Last year I was inspired by an article I read about a school connecting with their community to essentially create a database of experts, which is so simplistic yet so brilliant because as we all know, education should not exist in silos. I never professed to have all the answers and often look to experts when planning units of study: authors for my students to model their writing after, NASA for their latest endeavors in space for our rocketry unit, and other teachers who are finding unique ways to challenge/support students in math. So it only made sense to grow this network to include those who live closest to us, the parent body. With a calendar in hand, and a clever title (or so I thought) our Expert Lecture Series was born.

Part of my planning for the 2016-2017 school year also involved hacking open house. I decided to send the parents my keynote presentation ahead of time and asked them to do a little homework in preparation for open house. A few of their tasks involved signing up for twitter and following me, making a family tinkercad account and bringing their calendars to open house with the intent of signing up for one hour in which they, the parent, would be the Expert Guest in our room.

Expert Guest Lecturers were asked to come in talk with the class about something, anything, that they considered themselves to be experts on. Something related to work was fine, but not required. The key was that it had to be something born of passion. It was essential that each parent discussed how they encountered difficulty and how they overcame that difficulty – in class we spend a lot of time talking about FAILING FORWARD and kids need to see that everyone struggles with failing but it’s how we handle it that leads to success.

Last year I had about a dozen parents come in and lead amazing discussions with my students. Parents planned slide shows, brought props, made charts and really demonstrated how passion plays a role in the decisions we make in life. The general message was that passion leads to success and happiness. The kids got it! They loved the lectures, asked insightful questions and wrote thoughtful questions reflecting on their learnings. It was impressive!

We are now in the second year and Expert Lecture #7 will be in two weeks. The kids are going home talking about what they are learning and more parents have emailed requesting a date for their turn on the expert stage. Our series has grown to include former students (now an engineer at Google) and a new friend (a mechanical engineer passionate about getting more girls into science). It will be exciting to see where and how the connections grow with each new lecture.