So now...

I posted yesterday in regards to the positive impact of a growth mindset within education. I would like to come back to that for a moment, and consider this. We each bring to our environments our individual background and experiences...our schema. Everything we have learned through exposure and experience since the day we were born. Every time we enter a situation we bring that schema with us, and therefore despite the best intentions and plans, situations will tend to take on a life of their own based on the schema of the people present at the time. With that being said, it is quite amazing that we have everything from large corporations, to small businesses, to educational and governmental systems and structures that run well at all.  We know the role history has played in much of that, and of course through experiences we have learned to create successful, global systems and structures that continue to grow and experience success. However, we can acknowledge that it takes strong leadership in any organization to conduct the orchestra of their enterprise.  A strong leader assesses a situation, gets to know the stakeholders, begins to understand their schema, and then uses each person in such a way that they are operating in their greatest area of strength to benefit the whole of the organization.  Once a leader has accomplished that, they may strategically begin to build teams around strengths to help strengthen their organization, and to help utilize the right people in the right area to create the greatest impact.


We do this in schools every day with the development of leadership teams, and PLC's (professional learning communities), and even a variety of task forces to problem solve, and committees and other various teams to lead implementation efforts. 

So now my wondering is, can we do a similar process in classrooms?  What if we build smaller versions of grade level, student led leadership teams, and classroom PLC's, and what if we began to chip away at the tight structures within education that lend themselves to a more direct instruction model, to begin to not just look at differentiation within instruction, but rather differentiation within a learning system within the classroom?

 I'm getting more excited as I process through this idea....what if we did this? What we really took the words of the Common Core, and the verbage of "creating students who are college and career ready", and actually began to create systems and structures within the classroom, and school that are small scale versions of a larger, more global work force?

What if even at a kindergarten age we began to teach our little ones how to take on the role of leader, of advocate for their learning, and as they get older we refine and strengthen their roles, and teach them about their strengths, teach them TO their strengths, and then give them opportunities to DEVELOP those strengths within varied leadership roles and opportunities throughout their education. What if we teach our students through the vehicle of building their leadership capacity?

What if we did this? What if we took a risk, took down the isolations, and silos within educational systems and structures and began to approach learning with a growth mindset...

So now I ask....why not? Why not try? Why not start with our students who have been labeled as "least likely to succeed"? What's the worst that can happen? The current system has already failed them, so what's to lose? No great change agent in history made change without taking a risk, without sounding foolish perhaps with outrageous ideas (and yes, I know you may be thinking that about me;) at this point in this post), but why not? Someone has to look at this with a fresh, and innovative perspective.  Innovation always comes with risk, and some failures, before reward.:)

Let's do this!! Don't ask me how as this started to unfold in my head in traffic today...I don't know exactly how yet, but I'm for sure going to find out!!:))) Now to find my action research willing participants.:)

As always...I welcome your thoughts, ideas, wonderings.:)