Welcome to Guatemala

Sitting in the airport with a mixture of thoughts, most of them are filled with excitement, the excitement that comes from a new adventure. This trip sort of snuck up on me. I have been so busy with the start of school that I haven’t thought about the implications of heading to Central America for the first time. I have lots of ideas about what to expect, but I wonder a lot about how my expectations will meet the realities on the ground. My purpose for this trip is to see in a number of different ways. See the reality on the ground concerning bringing digital learning to these schools. See a new place and experience the food, culture, and people. See that which comes from being in education for 15+ years. See inside myself a bit as I experience life in Guatemala for the first time. See this project through the eyes of the teachers here in the States. See. See. See. I’m also thinking back to my selection of langugage learning in high school and college. I decided to learn French in middle school because I liked crepes, and though it has helped me in Paris and while watching the Tour de France, I’m longing right now to have some Spanish as a part of my communication repetoire this week. I’m sure that there will be some universals in the world of education, but there will certainly be some connections that will be lost in translation. Hopefully, there will be a few folks that have an opportunity to view this blog throughout the week. I’ll be grabbing the five best pictures from the day (hoping to take hundreds each day) and provide them in this space along with my learnings, musings, and connections that arise from this adventure. To learn more about this project overall, you can go to Global Learning Exchange.

The Trap

There is a trap set each school year in about the third week of school. It is the trap that catches you and tells you to resist change, follow the path of least resistance, and move to a safer space. No matter how many times you have told yourself that you plan to do things differently, this is the window of time when new and different collide with hard.  You have allies. You have support. Let your connected colleagues assist you through this trap that says that yesterday's success is good enough to today's kids. September is the perfect time to try something new, grow as a connected and digital learner, and build the student-centered classroom that maximizes learning and engagement.

Who lives in your bathtub?

I just finished watching Beasts of the Southern Wild, an interesting movie, about a community of folks that find happiness in the depths of poverty. It led me to ask, "Who in our schools lives in our bathtub?" The Bathtub in this movie was a low lying swampy area populated by a mixed bag of folks on the other side of the levee. This is the other side of the other side of the tracks. All of our schools have kids that live in The Bathtub, and it is easy to point to the ways that living this way is hard, but I think that it is important for us to remember that all humans find happiness, a time to smile, and rest even in the face of the pressures of poverty. All of our kids know those emotions and long for more of them. We don't have to teach our kids that live in poverty what joy feels like, but we do have to help them feel comfortable so the natural joy of the human spirit has a chance to rise more moments than ever before.

The Speed of Cultural Change

After three days at Leyden's Summer Symposium, I've been brought back to an idea that it is important to focus on as leaders of learning. Change can happen quickly. We see this around us all of the time. Music and media change the world everyday. They are able to shape public opinion through storytelling, common language, and passion for the topic. Schools often feel that change is a long process that can't be accelerated because of the massive amount of persuasion that has to take place among the adults in the system. This thinking is inhibiting innovation, and opportunities to be nimble enough to seize real-time opportunities. Schools must move fast on the road to being different. It can be done and is being done by courageous leaders throughout the country. It is a rarity that a school system can move this fast, but it's schools can and must if they are meeting their moral obligation to serve all students in a way that meets the needs of today's learner. Thanks to Leyden for reminding us all that change can happen quickly when courage, trust, and determination are all in the recipe.

Caring Too Much about Kids

Are we approaching a time in education when we care too much about kids? At some point, we have to think a bit more about ourselves, our happiness, and our families. There just isn't enough time in the day to care this much about kids. It is tiring. It is exhausting, and we aren't being supported by families, the community or our democracy. 

Maybe we can pull back 10-15%. Spend all of that time on a new hobby, relax or binge another show on Netflix. Pulling back the amount that we care about kids would be healthy for me, my family, and my larger ecosystem. 

If I pulled back a bit further, I may have time to write that book that has been in my head for a decade or more. It would give me time to decompress and leave work at work. It would also allow me some distance from my kids to gain some greater perspective, stop making emotion-driven decisions, and hit the reset button. 

It is easy to care too much. You get sucked in, and you don't even know it. Twenty years later no one will reward you for caring about other people's kids, but a large section of your life will be lost. It truly does make sense to pull back, way back, and rethink whether or not we can do this education thing in a more high tech way without the high touch piece that is destroying people and robbing them of the balance that everyone needs. 

It is clearly time to care a little less about kids, and leave this education thing to those that are deranged enough to care. 

Are You Sure that You Want to Teach?

Before you step into the classroom in the fall, please be sure that you really want to teach. I know that you need a paycheck to support your family, but we need tireless servants that are dedicated to serving all kids. I know that it is the only thing that you have even done, and you can't imagine doing anything else, but I'm not sure that is the deep passion that we need in each of our classrooms to make a difference. I know that you have got this teaching thing figured out and it is a lot easier than it was in year one, and I also know that as soon as we think that way, we aren't the best that we can be. I understand that you have already bought new bulletin board materials and supplies, but what have you done to be a true learner that is implementing next practices and making your classroom completely different for the fall. I know that everyone likes you at school, and it is your place for social acceptance, but the world of education isn't designed to make your social life better, but it is designed to weave a new social fabric for the next generation. I know that you have sacrificed better paying jobs for a quality teacher pension when you have completed your 30 years, but teaching is different, schools are different, and our kids are different. Is this what you signed up for? Are you sure that you want to teach? 

These thoughts were inspired by the infographic below that reminds us that there are many roads to teaching, but the road to excellent teaching over time is paved with some of the hardest work in the world.

CertificationMap.com is a free resource for teachers and aspiring education professionals developed in partnership with the USC Rossier School of Education. 

Forced Choices

How do we teach children beauty? How do we teach children to care? How do we make this a central piece of growing our democracy through the education taking place in our school? These questions present a challenge for those of us looking to peel back the role of schools to their core, their true common core. Over the last few years though, those tuned into the challenge of making education different for the next generation have been given a false choice as the Common Core State Standards have rolled into the DNA of public schools across the country. The forced choices became about what teaching in the Common Core era means and how do we teach in the Common Core era, while the essential choices are about deciding whether we have the right set of learnings for our students and asking whether the Common Core State Standards make sense for us at all or whether we should be pursuing another trajectory for all of our learners that focuses on building curiosity, empathy, and creation.