On Saturday, February 17, almost fifty local CFG coaches gathered for our 2nd Annual CFG Reunion. Our special guest was Steven Strull, director of the National School Reform Faculty, and our main focus was "Using CFG's in the Land of PLC's."

These are the topics that people offered for Open Space:
How do we inject collective inquiry into our CFG’s/PLC’s/practice?
How do you compile a list on interventions available to teachers for themselves and their students?
How are parents empowered to be better advocates for their children and teachers?
How do we use CFG to change the culture of the school as a whole? (including students, teachers, parents, admin, etc.)
Your best practices with special education students!
Being new to my campus, how can I start up Critical Friends on campus?
How do you get a teacher to realize that her student discipline problems are self-imposed?
The administrator’s role in CFG’s and its infusion into PLC’s
CFG/All students/equity/instruction/daily

On Thursday, March 15, I met with a group of Denton ISD educators who were trained as CFG Coaches last summer.

The reflections are in the extended entry.

The funniest part of tonight's facilitator CFG was picking out our pseudonyms for any transcripts that we may produce of our meetings. The list of names includes Erin, ZhaZha, DeeDee, Hannah, ChuChu, Candy, Morgan, Maroon, CoCo, Katarina, and Fifi. Hmmm, are these indicators of a rich fantasy life or just a depressingly unfulfilling real life...

I actually squandered about 10 minutes tonight looking for the "stripper name" formula. It's name of first pet + mother's maiden name (Foxy Giles).
Your soap opera name is your middle name + the street you grew up on (Jean Daniel(s)).

On March 21, 2007, the Facilitator CFG met from 4:30-7:00 at Grady Middle School. Present were Donna, Michaelann, Mary, Lynn, Debbie, Linda, Sharon, Janet, Carolyn, Lauren, Mike, and Tim.

We started with Connections. While a few folks went to the facilitators’ training for the NCLB training, the rest of us engaged in an icebreaker called “Crumpled Confessions”

Our written reflections are in the extended entry.