Gearing Up for Another Go

Ah… the golden sunshine of August.  Families are enjoying the last few weeks of vacation.  Administrators are just taking up their new mantles of leadership.  The office staff is cheerfully moving through a maze of boxes, while the custodial and IT staffs race to beat the ticking clock and the influx of returning teachers and students.

What about the teachers?  There is nothing “part time” about what teachers do. Some of us did get-away-from-it-all for a week or two.  But many more of us taught summer school, or became students by enrolling in post-graduate classes.  Most of us worked on classroom curriculum plans in response to newly adopted reading materials.  And some of us were involved in professional and personal development activities of our own; writing, reading, speaking, or just plain thinking.

I was a part of a cadre of English Language Arts (ELA) teachers who spent scores of hours during July and August crafting a clearly articulated ELA Scope and Sequence for grades 4 through 8.  The work was intense and engaging and will go a long way toward providing consistency in writing and reading across grade levels and classrooms.  As parents, you will become as familiar as your students with this initiative as the year progresses.  Guaranteed.

I had the opportunity to speak at the d.school (Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute for Design) in July.  Sitting on a “Panel of Doers,” and sharing the story of how well the Integrated Exploratory experiment worked last year with a group of novice ‘design thinkers,’ could have been the highlight of my summer.  It sparked new and now continuing collegial discussions with teachers and entrepreneurs from Greenwich, Connecticut and Toronto, Canada, and from Malibu to Bakersfield.  The buzz about design thinking, big questions, and helping kids make connections between bits of curriculum is growing wider and more strident. 

Because last year, our inaugural year, was so extraordinary, I couldn’t let the summer pass without sharing the experience with an even larger audience.  Although several months from actual publication, the book I wrote this summer, with the working title “A Different Kind of Classroom,” seems to be striking a chord with practicing professional educators across the country who are seeking answers to the questions of relevancy and rigor in America’s classrooms. The intent of the book is to assist other teachers who may wish to replicate our success.

So, school starts again for teachers in slightly more than a week, and we will face the flurry of meetings and staff development opportunities that are de rigor for those precious days.  I will be taking time to write to my new crop of 5^th grade Explorers during that week.  I will be urging them to gear up for a great year of independent - but structured - investigation, and increased responsibility and accountability for their work.  In the meantime, you may wish to review the Welcome the Integrated Exploratory Class blog post from July, 2009 to find out what Integrated Exploratory is all about; how it differs from a traditional classroom.  And do SAVE THE DATE for our Back to School Q & A dinner on Thursday, August 26^th. 

Relaxed? Yes. Busy? You bet. The summer months, for me, are a time of pursuing slightly different professional dreams.