The Power of Partnerships
The Vermont Rural Education Collaborative’s mission is to inspire school communities to learn, share, and thrive. We advance our mission through the integrated pathways of innovation, advocacy and partnerships. We strive to promote a positive culture across our collaborative and to maintain the ability to directly support a wide range of youth and adult programs. Whereas our disposition, and initiatives, related to both innovation and advocacy are important, it is our established partnerships that provide VREC with the capacity to thrive.
As a true collaborative, our partnership with member supervisory unions and districts is the foundation of our organization. We exist to serve our area schools and depend on the representation of educators on our board of directors and the ongoing input from those in the field. Much of our direction for professional learning is a result of our Professional Development Consultant, Jenn Barone, meeting regularly with curriculum directors from our eight SU/SDs. We build upon common interests and needs for professional development and coordinate activities regionally to often provide opportunities that otherwise would be elusive for single supervisory unions.
We have a well developed partnership with the Northwoods Stewardship Center in Charleston. This relationship is particularly meaningful to me as their Executive Director, Maria Young, was a former student of mine when I was Principal at Lake Region Union High School. We now have provided five years of middle school leadership learning opportunities that VREC would not be able to provide on our own. Maria was also an invaluable resource in the development of our Expeditional Field Studies program and joined us as a “guest paddler” for our first canoe trip on the Ct. River. We envision other potential initiatives around youth and adult leadership development in the future.
We have an emerging partnership with Up for Learning thanks to their support of our Aspire - Imagine - Motivate Summer Summit dedicated to promoting post-secondary aspirations and personal goal setting. Once again, they have the staffing and skill set to facilitate a day-long training for raising 8th grade students, that VREC doesn’t. We are engaged in discussions with Up for Learning to explore expanded opportunities for youth voice in the NEK and considering ways to support parent organizations. Up’s strength in promoting youth voice and experience as effective facilitators make them an ideal partner for VREC.
Over the past year, as VREC took on an ambitious initiative to support the development of “grow your own” pathways for teacher licensure, we were fortunate to engage in an active partnership with the Vt. Agency of Education, Vt. Department of Labor and Vt. National Education Association. The level of communication and collective problem solving has truly been remarkable. We have established a pilot registered apprenticeship program for initial licensure and looking to extend additional opportunities. We are excited about expanding our partnerships with institutions of higher education both in and outside of Vermont.
One of the higher education partners we are cultivating is the University of Vermont, as we explore a residency model for teacher development. We are having initial conversations with UVM about shared areas of interest for research in the field and in establishing an official affiliate member of the National Rural Education Association. VREC is one of 13 national rural collaboratives and participates in regular online convenings. We are fortunate to have colleagues at the national level and these connections add yet more strength to our organization.
VREC provides added capacity to our supervisory unions and schools by working together and combining resources. Likewise, we have added capacity through our various partnerships with other organizations, higher education and state agencies. We are able to learn, share and thrive thanks to the power of partnerships.
