For instance:

Is a practice really “best” if we don’t study what actually happens when it lands inside of the rooms where students learn and work?

And what do we mean by fidelity? Can we truly achieve it well without asking, “What happened here? What did this intervention do in this space, with these people, in this context? What does it make sense to do next?”

And who gets to decide what’s best? What’s next? What makes sense?

What the Research Actually Tells Us

A recent meta-analysis of motivation interventions in education (Lazowski & Hulleman, 2016) examined 92 field studies with over 38,000 participants. The findings were notable: motivation interventions had an average effect size of 0.49. That’s pretty impressive for educational interventions.

Something of particular interest: The researchers found that quasi-experimental designs—studies where researchers were embedded in contexts, adapting and studying what actually happened—showed larger effects than the more rigorous randomized controlled trials.

They write: “Teachers often lack the research expertise necessary to adapt emerging principles from the research literature, and researchers often underestimate the complexity of classrooms because they are not fully embedded within school contexts.”

Translation: Research conducted in one context doesn’t automatically translate to every classroom, every community, every learner. And when we fail to study what’s actually happening in our spaces with our people, we miss everything that matters.

The authors of this study are clear: “Research conducted in one context with specific populations doesn’t automatically translate into every classroom, every community, every child. And when we fail to study what’s actually happening in our spaces with our students, we miss everything that matters.”

Was I surprised to read any of this? Nope.

This is why I’ve been so passionate about pedagogical documentation for nearly two decades now.

The Problem We’re Not Naming

Inexperienced facilitators measure success by the number of “likes” they rack up. Did people clap? Thank them? Leave good reviews? Did they gain more followers on social? Gain invitations to bigger and bigger stages? Raise their rates without pushback? Get invited back?

Those with more experience wonder: Did teachers complete the protocol? Did they follow the steps? Did they produce the expected deliverable? Is it high quality, when compared to whatever model was shared?

We monitor fidelity to the intervention but not fidelity to people, place, or greater context.

And when local experiences don’t match the research predictions? When teachers struggle to make it work in their specific contexts with their specific students?

We don’t tend to get curious. We don’t document what’s happening so we can reflect and gain insight together. We don’t gather evidence about what this intervention actually does in this particular space, what it doesn’t do, and why that might be.

We just push harder.

Because at best, we’ve been trained to position ourselves as helpers rather than facilitators. We’ve never learned how to learn alongside the people we serve.

What Changes When We Document Our Local Reality

Everything I understand about facilitation, I learned through documentation.

It was documentation that helped me see how an intervention I was certain would work actually confused teachers in one district while energizing teachers in another. Same intervention. Same me. Completely different outcomes because the contexts were different.

It was documentation that showed me the small group that didn’t complete my carefully designed protocol wasn’t off-task. Ha! Yeah, they were having a breakthrough conversation about a problem that I didn’t even know existed in their building.

It was documentation that revealed how what I thought was “going well” in a session was actually leaving half the room behind.

When professional learning facilitators capture what’s actually happening in a learning context rather than what they hoped would happen they create evidence they can’t ignore.

Unless they choose to, of course.

It’s a beautiful thing when the research we’re attuned to illuminates what’s happening in our own small world. In my experience, it’s documentation that helps us better understand where our context, our educators, and our community requires something the research didn’t anticipate.

Lazowski and Hulleman argue for exactly this kind of work in their conclusion, stating, “When combined with other methods, intervention research provides the opportunity for researchers to create a set of recommendations for practices based on appropriate scientific evidence. Without intervention research, educational researchers are needlessly left on the sidelines when educators ask, ‘What should I do now in my classroom based on your research?’”

I’d take it even further: In the absence of documentation, facilitators are left on the sidelines when the educators they serve ask, “Why didn’t this work for me?”

Worse? They’re tempted to pull on their title, authority, positionality, or power as they offer damaging responses. I’ve heard them a million or more times over the last twenty years: Well they don’t know what they don’t know and they just aren’t ready for change and bad systems beat good people every day and they haven’t achieved fidelity yet and the kids aren’t holding their pencils right and they aren’t choosing their own paper and their mini-lessons are too short are too long aren’t rooted in the use of the right mentor text the mentor text is too short too long too complex not complex enough it’s fiction when it should be non-fiction and standards ruin everything and data do great harm but data are really just information and documenting our learning is a data driven approach and well if it is you’re likely doing it wrong and of course we are.

