It's vacation week in Massachusetts. Essentially, for me, it has been a catch-up week of personal matters and school thought--a needed reprieve from daily practice.
Six days into the vacation has brought me clarity and energy. I'm ready to embark on the end-year goals of math education, project base learning and literacy studio. I know my students well and have many individual and collective goals at-hand for the students.
As I begin to think ahead I find myself desiring the broader view, the system-wide goals and vision. In the old days I was content to hear this vision in the fall as learning didn't change a lot from year to year. But today, an update in September seems too late as tools, processes and strategies are changing at a fast rate in this information age. Children are coming to us with different skills, goals and questions due to their ready access to technology and learning at home. Plus, the potential to serve each child well in a personalized fashion is greater than ever before. We hold wonderful promise in our hands.
Yet, that promise demands that teachers hone their craft, research, and learn in order to catch-up with the quickly changing learning landscape around us. There's been a leap with regard to research, innovation and potential, and to sit by and just be satisfied seems to no longer be a plausible route to travel. Educators today need to take on the pace and direction that new learning offers because this new learning has the potential to empower and engage students in ways not possible before.
How has your vision and goal sharing changed since the onset of tech tools and innovation? What is the best pace for the changing learning landscape? What does this change look like? Am I impatient or am I rightly directed towards wanting to understand, create new paths, and revise our school environments, processes and efforts? I welcome your thoughts and ideas?
