World Cafes for Superintendent Search

On November 1 and 3 - a colleague and I hosted two world cafe conversations in Port Townsend to front load (and slightly disrupt) the search process for a new superintendent of schools. Our community has declining enrollment and a history of selecting safe candidates who under utilize the community's assets...its knowledge, talent, and amazing volunteer base...so we'd like that to be different this time. At the AoH on Bowen Island in October, I hosted an Open Space session on designing good questions for this event...thanks to those who supported this effort, we used these questions: What could our school system also be? and What kind of leadership would take us there?....we had 48 people participate and it created a community buzz...now people want to talk together more often! Yeah...we harvested some big ideas about how to find a superintendent with values that match our community, someone who will engage in community and develop a more permeable space in our schools...people really care and want to participate.

As a relative newcomer to faciliation of World Cafes...I felt good about setting up the structures, ground rules, etc and want to improve my comfort with harvesting and not letting things drift into 'report out' also want to learn more about graphic recording...I appreciate the opportunity I had at AoH to practice with my esteemed colleagues...it was a good launching place.

The resources online for great visuals were amazing - we blew them up into poster size and participants noticed and liked them.

I want to work alongside others and go further with this...

Replies to This Conversation

Permalink Reply by Amanda Fenton on November 20, 2011 at 11:28pm

Thanks for sharing, Kristina! I echo the desire to improve in the graphic recording skills (I'll be attending this in Vancouver in January). And would love to hear about your next steps on "working alongside others and going further with this"!