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Teachers around a table, honing their craft. That’s the scene Bill Keller describes in today’s New York Time’s article about new kinds of teacher training.
Honing a craft means asking tough questions, like: “What worked? What missed the mark? Did the student get it? And what does that mean? Does ‘get it’ mean getting an answer?
This week, we’ve been gathered around Jonas’ dinning room table trying to hone our craft. We think of it as our change craft.
Between us, we’ve prototyped and launched new services & products with and for families, older people, socially isolated folks, homeless youth, and people facing a disability. But, just like the teachers, we wonder if we’ve focussed too much on the ‘it’. On a single solution. Rather than on the underlying systems and structures that are at the root of so many entrenched social challenges.
Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be experimenting with a new approach. With teams organized around multiple user groups: people on-the-ground, and professionals & policymakers in the system. With projects that start small, by collecting stories, to test the water for bigger and longer-term change. With new kinds of partnerships, contracts, and routines too.
We want to share all of our hunches, hiccups, and happenings here. Well, just as soon as we get our website up and running.
That’s what’s keeping us busy these days. We’re building a website that will allow us to openly share our thinking, our doing, and our many iterations. Along the way, we’re also trying out some fresh ways to organize ourselves, distribute work, and give and get feedback from one another. We want to be as intentional and reflective with our internal workings as with our project work.
So here’s a little glimpse at some of our internal workings, week #1.
Our first week from InWithForward on Vimeo.