I have a futurist in my midst. That teacher is spending hours researching and employing new strategies, tools and intent to engage and motivate her students.
I am watching. I am happily challenged. I see promise. Research supports her efforts.
Some worry--they check the scores, compare old teaching and new, and fear we won't make the standards.
I say give the futurist a small budget and time each day to weave her modern magic and teach others about the learning to come. We're lucky to have this teacher in our school. Let's not kill the spirit or suffocate the possibility--instead let's feed this wonderful path of innovation, engagement and change.
Then, when it comes to the scores, let's do that too. Perhaps I exchange teaching times so the innovator can share her craft with my students while I share some tried and true standards-base lessons with her students--I'm an "old" teacher; I've been around for a while and can do that. And, even though I'm a great advocate of all that is new and wonderful, I'm not as passionate as this vibrant teacher next door.
Schools today can be win-win as we weave new and old, traditional and modern, tried-and-true and innovative together to create a positive, multidimensional, vibrant path towards the schools of the future.
