Why now? This is the question we should really ask ourselves.
For so long, teachers have been expected to do so much with so little, and so much scrutiny. If you went to school, you think you know what should be done in a classroom, and that is true, except you only know what should have been done for you.
Education is not “one size fits all,” but that is the way it has been structured. If you listen to any of the students I have interviewed for the Unimagined podcast, you will know that what works for you might not work for me (or work for anyone else). What’s more, we don’t give the time, space or resources to make discovering that a possibility.
Well, then, what is the answer?
Unfortunately, there isn’t just one answer, but there are enough people in a community to make the solutions possible.
The challenge is that we have to work together, and we often don’t do that effectively.
Administration works in isolation, away from the educators and the students.
The best option is to collect the data, from everyone; teachers see problems, administrators see problems, and the students see problems (and boy, do they see them!).
What happens when we all see the problems, but don’t connect about what we are seeing:
Disengagement,
frustration
and more isolation.
My favorite thing to do with that data is to collaborate with students on the solutions they think could solve those problems. The beauty of the way I work with students is that we don’t implement the solutions, we think about the impacts the solutions would have, and the roadblocks we might face around those solutions. We come up with ideas and plans with a problem solving focus. Then those students would report back to their groups of friends, or even advisories, and repeat the process. I love this idea so much because we are not bearing the cost or time to implement solutions, but we are creating solution driven thinking among our students, and creating grass roots solution based thinking.
Want to try it? Give me a call! Try it out and let me know what you think! There is no downside!!!