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Future Search Symposium was a “standout event”
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The strategic planning symposium held March 15-17 impressed Tom Koenninger enough to write a newspaper column about it. Koenninger is chairman of Vancouver School District’s Management Task Force, a longstanding district advisory group. He also is editor emeritus of The Columbian. In his column, Koenninger reflected on table discussions during the symposium where approximately 120 district staff and community members brainstormed ideas and suggested pathways to a better education. He called the symposium “a standout event, a model for any organization proactively facing its future.”
Kathy Gillespie, an Eleanor Roosevelt Elementary School parent who participated in the symposium, also wrote an opinion piece for the newspaper. She noted that symposium attendees included a diverse group of business and community leaders, parents, students, educators, school board members, and district staff members whose thoughts and contributions were stimulated by keynote presenters Ian Jukes, a noted technology futurist, and Dr. Robert Sylwester, an expert in cognitive neuroscience. “There is no other place I would have rather been,” she wrote. “These ideas, data and directions will bring profound change.”
The symposium facilitator was Tom Olson, who has led many similar sessions for Vancouver School District, including the district’s original strategic planning symposium in 1989. Olson said he was overwhelmed by the involvement of this recent group. “This was the most passionate, intensive group I have ever worked with in 150 sessions,” he said. “They spent almost three days actively engaged in thinking and talking about the future.”
In a report to the school board on March 26, Olson outlined several emerging themes that came out of the symposium:
• The future learning system—how we use time and space
• The future performance system—changes in accountability for both the student and the system
• The future human system—capacity building and powerful relationships and communications
• The future infrastructure system—technology and facilities
Olson emphasized that the symposium was only the first of several activities to gather input from district stakeholders.
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