Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Coming Back To Reality

With soooo much good coming out of SXSWEdu, sometimes the snap back to reality is really jarring.  If only I could come back to all of the amazing innovations I saw, and those who embraced them.

Back at school this week, I have realized that there are few kindred spirits, especially among the administration.  They were all fascinated by what I told them of my trip, but immediately had excuses for "why it wouldn't work here" or "why we can't do that."

Despite the data I brought back with me, and the data that they have seen, so many teachers and administrators are still *scared* of putting technology into the students' hands or teaching students to think by, well, letting them.  What would happen if, rather than telling students how to do something, or lecturing them, we let them figure it out and gave them personalized feedback along the way?  What if we acknowledged that, say, there is more than one way to solve a particular math problem, or that there is more than one valid way to make a particular argument?  What if we put the resources in the students' hands?

As one colleague told me, "It would be chaos! They would be running all over the place and talking too much!  Besides, it takes way too much time to gather all the resources and work with each student!"

I sighed.  What about things like Writer's Workshop, training other students to be good peer-reviewers?!  What about working with examples, and having students critique the examples? And that's not even to mention teaching them self-control and self-discipline! 

Needless to say, I came back and jumped right in to class, with my students working on writing a response to a story in small groups.

"Where were you?" one of them asked.  I told her.  I realized that my other students were listening too as I described such an amazing conference and great ideas. 

One of my students' eyes went wide.  "Is this where you get ideas that make us think?" she asked.  The lightbulb had turned on.

I nodded.

"It's refreshing to have to think sometimes!"One of my other students commented.  And others grudgingly admitted the same.

And I couldn't help but think about SXSWEdu, where one of the panelists in a session I went to said that she hoped that "the next generation of students would know how to think and problem solve."

Thankfully, there are kindred spirits around, similar fish heading for a new climate.  So, my kindred fish, where do you find other kindred fish?  What keeps you going when you have to go back to reality?

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