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Third Thursday began when I moved to South America after 20-ish years in the profession. I found myself regularly being solicited for conversations with other counsellors looking for insights – a truly humbling experience.

Given my desire to balance my time, I asked a handful of these people if I could get them all together to be more efficient. These individuals, mostly single-person college counselling offices, seasoned educators with little to no college counselling experience, or folks entirely new to the field, welcomed the invitation…and Third Thursday was born.

Now the spectrum of attendees is far greater, often featuring individuals with 30-plus years of experience engaging with others who have not yet begun in the field. I have a hard time now thinking about my professional world before these events began. While they were initiated under the aegis of helping others, I’ve come to terms with how much I selfishly get out of them and how much they now mean to me.

As the 12 to 15 individuals (on average) check in, we do introductions to ensure all are aware of who else is present. Brazil. US. Saudi Arabia. Bolivia. United Kingdom. Costa Rica. Tanzania. China. Uruguay. Spain. Nigeria. Peru. Switzerland. Paraguay. Oman. India. Venezuela. South Korea. Colombia. Argentina. UAE. Mongolia. Singapore. Taiwan. Canada.

In our 22 meetings so far, we have had individuals from five continents and more than 25 countries, representing more than 85 schools, institutions or organisations. College counsellors, comprehensive counsellors, principals, aspiring or inquisitive school folk, independent counsellors and several others have found Third Thursday a welcoming place of inquisitiveness, support and learning. 

As we begin the meeting, I reference the agenda that has been shared out to the 106 individuals on the mailing list in advance for crowd-sourcing. Although not all on the list can or do attend, there are usually a half-dozen questions or topics for discussion from the membership.

What has been happening in your college counselling world this past month? What questions do you have that might benefit from an outside eye? How do others handle a particular or unique situation? What are you doing that is working really well? Topics digging into these questions predominate the GoogleDoc that usually records the minutes of these hour-long meetings. I hand-off to the individual who posted the question to present, and the conversation unfolds.

As the conversation develops, the real magic of Third Thursday is revealed. Engagement. Praise. Follow-up. Perspective. Disagreement. Generosity. Support. Concern. Ideas. There is real community forming.

Topics span all aspects of college counselling: professional development, early decision, social media, student attention and engagement, parent programming, career planning, standardised testing, and working with challenging colleagues to the more mundane – about titles, salaries, job descriptions and the like. The ideas ebb and flow, and we do not usually stick to the script but instead follow those tangents and dive into those rabbit holes of conversation.

The meetings often close a few minutes over our allotted 60 minutes as someone squeezes in one more idea or response before we abruptly jump to farewells.

The Zoom chat typically fills with notes of appreciation while others unmute themselves and sign off with thanks and praise before we all move on to the next thing on our busy calendars. These events have taken a singularly important role in my professional life, and I go to great lengths not to miss them.

I have had to skip two since their inception, asking others to moderate for me, and each time I perused the notes with great interest afterwards, seeking to grasp even a fraction of the live experience. It is such a simple concept: bring together like-minded people to discuss our work. I took a small chance in getting this one started.

And you could do the same. Try reaching out to colleagues with whom you might enjoy spending time. See if they can come together to chat as a group periodically. Bring together some people for collegiality. For professional development. For growth. For learning. Just keep in mind, 10am Brazil time on the third Thursday of each month is taken.