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Bright Spot

February 5, 2020

Happy Wednesday,

"Shouldn’t our mindset and work be rooted in creativity and innovation and not just in best practices?" ~Raymond J. McNulty

This quote is the optimism that I seek.  The question is, do you have the freedom to create and redesign lessons & curriculum using the "new practices"?  I am lucky, I do.  This time to collaborate and innovate meaningful learning experiences for our students is a must.

As a nation, we must do better in the world of education.  To do this, we must relook at how we are running things and change, adapt, and grow.  As educators, we cannot resist change but encourage big moves to be made.  We need to prepare the next generation in our country so that they can have the knowledge and skills to be positive citizens of the world.

We need to be innovative.  We need to enlist coaches and teachers that inspire connection, reflection, and support change.  Katie Novak, Chip Heath, and Todd Rose have helped me realize the importance of embracing and even guiding change.  I see how our instructional coaches are essential to this process.

With a bit of innovation, I see how we can maximize student achievement and design an educational experience that works for ALL of our learners.

One way that the Heath brothers suggest we can change things even when it's hard is to focus on what's going well.  They state that change can occur if we look to the "bright spots" and do more of the things that are working, whatever it is.  When I think about a time that technology in schools has inspired me, I think of e-portfolios.  At City School, students beginning in Kindergarten use portfolios as a way to showcase their learning and collect evidence to show they are proficient in the transferable skills.  I have seen students really own their learning and school experiences using this technology tool.  Many teachers didn't' believe that five-year-olds can own their learning in this way or document the transferable skills using this tool.  But when I looked at my own child's (a Kindergarten student) e-portfolio in the fall, I was blown away.  Much of the evidence was photographs or illustrations, but she truly owned her learning and could explain how it showed her meeting a specific transferable skill.  It was beautiful and absolutely away our school has used technology to create a "bright spot" for our students and their learning.

~Ashley



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