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Greetings!
And welcome to the QFI preview and orientation video
for our upcoming School Leaders Workshop.
I extend a special warm welcome
to my colleagues from North America and South America,
and to my new colleagues and friends from Qatar.
"Al salamu alaykum."
My name is Al Bertani.
I serve as senior international associate with the Innovation Unit,
based in London, England.
And along with my colleague, Valerie Hannon, from the Innovation Unit,
we'll be co-facilitating our two-day School Leaders Workshop, in Doha,
coming up here at the very end of October.
I'm very pleased that our program, Learning and Leading for the 21st Century,
has attracted some significant interest from principals,
as well as program leaders from across the US and Brazil,
as well as from a number of our colleagues in Qatar.
We're pleased to have the sponsorship of QFI,
The Qatar Foundation International,
and SEC, the Supreme Education Council, in Qatar,
to bring this program together.
We're truly excited about the opportunity to bring you together,
as an international community,
and to work with you, over this two-day period.
I'm confirming that our workshop will be held on October 27th and October 28th,
in full day sessions that will convene at 8 a.m.,
with coffee and continental breakfast,
and begin promptly each day at 9.
Our schedule for each day will be 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.,
with appropriate breaks and lunch, throughout the course of the day.
Our program has attracted for us principals from across the United States,
of a variety of schools, both elementary, middle and high school,
as well as a colleague that will be joining us from Rio de Janeiro,
where she manages a group of middle schools participating in the program.
We'll also have approximately 30 representatives from Qatari schools,
representing 15 different schools from across Qatar.
We're very pleased to bring together the group
into this international learning setting.
The purpose of our program really sits at the highest level
in bringing together this international network.
Our primary purpose in working together over the two days
is to build a professional learning community,
that exists for you as an international network,
connecting you with principals from all respective collaborating countries.
A second purpose, though, of the workshop
is to ensure that you leave in partnership with at least one other school,
to commit to a collaborative project that you will build
working with your teachers and staff,
working with your students, around a project-based learning program.
All of this will be explained more deeply in the workshop,
but those two purposes are the primary reason that we are coming together.
In addition to our meeting, that will be going on across those two days,
QFI is also sponsoring a companion activity around steam,
bringing together the Science, Technology,
Engineering, Mathematics and the Arts together,
in a series of round-table discussions,
to talk about how to advance the whole notion of what happens with steam.
I mentioned this because they'll be joining us for some of our activities,
including the opening that we'll have on day one.
When it comes to the workshop, in terms of our content design,
the workshop's really divided into four distinct parts.
We'll begin our work together on the first morning,
really helping to build our professional learning network.
The only way this can be done is by getting you to get to know one another,
and know one another in relation to your schools.
So, we'll spend part of the morning in that opening activity,
helping you get to know one another,
primarily by having you engage in activities within a home group
that each of you will be assigned to.
Those home groups will be mixed groups of principals from Qatar
and school operators from Qatar,
some of our academic vice-principals from Qatar as well,
along with principals and program leaders
from schools in the United States, as well as Brazil.
We'll spend the latter part of the morning on our first day
really examining the drivers for 21st century learning.
What is it that's changing in the world,
that's forcing education, and society more generally,
to rethink the way in which we believe education should occur?
We'll examine five specific trends across the morning.
We'll look at globalization, the impact of the world recession,
we'll look at changing demographics, the emergence of new technologies,
and, of course, we'll have to examine what's happening to our environment,
as we change more and more across the world,
in what is creating more of a distressed environment
for our young people to grow up in.
We'll, then, shift your attention, in the afternoon of day one,
to a series of design principles around learning for the 21st century.
In this sense, we'll examine, through a very deep dive,
some of the trends that we've looked at internationally,
that are occuring around learning,
and we'll ask you to examine those principles,
as it relates to your own work and your own school.
In that sense, we're trying to build a foundation for,
what are the specific learning principles you want to have in place
in your own individual school?
On the second day of the program,
we'll engage more specifically around that driver called technology.
We know that technologies are not only transforming
what's happening in classrooms and schools,
but are transforming, as well, what's happening in society.
And we'll do a deeper dive, throughout the course of the morning of the second day,
very focused on the impact of new technologies
and their implications for learning,
for both our students, as well as for our staff.
We'll close out our two-day work together in the afternoon session,
by engaging in a series of market places,
and the purpose of those market places will be
to help us examine the possibilities that might exist
for project-based learning programs that you'll engage in,
collaboratively, across countries.
This will be a preliminary matching process for us that afternoon,
hoping to be able to emerge, by the close of the day,
with multiple ideas about the possibilities that will exist for both projects,
as well as for partners that you might be working with.
In preparation for the School Leaders Workshop,
we have posted a number of items to "C2C", "classroom to classroom",
the QFI website that's supporting our work together.
I command you to take a look at that website, C2C,
so that you can examine the five pre-readings that we've offered,
along with a series of discussion questions I've prompted,
to help to get you into the frame for learning
of the work that we'll be doing together.
You'll also note that we're posting the organizational profiles,
from each of your schools, on the C2C space.
And, in that sense, I'm encouraging you, if you've not already done so,
to please go ahead and post your QFI organizational profile,
so that everyone can see it as part of the program itself.
One last reminder in pre-program preparations
is that we have invited each of you to post a video,
where you give a short description about your school and your work.
We did this because we want to ensure that you have a chance to see people
before you actually arrive in the main conference room,
during our first day program.
So, if you have the time to do so,
and if you have the opportunity to do so,
we certainly encourage you to go ahead and be prepared to post that video.
Lastly, let me offer my thanks to Kent Lewis,
my colleague at the Qatar Foundation International,
who, working along with his team,
have been tremendous supports for both myself and Valerie,
in preparation for our upcoming School Leaders Workshop.
We look forward to meeting each and everyone of you,
and, more importantly, we look forward to helping you build
a strong international learning network
that will become a new professional learning community,
to help to support you in your work.
Once again, we're excited to see you,
and look forward to our opening dinner, on Saturday evening, October 26th,
where we'll have the opportunity to meet one another,
along with the following morning, when the program initiation begins.
Until then, safe travels for all, as they make their way to Doha,
and for my colleagues in Qatar, I look forward to meeting you.
"Al salamu alaykum."