Classroots.org

Dreaming about work by Claudio.Ar

As a husband, parent, teacher, and blogger, I’m always thinking about second chances. What do I believe? What did I say? What did I do? How did it all end up? How would I have done it differently if only given the chance? If given the chance, would I behave differently?

As much attention as I pay to learning objectives and processes and products at work, I don’t know that I use backwards design nearly enough in my life. I have gotten used to reacting – the fridge needs food; the car need gas; the kids need out of the house; (ZOINKS I need to collect and submit my recert docs).

Candidly, even at work reaction often wins the day. There’s data that needs a response. There’s a blown lesson or scrapped project that needs salvaging. There’s a relationship that needs attention. There’s a student that needs something other than school work today. There’s the budget.

Then it all ends and begins again. Every Autumn feels like a second chance, but really, it isn’t. When I say I never want to teach the same year twice, I’m being disingenuous. I want to riff. I want to tweak. I want to perfect. Really, in my teaching so far, the new school year hasn’t been a second chance. It’s been a proxy for the past with revised goals, new props, and a new cast. A revival of an old show. A re-telling of a classic tale. A reboot of a classic franchise. A cover of a genre standard.

If there’s a second chance to be had in my teaching, it’s in beginning again, building up from the ground floor, and breaking with the past.

I think this is my second chance. This is my opportunity to innovate and collaborate and co-learn with kids and colleagues across the country. This is something new, something different, and something daring.

Paula White (@paulawhite) invited me into this Reimagining Learning grant application, and I’m grateful for it.

I want to take this opportunity and run with it. I want to plan a break with my classrooms’ past. I want new goals that look nothing like the old. I want to innovate through “transmedia” collaborations that help us transform the warez that we view as our competition for kids’ attention into learning tools. I want to offer my students new kinds of leadership true to a vision and not so beholden to reaction. I want to document our work to reimagine learners as designers. I want to share it. I want to celebrate its successes and analyze its failures. I want it to be of use to you. I want to run a middle school class that feels like it belongs to the future problem-solvers of the world, and not to outmoded ideas about the inviolability of content-areas and fallacious limits of what should be learned when. I want to make Joe Bower (@joe_bower) proud.

I want to use this opportunity to hold myself accountable to creating a second chance for teaching and learning in my classroom. I want to stop covering the same old ground. I want to bring down the curtain on my own personal run of Cats. (NB: awesome writing & design assignment embedded in that link.)

We have until Monday to collect all the comments and questions we can. Please visit the application, take a moment to register, and comment. Ask questions and we will answer. Challenge us. Push us further ahead. Take a stake in our work and we’ll do everything we can to return on your investment for kids and their learning.

Grant or no grant, I want to do something new. I want to make a second chance and not wait for one to appear from thin air. Maybe something serviceable. Maybe something edible. Maybe a little big humanities project with help from DonorsChoose.org. Something that values little big minds. Something novel. Something good.

What are you going to do?

What should we do together? Let’s dream up a second chance and take it.

And don’t forget to comment.