O
Remember Baltimore?
Baltimore lit the torch and is
giving fire to  our NAEA Next strategic plan
Community
Advocacy
Knowledge &
Research
Organizational
Vibrancy
The overarching goals that propel our mission 
All of these are
about practices—
things we can do
Community,
however, is larger than practice.
Community is a belief system that reflects values and emotion and it’s
personal and almost tactile
Community was sitting in the strategic planning studio on Friday afternoon…
watching clusters of people gather, one by one, in heated conversation…

the ideas on newsprint piling higher and higher…

remnants of images scattered on the tables…

insights flowing like the tides in and out of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor…
Inside the Microcosm
The strategic planning
studio was a microcosm
of our great organization.
It was the distillation of our life force.
The primordial stuff from which our collective vision poured forth in torrents.
Those hundreds of individual person-hours…
spent drawing and constructing and debating and writing…
the plan that will guide our work over the next 3 years.
will become…
The 2011-2014 Strategic Plan
will manifest as a written document.
But it will not be cast in stone.
Consider it a living document,
Dynamic and evolving,
As a record of our discussions and oral debates
Kaizen
Kaizen is a Japanese word.
It means “improvement” or
“change for the better.”
But in practice, it describes a process of continual renewal and reinvention.
Every step of
progress
gives rise to
two more
steps.
Every idea implemented becomes the “nurse tree” that gives birth to several more ideas
Kaizen depends on each individual 
of the entire community
investing herself in the idea
of relentlessly pursuing improvement.
This depends on the entire
community believing that it holds its
collective fate in its own hands
Not beholden
to departments
of education…
Not constrained by federal regulations
But able to continue moving inexorably forward,
Like water through stone, Finding the seams and
cracks of opportunity.
The key is in the believing.
Not only in our ability to
shape our collective destiny…
but in magic.
Consider the magical realism
of Hispanic literature and cinema.
Extraordinary, entirely unexplainable
events take place within the common,
everyday world we all know and live in.
The challenge to bringing
transformational change. 
In organizations and
educational cultures it is easy
to see the limitations and
obstacles to success.
It’s even easier to ultimately
let that awareness reduce
our ability to make the
transformation happen.
We have to allow ourselves… 
to believe the
magical can happen…
to wield the power
of that singular belief.
This enables each of us to actually achieve the magical…
particularly 
when we 
realize that, 
as a community,
we have 
greater power 
than any 
single 
one of us 
ever thought
imaginable. 
The manifestation of
community changes…
as the tools
for realizing it
evolve.
We did something different in Baltimore with the strategic
planning studio.
And the community was different…
It is my great hope—
and commitment…
That we continue to grow 
through the power 
of every single member
and harness that communal
energy and insight
And make extraordinary,
magical things happen this year.
I hope you'll take this message of
community and belief to heart.
Take part in the great
community conversation
on the challenges and
opportunities we face as an
organization, as a profession, and as individuals.
Share your comments
below on this first effort to experiment with form
and medium.
Learning