As I sit listening to Will Richardson's Keynote at PETE & C--the question that stood out to me the most was...
As kids connect socially to the things which they are passionate about—how do we in education maintain our relevance?
What a concept---we....the teachers....and what we have to say.....does it have relevance to the students we teach? How do we make it important to them? I have really been thinking about this a lot lately as we begin to answer the strategic plan process in my school. How do we continue to support these efforts while preparing for high stakes testing? How do we convince people that we can't continue to do more of the same stuff and make a difference?
Will asked us to think about these things as teachers...
Who are OUR teachers?
How are we building OUR OWN learning network?
How are WE modeling OUR learning for our students?
Groups like The Keystones and GTO mentors, the Classrooms for the Future Coaches, and PAECT are starting to have these conversations...starting to make these connections. So I open it up to you...what changes are YOU going to make?
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Hi Kristin
ReplyDeleteI found you!! and found your comments very interesting. We are the learners - and as we continue to seek new information and develop new learning it is because we are acting on what we understand to be relevant to our world. Our job is to model this for our students - to model ourselves as lifetime learners so that our students understand that learning is an on-going process and that relevancy constantly changes. What is taught needs to be relevant to the world in which our students are currently growing up - the experiences that they are having - and to the world they will be entering when they leave school. For many teachers the task is to identify both worlds and to understand that what was relevant in the past may no longer be relevant to the 21st century learner and member of the "flat" society. Think about what is offered in many of our social studies curriculums - do we question the content-the relevancy of the content to the needs of our students who will need to understand the culture and languages of countries that we do not teach about? There is a conflict between what we have always taught and what we need to teach. Technology will open may doors and hopefully many minds as teachers are able to access more information and expand beyond the confines of their classrooms and textbooks...