One more day of classes, and then formal exams begin at my school. It’s Sunday morning, and I’m imagining my teachers’ struggle to decide whether to tackle that last stack of marking from the term, or head out to enjoy an amazing, sunny Sunday.
I’m reading George Couros’ (@gcouros)“The Innovator’s Mindset – Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity”, or rather scanning it while procrastinating.
Each year I struggle, trying to decide when to reach out to my teachers to encourage innovation. This week it’s “We’re still marking, I can’t think about next year”. Next week it will be “Just getting everything organized from this year, and I’m ready for a break”. And when they arrive for the first staff meeting of the year, on the first day of school, it will be “It’s too late now, I have my semester planned out”.
I’ve had reasonable success when our collaborative work occurs near the end of the first semester, and there’s time to make changes for the second semester. But then there’s the question: “Is it fair to our students to change our assessment, instruction, and evaluation for a course mid-year? Aren’t we supposed to be consistent to ensure fairness for all students?”
Here’s some of what I’d like my teachers to hear from me, and consider sometime between now and when they begin to plan for next year:
- The curriculum expectations are a framework: turn them into concrete learning goals in clear learner-language, and then have your students co-construct the success criteria with you. You’ll be surprised what they might suggest: maybe more observations and conversations, and few products?
- Think about what you’d like to experience in a 75-minute class, and ensure that what you plan incorporates some of what you’d enjoy. Remember that while you are up and moving around the room, sometime your students are trapped in their desks.
- Think about some of the instructional strategies you’ve experienced in your professional learning activities this year. If you liked them, work them into your practice, if you didn’t, take them out.
- Keep your eye on the ball. Write your own mission statement for your course, and then check your work against this standard.
- Talk to your friends and colleagues. Even those who are not teachers can provide you with excellent feedback on your ideas.
And what are my plans for next year?
- I’m going to clearly state my learning goals at each of our staff meetings, early release days, and professional learning days., and try modeling co-construction of success criteria, rather than “giving” them to my staff.
- I’m going to continue trying to make our time together as a staff meaningful, and not waste the valuable time together on activities we could do individually either before or after we meet.
- I’m going use ONLY instructional strategies that I want to see in our classrooms: no more PowerPoint slide stacks with content that could have been posted or sent out via email.
- I’m going to work on language to express my mission statement, and share it each time we meet.
- I’m going to, again, try to blog, and reach out beyond my school community for feedback.
I’m hoping that the seeds we planted this year with the development of each department’s Theory of Action, with our viewing of “Most Likely to Succeed” http://www.mltsfilm.org/ , and with a continuing approach of saying “yes” to ideas, will be pay off as we reflect this summer.
Over the summer, I’ll blog more frequently, and use this as a means to capture and develop my ideas for innovation. And maybe I’ll be brave enough to join our Peel DSB colleague, Tina Zita @tina_zita, and pull my thoughts together in a TEDx talk: https://misszita.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/taking-a-leap-tedx-talk/
Feedback welcome!
Terry Whitmell, PhD 