Today we’re happy to release our summer project: a powerful policy short film about teachers’ role with innovation in school.
You’ll see, and hear the students in, a third-grade classroom where the learning has been individualized, using games for language and math.
It is:
- an unusually interesting personal story
- a remarkable case of teacher-initiative
- a significant example of personalizing learning, and its effects
- a commentary on the difficulty of change within the organization
- a suggestion about a successful strategy for speeding innovation
Innovation, to us, is letting people try things.
But please also bear in mind, as you watch, what it is not:
- First, it is not an assertion that this one teacher has found, in ‘games,’ the one best way for students to learn. It is not to suggest that what you see in this classroom could or should be done everywhere.
- Second, what’s said about the resistance to change is not a comment about any particular individuals or any particular district or school. The difficulty is endemic in the K-12 system.
The video is about policy; about the strategy for innovation in the K-12 system . . . and about the potential role of teachers in change.
One other thing we should say, which is not in the video: The Minnesota Legislature in 2012 amended the state’s school-based-decision-making law to encourage districts to give their schools the authority the schools believe they need to individualize learning.
We hope the video will stimulate both thinking and discussion. We’d be much interested in your reaction, at info@educationevolving.org.
Here’s the link again: A Split Screen Strategy: Creating the Capacity for Teachers to Innovate