Of course we are and OH MY SWEET CHEESE AND CRACKERS people. Enough already. Aren’t we sick of ourselves yet?

The Facilitator’s Unique Responsibility

Here’s what we have to sit with: One teacher affects 25-150 students a year. One facilitator shapes the practice of hundreds of educators who collectively influence thousands of children.

When we deliver promising practices without documenting and studying what happens, we’re not just missing an opportunity to improve our practice. We’re potentially doing harm at scale.

I can’t help but feel that it’s our responsibility to learn beside those who hire us. To become students of our own practice and the contexts we serve within. To document what happens when this intervention meets this group of educators in this district at this moment. To study that evidence with the people we’re learning beside. To adapt based on what we’re actually seeing, not just what the research predicted we’d see.

This requires what I call integrity and reciprocity in the ASPIRE framework. We must be willing to learn from participants’ local knowledge rather than simply positioning ourselves as the helpers with all of the answers. And it also requires accountability. We have to be willing to gather evidence about our impact and act on what that evidence reveals.

What This Actually Looks Like

Interested in making some small moves that matter without overwhelming yourself? There are four specific documentation approaches that are not difficult to implement but very rewarding to use.

• An assumption audit challenges you to think about the people and the situation you’re about to enter, list all of your assumptions ahead of your first engagement, and then, document what you actually learn during the process and what you’re still unsure about after.

• A critical incident analysis inspires you to document those moments where the energy shifts in the room, within people, or between them. Then, you consider the potential impact of those moments or what they might reveal.

• Analytic memos hold you accountable for documenting what’s happening, what you’re noticing, and what you’re wondering as sessions unfold.

• Data triangulation nudges you to draw conclusions from different kinds of evidence, drawn from very different sources. Documenting what you see and hear during task development, what you hear when people talk amongst themselves and with you, and what you notice about behavioral tendencies in single moments and over time. Checking your saturation levels here can help you determine how the evidence you’re gathering may be imbalanced and how you might do better.

You’ll find detailed explorations of each approach in this documentation notebook. It’s the same one that I’m using in my own work on the ground this year. I keep a separate notebook for each system and project I support. Purchase once and replicate as often as you need.

This isn’t about adding more work. It’s about shifting your identity as a facilitator just a bit. It’s about realizing that you aren’t the expert there to help people achieve fidelity. And you aren’t there to monitor compliance, either. You’re there to study the consequences and impact of the choices you make, beside administrators and teachers who are doing the same.

That hits a bit differently, right?

Need more support? I have a few invitations for you.

The Intentional Facilitator cohort launching this spring is built around this exact practice and so many more. We’re not just learning facilitation theory. We’re planning to document our own learning in our actual contexts. We’re studying what happens when our interventions meet reality. We’re developing the skills to make our practice evidence-informed by committing to own manageable action research.

For district and regional leaders: I also have space for one sustained partnership and a few shorter engagements for spring 2026-spring 2027. If you’re implementing new initiatives and need help building the capacity to study what’s actually happening in your context, let’s talk. My approach centers documentation as the tool for understanding and improving implementation, no matter what you’re trying to achieve. It’s helped many districts improve performance on standardized assessments while reducing reliance on those practices that do little to engage students—or teachers—well. Documentation is also necessary to pursuing the vision of New York Inspires creatively, coherently, and in ways that don’t rupture already brittle systems and the people who make them run. I have plenty of receipts here, and I’m glad to connect you to others I’ve worked with in the past.

Individuals and groups may also want to try a 90 Day Documentation Project. This invitation is open to individuals from all walks who want to develop a documentation practice in their own unique context. Thirty-minute exploratory calls are free, and they aren’t about selling you on anything. Oftentimes, people speak with me to learn that they aren’t a good fit for the invitations I’m extending. No pressure at all. Promise. Just reach out.

So Here’s Where I’m Landing

Lazowski and Hulleman conclude their meta-analysis with a call for “researcher-practitioner collaborations that utilize the tools of improvement science to address important practical problems.”

