This is how I try to go about my duties as a technology integration specialist and coach here in Hamilton and someone who is deeply involved with the goal of continuing to move education forward. If you ever catch me not practicing what I preach here, call me out.
“There’s something happening here.
What it is ain’t exactly clear.” ~Buffalo Springfield
On Wednesday morning as I prepared for school, the news programs worked through their post-election coverage. The one phrase I kept hearing was “a need for common ground”.
Yep. If there is one thing this country needs right now it is some common ground. That couldn’t be truer in the world of education either.
To quote Buffalo Springfield again, “There’s battle lines being drawn. Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”
A lot has happened legislatively, economically, and technologically since I first started teaching in the mid-90’s. With all of the change has come increasing divisiveness. Back then it seemed like the only real squabbles in elementary education circles I heard were from the hardcore phonics and whole language camps. Oh, there was also that time when a first grade teacher declared she was now going to do a penguins unit although a second grade teacher had done been doing her own penguins unit for 17 consecutive years. Total chaos in the teachers’ lounge almost led to no Secret Santa exchange that year.
Now it seems like there are passionate camps on both sides of absolutely any issue…even issues that aren’t issues.
I have been hopeful that the new adoption of the Common Core State Standards might help us find some common ground. Unfortunately that is yet to be experienced.
We must not have disrupted this thing enough yet. Right? Sometimes though you have to disrupt the disruptors…call out your own.
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