Topping off the tank

Summer time is a time for fun, sun, and relaxation...or a little PD to refuel the passion for education.  This summer I have had the opportunity to attend two very powerful conferences.  The first was ISTE in San Antonio and the second was the Great Plains Google Summit in Lincoln.

           

 As it turns out, these would be some of the best days of summer.  I am sure that all educators can relate to the fatigue we feel at the end of the year.  It is that fatigue of caring too much throughout the year and not having the emotional dollars to spend that makes us long for the days of summer.  However, as summer passes we feel rejuvenated by time away from our passion and become hungry once again to teach and learn with kids.

We need to cure what ails us, and...

...collaboration is the best medicine

These two conferences were instrumental in rekindling that fire in me. The sessions I attended solidified my beliefs that we are on the verge of crisis in education.  National mandates pushing the testing agenda are coming up against what we know are best practices of collaborating, creating, sharing, and making education relevant.
       
At the ISTE Conference, the closing keynote was delivered by Adam Bellow (Adam's entertaining talk starts 23 minutes in) who invited us to change the world by making education relevant to the lives of our students.   We were reminded that technology shouldn't be the icing on the cake, but rather mixed into the batter.  But the most striking point he made was that we as schools need a startup culture. We must move towards problem based learning and come to RESPECT FAILURE AND EMBRACE CURIOSITY.  As a system we have become almost systematic in killing the natural curiosity kids while teaching them the game of school.  If you want to rethink what we are doing as profession, take the hour to watch that closing keynote.  If it doesn't inspire you to do better, then you may not have a pulse!

The at Great Plains Google Summit opening keynote was delivered by Chris Lehmann is the founding principal of the Science Leadership Academy, a progressive science and technology high school in Philadelphia, PA. In a room filled 500 educators he lamented us to answer this question regarding the efficacy of the high stakes testing environment we are currently in compared to inquiry driven models we are discovering to much more effective. His exact question was: "By a show of hands, how many of you think we are getting it right in school today?" Not a hand went up. My first reaction was shame. Shameful that we are wasting our only chance with the kids of today. We don't get any mulligans. These kids don't get a second shot at the best we have to offer them.  That shame however morphed into a resolve to do what I can do to change the world as Adam Challenged us to in San Antonio.

Learning about turtles was one the best lessons of the summer with my kids.

This day and age of pervasive technology has given us so many tools, that we have no excuse for why we can't have kids engaged in inquiry based environments. My two and four year olds at home still love to learn about bugs, shapes, colors, how things work.  They are sponges without a saturation point.  Why?  Because learning is relevant to their world and it is fun.  I hope we never kill that curiosity.  It is my hope that we can shed the shackles of high stakes testing to engage kids in real world problem based learning.  Lets make school and learning a place where things are done with kids, not to kids.  I am ready to tackle the 2013-2014 school year with as much zeal as I have ever had.  I will seek to change the world.  Who is with me?

Dustin Favinger