Facilitators shouldn’t wait for researchers to partner with us, though.

We need to become rigorous students of our own practice and the contexts we serve.

We need to document what happens in the small, local spaces where we work.

We need to study that evidence with the people we’re learning beside.

We need to let what we learn change what we do next.

The research tells us what can work. Only our close study of what happens within our local contexts can tell us what does work, though. Here, now, with our people, in our communities.

We can do this work. Reach out if you’d like a good friend in it.

For days.

No one will ever facilitate professional learning the way that Giselle and her entire team at Learner Center Initiatives facilitated professional learning. And I’m confident that when I’m old and gray, my memories of time spent in their collective orbit will remain most precious to me.

My heart, I was so fortunate to come up in this field when I did.

There are a handful of moments that return to me from my brief time in Giselle’s orbit. Each one shifted my thinking deeply. Each built and shaped my identity as a professional learning facilitator, too.

Giselle always pushed us to pull critical friends around us, engage in peer review, and learn how to better surface and interrogate our assumptions. She was a researcher and a dedicated photographer. She was a business owner and a mom. She was discerning and disarming. Her vision of what schools and learning could be was sharp. Her legacy? Luminous and enduring.

I’m a well connected educator, and I’ve built my network with intention. I show up, I contribute consistently, and I’m committed to my own learning. I have yet to meet anyone who facilitated my learning as well as Giselle once did.

In the absence of her very human influence on my professional growth, there is one accessible and powerful practice that has made a meaningful difference: pedagogical documentation. If you keep up with my posts here, then you know that I spoke to some very specific documentation protocols on Sunday, as I reflected on the moves that I made in 2025 that prevented my own burnout.

One of them is called an assumption audit. This is a documentation approach that challenges us to name and notice our assumptions at work inside of the contexts we lead within. It offers a framework for unpacking them, too. I describe it here.

So often, when we speak about facilitation, we focus on the importance of discovery work, purposeful design, skillful and engaging execution, and even the assessment of achieved outcomes. We rarely discuss the importance of becoming what Dr. John Hattie calls students of our own teaching. This is what Giselle constantly invited us to do, and as I’m missing her more than ever right now, I thought I’d extend that invitation to you. I hope it chips away at your certainty in the very best ways and surfaces some unexpected goodness that shifts your perspective and makes you even better at what you do.

Or maybe…even…who you are. That’s what I think Giselle did for anyone who had the good fortune to learn from her. She didn’t just leave them better equipped. She left them better. Period.

If you give the assumption audit a whirl, I hope you’ll reach out to let me know how it served you. I hope its of good use during these turbulent times.

Happy new year, all! I’ll see you next week.

Exclusively.

I can honestly characterize every leader I am currently working with in this way.

These are people who partner with me to do complex work. When I say they partner with me, I mean that they expect me to bring expertise that they may not have. And they’re honest about that. They collaborate with me. They trust me. And? They consistently offer me the insights I need to serve them and those they care about as well as I possibly can.

As you might expect, this isn’t always the case.

It’s not uncommon for me to find myself in the company of authoritative and managerial leaders who confuse authenticity and empathic leadership with weakness. And that’s never an easy thing, but it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker, either.

If you facilitate professional learning too, I wonder: How do you broker productive and mutually respectful partnerships with leaders who maintain such controlled postures? What matters? What serves?

Yesterday was the last gathering of the fall cohort of my new online course, The Intentional Facilitator. We spent this final hour exploring common challenges in our work, and I was honest about one of my greatest: Beyond simply knowing the stuff people count on me to know, empathy and authenticity are my greatest strengths. They’re also what make me most vulnerable to those who view collaboration as capitulation and humility as naiveté.

Program design and skilled facilitation require precision and care. My very best mentors here know how to decenter themselves. They hold expertise without imposing it. They design experiences around protocols that create equity, ensure total participation, and make space for divergent, emergent, and convergent thinking to unfold. They position themselves as learners beside—rather than leaders over—others. These are the people who, once upon a time, made me realize that I was a good teacher. Some of them are the same people who still remind me that my ideas and work have worth, that I can be of use to others, and that I know how to solve hard problems. All by myself. I don’t need them to do that for me.

