 We're staying in the Midwest with Miriam Acklers College College's teacher educators group and their expert mentor Kathleen Horgan and they're going to do this through ethno drama. Looking forward to this. Good morning everybody. It's an absolute pleasure to be here this morning to celebrate with you all in this very historic room on this great day and this presentation attempts to capture some of I suppose the essence of our experiences in Miriam Acklers College as we developed a collaborative portfolio and our portfolio documents the backgrounds the beliefs the experiences and the learnings of four lecturers who engaged as a community of practice to collaboratively design develop assess and reflect on a module entitled parent professional partnerships. The module aimed to explore and expand on the beliefs assumptions and understandings of student teachers about working with parents and other professionals as they engaged in the context of the learning needs and well-being of children with special educational needs. Our collaborative portfolio embraces the professional development framework and it uses the metaphor of the dance to give texture and depth to the interactions and the experiences and the bonds and the relationships that developed between us over time. So the dance cast includes the four lecturers mentioned in the slide but the cast also includes three parents Avril, Emer and Catherine and other professionals who were involved in the module as well as the students who contributed enormously to its evolution and to the learnings which arose from it. Our portfolio is presented as a woven tapestry of reflections and insights which document and present our own personal and professional development from the perspective of each of the four authors and it is comprised of four acts. The final act the legacy of the dance leaving time for reflection at the end of each lecture was something we strongly believed in but something that we often found difficult because of time constraints. However we committed to and persisted with reflective practice sessions after each class. We sat in a circle and talked about what we had learned in any session. We shared ideas, questions and differences but how could we go further? Where might the dance take us? In learning to dance I learned to lead and to follow to follow and to lead. I learned how to dance with others and to allow others to dance with me. None of us entered this space as skilled dancers. We became skilled dancers by learning how to dance with each other. To follow the note, the beat, the insistent sound, the sudden turn. The dance could be fast, the dance could be slow but the dance was never boring. It is said that in order to dance the dance of the Sufis one has to be a believer, to believe in and to value each other, to hear and to listen to each other and to self. Thank you very much.