Conferences and Cooperation
Happy Fall, Royals! This month’s iteration of Every Royal’s Voice comes to you from the Board of Education. We thought it might be interesting to shed some light on how we stay up to date on the state of Education in the State of Illinois. It’s not dissimilar from other ways that we all stay up to date on important matters, but it may help answer the question, “How do Board members further their learning and professional development?”
To set the context, we should look at two important concepts that make a world of difference in keeping the school district in fine running order. Those two words are: conference and cooperation. Cooperation can be said to be one of the defining features of how we got here -- “we”, meaning Humans, or Homo Sapiens. According to modern scientific thought, there have been many different hominid species, but how did we raise to the top? In other words, how is it that we don’t still live in caves, don’t still chase large animals off of cliffs for our dinner, or don’t still behave like the hairy human beasts featured in dusty old museums? One large answer to that question is cooperation. Among the other hominids, we may not have been the strongest, the smartest, or even the most skilled at hunting, but we did leverage cooperation. By cooperating with each other, we built communities, we staved off the wolf at the door, and we helped each other realize our greatest potentials. So, according to that line of reasoning, we are here today because we maximized the skill of cooperation.
In the modern world, we foster that skill of cooperation in many important ways, but one biggie is through conferring with each other. We confer with family members, we confer with neighbors and friends, we confer with spiritual advisors, and so on. Whenever we’re uncertain what to do next, it is natural for us to confer with those that we trust the most. And in education, it’s exactly the same.
Parent/Teacher Conferences
Consider for a moment Parent/Teacher Conferences. Why do that? Why don’t we just send the kids to school, hope for the best, and live with the outcomes? Well…because there’s a better way. Teachers do a lot of work one-on-one with students, and much of that work is grounded in best practices. Teachers learn about what works for most students, and they apply it in the learning journey. But that’s not enough. Teachers need to know about family life, personal student interests and struggles, and when and how things in the classroom are or are not working. The most valuable way to gain insights about any child’s education includes trying to understand what goes on outside of the classroom. There is no One-Size-Fits-All method of teaching and learning, so Parent/Teacher conferences provide valuable insights and information about how to maximize a child’s learning. Without conferences, it would be business-as-usual, and that model doesn’t recognize the individuality of all human learners. It’s also a compact. It’s a time for parents and teachers to affirm the trust and care among the teacher, the student, and the family from which the student comes. It is critical and fruitful time spent for all parties.
The Little 10 Conference
Why do we compete against schools in Earlville, Kirkland, Newark, and the rest? Well, how fun would it be to only compete against other Royals? What would we learn? By bringing together talent from other districts, we learn many things other than the value of scoring points. We learn a sense of pride in what it means to be a Royal – yes, but we also learn that these communities are comprised of people like us. We all share the same values, we all grow from the wins and the losses against other competitors, and we all gain the insight that communities like ours care about their schools, their cultures, and their kids. Competition in the Little Ten Conference teaches us where we are strong and where we have room to grow. It teaches us that we all strive for glory, we have potential friends that live miles away from us, and we’re all bound under the same sets of rules from the IHSA. Teams cooperate within each other when they agree to play by a set of rules and regulations that keep competition exciting yet fair. Those are values that couldn’t be learned as well if we were to silo ourselves off and not interact with the communities within our conference.
The Triple I Conference
On 17 – 19 November, the Board of Education will meet in Chicago to participate in what is known as the Triple I Conference. It’s a yearly event where all 852 school districts in Illinois are invited to convene, learn, celebrate, and commiserate. That’s right – there are 851 other districts like our own HBR 429. They’re like us – but not exactly. Some are huge; some are tiny. Some are rural, some suburban, and some urban. They have their own distinct concerns, and they have concerns very similar to ours. When all of these districts come together under one roof, it’s a marvelous opportunity to learn from each other about how to approach common concerns.
As a sample of the topics up for discussion, we can attend sessions focused on:
Legislation How to Be a Better Board Member
Finances IHSA Rules and Regulations
DEI Collective Bargaining
Leadership Superintendent Evaluations
School Safety Public Service
Unconscious Bias Stewardship and Trust Building
These are just some of the opportunities that we’ll have to develop our professional skills, serve HBR 429 constituents and stakeholders, cooperate with each other, and generally improve how we dispatch the roles that our communities have elected us to do. It’s an exciting time to confer with others, learn from others, share with others, and foster the skills of cooperation that are so essential to good governance and growth.
One final point – as you may glean from the Board’s conferencing activities, your learning is never done. We Board members still have learning to do, and no matter what path you take in life, more learning will always be in the cards. Whether we work in the trades, a corporation, a small business, or indeed a school district, we always have something to teach and to learn when we just get together and cooperate.
~The Board of Education