This is what good facilitation does—it illuminates, uncovers, honors, and aligns different competencies. Different kinds of genius. All in service to a shared vision.

I can see how some may register this as absence rather than presence. When the professional development “provider” isn’t performing authority? When they’re not being boss? Climbing pedestals or ivory towers? Well, I know it’s easy to mistake that kind of restraint for lack of rigor in expectations and perhaps, professional relationships too. How do I know this? Because I’m guilty of making these assumptions myself.

In my experience, it’s authenticity and empathy that nurture that kind of rigor, though. Being boss? Performing authority? That might garner a following for a while, but it rarely builds trust or nurtures a gradual but very deliberate release of responsibility. And independence is the goal, right? Facilitators aren’t the heroes in any professional learning adventure. The participants are. We’re allies. At best, we’re guides.

Even if and when we think we’re somehow more.

This points me toward another challenge that facilitators like me often face: When we exit systems led by authoritative or managerial leaders, we risk the undoing of all that was accomplished unless we’re able to build real trust with those people, too.

In these cases, I find it helpful to shoot from the hip as early in our relationship as possible. I try to be transparent about my leadership style, how I design professional learning experiences, and how I facilitate them. I’m honest about how I handle skepticism, disengagement, resistance, and even rude participants. I explain the intentions behind my approaches. I speak to what empathy looks and sounds like. How I think it’s important to get to know the people I will be working with. That I make it my mission to truly—sincerely—like them. Befriend them.

Because I live on the road. Out of suitcases. On planes and trains.

Life is short, and most of my friends are far-flung. I make new ones wherever I go. Wherever I work.

Because in the end, like Ram Dass said, we’re all just walking each other home.

Relationships are everything.

That’s why I try to reveal how and why I move the way that I do early on in my experiences with more authoritative leaders. I try to do this before I know much about their style or why it exists. I do it before there is any reason for them to assume that I’m reacting to anything they may or may not have done that participants do or do not approve of.

It’s incredibly difficult holding a high bar, attending to accountability, and imposing consequences inside of systems whenever that’s necessary. And I know that it is. That’s also rarely my work.

I’m well aware of the fact that my ability to lead with empathy and authenticity is quite privileged.

If I want to do good work, I have to be able to move this way, though. More importantly? If I want to be comfortable in my own skin, I have to be able to move this way. That also means I have to be authentic and empathetic with those who don’t enjoy that particular privilege. For me, this isn’t merely about taking care not to throw the people I partner with under some bus. It’s about seeing those people, better understanding them, and earning my place beside them in the work they’ve invited me into.

Like I said, I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with experienced, savvy, and empathetic school district and building leaders this year. This isn’t always the case.

And that actually makes for good learning. Professionally. Personally.

It’s not always a bad thing.

If you’re a professional learning facilitator too, I hope you’ll share your thoughts about all of this.

It’s complicated stuff. More and more often though, I’m realizing that this is what often makes the work with doing and the life worth living, no?

Note: I’m not speaking about abusive leaders here. Another post for another day, perhaps. I’ll think on that…

When I stay conscious here? I spend most of each day feeling pretty grateful. When I don’t? I’m anxious, irritable, and even depressed.

The context doesn’t matter.

Here’s how I know: Over the last several weeks, I’ve been making, learning, and messing around in seemingly dissimilar spaces. I’ve been doing a lot of work on the ground in K-12 classrooms, in my own virtual undergraduate classroom, in the Intentional Facilitator, and in Canva (designing content for lots of people and some of you). I’ve spent a ton of time with family and friends. There were events to plan and holidays to enjoy, and there are even more in front of me. People are messy. Life is gloriously complicated. That’s actually the point. Imagine if it weren’t?

One question that keeps coming up in very different rooms I enter: What should we do when we discover that we’ve set inappropriate expectations? Well, you give me a call and we commiserate, that’s what. Ideally, over some sort of carbohydrate. I promise this will make you feel better. See, I am the queen of ridiculously high expectations, and even though I know they ruin everything, I still find myself all kinds of surprised when all manner of people and experiences fail to rise as I hope they will.

I’m so serious when I tell you this, though: Shattered expectations are always such a gift.

Here’s why:

When people don’t present or respond the way I thought they might, it forces me to interrogate my expectations…my…if you will…standards. Academic, personal, or otherwise. And that is never a bad thing.

