Essential Question: How do we maintain excellence as we innovate?
Dates to save:
Tuesday 4:30 AKST Twitter Focus Session #ETLEAD Hosted by the two Saras! (Note that twitter is on Tuesday rather than Thursday this week!)
Thursday 4:30 AKST Dave Burgess Webinar. This will be done as a Hangout on the Air.
Reading: Part Three Teach Like a Pirate
About the Week
When we innovate, we tap into our creative passion naturally. We get excited about the invention we will use in our classroom this week. It may not be a new invention – it might have been used by others in the past in some way – but in our classroom, at the moment that we commit to the lesson, it becomes uniquely ours. This set of students at this moment in time with this teacher have never seen this before! And it can be a great deal of fun! When things work, our colleagues laud us and our esteem soars! Our students learn, parents are happy. Indeed, the angels may be singing!
On the other hand, when we innovate and it absolutely flops we may feel discouraged. We might feel we wasted time by creating that lesson, by attempting something that in all reality should have worked but for some reason did not. At this point, we might wish to go back to the “tried and true”. We might think to ourselves, “I’m never doing THAT again.” Well, that is completely appropriate. On the other hand, we can’t swear off trying new things. After all we are teachers! If nothing else we are resourceful, and the best teachers try EVERYTHING within their power when a challenge presents itself.
There is no “tried and true” method. There is only the method we are comfortable with, and the one that we are not. Even our “tried and true” methods are not perfect. For the group of students we have we will tweak the method, we will mix things up again. And if we wish to be excellent ourselves, we may have become bored with the “tried and true”. Sometimes we have to shake things up a bit for ourselves, to regain our passion! Suddenly our world gets bigger! Suddenly we have new problems. They aren’t the problems that existed with the “tried and true” method. They are different problems! They aren’t better or worse, only different.
“Change is the only constant”. This being the case, we can choose to lead with our dreams. The change we create in our classroom may be small, and it may be new only to our students and ourselves, but it represents our own capability to model growth and adaptation to our students, and ultimately, our own greatness.
Due Friday:
Create your Week Five Blog, responding to the Essential Question. You should use resources from the text, and you should also add at least 3 of your own resources to the blog posting.
Use Twitter to share your blog address with the #ETLEAD community.
Due Sunday:
Comment on the blogs of others.
Create a blog entry outlining the way that you contributed to the learning of others, and the impact of your interaction with others through social media (Twitter, blog responses) on your learning.
Submit the URL for your Blog Postings to Livetext on Sunday.
Leadership In Ed Tech 