Create, Reflect, Revise

This is a big summer for St. Christopher's School.  We have a 1:1 program launching in the fall, our school will be celebrating its centennial, and we will be opening the Luck Leadership Center in January 2012. So in the midst of all of the excitement, I find it is critical that as we create new and engaging activities for our boys, we must also be mindful to reflect and revise as needed.

A true master teacher/learner will reflect on the outcomes of their lesson or activity and will take the time to revise the approach to maximize learning.  At a recent PD activity on Google docs for the faculty, I opted to share my notes with the attendees rather than give them hard copies.  In so doing, I was able to augment the notes with their ideas and suggestions after the class.  It was quite easy to amend the notes and best of all, I didn't have to resend an updated version because the document was shared. Having done this 2x and with several more PD sessions remaining throughout the summer, my latest reflection has prompted me to give the participants editing capabilities so we can truly benefit from our collective efforts.

We've been using this approach in our tech dept meetings to collect minutes and document action items so why not extend it to the classroom. It's like a wiki on steroids with the benefits of concurrent users.

While most of us are in the business of creating, let's not forget to take the time to reflect and revise.

Fostering a love of learning

How many times have you found yourself being sucked into reading hours of information about a topic just because you stumbled upon it? Or maybe you intentionally sought out information that had little or nothing to do with what you teach but you needed it solely for personal reasons.

Well, it is the second example which is the impetus for this post. Within the past few months, I've acquired information on how to repair my mountain bike through bicycletutor.com, determined the location of the cabin filter on the family van through wikianswers.com, watched a video on how to install a 3 way dimmer switch at easy2diy.com, and most recently, I was able to correctly insulate the pipe leaving the central air unit using yahoo answers. Can you tell I am a new home owner?

In each of those instances, I was hoping to be an informed consumer and save a few bucks but ultimately it was my passion knowing for how stuff works(great site) and a love of learning that drives me.

So how can we foster a love of learning? With respects to the curriculum, often times, too much emphasis is placed on content objectives when it is the affective component of the curriculum that is deficient. Please note, that I am not advocating abandoning content because having a foundation is indeed important in creating interest and passion.

What I am advocating, however,is balance on a sliding scale. Provide the foundation, check for understanding, and then allow your students to discover, apply, and create. And as the content becomes more complex, allow that scale to slide some, perhaps in favor of content, so the affective component can grab hold.

This is hardly a new concept, but imagine the time and energy our students would spend given the opportunity to engage in meaningful learning. For some teachers, this is a radical shift in pedagogy but our teachers need models too. If we model this approach within our professional development days or classes, we can take advantage of the innate curiosity within educators. Spread the seeds of curiosity(change) and watch the learning take hold.

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