When my expectations are shattered, I have to get very clear about what I was hoping for and more importantly why I was hoping for this.

And then? I often need to consider what the progression toward that standard demands of the people I’m trying to show up for, personally or professionally. Including myself. So, I do this. And then, I share it—because clear is kind. Often, I try to tuck it between words like these: “I expected X, and I’m noticing Y. I’m wondering how to be more considerate of everyone involved here. I’d love your ideas.”

And yikes on bikes, do I learn a ton this way.

This framing has been really useful, whether I’m trying to resolve a problem with a friend or family member, invite a learner to behave differently, or ask an administrator to rethink strategic plans or program outcomes with me.

Gold.

I also withhold the progression I’m imagining until those ideas are shared and considered. They often refine it. They make it far better.

And that progression? It isn’t something I slap on a slide or a chart. It isn’t a scale that I pin people to or evaluate them against. It’s a cognitive continuum that helps me attune my words and actions to our collective needs, without compromising our integrity, dignity, values, or vision.

The best part about expecting my expectations to be shattered? Each time they are, I squint. My vision sharpens. My heart softens. I realize I simply cannot be the problem solver, because it does no one any good. Quitting on people doesn’t either, though.

Shattered expectations make me a far better friend, partner, and facilitator—when I remember to be grateful for them.

They make me love people and life a whole lot more, most days.

Are there deal breakers? For sure. I know where my boundaries lie, and I’ll bet that if you’re reading this, you do, too.

But everything else? It’s messy, human, and heartfelt stuff. I often get it wrong—just last week, I cyber-snapped at someone who meant no harm. I was feeling a bit ragged that day. I said so. Apologized. It was accepted.

Messy is what makes us real. Real family. Real friends. Real colleagues.

Come what may.

It’s everything.

So.

For real, now: I am loving every minute of this new adventure, and especially the parts where I am getting to know everyone in the community that gathered around it. I feel like I should send personal thank you cards to every single one of them for showing up so consistently and continuing to stoke our collective curiosities about this very rewarding (but also a teeny tiny bit challenging especially right now) work that we all do.

If you’re a professional learning facilitator yourself, then you know this much is true: We’re actually just a bunch of empathy-fueled caregivers who often need a bit of TLC ourselves, and it is nearly impossible to find.

So, that’s why I’m doing this particular thing during this particular season.

This week’s conversation was all about how we might measure and report our impact. As someone who spent many years making this far more complicated than it needs to be, it was good to share a simple approach before diving into the complexities. If you do what I do, then you might appreciate it, too.

Here’s a step-by-step (alt-text):

And a few responses to frequently asked questions:

• What if I’m only visiting with people for a single hour or day, and there is no opportunity to follow-up? I always extend these invitations myself by making my weekly office-hour appointment calendar available to everyone at the end of our face-to-face gathering, encouraging them to email me themselves so I can check-in via email replies at different intervals following our time together, and inviting them to remain connected to me in various online spaces. While this demands a great deal from me in terms of time and social media presence, it’s worth the effort. A fringe benefit: I’m often able to connect people across systems, growing their learning networks and making everyone less dependent on me. I account for this level of availability and sustained personal attention in my fee structures and tend to serve fewer systems far better than I might otherwise each year as well.

• How do participants share their responses to these questions to make for easy data interpretation? I often use sticky notes when I’m on site because they invite divergent thinking and iteration, slowing the roll toward hard and fast (and often incomplete or inaccurate) conclusions. Sticky notes also protect identity and allow for anonymity, which builds trust. Whenever I use them, I cluster, categorize/code, and count during session breaks and lunch. This helps me notice important trends and even quantify responses when its useful. Digital survey tools are helpful, too. I like Google Surveys, Jotform, Qualtrics, and Mentimeter.

