Friedman talks about reflecting, accelerating, and innovating. How do each of these apply concepts to your school situation?
When reflecting on my school, I feel extremely fortunate. While it is not perfect (but in life what is?), it does provide opportunities for reflecting, accelerating, and innovating. I believe these opportunities are afforded to us because of our previous leadership as well as our teachers.
In my role (technology teacher) in our school, assessment is not necessary for me. My previous principal and I had a number of discussions around inspiring creativity and excitement with the use of technology and how to measure my success. He suggested that I create a student reflection form (Google form) to gauge students interest in the projects. I felt that my success was strongly tied to their success because my goals are more to excite and encourage as opposed to explicit instruction. This year, I plan on implementing a similar reflection piece for the students.
My own reflection is critical in my success as an educator. I have been blogging for many years but it has never been very regular. This year, I made it a point to blog weekly but my focus was always a tool and/or academic strategy. At the beginning of the summer, I joined a small blogging community where I was inspired to use my blog as a more personal platform. I think by tying in the personal aspect to the professional, technical part of my blog, I am taking the necessary time to really reflect on all the aspects of my professional life and even part of my personal life. I feel like taking that time to reflect and put it out in the world has helped me connect and created a ripple effect. The questions and feedback I get about my reflections cause me to reflect and question myself and others more. This practice is so powerful for me...I have to believe that it has great potential for my students as well. Friedman (2016) quoted Megginson as reportedly saying “the species that survives is the one that is able to best adapt and adjust to changing environment in which it finds itself” (p. 298). Reflection allows us to adapt and adjust to the changing environment of education.
Accelerating is a difficult concept to tackle because it can viewed and approached in so many different ways. I saw this first hand when interviewing my new principal(s) versus my previous principal for our EDL 600 project. I asked what would be best for a technology update roll out, if we did a little at a time or if we rolled everything out at once (if money was not factored in). My previous principal thought that doing everything at once and then putting out little fires was the better approach. My current principals believe that going slower and incrementally is the better approach to ease everyone into the new devices. Friedman (2016) explains that “when so many things are accelerating at once, it’s easy to feel like you’re in a kayak in rushing white water, being carried along by the current at a faster and faster clip” (p. 198). Everyone can and everyone is accelerating through change. It’s just that some people are ok moving at a faster speed than others.
Innovating can also be viewed and approached in different ways. What is innovative for one school may not be innovative for another school. For example, this year, we have made the jump to GSuite for Education. Many schools have already made that jump, so we are not doing anything new and innovative but it is for our school. Our school has been 1:1 BYOD for 5th through 8th grades for many years now. That, compared to other schools in our Diocese is innovative. However, some of the things that we are doing with that is no innovative. This is where GSuite may come in. What can we do with these two things to become more innovative?
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