In Anticipation – Project Zero Sydney

This is not something that I have done before, blog prior to an event, but I am seriously excited about this one – Project Zero Sydney. You can follow the event at #pzsyd.

I’m excited for lots of reasons but principally because it is for teachers, by teachers. No-one will be lecturing or pontificating, telling people to consult this toolkit or that, flog this evidence or that, just practitioners generously sharing their practice and their research about what is making a difference for learners in their classrooms. Sessions are two hours in duration and the expectation is for them to be fully interactive and for participants to be able to take away strategies or ideas, challenge thinking and norms constructively and consider how what they discover could be adapted for their unique contexts.

The other emphasis that appeals to me is that there is plenty of time to share stories and think together. By building this into the sessions, rich and important narrative will likely form that expresses our excitement about teaching, articulates the challenges we face and presents opportunities to think through possible solutions together, at the personal, classroom or organisational level.

It will also be an opportunity to pause, reflect and remember that our profession is a great one. Not an easy one, but a great one. At the grass roots level, there are some extraordinarily good things happening in classrooms and schools that sometimes fly below the radar or go ignored in favour of the latest fad. These great practices deserve to be surfaced and shared. People’s research and emerging evidence should also be celebrated and their voices heard above the cacophony of education speak.

At times or events like #pzsyd I reflect on this from Gert Biesta:

“We live in impatient times … the call to make education strong, secure, predictable, and risk-free is an expression of this impatience.”

An education is a wonderful thing. Spending valuable time together dialoguing, thinking, planning and sharing what makes, or can make it good and make a difference is really worthwhile. Equally, challenging dogma’s that hold back dialogue or policies which make education a challenge and deprofessionalise us are important to have too. I sense this will b a great event and will blog more fully about it next week.

 

One thought on “In Anticipation – Project Zero Sydney

  1. You are describing a rare and wonderful thing in our jobs: “the time to share stories and think together.” I’m very excited about attending this event, and you’ve bumped up my anticipation.

    On the flight from the Sunshine Coast, and in mental preparation for this event, I was reading Ron Ritchhart’s “Creating Cultures of Learning.” I kept rereading the chapter on time, and this quote about the benefits of instructional wait time (from Mary Budd Rowe) jumped out: “To grow a complex thought system requires a great deal of shared experience and conversation. It is in talking about what we have done and observed, and in arguing about what we make of our experiences, that ideas multiply, become refined, and finally produce new questions and further explorations.”

    Though written in 1986 about another topic, it sounded exactly like my hopes for the next few days.

    Thanks for your post; it was a great “night before” read.

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