This post is the convergence of two items I’ve encountered through my RSS reader and Facebook stream. The first is this graphic about “creatives.”
I really like this. It’s a list of nine things we should all live our lives by. I like it so much I’m going to share it with my department and have a conversation about it. IT departments can be very status quo, but fortunately we have some out-of-the-box thinkers. Many of their ideas have contributed a great deal to our success with technology.
And the second item is Will Richardson’s post in District Administration Magazine, “Are You an Old School, or a Bold School?“
I am often saddened by the lack of creativity in this profession, from leadership as well as educators. It must be in our DNA. We have been in a system that is characteristically top-down, waiting for the orders to carry out like good soldiers. The voice of the status quo is so loud that the small group who remains creative – finding the gaps and filling them in, above and beyond what they are told – are drowned out by the frenzy and drama of those wanting and willing to play a crazy game.
I know I don’t want to be one of those preservationists. I want to be the bold leader, “innovating and inventing in the classroom and curriculum, poking the box of traditional education in ways that make sense for kids.” I will continue to do my best to poke the box. I just don’t know any other way of working. As leaders, we need to play the game of school as established by the federal government and states. We also need to focus on the development of a vision of schools that pokes at the box. We don’t do that. It’s not an either/or but an and/both. You can have your mandates and be visionary. Sadly, poking the box isn’t even on the radar of most school leaders and educators I encounter. I’m not so sure there is much vision even on the radar, just playing the current game.
- A silver lining - January 22, 2022
- Is our use of tech working against us? 🤔 - September 8, 2021
- What’s NOT going to change in the next 10 years? 🤔 - September 7, 2021
I fully agree with your point about and/both solutions. We are so hard-wired to see things in terms of either/or, but that approach almost never produces the best solutions. Thanks for the post, and keep shaking things up!
But, poking the box the best part. Too bad too many of the folks you know don’t try it. i wrote about playing the game, but in a decidedly different context. There are more of us out there than you might think.