• How do I report on my impact? I always send summary, findings, and recommendations reports. Recently, my friend Dr. Ann Marie Luce inspired me to begin creating video shorts that offer a 2-3 minute multimedia progress reports. Here, I weave together teacher and student work samples, video and audio recordings, and images of artifacts gleaned from my engagements with faculty, staff, and students. Early data is suggesting that district and building leaders appreciate these much. They can also be repurposed for caregiver communication purposes, added to school websites and newsletters, and shared during board of education updates. A better approach? Photovoice. Another post for another day, which inspires me to end on this note:

While these simple approaches typically yield meaningful results and the production of compelling findings—even in the context of facilitating sustained work—pedagogical documentation, dedicated action research, and the combined use of qualitative and quantitative data can help us gain greater confidence in the conclusions we’re drawing. Those participating in the Intentional Facilitator were left with greater invitations here, including the opportunity to meet with me 1:1 during an office hour intended to shape their own assessment plans, if that’s their wish.

Eager to learn more? Register now for the spring cohort of the Intentional Facilitator. And keep an eye on this space, too. The playbacks of all five fall sessions will be available soon, as well as The Intentional Facilitator Playbook—a substantial eBook that accompanied the course. It includes a robust set of tools and protocols that I’ve designed and tested myself as well as links out to my favorite practitioners and their incredible work. If you’re unable to commit to the spring cohort, you might appreciate these resources and their embedded tools.

See you next Wednesday, all!

And the answer is no. No—I’m good. More importantly: I have very strong feelings about vague-booking (on any platform, truly), and so I take care not to do it. I’m a pretty direct girl who knows that clear is kind (thank you, Katie). If something really needs to be said, I’m straight about it—even when it leaves me feeling a bit vulnerable. And if it doesn’t need to be said? I zip it.

I shared that Insta post because we’re about to dive into Session 4 of the fall offering of the Intentional Facilitator, and that session is all about problem-solving. If you facilitate professional learning in any space, then you know this much is true: The challenges we face are often uncommon, and the resources we need to meet them well can be hard to find.

I’m facing one such challenge right now: A team I’m eager to build trust with clearly does not trust me. This hurts my heart, but my brain reminds me that really now? They shouldn’t trust me. They barely know me, and y’all? HAVE YOU EVEN SEEN THE HIJINKS SOME PROFESSIONAL LEARNING “PROVIDERS” PERFORM ACROSS MULTIPLE SYSTEMS OVER MULTIPLE YEARS WITHOUT NARY AN APOLOGY FOR DOING SO MUCH HARM?

Leaves me reeling some days, I’m telling you.

And this isn’t new trauma, but it is especially costly in this particular season we’re all trying to survive.

So yeah, they don’t trust me. And they shouldn’t. But, I really want to earn their trust, and that’s not because I need the contract or want to stay there any longer than necessary. It’s because I truly believe I can be of use—if they’ll have me. I enjoy being of use, caring for people, and making new friends in the field. So, do I have a personal stake in this? Of course I do. Money has little to do with it. Belonging? Agency? Adding value? Having a positive impact? Those things mean a great deal to me.

“Just be patient,” my better angels tell me, and patience is a virtue, but understanding the psychology of change management? Well, that’s something I actually pay someone to help me understand.

I’ve worked with a psychotherapist for years, and by years, I mean two decades. I’ll remain committed to this particular work until my dying day, and I’m confident that when that moment comes, I’ll have fewer regrets than the average human might.

It’s not about perfection. It’s about intention. Mindfulness. Deepening my humanity.

And here’s an outrageous statement that will likely lose me followers here: I firmly believe that anyone who calls themselves a leader in any capacity would do well to make a similar commitment, too.

Humans are messy, we all have baggage—every one of us—and we need to carry it well if we can’t release it entirely. Otherwise? We end up dragging it into nearly every room we enter.

Here is one of the single most important lessons I’ve learned: Trust isn’t transactional. It’s something I earn through consistency, through showing up as my actual self—flaws included—and through my willingness to do my own work even when (especially when) it’s hard.

That’s where the ASPIRE framework comes in. Have a peek:

This challenge I’m facing with this team? It’s where accountability, purpose, integrity, reciprocity, and equity converge. If I’m eager for people to trust me, I have to be accountable to my own growth. This framework is a reflective tool that keeps me curious. It helps me find better problems to solve, ask better questions, and chase better solutions—with others.

It also helps me figure out where I need to do better.

For instance, if I’m asking these people to engage in this work with me, our purposes need to be shared and crystal clear—we’re not there yet. Maybe I need to ask everyone right aloud: What will it take to get there? Their skepticism is legitimate. It’s fair.

