I have been thinking a lot about schools and how from my observations, things are moving in a positive direction in many cases. Since I am not in schools every day, I wanted to see what others thought, so I asked this question:
We are almost finished 16 years of the 21st century. What has been a significant change in schools since 2000? Would love your thoughts.
— George Couros (@gcouros) December 12, 2016
Here are some of the thoughts that I received:
@gcouros more efforts and realization that learning should be more personal. Wasn’t even in the vernacular 20 years ago.
— Dean Shareski (@shareski) December 12, 2016
@gcouros “more” acceptance/acknowledgment that learning happens outside of school and that it can be orchestrated to the benefit of all.
— Todd Conaway (@Todd_Conaway) December 12, 2016
@gcouros Teaching metacognition over content
testing ways to better engage Ss in authentic practice of skills
— Becky Schnekser (@schnekser) December 12, 2016
@gcouros The move from Socratic lectures to collaborative learning btwn teachers and students. The move from regurgitation to meaningful Qs.
— Mrs. O’Brien (@htobrien) December 12, 2016
This is just what I received as responses in the first few minutes. Check out the original tweet to see what others shared as well.
The purpose of the tweet was to acknowledge that although schools still need to grow, there have been many positives that have happened in the last 5, 10, 15 years. What I think is valuable to understand, that many schools are making these changes under less than optimal conditions (decreased funding, increased demands on teacher workload, etc.). This is what I refer to as “innovation inside of the box”; working within the constraints that we have within our systems to do new and better things.
The continuous need to grow and develop is essential. This also doesn’t mean that things we did 20 years ago are irrelevant (relationships in my opinion will be something that we should always focus on as crucial to education), it is just important that we continue to look and pay attention to how we can get better, as we ask our students.
If we are truly successful in education, we realize that we will never get there. Things will always change and there will always be things that we could do that will create better learning opportunities for our schools. But if we embrace that schools are to be “learning organizations”, we should be comfortable with the continuous growth. As soon as we feel we are “there”, is the moment that we can become the “Blockbuster” of education.
This tweet from Kay Oddone says it nicely:
@shareski @gcouros of course we can always improve; that’s what’s cool about learning
— Kay Oddone (@KayOddone) December 12, 2016
We need to both celebrate and push; too often we forget the former in pursuit of the latter.
Photo via @katiemtlc
Source: George Couros
from Connected Principals http://ift.tt/2gFTgII
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