To encourage dialogue and reflection about reflections about progress and the future, our question for the week is: What do you hope school will look like in the future? Share why. Future Thinking (Week of 9/17/23) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
I do not know if I am the only one who seems to forget what it feels like after the first 5-day week of school, but I sure felt tired last Friday afternoon! It was nice to hop on the bike for a bit to decompress and then have a relaxed Friday evening with the boys, as Katie was away with friends for the weekend. With the sports activities for both Grayden and Owen, these weekend days go by far too quickly!
- Do I have a clear understanding of these ideas?
- What is it that I am hoping to convey?
- How do these ideas translate to our work?
- Do these ideas translate to our work?
- Are there connections? And, are these connections clear?
- Are these ideas helping to clarify my work?
These questions could go on and on, and I would be lying if I said they didn’t go on and on inside my head. They push me to think forward and wonder - and, I do believe that this ‘wondering in a forward way’ (for lack of a better phrasing) is critical for us as educators. This will keep us hopeful, and coupled with the reflection of threadlines, we can help shape a path for our students and ourselves to grow.
When looking for a way to ‘sum up’ or capture this framework, the term futurist really helped to provide clarity and meaning. Webster’s defines a futurist as ‘one who studies and predicts the future especially on the basis of current trends; one who advocates or practices futurism.’ Last year I shared an article by Laura McBain and Lisa Kay Solomon, speaking to this mindset for teachers - moving from ‘preparing for the future’ to ‘shaping the future’. The post below goes deeper into these ideas with the authors…
Educators as Futurists: A Conversation with Stanford d.school Leaders
Q&A with Laura McBain and Lisa Kay Solomon in Education Reimagined
Educators who take a futurist’s mindset are looking to cultivate young people as lifelong, adaptive learners, rather than being concerned with teaching what’s immediately measured on a test.
I believe that educators are shaping the future. Every day, we consciously and unconsciously make choices that shape the experiences of our young people.
Classrooms are often designed based on content, curriculum, and the learning that we, as adults, decide is important. We need to humanize the education experience and listen to what young people need. And, we must see these needs as opportunities to reimagine our inequitable system.
I told my students, “The only way you fail my class is if you think you have an answer before you’ve really had a chance to understand the problem.”
Traveling to the future is a team sport. It is important to invite other people to travel to the future with you.
Having a futurist mindset means being comfortable that tomorrow might be quite different compared to today based on unfolding trends, patterns, and external signals. It means getting perspectives from multiple sources, being a sense maker, and having a willingness to change a point of view if new information conflicts with what drove past decisions.
Being an educator futurist means designing experiences that help our young people feel equipped to shape, design, and build the futures they want to live in. This means moving beyond preparing students for one particular path and, instead, giving them opportunities to visit the future, envision challenges that might arise, and build prototypes that will lead to more just futures.
…the most optimistic idea about being a futurist is that you always have an opportunity to do better. There is endless possibility. There’s an opportunity for all of us to do better—to design with a more equitable mindset and a commitment to making personalized learning more accessible. There’s an opportunity to equip each young person with the agency to both be ready for multiple iterations of the future they might encounter and the capacity to shape futures they can boldly imagine.
There are things we are currently doing well and there are things that are needing to change - both are true. A hope I have for myself and our community is to grow and adapt in a coherent manner. I want to keep pushing myself to find these threadlines, while maintaining and fostering the mindset of a futurist. Changing and adapting will be both critical and necessary for this to be realized, and the responses below reflect an awareness of how we all respond. I know I have areas to grow and hope that you will hold up the mirror, ask questions, reflect, and push forward towards growth.
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: Do you think adapting and changing is easy or hard? Why?
- Easy. Bring new challenges and new opportunities. I think it is also pushing yourself to bend and be flexible and apply your skills in a new light/way! Bring it on.
- Hard, we get very used to and comfortable with things and when it has to change, we sometimes push back on it.
- Change happens - I need time to reflect and talk with others about new possibilities that change can offer.
- I think it is hard because it is like you are changing your surroundings, and that takes time.
- It depends on the situation you are in. Whether you are changing something important to you, or something that you care little about, and who supports you, matters and impacts the situation.
- I think adapting is different depending on the person. Personally, for me it is easy. I think this because if i do something over and over again I get used to it.
- Hard because change can be scary
- I think adapting and changing is hard because oftentimes we are so used to a certain way of thinking it is difficult to think outside of that way.
- i think is hard because you’re not really used to it
- I think it's hard because changing and adapting means getting out of your comfort zone and doing things you might not want to do or wouldn't usually do.
- They are hard because you never know what people will do if you are new and changing is hard and adapting is like when you try to start settling in.
- I think it depends. If you're adapting to something drastically different, it's much harder. If it's something similar to before, it's much much easier. It also depends on the person; if you're used to changes, it's easier. If you're not used to big changes though, it's harder.
- I think that adapting and changing is hard because it can be hard to get used to new things.
- I think adapting is hard at first but once you get used to your schedule and your new routine.
- Pretty easy. I think this since Dale Street prepared us a bit.
- I think its hard because you have to change something you might have really loved
- I think it can be hard for some people and easy for some people. I think this because some people can't change very well and it's hard and confusing to them and not to others.
- Easy
- It matters what you're changing or adapting to because some may be easy while others are hard.
- Adapting and changing is hard because you have to get used to the people and things around you.
- It's hard because you have to entirely adapt or change something about yourself.
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Take care.
Nat