Positioning Your Team's Attendance at the Assembly for Growth

Linked for Learning; Positioned for Growth is the overarching theme of the PEJE 2008 Assembly in Boston, April 6-8. It inspires us all to imagine how, through the power of collaborative learning on many levels and in many ways, we can ensure the growth of Jewish day schools.

This very same theme can also serve as the underlying motivation behind your school's attendance at the Assembly. It can inspire your school's leaders to come as a team, with three or four team members (e.g., Trustees, Board Chair, Heads, principals, division heads, curriculum supervisors, development director, financial manager, admission directors, etc.). The links they will forge with one another--before, during, and after the Assembly--can successfully position your school for continued growth in ways that align to your mission and strategic plan.

The concept of team attendance is deeply rooted in the design of the Assembly. Past experience has shown that when schools send multiple leaders, the benefits of attendance multiply many times over. More people translates into, for example, more sessions to attend, more networking to take place, more resources to discover, and more links to be made across schools and agencies. To encourage team attendance, PEJE offers a significant incentive: the larger the team, the deeper the discount on the total registration fee.

In order to maximize the experience, your team can take deliberate steps to (1) get ready for the Assembly, (2) make the most of the Assembly while there, and (3) translate knowledge into practice afterwards. Given its commitment to teams, PEJE has designed a variety of strategies to support these three, interrelated steps.

Getting Ready
Whether or not you your team has already registered for the Assembly, your school should be asking three key questions in preparation for April: Why? Who? How?

• Why? This question focuses on determining the many reasons for going. Clarify your school's needs and goals for continued growth.
• Who? The next question flows naturally from the first. Once the reasons are clear, then who needs to be part of the team? Borrowing from Jim Collins's book Good to Great, you might ask: "Are the right people on the 'bus' to the Assembly?" Be sure to think about both professional and key volunteer leaders.
• How? As a next logical question, once goals are set and team members are identified, how will the team spend its valuable time at the Assembly? What will they chose from the cornucopia of opportunities (e.g., plenary sessions, concurrent sessions, networking times, meals)?

 Team Planning Tool

While at the Assembly
Based on the plan your team will develop prior to the Assembly, you might decide to "divide and conquer" to make take full advantage of as many of the rich learning opportunities as possible. If so, your team will need ways to intermittently check in with one another while at the Assembly in order to:

• Share:
  
  • what you have been learning in terms of your school's needs and goals
  • the resources you have been gathering
  • the names of people and schools you want to link to
  • the PEJE initiatives you want to follow up with (e.g., CoPs)
• Modify your plan, as needed
• Plan ahead for sharing with the school

PEJE will support these efforts in three ways. First, PEJE will provide a check-in tool which will give your team a way to share, modify, and plan. Elliot Eisner, the respected education professor at Stanford University, once said, "ideas are slippery." That's why PEJE will be supplying teams with a tool to record their ideas before they slip away. Second, PEJE is building times into the schedule for school touch-base sessions. Third, you won't have to figure out where your team should meet. PEJE will have a designated area where you can congregate, furnished with comfortable couches, refreshments, and internet access to immediately share with your school what you are learning.

Turning Ideas into Action After the Assembly
The three days your team is at the Assembly will position your school for continued growth afterwards. Starting immediately, and continuing well into the future, you will be able to draw on the links you made during the Assembly as you translate ideas into practice.

Many of the ongoing PEJE initiatives will serve as direct follow-up links to the Assembly, for example:

• PEJE Communities of Practice (CoPs)
• LeadershipLine for consulting
• Frequently updated website
• Regional conferences
• Hadashot V'Hidushim, PEJE's monthly newsletter
• Grants

PEJE will continue to provide you with information about initiatives, invite you to upcoming events, and notify you of updates on new opportunities. Watch for a planning tool, so that you can review the many opportunities, select those that link to your school's needs, set goals identify liaisons (at the school and at PEJE), and document what is happening.

We all know that sending a team to the Assembly as a team is an investment of time and money on the part of your school. It demonstrates your school's commitment to excellence. Because PEJE wants to see this investment pay huge dividends, we, in turn, are committed linking to all of your team efforts before, during, and after the Assembly.