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Building Community Through Adversity

Over the past few weeks, in every conversation and through every email, I have been reminded about the power and promise of community.

School leaders are understandably overwhelmed. They are trying to process all the information, requests and needs being thrown at them. Yet through all this messiness, chatter and clatter, they want to connect: with their students, teachers, and parents – and with each other.

That came through loud and clear in Folio’s first virtual Town Hall sessions last Tuesday. Dozens of school leaders joined us to share their thoughts and concerns. Despite everything they were wrestling with, they took the time to jump on the call to hear what their peers had to say and to offer suggestions that they thought might help someone else.

These conversations were especially powerful for me for two reasons.

First, it reiterated the importance of school leaders being part of a community of colleagues. They want to hear about and share best practices. They value feedback. They need a safe, trusting place to pause and reflect. As they create these collaborative experiences for their teachers and school community, they also want it for themselves.

Second, these conversations will shape what Folio will become in service to our members and school leaders. It already has.

We are going to focus our time and resources on creating more opportunities for people to learn from each other. We’re going to create spaces for interaction and introspection, ideas and inspiration. We’re going to provide ways for our community to share best practices, and to build and maintain remote communities. As we encourage school leaders to offer their suggestions for supporting and celebrating teachers, we’re going to take our core values – collaboration and conversation – and help schools figure out how to make that happen.

A leader’s role is to create the space and time for conversation to unfold. Our members are doing that in their school community. Folio will be doing that for our community.

I encourage you to visit the Resources page on our website, where we are constantly adding articles and tools to help you navigate these ever-changing times.

And, as always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions. What can Folio do for you? Please let me know. Be well.

About the author

Meredith Monk Ford

Executive Director of Folio Collaborative since 2013, Meredith Ford and her team partner with 100+ schools globally to help them foster a working environment of professional learning where teachers want to stay and thrive. Before joining Folio Collaborative, Meredith was a classroom teacher and coach. After graduating from the University of Maryland with a BA in Classics, she returned to her alma-mater, the Bryn Mawr School in Baltimore, to teach middle school ancient history and coach. While teaching at Bryn Mawr, she also completed her first master’s degree in Liberal Arts at Johns Hopkins University. In 2009, Meredith pursued a second master’s degree in School Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The following fall, she joined the middle school faculty at McDonogh School where she served as a 7th grade history teacher, hockey and lacrosse coach, grade-level leader, and eventually, the Folio Administrator. As a result of her own Folio conversations with McDonogh administrators, she was able to realize one of her professional goals when she left the classroom to lead Folio Collaborative full-time. Because of her experience working in an environment where she thrived, Meredith is passionate about Folio’s potential to help other schools create that experience for all teachers. Although she is striving to spend the majority of her time working on the business, she still loves opportunities to train and facilitate workshops amongst administrators and faculty around professional growth, leadership, conversations, and feedback. She has spoken multiple times at the NAIS Annual Conference, the TABS Annual Conference, as well as many regional school association events. When she is not running the Folio Collaborative business, Meredith enjoys learning from her Entrepreneurs’ Organization Forum and spending quality time with her guys Owen (7), Walker (5), Briggs (2), and Robby (35).