How Lynn Sawyer and Lindsay Prendergast Are Changing the Goal of the Typical Workshop We’ve all been there. You attend a workshop, the kind that sparks fresh ideas and opens doors to new possibilities. The excitement in the room is palpable, educators are inspired, and strategies that could change the way students learn are shared. We leave energized and return back to the classroom.   But then something happens. Life back at school gets in the way. The day-to-day routines, meetings, and endless to-do lists begin to pile up, and the excitement slowly fades. "Both supervisors and teachers want the supervisory process to result in positive interactions and continuous growth in practice." - Lynn Sawyer Whether you're an educator or a consultant, this is a challenge we all strive to overcome. We see it time and time again: workshops that ignite enthusiasm but don’t always translate into lasting action. It’s not for lack of trying. Educators are passionate, committed, and eag

Does the following checklist look, or sound, familiar to you? Pedagogical focus for the following school year is agreed upon Professional Development dates are confirmed on the calendar The amazing workshop leader or consultant is booked Teachers implement what they learned on the PD day(s) in their classrooms to enhance student learning How often do you check ALL of the boxes? Which box is typically the most important? Which box is the one typically left unchecked? Why? And more importantly, how can we improve in this area? My guess is that most of us, if not all of us, agree that the final box for the questions above proves to be the most challenging. But why? The bottom line is that without the chance to continue learning about the topic and actively using the tools/strategies delivered during the PD sessions, people simply revert back to what they have in the existing toolbox because they haven’t truly experienced deep learning of the content presented. So, how can we provide for

I like to talk to people about what systems, structures, and platforms they use to help their teams collaborate, learn, and problem-solve.  It doesn't really matter if I'm talking with trainers, consultants, or educators. I usually hear something like this: "We have our (training) courses inside of  ( INSERT NAME OF LMS HERE) . And, then we collaborate every week on  ( INSERT ZOOM, SLACK, GOOGLE MEET, ETC) " When did we start thinking / saying this?  Was this a prevalent phrase pre-pandemic? I don't remember hearing it then. (Perhaps I wasn't listening.) It's certainly a common paradigm now. More importantly, what impact does its arrival have on the way we structure our team's environments? For starters, it brings up a few odd questions. Aren't we naturally better learners when we collaborate? Aren't we better collaborators when we're learning along the way? Don't we do one better when we incorporate the other? When we think of the syst

Consider this post an invitation to engage for every AI expert seeking to transform the way teams and organizations learn. We consider ourselves AI enthusiasts, but not experts - and we are in need of advice and support from those higher up the ladder. These days, organizational learning is a pretty dynamic space. Everyone's abuzz with AI - and for good reason. Every day, it's linking content and context in fantastic new ways. The content has always been there.  It's the context piece that makes AI so exciting - and also its biggest challenge. How can we get AI to become ever more intelligent about "our" context? How can AI help generate solutions and feedback that are contextualized to what "we" need?   To transform learning with AI, most people are seeking to answer the following question: How can we leverage AI to capture all the relevant data in our learning ecosystem?   We're asking a different question. How can we reimagine the learning ecosys