Sunday, August 27, 2017

Teach Well: We lose capacity when we don't collaborate

When I woke up thinking about the incredible possibility and promise holds today for education, I recognized that we lose capacity when we don't collaborate.

Further, we lose capacity when we don't develop distributive models of leadership that forward the research, development, and intersection of significant fields of study.

For example if everyone is working on doing all teaching or lots of teaching in silos, there's little time to go deep with research, exploration, innovation, and adaptation. Yet, if we intersect deep study in significant areas by some, then the intersection of that deep research amongst teams who specialize in different areas, we will spiral the teaching/learning forward in deep, meaningful ways. This matters.

I wrote a post that explains one way that elementary schools can distribute leadership, democratize innovation and development, and move schools ahead. As I thought about moving our coding efforts forward this morning in ways that matter, I realized that we need distributed models like this to move coding and any other area of significance ahead in meaningful ways. Right now many systems are losing capacity by continuing to work with old models of leadership and innovation--this is a problem.

Fortunately I work in a shared model that maximizes the targeted efforts of many individuals when it comes to teaching children well. Everyday I see the significance of this model, and why it makes a difference. The model is outlined in the presentation below:


As I look forward, I want to continue to advocate for greater distribution of leadership in ways that foster deep research and study as well as significant intersection of ideas in modern, forward moving ways. This is an exciting problem to solve in education, one that holds great strength for better schools.