Patience is a virtue, but the way I show up? Respond? Hang in? Well. I have some more reflecting and thoughtful planning to do.

I can pretend to be an authority, and it’s easy to go there where you have influence. Social capital. A following. A teeny bit of power.

Credibility is something entirely different, and trust? Well, that’s a higher bar.

It’s hard, messy, heartbreaking stuff. But if we commit? We grow. We find our people, too. And our fit.

That’s the deal. That’s always been the deal.

Glad to be in this work with you. See you next Wednesday.

Welcome!

I’m Angela, and I facilitate professional learning experiences for K-16 educators, non-profits, and near-peers who operate in spaces that are similar and adjacent to education. I spent four years as a BOCES facilitator serving 26 component school districts before founding a writing studio for teachers and kids and stepping into my own independent consulting work in 2008. If you’re looking for my elevator pitch, this is it (for now—perfect is the enemy of done, y’all): I help literacy-minded educators solve high stakes problems in their unique contexts. This means I usually commit to the systems I serve for quite some time (or as long as they’ll have me), and we align curriculum, instructional practices, assessments, reporting systems and report cards to one another and a far greater good in terms of purpose and practice.

Do I also facilitate event-based PD like workshops and webinars? I do. And do I also keynote? Sometimes.

My best work, though? It requires me to commit. To earn a real seat at the tables I’m invited to stand beside. To get my hands dirty and sometimes…my heart broken.

You, too?

Well, I’m glad you’re here.

Let’s help each other.

My first question: How do you currently do solid discovery work right now? You know…need-finding? In other words, how do you learn as much about the system, the people in it, their vision, their values, and their plans before you propose support or begin designing a potentially useful service plan?

We’ve been exploring a bunch of different and fairly complex need-finding tools and design canvases in the fall cohort of The Intentional Facilitator, and another that is far more simple, too. It’s this visual framework:

I find this elegant mental model of an airplane and its associated features really helpful as I think about doing solid need-finding work. It pushes great thinking and informs some powerful questions, too. For instance:

1. If professional learning is a hero’s journey (and it surely is, quite often), who is flying the plane over turbulent waters and rough terrain? And how have the roles been defined and the boundaries established? The fact is that the people who hire us pilot entire systems, and we serve as their co-pilots in those contexts. Once we’re facilitating professional learning experiences that we have been paid to design and lead, though? We pilot those experiences. How’re we negotiating that shift while taking care to be clear, kind, and respectful?

2. We need to be especially sensitive here when we’re co-facilitating systems change in partnership with others. System supports help us achieve the proper thrust, in order to gain traction, momentum, and lift-off. When those primary engines fail, the plane crashes.

3. We also need to design useful resources and tools of our own. They enable us to decenter ourselves in the work, invite solid inquiry and collaborative learning and decision making, and ensure quality. Those are the second engine, and they can’t work without the first.

4. The plane is stabilized by solid wing support. We rely on them to ensure a smooth flight. Predictable norms, transparent agreements, protocols, and routines matter here.

5. All of these components work together to keep the body of the plane in the air and the passengers safe, well-fed, and comfortable as we call them to adventure.

Here’s a quick invitation: Use this visual framework as a tool to self-assess your levels of preparedness as you lean into good need-finding or discovery work. For lack of a better cliche, I’ll offer this: Like most, you’re likely building your own plane as a facilitator while flying it. So, which parts are most stable? Which need your attention? How might you provide it?

What do you already know and know how to do well?

What do you want to learn?

This new Substack project of mine is just for you. So, drop me a comment or a message and let me know what you want and what you need as a facilitator yourself. I’m excited to be of good use in this entirely different way, friends.

Please help me understand what that might mean for you.

I hope to be here every Wednesday, sharing the good, the bad, the ugly, and some useful tools and resources just for professional learning facilitators like you. Let me know who you are and what you’re struggling with. I’ll try to lend a hand.

See you next week,

Angela

Need a good read? My plane is an adaptation of a visual framework that Donald Miller introduced me to in his book, How to Grow Your Small Business. If you’re an independent consultant, I highly recommend. No one is paying me to say that, and I paid for my own copy, too. :))