ProgEdNet@Distance: NEW PEN

— by Andrew Williams

Once a month in the fall of 2021, I headed home after a day at the schoolhouse energized and excited to hop onto a Zoom. This would surprise most of the folks who know me – I tend to not enjoy sitting in front of (and talking into) a laptop. These Zooms were special. I knew that I would laugh a lot, and be both affirmed and challenged by the conversation. They were the monthly meetings of NEW PEN, a cohort of educators new to progressive education and, in some cases, to the field of education.

For four months I had the joy of helping facilitate the NEW PEN meetings along with fellow board members, Sven Carlsson, Kavan Yee and Jaime Danen. Together we worked with the small but mighty group of teachers – from New York to Hawai’i, at all grade levels – who gathered to build a community of colleagues new to the day-to-day of being a progressive educator.