Is change really hard?

A challenging keynote today at Ulearn15 from Grant Lichtman!  I was really taken by the fact that when we were challenged to decide on one word that would encapsulates what our school "reeks of" (or what we want our school to "reek of") we came up with lots of values, key compentencies, learner qualities, attitudes etc.   When challenged to go back to school and ask our children at the end of each day what their day "reeked of" would their words be the same as the words we came up with?  WOW!  Do I dare?  I hope so.  

Some key thoughts from his talk...

Great learning is based on experience that leads to engagement that leads to passion that leads to learning - authentic contexts are needed to truly engage our children in their learning. How can i do this better. Ideas talked about were "Make it Monday" and "Take apart Tuesday". Love it. Why as teachers do we have such a need to control learning? Hmmm.

Problem solving and critical thinking are different - critical thinking is where the children come up with the problem to solve. How much of this happens in my class?

You can’t just tweek a traditional way of teaching - you have to make a fundamental change to transform it. We need to blow up our assumptions. What do I need to blow up?

Change in school is uncomfortable not hard. Get over it!

A lot to process:)