WOW! I am sitting here in Philadelphia reflecting on the beginning of my Educon21 experience and what an event it has been so far. I arrived at SLA too late to visit classes, but as I sat in the library looking around something that Kevin Jarret said to me the other day REALLY struck me...
SLA is a place where people go to learn....
As I watch the kids I saw individuals who are not afraid to engage in conversations with adults about what they are learning, how they are learning, WHY they are learning. They ask intelligent questions and they do so with genuine curiosity. During the panel as they were talking about the purpose of schools, and what schools should be one of the students turned to Chris Lehamann and said something along the lines of....wow, they are talking about our school. While I took my notes at the panel "old school" with a pen and paper...and will post them at a later time the thing that really struck me was that all of them described schools in whe the atmosphere infused creativity, collaboration, and learning with courage and confidence. Schools that build community, allow students to generate ideas...not regurgitate information. That foster creativity and are idea harvesters and make school a part of the global community. Schools shoud be based on inquiry and model the world that the students will inherit...and the SLA kids model this at every opportunity!
YES! SLA is place where folks go to learn....but when I say this, I am NOT just talking about the kids!
Folks like David Warlick, Gary Stager and Will Richardson who make their living talking about educational change, come to SLA to learn. Bud Hunt who I followed yesterday on twitter describing his experience in Mr. Chase's english class...comes to SLA to learn. Learning by collaborating, and building community. I have so enjoyed getting to spend some face to face time with my network and know this is going to be a great weekend of learning for us all. I want to thank Chris Lehmann and all of the teachers and students at SLA for opening the doors to their school, for inviting us ALL to continue to be learners there and to think about teaching and learning, and I look forward to the learning I will do at Educon this year.
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