On the eve of returning to work, for my daughters, 6 and 9

So.  This is it.  The year of no homework.  The year of no worksheets.  No desks in rows.  This is the year of "what if" instead of simply "what."  After swimming around in our faculty summer reading of Tony Wagner's Creating Innovators, surely we are all ready for a year of igniting creativity, nurturing bravery, and challenging the real or imagined barriers students carry to school.  

Right?  

It has to be, because this is our chance to leap into whatever magic is through the portal, glittering not so far away.  If we wait, if we hesitate even one day more, the portal will pass and we will be stuck in rows and worksheets and rote memorization and complacency for another school year.

So.  As a parent I will be my children's advocate.  As an educator I will be your children's advocate.

My inspiration for my work this year comes from this poem I found in a book marked for Goodwill, If You're Not Here Please Raise Your Hand, by a former teacher, Kalli Dakos:

"The Wind is Calling Me Away"

How can I sit through one more day,
For the wind is calling me away,
And I want to change with the leaves that fall,
But I'm here in school and I'm missing it all.

While leaves as bright as the sun fly by,
We add, subtract, and multiply,
And none of these numbers makes sense to me,
When the sky is as blue as the summer sea.

Oh, teacher, please let's race the leaves,
Let's jump in piles and climb in trees,
Let's add, subtract, and multiply,
The wind, the leaves, and the deep blue sky.

--Kalli Dakos

And one more, just because in my crusade to make school different, I can't forget about my first passion, the fight to make reading wonderful.

"I Have No Time to Visit with King Arthur"

I have no time to dream a dream,
Or think a splendid thought,
Or visit with King Arthur
In the land of Camelot.

I've underlined one hundred nouns, 
And circled thirty verbs,
While wishing that this workbook
Had a story to its words.

I could travel to another time
With Huck Finn on his raft,
Or read a poem by Silverstein 
That really makes me laugh.

Instead I fill in compound words,
A neverending chore:
How I long to be with Gulliver
On a strange and distant shore!

Nouns and verbs and compound words
Are sad and dull and stale,
Unless they're fired with the spark
Of a mighty, wondrous tale.

--Kalli Dakos

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.