At the campus where I work, we have discussed a lot about the importance of creating a safe environment for our learners to grow. We are not only educating our learners about academics, but life skills. My previous experience working with elementary made me think once children went off to middle school they somehow were so much older and wiser. After spending only a few days at a middle school my perspective quickly changed! Yes, laugh at me! Have a chuckle. It did not take long to learn how young middle school students are and how much they have to learn to be prepared for high school. Wow!
I recall multiple conversations with educators across our campus regarding frustration when dealing with the behavioral aspects of technology. We turned the focus of frustration to a productive conversation about providing our young learners an environment to fail, and grow. We should keep in mind, most of us did not grow up with devices readily access information and connect. As adults, we frequently need reminding how to handle our own personal devices, so why would our children be any different? There is a reason why the doctor's office has a notice posted asking patients to turn off their devices. For my own family, we do not answer a phone or text message during meals; and, we wait until we are not driving to check devices for messages. Is it always easy? No! Is it the right example to set for my children? Yes. Do I want my children to make their mistakes now when they are young and the consequences are not as significant? Yes. Building a safe environment for our learners to take risks is an important part of their school experience.
Risking-taking is not limited to how we ask learners to act. At the same time, as educators we need to step outside our comfort zone and provide risky learning experience for our learners. How are we designing learning experiences to help our learners stretch their learning? I felt like I took a big risk when it came time actually discussing educators taking risks in their curriculum delivery. Vicki Davis, AKA @coolcatteacher, had recently published a podcast of an interview with George Couros, An Educator's Guide to Acceptable Risk Taking. The interview is fantastic! What is a risk for your classroom? Nothing replaces good teaching, but we can make small changes to make us, as educators, feel outside our comfort zone to benefit learners. Why are we doing this? We do this for the learners!
I felt like I was taking a risk, asking educators to sit in a room and listen to a podcast for this PLC session. For me, it was an uncomfortable situation to not have a video to watch. However, I received positive feedback. The podcast conversation was engaging, holding everyone in the room's attention and opening our groups up to more conversations. This risk paid off!
After listening and having some process time the educators were asked to reflect on their own risk taking through these three questions: 1. Are you a risk taker? 2. Where could I take risks? 3. How am I disrupting my day? I suggested they use Popplet because it was one of the apps highlighted during our previous app smashing session. I wanted educators to feel comfortable using the app in a different manner than I had presented the last time we met. Not everyone wanted to share and that's okay. Several educators did share. When they shared their personal thoughts, it helped everyone in the room to reflect on their own approach in planning and implementation with learners.
I realize my brain never turns off. And, I have come to realize this thinking is actually more reflective of what I am doing and what I want to do to make learning better for learners of all ages. Taking risks and growing in my reflective process, I'm still learning too!
