#IMMOOC Week 1 – Embracing change

My first response to watching the first #IMMOOC YouTube video and reading the introduction of The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros was to create a sketchnote of my main take-aways:

I know that we have been asked to do a 30-second video reflection. I’m putting that off for as long as possible as I cannot bear to be on that side of the camera… so I’m going to start with the blog prompts first!

What do you see as the purpose of education? Why might innovation be critical in education? Yikes, what a huge question. Just going to write from my gut. I believe the purpose of education is to provide learners with significant, relevant, challenging and meaningful opportunities to enable them think deeply about the world (or to ‘stretch our brains’ as I tell my young students). Education should develop a learner’s life skills enabling them to communicate, cooperate, and collaborate with others in a respectful way. I’ll share a quote from Ron Ritchhart’s (awesome) book “Creating Cultures of Thinking“:

“…what emerges is a rich portrait of a student as an engaged and active thinker able to communicate, innovate, collabrate, and problem-solve.” 

I also firmly believe that students should be given opportunities to develop as problem finders, not just problem solvers.

The world we live in is forever changing. Students today live very different lives to the students of yesterday. It is critical for educators today to embrace and lead innovation to ensure that our students are equipped to embrace and lead innovation tomorrow.

Change is an opportunity to do something amazing. How are you embracing change to spur innovation in your own context? I’ve had a lot of big changes recently. I’ve just moved to a different school in a different city in a different country in a different continent! Previously, I was teaching at an international school in Hong Kong (I was born and bred in the UK, but haven’t lived there for almost two decades!). I left Hong Kong in June and headed to Africa, where I am now teaching at an international school in Tanzania. Both schools use the PYP curriculum… and that is pretty much where the similarities end!

Even my teaching position has changed. In Hong Kong I was teaching Performing Arts (Music, Dance and Drama) to almost 400 students aged 5-8. I was yearning to get back into classroom teaching… another big change! So here I am. I’m a homeroom teacher of Grade 2 (I’m also the Tech Coach for the Grade 2 teaching team). I love that now I only have 22 students to think about!

Huge work and life change. I love change and I fully embrace it. It does not scare me. It excites me. I had initially thought that the move to Africa was an opportunity to experience something amazing. But now I’m starting to think that it is also an opportunity for me to do something amazing.

I know there are quite a few things in my classroom I want to change already. Things that don’t sit well with me because they just don’t seem to be creating the BEST possible experiences and learning oppoortunities for my students. I know I can’t change EVERYTHING at once. I know I need to start small. I need to choose one thing to change. I asked my students a week or so ago to complete a reflection on our time together so far:

The things they wanted to change were:

1. to have markers more available in pencil pots (done)

2. to eat snack indoors (their reason was because food and drink falls on them from the balcony above – so I’ve talked to the teacher there to try to stop that happening!)

3. colours of the walls (they think light blue is too boring – will try to find out how viable changing the wall colour is!)

4. seating (some students wanted to have their own assigned seat… so far I have left seating ‘free’ and told them that they can sit/stand where they like).

I feel like there is nothing substantial there that calls for change or innovation. There is, however, one element of our classroom that I feel is in urgent need of attention. Our book corner. I hate it. I inherited hundreds of books squished into small wooden book boxes. It’s not user-friendly and I am quite sure that my students are not having their best possible literature interactions there. Interestingly, many of my students identified it as something we should keep when we completed the reflection (they like to go and sit and ‘read to self’).

I think this is a small (tiny, even?) manageable change. Maybe it’s too small?! A place to start anyway. I’m hoping it might lead to other things. I’m going to begin by asking the students to identify what they like and dislike about the book corner. Find out what they think a good book corner should look like and then have them design a new space. I’m also going to try to find research on reading that talks about how classroom book corners can be organised to best suit student needs. Watch this space for updates!

#IMMOOC #education #Innovation