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Josh Reger is a sixth grade teacher at Blandford Elementary School.

The most memorable experience I’ve had was when I got a chance to be part of the initial core team for the strategic plan. I’ve told the story often to people that being involved in that process and being somewhat sequestered for three days to really plan the direction of the district required some of the deepest thinking I’ve ever done. The Ball Foundation members got you to really think outside of your normal realm of thinking, and the questions they asked were exceptional. They would question everything you thought you knew, and make you think more deeply about what you really think about yourself, your peers, and your profession. It was interesting to work with them because I had never been in an environment where there was a real chance to grow something.

The great thing about The Ball Foundation is that their whole mission is to simply be the facilitators of the thinking. That’s one thing that Bob preached: Everything is already here, it’s just a matter of building the connections – and that’s the power of the whole process. That’s why we had teachers, administrators, and community members on the strategic planning team. This was really an organic grassroots movement with Ball acting as the guides.

The part of the strategic planning process that stood out the most to me was designing the mission statement. Ball made us question who we are as a district, where we want to go, and how we’re going to get there. I recall that coming up with the mission statement took a full day. We rewrote it and rehashed it, asking ourselves, “Is this word right? Does this make sense? Is this who we are? Is this where we want to go?” I left that day at 10 o’clock at night after getting there at 7:30 in the morning, just dead tired. But it was some of the deepest thinking that I’ve ever done, and it was memorable. When we were done with it, it was unbelievable. You sat back and looked at the statement and said, “Wow! We designed this. This is 100% from us. This is where we believe we are. There’s no other mission statement like this. This is exactly what we want to do.”

Going through this process has changed my teaching as well. I challenge myself now to think deeper, and I also challenge my students to do the same. I’ve tried to take more of a facilitator role in my classroom versus being a director or teller, and I think the kids appreciate that. Sometimes they don’t realize how much they know and they fall back into that thing of letting us tell them. If we give them the opportunity to speak their minds, there’s so much they know and can communicate. So now I sit back and ask them to think more deeply, and to tell me more about their thinking.

I’ve really been impressed by this experience, and by Ball’s commitment to education. I think they’ve brought a lot of great change to the district, and that they really opened up our eyes to a new way of thinking.

Word cloud created at wordle.net.