World Care Questions- interim assignment

Hi Everyone,
Carol provided a comprehensive summary of where we are to date and tasks to be completed. We have made great progress to date. Paul Ouelette of the Northern RI Chamber of Commerce accepted an invitation from Donna to co-sponsor the World Café with us. Lisa secured the Blackstone Valley Theatre for January 9th and is looking into January 23rd as a snow date. Lisa is also working on a save the date and an invitation for the event. The list is being shared among all of us to populate with potential World café participants.

At the last meeting, we also agreed to begin an online dialogue about the questions for our World Café.

Carol provided a handout including questions we had initial agreement on at our meeting on October 6, 2009 including:

1) What would it look like if all community representatives partnered with schools to take mutual responsibility for student achievement?
2) How do I envision my role in the community where all adults clearly assume collective responsibility for every student’s success?
3) What would I contribute (knowledge, skills, experiences, human/program resources) to assist our community in supporting learning for all Cumberland students and/or town residents?
4) What are the opportunities/dilemmas in developing a partnership between all community members and the school department on behalf of the town students and residents?
5) What would it look like if every member of the community contributed to the education of our youth?
6) If our success was completely guaranteed as a Town Wide Learning Community what bold steps might we choose?

Other potential questions including how they can assist in moving the work forward might include:

7) What would it mean if Cumberland’s motto read: Cumberland a town where opportunities to learn are abundant? (defining the vision)
8) What would it look like if Cumberland were renown for being “a learning community” for all residents? (defining the vision)
9) How might we “band together” to contribute to a town wide learning community where learning is a priority for everyone? (defining the action)
10) If we were successful in creating Cumberland as a town wide learning community, how might we define learning? (creating a shared vision)
11) How can we collaborate and enhance our community assets by focusing on learning as a core component of our town’s culture? (defining the action)

You will note that there is some redundancy in the questions. Carol advised that we consider:
1) The scaffolding of the questions rather than sequence.
2) The questions should be independent yet related.
3) Consider key components or domains of inquiry. For example: I identified three potential domains within each set of questions:
a. Learning community defined (questions 1, 6, 7, 8, 10)
b. Contribution to the learning community (questions 2, 3, 5)
c. Collaboration within the learning community (questions 4, 9, 11)

Please review the questions. We need to have three questions for our World Café.
Please choose three from the list or generate others to post on the blog.

I would offer:
What would it look like if Cumberland were renown for being “a learning community” for all residents? (8)
What would I contribute (knowledge, skills, experiences, human/program resources) to assist our community in supporting learning for all Cumberland students and/or town residents? (3)
How can we collaborate and enhance our community assets by focusing on learning as a core component of our town’s culture? (11)

What are thoughts about these questions. Do you think they will help facilitate the work at our World Cafe? Will the questions help us engage the participants and identify next steps in our work?

I look forward to your ideas and the discussion.
Rosemary