If you haven’t held back to back meetings in opposing corners of the state within 24 hours, we highly recommend it.  In the past two weeks both Kathleen and I have gone from one corner of Kansas to the other to present or facilitate at meetings.  We’re a bit ragged by this point.

For all of that whining, we encountered great groups of people in the focus group sessions.  Both the North East that met at at Johnson County Community College and the North West group that met at Sheridan County EMS were engaged in and prolific with their ideas.  Even 15 hours behind the wheel can’t dampen our enthusiasm for the information that we’ve been getting in the focus groups.

Northwest Focus Group

Pat, Kenneth, Dave, Bill (hidden), and David work through small group questions in preparation for the larger discussion.

A big thanks to our hosts for the focus groups (Ray Wright at Johnson County Community College and Deb Kaufman and David Stithem at Sheridan County) and to all of the participants who were able to find time to attend and participate.  We go to Ellsworth on August 11th for the final focus group and will then be on the downhill run of writing the course planning documents.  So far we only have four people signed up for Ellsworth so there is plenty of room.  To register, click here.  August 31 looms as the deadline for the needs assessment work before moving into lesson plan development.