We've Never Done it That Way

I have had the privilege to coach at three colleges and it was a wonderful experience for me and I met some lifelong friends during that time.  At one of the schools, however we had a secretary that would constantly say "We've never done it like that before" I grew to hate that saying.  For me the answer was obvious-We're doing that way now!

Sometimes I feel the same in the world of education, when we challenge the past practices and why we do things the way we do them.  Questioning some of our practices in the education world is long overdue.  Homework, as a practice to improve learning, textbooks as the holy grail of information, and the reluctance to use modern technology to protect our students.

I started to question some of these practices when my daughters were going through school, granted had it not effected my kids I probably wouldn't have, but the expression "Thats the way its always been done" popped up again which really went up my backside.  Our daughters were good students (fortunately they took after their momma), but when they would come home dazed and confused with some of their upper level classes I questioned in my own mind why this practice of homework had never been challenged.  I just didn't have the guts to publicly challenge the practice, shame on me.  Since I was a building principal, I did question the individual teachers, which I'm sure appeared to be self serving, but I also figured my children weren't the only ones struggling.

I didn't use email until 2002 when our oldest child went away to college, once again shame on me.  It sure beat snail mail to stay in contact.  Then our school went 1:1 and my transformation was pretty much complete.  Surely there is more to instruction than lecture, questions at end of chapter, test.  Fortunately our staff really embraced the 1:1 and we made some great things happen in the learning of our entire building, teachers thinking of new ways to deliver content, and students teaching our teachers as well as administrators how to use these nice new machines.

Enter Twitter into my world and what I have learned is some of the things I questioned are and have been questioned for some time now.  My regret is that I should have challenged these things before more openly.  We are in charge of educating kids so we need to be the frontrunners in new things that are available, instead we let other professions and areas bypass us and students have to learn on the job.  We've Never Done it That Way Before-yes we have and we're not doing that again, we're changing!

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one learned in school-Albert Einstein.