Teacher Life

0 Jan 05, 2023

Common Themes, Personalized Solutions

Teacher Lingo

Blog Writer

I was having a wonderful conversation with a group from Texas today, and I wanted to share some of the thoughts that I had as we were planning for an upcoming event.

As we talked about the event, we shared the importance of connecting BIG IDEAS throughout, so there were some common themes in what we were sharing. And although these ideas are essential, we cannot provide any cookie-cutter solutions for any classroom, school, or district. Ultimately, people and teams would have to create those solutions themselves that best meet the needs of their community.

I talked about this idea in “Innovate Inside the Box“ when I shared the “Core of Innovative Teaching and Learning,” which you see below:

In the book, I share what each core element means and some ideas for implementation. In the end, though, I encourage people reading the book to discuss with others what these concepts mean to them, some examples of what those big ideas look like in practice, and assess how they are working. I encouraged people to “brainwrite” their answers to the chart below and bring their ideas together for further discussion.

The whole premise was that I could provide some ideas, but ultimately, each individual and organization has to create their own solutions. The people closest to the community always understand those they serve and what solutions would work best in their context.

The same is true for “mission and vision” statements.

You can bring people together to think about what those statements can be and how they have a common goal, but how they get to that vision and what the journey looks like should be a personal process.

Think of it this way…We should be going the same way, but how and when we get there can look different.

This is true in education at the student, adult, and organizational levels.

Common themes, personalized solutions.

Often, the best solutions for our problems and goals are the ones we create for ourselves.

Written by Teacher Lingo

Member since January 5, 2023

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Written by Teacher Lingo

Member since January 5, 2023

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