My world on the web
Just having a clear mission isn’t enough; that mission must drive the work in every part of the school down to the support staff, maintenance crew, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers.
Why don’t we create an app for students so they can track every time our “narrow path” narrative makes them anxious or stressed, or every time we deny them the agency to pursue learning that matters to them, or hint at their value as humans by the test scores or GPAs they get, or whenever we deny them fundamental democratic rights, or refuse to act in ways that suggest that we are the problem and not them? We could call it “Ed-mote” or some other silly Silicon Valley play on words, and the software would send DMs to superintendents and principals when an intervention is required, like an immediate two-hour play period for everyone in the school. (We could also, by the way, encourage them to track the many positives about their school experience as well.)
Using what’s measurable as the lens that guides your work is easier, yes. But now that the world is honoring skills and dispositions over content knowledge and other things easily measurable, it’s time to change the lens. The primary lenses for our work today must be our deeply help beliefs about learning, our deeply held commitments to our children and their well-being, our clear understanding of the opportunities and challenges of the world as it operates today, and our capacity to create new cultures and practices in our classrooms that serve all of us, adults and kids, as learners first and foremost.
Do you know the difference between technical change and adaptive change? Most change in schools involves technical change, like “dressing up” the current situation, but not really addressing the underlying issues. Adaptive change, as defined by Harvard’s Ron Heifetz, is changing culture, worldview, and self-worth. These are the changes that are the hardest to make and require a re-imagination of our culture and our basic roles. The message is that we need to stop “playing around the edges” and make changes that really get to the core.
Another interesting listen, with so much to reflect upon.
One thing that stood out though was Will Richardson’s reference to “a post shared on LinkedIn and Facebook.” I wonder if this is the ‘Modern’ world, one ruled by platform capitalism? If:
We need to stop “playing around the edges” and make changes that really get to the core
then I wonder if this is really the core?
I understand our focus should be about ‘learning’, but if there is anything to come out of the recent Cambridge Analytica revelations, then it is surely that we need a better model moving forward.
The future may not involve everyone to #DeleteFacebook, but I would hope that those leading technological change would lead the way? I have the same concern about Anil Dash writing about the open web in a post on Medium. For me, the future is the IndieWeb, for others it is a Domain of One’s Own. I think that both of these discussions touch upon the idea of a canonical URL.
