“Are you with me now” A J Ryder
Once again, my time in Winnipeg with our schools and the entire Seven Oaks school district showed me how the differences make the difference. One difference was that for 22 years, Brian O’Leary was a progressive superintendent where among many other initiatives that included the start of 3 BPL schools, he also successfully transitioned the on-going work to his successor Tony Kreml as Brian assumed the role of Deputy Minister of Education of Manitoba. Not only that but the board of Seven Oaks District has been one that supported and continues to support all sorts of innovative initiatives, including ones around their indigenous community.
In all the years, I’ve been in this work, I haven’t witnessed anything like this anywhere. Not only that but think about that starting last year, the largest division (district) in Winnipeg also has a new superintendent, Matt Henderson who was also deputy superintendent in Seven Oaks when Brian was Superintendent. Sonn and I will be working in both districts this coming year as well as having discussions at the provincial level. And Carlos will be there in October doing a book talk. Our relationship has spanned 15 years and now the potential for influence in districts and the province has never been higher both in the k-12 school space and the out of school space a la B-Unbound. Yes, there is a lot of work to do but one indicator of their commitment to BPL is that there were loads of people coming Winnipeg to the 30th Anniversary of BPL’s Big Bang in Providence. They can’t wait.
“Staying small is as important as starting small” Ted Sizer
Decades ago Ted told Dennis and I that BPL will have 80 people working there in 6 months. At that time, we both told him that it would not happen. We wanted to stay close to the ground and did not want to manage a large org that would take us away from direct support. This issue of getting bigger was one of the main reasons for the transition to Carlos and Andrew seven years ago, who were ready to take on the difficult work of going to scale at a human scale. The recent on boarding of so many new wonderful staff at BPL puts us close to 50 full-time people and Ted’s note is all the more important because it is a reality. How do you stay small as you get big? This is one of the many challenges BPL faces in the coming years and it is a good one to have at 29 years and counting.
Photo from NY Times
This is a photo of the Klamath River that runs through California and Oregon. For decades the Klamath salmon run barely existed but now the removal of four dams have opened up the 430-mile river to the salmon and all who live there. It is the largest dam removal in US history.
“The Klamath area tribes kicked off an aggressive campaign to remove the dams, collaborating with scientists, environmental organizations and commercial fishermen, who together wrote letters, staged rallies and traveled as far away
as Scotland to protest outside the headquarters of ScottishPower, which owned the dams at the time.”
This effort started 22-years ago and is near complete. It will take years if not decades to get the ecosystem back to a semblance of what it was but I can’t help but think about the metaphor to our Upstream work regarding how it takes an entire community’s buy-in to make the changes. Nope not just schools but the entire community.
Be well.
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