Two years into building 100Kin10 — the network of organizations that prepared 150,000 excellent STEM teachers in a decade, now called Beyond100K — we gathered our partners in Chicago and asked them, straight up: “Will it work?”
No single organization could solve the STEM teacher shortage in the US on their own, so success depended on whether all partners showed up and made this still-fledgling effort their own. Whether they followed up on the connections they had made, adapted new approaches, shared their learnings and did more than they otherwise would have. For any of that to happen, they needed to trust us and each other.
“Will it work?” People don’t get asked that question often, especially not at conferences run by the organization asking it. Conferences are for networking, maybe for showing off a solution you designed or research you conducted. But they’re rarely for actually doing work together. The room hushed. One person later described it as a “punk rock” moment. (He meant it as a compliment.)
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