Training with colleagues is great.

BUT training with professionals you don’t know (yet) has irreplaceable value!

NSRF offers a few “venues” for our big trainings: we can come to you, you can come to us, or we can meet virtually. When we organize a training just for your organization, you and your colleagues bring their own history of interaction, as well as the problems you may collectively face. Each Critical Friends Group^® training begins by guiding participants through a process that builds your relationships, increasing (or creating!) trust. Then we introduce you to new ways of interacting and problem-solving, and can help your group shift your organizational culture.

Each year we ALSO offer “Open” CFG^® New Coaches’ trainings. They are open for anyone to join and are an excellent way for singletons or small groups to be trained!

If you have travel funds, register for this summer’s only on-site Open CFG New Coaches’ training to be hosted at Wildwood School outside Los Angeles the week of July 27-31.

If you prefer not to travel, spend a series of half-days with us in July or October in one of our upcoming Open CFG New Coaches’ Virtual Trainings. (We’ll have another one coming up in February, too.)

How often do you have the opportunity to think deeply alongside someone not only from a different school environment than you but also from a different culture?

In recent virtual open trainings, we’ve had university professors from Turkey, secondary school teachers from Ireland, middle school teachers from a bilingual private school in Kuwait, and educators from a school for girls who not only need academic but mental health support as they learn. We’ve been joined by a broad variety of classroom educators, instructional coaches, and administrators from across the U.S., and sometimes we have professionals outside the field of education altogether attend to broaden their toolkit as well.

The majority of our virtual attendees are in the Eastern Time Zone of the U.S., so we often schedule trainings for our morning hours. However, we’re always so grateful to those on Pacific time who rise to be online — showered, breakfasted, and coiffed every morning at 6am their time! — as well as those in Europe and Asia who are working well into the evening to join us.

The point isn’t the varied locations, it’s the varied PERSPECTIVES.

You may know this famous quote reportedly from Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

It’s worth contemplating who you speak with routinely about your work challenges. Typically STEM teachers hang out with other STEM teachers more than anybody. Fifth grade teachers are in meetings with other fifth grade teachers. And school administrators, other than addressing problems brought to them by their staff, are more often interacting with other administrators when trying to solve their own problems of practice. Yet…

It’s a fallacy to believe that people who share the same job and daily tasks will have answers for all the problems you may face.

Sometimes, the most powerful, impactful ideas come from someone with a completely different perspective. Our Executive Director, a former first and second grade teacher, likes to say “What’s good for student learning is also good for adult learning,” so she reminds people that adults need time to think before answering a question just as much as students do. As someone who works primarily in virtual settings, I talk about the need for people to rise from their seats periodically, even on Zoom calls, since one doesn’t have to literally move to be sorted into different breakout groups. When we meet “strangers” in open trainings, we have the unique opportunity to build trust and pick up tips from the broadest gathering online available in educational arenas for professional development.

It’s the DIFFERENCES of attendees that make everyone more valuable, particularly in CFG work. In a training or a CFG meeting, it’s not at all unusual for a high school teacher or university professor to learn a new tactic from a kindergarten teacher, or vice versa. STEAM educators can learn from language arts teachers, or a school administrator can hear valuable, unvarnished ideas from educators who work far outside their usual spectrum.

A few special words for administrators

If you’re considering bringing us to your school to train a bunch of educators to become CFG Coaches, it’s MUCH BETTER for you and other administrators to attend one of our Open CFG New Coaches’ trainings without any of your staff in attendance. Because CFG Coaches’ Training requires participants to share their problems and imperfect work, it can be highly stressful to share in a room with people whose job is to evaluate your work performance. On the flip side, admins have their own dilemmas and work product, and it may be inappropriate to share such topics with the teachers who work for them, no matter how much the admins would value gaining the insights. Because we have a strong commitment to confidentiality in our Open trainings, admins attending can speak freely without worrying about information getting back to your schools, allowing you to receive crucial suggestions and feedback from other educational professionals around the world. You also will benefit from the opinions and ideas from real classroom educators who feel free to be open and honest.

Finally, Open Trainings are a wonderful “try before you buy” option for any school leader who’s heard about CFG work but isn’t sure they are ready to invest in training a whole cohort or school district.

Beyond all this, there are additional advantages to our training VIRTUALLY.

• No travel concerns and cost — No removing your shoes for TSA screenings, no possibility of lost luggage, and no jet lag!
• No sleeping in strange places — You can sleep in your own bed every night!
• Eat with your family every night or every morning, depending upon your time zone!
• Train for half of the day and have the other half available for your day job or other tasks — We meet 3 or 3.5 hours each day, Monday thru Thursday!
• Dress as comfortably as you like — If you need to rise at 6am to join us and didn’t shower or change out of your PJ pants, no one will even know!

I would dearly love for you to become one of our newest critical friends … and for you to make long-lasting, valuable friendships with others, too.

CFG Coaches’ Training will reinvigorate how you teach and/or lead meetings, how you build a sense of community and trust, and how you GET THINGS DONE!

For our Virtual Open Trainings, if you bring a friend (or if you’re an admin who signs up two people) you’ll each get a $75 discount! In the summer, we can extend that discount only to one pair per organization, but in October and February we’re extending it a bit further and can offer it for up to five participants in the same training. If you need the discount code and/or want to pay with a purchase order, send our office staff an email — nsrf@nsrfharmony.org — and we’ll get you set up.

In challenging times such as these, building a safer space to get support is more important than ever. I hope we’ll see you soon.