Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Perspective and Defining a New Reality

The following tweet was shared with me and kind of struck a nerve:

This post, originally shared in 2014, talks about some of the traditional barriers that lie in front of educators as they try to move forward.  What I thought about reading it, was some of the contradictions that we often talk about in what is holding us back.  One that was shared was regarding, high “teacher turnover”, which I found interesting because I have heard educators say to me that some schools aren’t innovative because they have had people there too long. Total opposite ends of the spectrum.

Another barrier was too many meetings. The contradiction is that we do not have enough time for collaboration. So we are either seeing that we spend too much time together, or not enough.  Now I know there is a difference between “meetings” and “collaboration”, but does this present an opportunity or an obstacle? Really, it is how we look at it.

I shared this in “The Innovator’s Mindset“:

When the six-second video app Vine came out, some people asked, “What in the world could you possibly do with six seconds?” Others said, “I wonder what I could do with six seconds?” It is not about skill set; it is about mindset. While some looked at the time constraint as a barrier, others saw the constraint as an opportunity. You choose your perspective.

I understand the point of the post, and the conditions that many educators face are not ideal. But I also know that we face certain realities in education that we will have to overcome, or they will control our future.  Leaders don’t focus on “we can’t”, but on “how can we?”

It is all about perspective, and we can either let our reality define us, or define our reality. Somebody, somewhere, is doing the same things that others say they can’t do.   What perspective we choose could determine the future of education.



from Connected Principals http://ift.tt/1L4fXAj

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