Thank you for this opportunity to give input on the budget. My name is Chad Sansing. I teach at the Community Public Charter School.

We know as an audience, school system, and community what we have asked of you.

We know that as things stand, there is not enough revenue to truly move students’ learning forward into a world fundamentally different from the one in which we went to school.

We know that these are unprecedented times and that we share a common financial burden. I see it at school every day.

What I’d like for you to do with the rest of our time together is to put taxes aside and to put the idea of schools aside and just ask yourself what it is you want for the children in your lives.

Then I’d like to know what you expect from us with the revenue you plan to give schools.

I’d like to know if what you want for kids and what you’re willing to fund are one and the same.

I’d like to know that if they are not the same, that you’ve done everything you can to take extraordinary action on our students’ behalf during extraordinary times. I’d like to know that if we can’t fully fund the schools, it’s because we’ve exhausted our resources, and not our will.

What you can do, do.

What you want for our children, tell us.

What you expect, fund.

If any of the rhetoric is useful, rip, mix, & burn it into the conscience of your local funding agency.

Trevor’s post makes a startling point: the genius of a lesson plan may be in its failure.  If a plan prompts students to follow their interests and passions in taking the work in another direction, then its failure can provide more authentic engagement than its success.  Indeed, to move past thinking about our own lessons as successes and failures, we need to make students equal partners in the differentiation of their learning.

After reading Trevor’s post, the big question for me is: how do we shift our mindest and planning practices to prepare for the “accidents” of authentic engagement?  Even in a classroom rich with opportunities for authentic engagement, students will make discoveries about themselves and their learning that will take them in unanticipated directions.  When planning for authentic engagement, what’s the right balance to maintain between familiar structures and the unknown?

Trevor’s blog is here, and you can follow him on Twitter via @trevorprzyuski.  Please read on and comment!