Jessica D. Bayless

I began working with Essential Partners (EP) back in March 2020, shortly after I took on the new role of Civic & Social Information Services Lead Librarian (now known as Library Services Supervisor - CivicCLP). John Sarrouf, Co-Executive Director and Director of Program Development of Essential Partners, became an incredible partner and friend as we worked together to bring CLP the tools and teachings of Reflective Structured Dialogue. The pandemic delayed many things, including this training opportunity for staff, but after some hard work on both sides we were able to provide staff with several ways to access this opportunity, first on Zoom and then in-person.

 

Bob Stains from Essential Partners led all of our trainings and did an amazing job bringing his many years of experience to provide a customized and relevant experience to those involved. From the training handout to the slides to the sample topics for practice facilitation, he has been an influential part of this staff training's success. You can learn more about Bob's background here.

 

Here is a snippet from the 2019 Civic and Social Services grant proposal, which speaks to this initial partnership goal with EP: 

 

The Library will work with Essential Partners, a Boston-based nonprofit whose mission is to train people to foster constructive dialogue where conflicts are driven by differences in identity, beliefs, and values. Essential Partners will provide a training to 24 library staff to enable us to build a leadership cohort ready to support the Library's role in facilitating community conversations related to the First Amendment.

 

I'm proud to announce that we have had 42 library public service staff and nonprofit community attendees participate in the full two-day training in May 2021 (Zoom) and October 2022 (In Person), and 11 management staff complete the shortened 3-hour 'training sample' in March 2021. Additionally, several colleagues completed an additional EP training with me in September 2020 so that we three could act as co-facilitators to assist EP staff during the subsequent trainings.

 

Survey feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive and included some of the following responses:

• The application of this material can meet so many needs in our current work and personal civic life. I can think of about 5 different venues to take lessons learned.

• So much practice! Very accustomed to webinars and prof dev being a lot of listening and lecturing. This was great!

• The format, pacing, etc. exceeded my expectations and was a nice surprise. it didn't "feel like" a 2 day, all day workshop!

• It exceeded my expectations. I was concerned that it would be really focused on the climate we live in today, but I like the boarder topics. It gave me a foundation for how to use this type of dialogue in my daily work as well as to facilitate other groups.

• It exceeded my expectations in the collaborative aspects of the training, and in growing my professional network

• This workshop was everything I wanted it to be and more. I had some facilitation training before, but this was superb, and I will definitely be utilizing this framework in my professional life.

 

Some next steps will include reaching out to staff that attended previous trainings to schedule virtual consultation time with Bob as part of our contract agreement with EP. We also plan to work with several trained staff to lead community conversations in their locations on a variety of topics, with CivicCLP leading the way on topics focused on the First Amendment, Libraries and Civic Engagement.