Creek Community School. Images from

At each 90-minute meeting we centered on a topic: learning spaces, connecting teachers with students’ home lives, building relationships, and dealing with stressors. Each month the cohort built upon the shared vision of a safe space, creating relationships with each other and honestly sharing and asking. Rarely have I laughed as hard and been as inspired in the same Zoom.

Engaging with the documentation of other’s learning spaces, hearing what was going well and the challenges people were facing, and having the sense of connection with other progressive educators was invaluable to me. I found, often, that a question or comment raised in the evening’s discussions would shape the way I approached something at school in the following weeks. Looking at other folks’ documentation of the way they communicate the learning that happens in their classroom genuinely changed my communication for the better as I incorporated their successful approaches into my weekly(ish) emails home.