110% humidity, 100% human collaboration
This summer time, 1000’s of educators and distributors who serve schooling descended on New Orleans and braved 110% humidity for the primary “back to normal” convention for the International Society of Technology in Education, or ISTE. After two digital conferences, of us have been excited to be again in particular person, and regardless of continued COVID protocols, hugs abounded as mates and colleagues reunited on the tradeshow ground and through classes all through the New Orleans conference middle.
My convention expertise started on the Future Ready Library Summit on Collaboration the place 150 librarians from throughout the nation—and even abroad—gathered to brainstorm methods through which they may higher collaborate with academics, principals, district management, and one another. I had the chance to welcome the group and felt compelled to share a narrative about one in all my earlier visits to New Orleans in 2005, a few week after Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
Back then, I labored as a tv journalist in Oklahoma City. I traveled with the Army to New Orleans to cowl the search, rescue, and restoration missions. While there, we slept within the Walmart parking zone within the Ninth Ward. I needed to put on a masks (a few years earlier than masks have been the norm) and put Vicks VapoRub underneath my nostril to fight the scent of the flood water and waste. My videographer smoked cigarettes on the time, and I discovered myself standing subsequent to him as a result of the cigarettes smelled higher than the air (and I’ve by no means had a cigarette in my life)!
While canvassing the neighborhood, we discovered many houses that had been efficiently evacuated. Heartbreakingly, we discovered some houses through which the resident didn’t make it out. But I’ve by no means forgotten once we knocked on the door of a house and Paulette answered. She was wading by means of a foot of water in her front room. She defined that she didn’t need to evacuate as a result of her good friend Sylvia brings her meals each two weeks and didn’t understand how she would survive with out Sylvia’s supply. What Paulette didn’t perceive was that Sylvia wouldn’t be bringing her meals. We satisfied her to go along with us to the Superdome, the place she could be transported to one in all 5 cities taking evacuees.
I’ve by no means forgotten Paulette. I do not know what occurred to her however can solely hope she discovered herself in a metropolis with the form of assist companies she wanted.
I shared Paulette’s story with the Future Ready group at ISTE that day as a result of she had no management over the hurricane headed for her dwelling; she had no management over the subsequent supply of her groceries; and he or she had no management over the place the Army transported her for her subsequent dwelling. Not having management is frightening.
And there’s my level. There are many esoteric challenges going through schooling immediately. Librarians can’t management the pandemic… or dad and mom arguing about masks, vaccines, or books. But librarians can management how and in the event that they collaborate.
