Connect and Disconnect

I finally caught up with Louise - she has been either very busy or on leave for personal matters. We had a very good conversation this morning, talking quickly through the things we needed to work on for the MOU and protocol agreement. We talked again about expectations of the attachment and what would help it to be successful.

Then it was full swing into the LAB programme. I received a barrage of documents regarding the programme, including supplementary documents e.g. Benchmarking Equivalency Senior Leaders Table, and links to the programme's learner website. It's too much to blog about, and in fact I'm still digesting it all! We also had a LAB meeting today with the programme's lead faciliators, who are external consultants. It felt awfully familiar in terms of meeting duration and types of knotty issues that needed to be ironed out - even though the programme is already beginning on Saturday afternoon! Halfway through the meeting, we also had a conference call with LAB's Chief Scribe, to modify the design and delivery of a component that emerged from the participants themselves at the end of Module 2 in/led by Australia. (Module 3, also the last, is the one being led by the School).

I'm getting a sense that the School is at the same time, connected as well as disconnected. It is well connected in that they clearly have a system where the public, private and community sectors work together to design and deliver quality learning for public servants (btw, when they say "public servants", they refer to federal level public servants. Provinces and municipalities are the other levels of government, each province having its own public service). Internally, they are always contactable too - I mean, even I got a Blackberry! Arguably, having a Blackberry may not necessarily be a blessing, since it does carry certain expectations. But that's the accessibility they choose to offer.

Yet, from the snatches of conversation so far, I hear a darkness in their voices. There's a lot of passion for what they do and believe in, yet also a recognition of the forces and circumstances that often subdue those ideals. Reading too much into things? We'll see...