Thanks to Megan Howard’s riffs on the 60-60-60, I am bumping a scheduled post. She has me thinking about interdependence and making certain that we close the gap between metaphors and action. In fact, schooling has been a very silo-ed endeavor for practitioners…for a LONG time. Kathy Boles, at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, calls school the egg-crate culture (think of a school building and the dozen eggs in your frig!).
So…how do we school folk work to become interconnected, interdependent practitioners? How do we take action to become more advanced professionals? One major, critical step is simply to visit each other’s classrooms. Yep. In fact, if anyone thinks that the Junior High School where I currently work has moved closer to 21st C education in the last decade, I would argue that the journey really began with peer visits – just committing to visiting each other’s classrooms and practices on a regular basis.
If you say that your school and your teachers are great, then take advantage of the single most valuable professional resource that you have at your immediate, daily disposal…take advantage of having each other just steps away. Connections don’t just happen…we make them happen.
Go. Do. Visit. Share. Learn. Grow. [Rinse & Repeat!] It’s good for the head and the heart! And with practice, the mindset spreads, other interdependent innovations emerge, and the ripples in the pond radiate outward. The tribe bonds and grows.
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