Last night for dinner I was talking with a large group of educators from Illinois. A table full of educators will no doubt end up talking about education, and of course Workshop. Some questions that came from our conversations…..
- How do we get buy-in from our teachers to launch Workshop?
- What do you do with those naysayers who 'won't' implement?
- How can/do we push people to keep going/working/learning/encouraging?
There is of course no formula for this, with each school/staff there needs to be a different approach, depends on many factors. I believe our 'Team Kid' attitude/slogan at John Swett makes it pretty easy to move forward and be a pusher! My blog post about that can be read here.
Thinking more about this during coffee today, how do we make/encourage more people to push or become a pusher?
More thoughts coming up after hearing Keylene Beers keynote yesterday and seeing this tweet!
And this tweet from Justin Tarte and this blog post.....
Who's your pusher? Are you a pusher? Can you become a pusher? Make it happen, it's good for kids!
#teamkid
I think it comes down to the conditions that support this, and building systems of internal accountability through positive peer pressure and making people famous for what they do well. For a school to be a learning community, we need to do all that we can as leaders to create a supportive environment that empowers people to take risks and push themselves as learners. We need to make public the places (and people) where others can go to gain more expertise on a particular topic, method, practice, book etc. The question should be in schools, "What are you on and about in your teaching and learning?" Every educator in a building should be able to answer that question and speak to how they are going about their inquiry. Leaders need to be on and about something, also as the lead learners in a building. Schools where leaders and teachers are at their highest learning curve are schools where students will be at their highest learning curve. This is how we "push" others.
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