Innovator’s Mindset - Week 2
A group of us aspiring innovators at Forest Hills have joined the second installment of the Innovator’s Mindset MOOC (Massive Open Online Course). The author, George Couros is the instructor of the course! It is my commitment to post reflections from the book, twitter chats and webinars each week. Here is this week’s installment:
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Just about every teacher has at one point in time had to write a Philosophy of Education paper as a teacher candidate or pre-service teacher. While I have grown greatly in my understanding of best practices and pedagogy, my over-arching view of the purpose of education has not changed a whole lot from when I was an undergraduate student preparing to enter the education workforce.
I still believe that the chief end of education is both civic and personal in its purpose. The civic responsibilities of education, more specifically public education, is to serve society by producing a productive workforce while also cultivating a population that can think for themselves and contribute to the advancement of its people socially, ethically and economically..
The personal purpose is not mutually exclusive from the civic obligation but it instead carries with it a different lens. In other words, education should serve the individual in order to meet its civic obligations. A learner should be cultivated to become a capable thinker and doer for the advancement of that individual as well as for the benefit of all people.
As the demands and complexities of our world shift down pathways still unknown, our preparation of learners must focus on skills that promote adaptivity and scholarship. Scholarship provides the capacity to wield any and all resources as a tool for self advancement while adaptivity is the affective capacity to accept a necessary change in order to thrive within a shifted paradigm or expectations. Traditional teaching and learning only provides rote skills that efficiently prepare for a static paradigm and consistent expectations. Therefore, innovation in education is critical as to uphold both its civic and personal functions.
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It comes with far less difficulty for me to notice the global deficiencies that hold our learners back from these lofty pursuits as opposed to formulating scale-able changes for the better. I can especially relate to feeling overwhelmed with a sense of an inability to bring about systemic change. I will not however, allow this to prevent me from personally being the change I want to see.
I begin the process of innovation by reminding myself of 3 core convictions:
- I am willing to take risks because it is a worthwhile endeavor. Complacency will only result in a poor if not worse outcome anyway.
- I can start small and build gradually. Any step in a positive direction is still progress.
- I do not have to know all of the answers before I begin. Through my personal learning network, wisdom from failing forward and a willingness to research along the way, I often produce some of my greatest accomplishments professionally.
As a Digital Learning Specialist, I work closely with amazing educators with a vast array of personalities, experiences, professional goals and philosophies. My goal is to cultivate innovative learning through coaching professional educators and providing organizational support. Although I am housed at our Middle School, I serve elementary, middle and high school educators in all subject areas alongside 2 other DLSs within a district with 7,600 students in 9 different schools. This in itself is an extremely overwhelming but worthwhile task that I personally feel extraordinarily blessed to be undertaking.
We’ve made amazing strides in the past handful of years to innovate learning through adapting tried and true pedagogies with invented or iterated experiences for our learners that inspire active and self-regulating learners.
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It is however somewhat cathartic to think about what it would be like if we could build a school from scratch. To keep this simple and not too wordy I have created 6 examples of thoughts at the forefront of my mind that would be conditions of this brand new, innovative school. Feel free to add to the list using the comment feature as we build a school with innovative concepts. Your response can be practical and specific or broad and philosophical.
- Educators would be given more time to grow professionally in smaller chunks of time each week rather than single disconnected whole days spaced throughout the school year.
- Learners would be given greater voice and choice with appropriate control over time, pace, place and path for their learning.
- Learners would have higher expectations placed upon them with a greater sense accountability for their own learning first facilitated by flexible schedules with varying levels of guided assistance based upon where they land on the self-regulating continuum.
- Educators would feel less burdened by assessment scores and more accountable for growing themselves professionally, through scholarship, coaching and networking.
- All learners would experience quality blended and personalized instruction within every learning experience they participate within.
- Learners would be given time every day to decompress and reflect upon their learning with the opportunity to receive support from their teachers as needed.
Contributed by Kyle Mack @ProfKyleMack
