And so the school year has begun with many of out-of-school time staff facilitating programming virtually.  We have been working with various clients all summer to help ready them for this and yet—does anyone actually feel ready?  

In the long list of lessons the pandemic has taught us, one is: No matter how much you prepare, you may never actually be ready. And, even though we may have prepared, we still have to be able to abandon our plans and readjust to a completely different context at the drop of a hat.  

Of course, there’s only so much planning we can do.  It’s important to jump in and do it. Then learn from our experience, make changes, and try it again. 

Isn’t that part of growth mindset? An iterative process? Creative problem-solving? Yep. All of the above. All those things we strive to help young people do, the skills we want to nurture in staff. But, dang, it’s hard. It’s especially hard when we’re stuck thinking about the way things “should” be. Or when we’re enmeshed in tendencies of perfectionism from our white supremacy culture. Or when fear of failure overwhelms our allowing the potential of success. 

To make that leap from planning to doing is daunting.  And it helps to have a few tools and strategies for support.  Even more helpful is having a community of other people doing this same type of work and then connecting with them to figure out solutions, adapt to various situations, and try new approaches. 

To provide those tools, strategies and community, we are pleased to announce that our team at Development Without Limits is launching our own virtual learning platform, LEARN>Without Limits. As many of you know, we have facilitated virtual learning since 2009 for our clients and have some lessons learned that we want to share more broadly.  LEARN>Without Limits is an online educational platform that helps professionals and aspiring individuals to succeed in online facilitation. 

As colleagues in this work, we would love for you to check out the platform, sign up and let us know what you think. We know there will be hiccups, things to change and things to improve. Who knows? The whole site could implode. But it’s time to give it a go. Please join us!