@johndalesio I believe in you, John. If anyone has something to say, it’s you.

— Valerie Koch (@valerie_koch) May 24, 2016

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On one cloudy Tuesday afternoon, six teachers skipped lunch, and instead had some thought for food.  Using Sonya terBorg’s Imagine a School as our prompt, we shared our musings on the future of school.

That’s Us!

Teachers are futurists. They have no choice not to be, the future is the client of today’s teacher.

What if once a month, or at least once a year, you and your colleagues got together to share your vision for the future of education?

Would we understand one another better?

Would we better appreciate the values of our colleagues?

Would we create a shift in our school’s culture?

Richard Harlos
Shift.

The future is built on a foundation of ‘what if’s.’ 

There is power in predicting.  There is power in collectively articulating our hopes and dreams for tomorrow’s learning environment.

The responsibility to be future-ready as a society starts with educators who want to instill future-ready skills in their students by modeling them themselves…today.

I’m reading an excellent book on the mode of thinking necessary to design better learning experiences: Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
by Tim Brown

“There is an important lesson here about the challenges of shifting from a culture of hierarchy and efficiency to one of risk taking and exploration. Those who navigate this transition successfully are likely to become more deeply engaged, more highly motivated, and more wildly productive than they have ever been before.”

Magical movements in education are brought to life in the space between reflection and conversation. 

Too frequently we wait for conversations to be started by others when the reality is we are the conversation starters.  In the words of Walter White…be the one who knocks.

John blogged about that very notion in his post here:

Stop waiting. Just do something. Try a new activity. Ask a colleague to help you with a new site. Get feedback from students on their favorite learning experiences, and model a new assessment around their feedback.

Victoria blogged about a key question for all schools here:

Is the curriculum I teach now going to make our society stronger?

Valerie’s bloggings imagined a whole new kind of school experience here:

…where kids don’t have to learn the quadratic formula.

…where kids teach and inspire each other.

…which prepares kids and teachers for the real-world.

Cate focused on the role that trust must play in schools, see her full post here

I guess it is about trust. Do we trust pupils to do what is right for them? Do we trust ourselves to sit back and allow them to experiement or fail?

Phil unpacks the significance of expectations in his post here:

…being brave enough to fail is so important – it gives us permission to hold exceptional expectations.

And I thought about moving from measuring to more mentoring in my post here.

What mini thought-experiment can you conduct this week?

Thank you Flickr for your amazing Creative Commons Images!

Richard Harlos

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