While we were sleeping the world changed. Think about that for a moment. When we went to bed on Thursday night, same sex marriage was a reality for only 35 states. When we woke up Friday morning, history had been made. No matter where you are in the United States it is now legal to marry whomever you choose. Did it really happen while we were sleeping? Not entirely. But this is the point Eddie Obeng is trying to make in his TED talk, Smart Failure for a Fast Changing World. He says that we are constantly trying to create fixes for problems, but we are always late. This is because the world changed at some point after midnight. I think this applies to this momentous time in history because same sex relationships have become more and more prevalent in society and yet (until yesterday) some of those relationships went unrecognized (and worse.) Lawmakers woke up to this change and started trying to do something about it. And now, many years later, love wins!
This analogy is true in education as well. For years we had No Child Left Behind (NCLB) but education, technology, and the world were changing. NCLB didn’t work and educators and policy makers started trying to come up with a fix. The result? Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Are CCSS the right answer? I think that remains to be seen, but at least someone tried. Obeng refers to the idea that some people take chances and get fired, but that we should be taking more chances and celebrate our failures. Out of these failures new ideas grow and we come to the right answer. So while we have CCSS as our framework, teachers should work within it and take chances. Make “smart failures.” Try something; if it doesn’t work—try something else. Now is an incredible time to be an educator: technology has so much to offer, we are being asked to teach our students how to collaborate and go deeper in their learning, and students are learning skills for jobs that we can only imagine. Let’s not allow change to happen without us noticing, instead let’s be agents of change and model failures and mistakes for our students so they will be excited to fail and always get back up to try again.
This analogy is true in education as well. For years we had No Child Left Behind (NCLB) but education, technology, and the world were changing. NCLB didn’t work and educators and policy makers started trying to come up with a fix. The result? Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Are CCSS the right answer? I think that remains to be seen, but at least someone tried. Obeng refers to the idea that some people take chances and get fired, but that we should be taking more chances and celebrate our failures. Out of these failures new ideas grow and we come to the right answer. So while we have CCSS as our framework, teachers should work within it and take chances. Make “smart failures.” Try something; if it doesn’t work—try something else. Now is an incredible time to be an educator: technology has so much to offer, we are being asked to teach our students how to collaborate and go deeper in their learning, and students are learning skills for jobs that we can only imagine. Let’s not allow change to happen without us noticing, instead let’s be agents of change and model failures and mistakes for our students so they will be excited to fail and always get back up to try again.