The GWT Blog

Welcome to the Toolkit website! This project has been a long time coming, and we are excited to watch what happens as this community comes together. In the past few months, we have been gathering together material for this site, and it's been a pleasure revisiting letters, syllabi, student work, and other materials gathered over the past few years.

When we first piloted the Toolkit materials in 2004, we were fortunate enough to bring together a group of outstanding educators from a variety of different schools and disciplines: a photography teacher from a regional high school, a middle school history teacher from a private suburban school, a choral instructor from a large public high school, a middle school social studies teacher from a private school and a psychology teacher from a large public high school. Gathering together before and after these teachers worked with GoodWork materials in their classrooms, we learned from their experiences and learned too that their ability to talk with one another was a valuable and important part of the reflective process. We are grateful to this initial group and to all the educators we've learned from since. We have gathered many terrific ideas from all of you.

Many years ago, one teacher told us that addressing the concepts of good work, solo, within a large and diverse school was difficult. As she put it, she felt like a single voice, "shouting into the wind." In response to her need for community and for support, we began to work with entire school communities towards building a culture of GoodWork. We imagine this website as a way to expand that culture, and expand the community that we know exists globally: the Toolkit is in countries around the globe, including Taiwan, Germany, Malaysia, Argentina, Australia, Scotland, South Africa, the Philippines, and Mexico. We often share advice that we ourselves have picked up from others who are using the Toolkit, and we can't wait until you all are able to talk with one another directly.

It is our hope that by the beginning of 2010, an elementary school teacher in Texas will be sharing her experiences with educators in Taiwan. We look forward to discussion topics on everything from GoodWork in the Digital Age to Issues of Responsibility and the Admissions Process, to Finding a Calling Post-Financial Crisis. We have heard from so many of you individually; we are excited to see what happens when you're able to talk and listen to a larger and more diverse audience. No more shouting into the wind everyone; instead, twitter and be heard.