Robert Fulghum, in his short essay All I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten, provides us with some common sense advice about how to survive and thrive in our constantly changing environment. Fulghum writes, “Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten … Share everything. Play fair…”
As we in career and technical education face new and greater challenges with regard to competition for resources, students and funding, we must look to different ways of operating. Where once we may have “gone it alone,” now we must look at collaborating with entities such as Workforce Boards, community-based organizations, faith based organizations, proprietary schools and human services agencies.
Collaboration is a different game for many of us and as such requires us to behave differently. Key behaviors that we must exhibit to be successful in new collaborative efforts are sharing and playing fair.
Sharing with our partners in the career and technical education field involves the 5 S’s. They are shared vision, shared planning, shared resources, shared responsibility and shared accountability. A common and shared vision of what constitutes success in any joint effort is the starting point. Shared planning of how all parties will achieve the common vision is next. The third S, shared resources, is not about you giving me your money and I’ll tell you how we can best spend it. The sharing of resources is about all parties putting forth some resources and all parties deciding as a group how the resources should be used. Only through shared responsibility and shared accountability for results can a group achieve its vision. One must not partake in the finger-pointing game, but rather understand that all parties are part and parcel of success and/or failure.
Fulghum ends his essay with, “…no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.” So, as we go about the business of career and technical education, let us “hold hands” with other stakeholders and share our vision, planning, resources, responsibility and accountability in order to survive and thrive.
