Forget Thinking Outside The Box

Yesterday in New York City Seth Godin told us to dance on the edge of danger.  He told us to find our edge, to consider what we'd be willing to get arrested for.  He asked us to figure out whether or not we are doing something so important that we are willing to fail at it.  What story, he pushed, are we prepared to live?  Most passionately, he implored us not to wait for someone to pick us; we need to pick ourselves.

Most of the attendees were entrepreneurs, marketers, and writers.  But a few of us were educators, eager to hear more about Stop Stealing Dreams and how to "make school different."  About five of the questions asked all day centered on making change happen in schools.  What follows are MY major take-aways from his responses:

1. At our school, we need to tell the same story.  All of us.  So who gets to decide the story?  And when?
2. Would anyone miss us (the school) if we were gone?  If not, our story doesn't matter.
3. We need to help kids find their superpowers and then celebrate those powers all the time.  Kids need to find their heroes among themselves.
4. We need to understand the parents' worldview--they want their children to be successful.  Instead of fighting that, bank on it.  We want success, too.  Let us show you how...
5. School can't change overnight.  We need to work from inside the box, lean against the walls, find the weakest wall, and leverage that weakness. Stop thinking outside the box!  Get in it--then bust through one wall.

Make School Different

This weekend I did something I swore I'd never do:  stick a bumper sticker to my car.  I really stuck it--no magnets, tape, or other alternative affixes.  For the past few weeks I drove around with it curled up on the front seat of my car, debating whether or not to take the plunge.  In all my years of driving, I have never peeled the backing off a sticker and placed the sticker on my bumper--not just because I don't want to damage the paint (though that is part of it), but because I cannot think of a sticker that holds a message significant enough that it should be a permanent and public banner of my beliefs.  So why now?  

Because Phil Sharp's "Make School Different" sticker, inspired by Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams, is that important.  I will never stop believe that our children deserve a new vision, an entirely different concept, of school.  Car paint be damned. 

Thoughts on Curriculum 21

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with a colleague about planning a new English course for our seniors--one that would prepare them for "21st century" college reading, writing, and analytical assignments.  We discussed the importance of media literacy and how our students, because of our more traditional program, rarely read and write texts that are relevant today.  Some of our teachers, upon hearing this idea, resisted.  Why should they analyze film, television, or YouTube videos?  What would teachers have to give up...Hamlet?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps not--maybe students could re-envision Hamlet through a video and audio mashup of scenes from different versions.  That's just one idea.

Upon reading Jacobs' Curriculum 21 I realized there's another layer we should add into this sort of course, and into all of our writing courses--documentaries.  I can just imagine our seventh graders writing the script to a documentary about a research topic of their choice.  I can hear their well crafted, voice-overs and imagine the time they'd take to select the music to accompany the images.  There's so much to teach in this sort of unit of study--as soon as I finish collaborating with my tech integration specialist, I'm on to my media literacy specialist to help me plan a documentary-writing unit for middle school students.

Then what?  VODcasts, leaving comments on authors' blogs, multi-school poetry slam via skype...

The Next Frontier

The talk of blogging has been swirling around me for quite some time, but this morning when I offered to help a fourth grade teacher prepare a series of minilessons to teach her students how to blog, I decided it was time to dive in.  So this is my first blog post, and it is little more than a confession that I've never blogged...and that I need to head into this new frontier so I can actually figure out how to teach blog-writing strategies to fourth graders.  Why would we want to teach fourth graders to blog?  Because for now, blogs are the way many people get the news, form opinions, or develop hobbies.  When these fourth graders are out in the world, who knows what new genre supported by what new technology will be their main source of information.  But for now...this is it.  So kids better understand how to communicate in this forum without being disrespectful, inappropriate, or vain.  Online etiquette, solid grammar/usage/mechanics skills, effective communication, digital responsibility...there are so many lessons here that I am anxious to get started.