Sometimes teaching feels like a box, and if you cut a small window and look outside to the possibility and promise that teaching holds for every child that box can feel small, tight, frustrating, and even suffocating.
Too strong box edges are created by policy, rules, and systems that prevent fluidity, new think, and share, while the little cut window or more flexible walls extend the box to the outside world making education more responsive, fluid, evolving, creative, and bright.
How do we make our teaching box continue to have good structure while also allowing the flexibility needed to grow and develop? How can we teach and collaborate well in the teaching boxes where we work? Are the sometimes too-inflexible walls created by lack of time and those rushed meetings that don't allow us to think and share with depth and care?
In some ways, I love the challenge of the box. The constraints make me think deeply about what's best and where to go, but at other times the tight box stands like a wall that prevents me from doing the good work I know is possible in schools. When this happens I usually cry :), explain myself, and find a new way to move forward. Onward
