Building Partnerships for Success

“Our company is fully aware of the many challenges facing schools today—not only on the educational side but also the financial limits they face each year. Partnering with HH Education Events was a natural fit for us to help support these events to assist schools and their staff to stay relevant on important issues facing schools today.” –Dr. James Budzilek, Director of Education for HIBster/EDS

As a former teacher, school administrator, college professor and Assistant Dean I have developed a passion for education. I have stated many times that Educators are #1. Education is the foundation that has made business leaders and other professionals successful.

There are some people who I have known and know who never retired—I am one of them. Following my second official retirement I found that I was unable to step completely away from the profession I love. I needed to remain involved.

As I searched for my next challenge I was reminded of something a previous employer (a business man) told me. To be successful you must do something that you enjoy doing, something that you feel passionate about.

With this in mind I realized that during my career one of the things that I enjoyed was organizing events, workshops, in-service programs and establishing goals and seeing them through to a successful conclusion, hence the birth of HH Education Events.

The greatest challenge was to find ways to provide events for educators that would be above and beyond what school districts themselves had the time to organize or could financially support.

Finding specific events that would be of interest to educators required surveying the needs of hundreds of educators. The responses were interesting and many were very unique.

An obstacle to making this idea a reality, as is true with most business ventures, was financial. Cost for room rental, food, presenter fees and expenses to name only a few. My vision was to provide outstanding events at no cost for the participants and many times provide breakfast or lunch. Yes, after years in education I know that a well fed educator is a happy person and receptive to new ideas.

I knew that business leaders are very interested in the communities they serve. They are interested in financially supporting their community. With this in mind I met with a number of business men and women to share my concept of HH Education Events. The response was overwhelmingly positive. One comment that I remember during a meeting with Bryan and Kevin Clark of Clark’s Studio in New Castle was “Herb, I like the concept because it gives us the opportunity to meet on a personal level with educators from a variety of school districts and with different levels of responsibility”.

In conclusion—oops, my second thought is conclusion may not be the correct word to use because the services that HH Education Events provides for school districts and the business community is continually evolving. It is never a conclusion. It has evolved to the point where hundreds of educators and many businesses have attended events such as: The Annual School Safety Summit, A Town Hall Meeting with Bernie Hoffman (Legal Issues), How Prepared are Students for the World after High School, The Impact of Mental Health Issues in Schools.

Dr. Keith Dils, Dean of the College of Education at Slippery Rock University summed it up for me when he said, “the faculty and staff at SRU in general and the College of Education in particular, value relationships with local school districts. And, we know we can get amazing things accomplished through collaboration. Whether it be by teaming up to secure competitive grant funding, professional development workshops or pursuing innovative approaches to teaching we want to work with schools to further the educational objectives of the region”.

This is a great goal for all of us to strive for and work toward. Because as we all know whether we be educators or business leaders our most valuable resource is our children and as we have heard many times they are our future.

HH Education Events is working to Build Partnerships for Student Success.

Thanks for reading–Herb