Teacher Time is Now Community Hours

After running Teacher Time for a full year, I felt we had learned enough about what worked well, and what needed to shift. I’ve made some slight changes to the Teacher Time format, and I think the new format will be a better fit for our much larger community, while keeping those real and genuine connections in place.

—Cole

What’s Different?

Teacher Time took place every Thursday at 3pm Eastern and lasted an hour. Each week was the same—just general open time to be together.

Community Hours will take place at the same time, but not happen every week of the year, and will also be an hour. They will still be general open time to be together except each week will be connected to one of the primary areas of focus at the school: Community, Deathwork, Thanabotany and Thanatology, in that order.

No Community Hours will take place in our rest months of July, August and December.

What Can Work Better

It takes an investment of time to form a connection to a community, and even more time to keep that connection strong. Many of the attendees loved knowing Teacher Time took place each week, but didn’t want to attend every single week. By having each month rotate through general areas of focus, I believe we will create spaces that help create community around those central areas of focus while making sure no one feels left out and while not burning anyone out on being together.

You see, several of my students shared that they felt bad when they missed a week of Teacher Time, and by dispersing things a bit, it should not only be easier to attend, but also eliminate any what-am-i-missingisms.

How To Participate

Community Hours are free to any past and current students, just like Teacher Time. The link to join our Community Hour zoom is in Slack, and all discussion related to Community Hours takes place in the #community-hours channel (formerly it was the #teacher-time channel).

The 411

Community hours happen on Thursdays at 3pm Eastern time. You can see upcoming Community Hour sessions on the event calendar. There are no Community Hours in July, August and December, or on any Thursday that coincides with a major holiday.