direction have left many lifelong educators with empty proverbial tanks and considering jobs at Starbucks with more than passing interest (I hear they have great benefits).
For these reasons and more, the ConnectEd Learning Community is needed. From short bursts of community time to talk shop, to routine opportunities to be coached, to more comprehensive customized consulting solutions to help stretched-too-thin districts, we strive to support educators – in all roles and in all states of exhaustion. Won’t you join us? We will be better together.