Every year in July the BUILD Initiative organizes a QRIS conference. In 2014 it was in Denver, but since I had attended the 2014 Child Care Aware of America Symposium in March, our Executive Director had asked that I select a few other staff members to represent our agency.
This year the conference was in National Harbor, Maryland. Just before the opening presentation, I was breezing through the participant materials and found a comprehensive roster with contact information of all attendees. I spent the next 30 minutes studying hundreds of names and addresses looking for representation from Hawaii. I found a handful of individuals and I emailed them to see if they wanted to meet during one of the meals or networking sessions to "talk story."
Out of 5 emails, I received one response, and the above picture is a result of that connection. It was super fun to meet with these ladies from Honolulu. While they were not associated with the University of Hawaii QRIS project (because it had lost funding shortly after I had connected with that coordinator in Manoa July 2014), we still had such a great conversation. They shared some of the details of what they're currently working on, asked a lot of really informed questions about our Kindergarten assessment system (WaKIDS), and the P-3 alignment work currently underway in Washington State. All together, it was a fulfilling conversation that helped me connect a bit of home with my obsession with QRIS.
The BUILD conference is scheduled to be in New Orleans and that is reply exciting because I've actually never been there before. I was asked to co-present a breakout session around improving data systems, and data literacy. If the proposal is accepted, I'll have the opportunity to share a bit of the innovative work we're currently doing in Washington state. This might be the highest point of my career thus far! I'll find out in March 2016, and I am hoping and praying for a positive outcome. Either way, it's sure to be a learning experience.
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