Learning and Changing through the Eyes of Specialist Teachers

This past Friday, a group of specialist area teachers (representing art, library, music, PE, science, spanish and technology) and I stumbled upon some open time to get together and talk about educational change, learning, and the impact “talk of change” has on our professional lives. To stimulate conversation I sent them 3 groups of bundled Ted Talks: 
1)  21^st Century K-12 learning from Jonathan Martin http://21k12blog.net/2012/08/11/18-videos-suggested-for-back-to-school-faculty-meetings-and-other-educational-audiences2) reimaging your business from Harvard Business ReviewBlog http://t.co/wQdMJ7rPUA
3) learning from failure http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/03/8-wonderful-ted-talks-on-learning-from.html
It was nice to see that from the 12 of us present, we picked from all 3 bundles. The questions I posed were the following:
•   What surprised, worried or excited you about the topic?•   How does it relate to our work as educators?•   How does it relate to our work specifically at our JK-12 school?
I framed the conversation around our “learning” both from one another and from the resources beyond our school walls. It was an open, un-hurried conversation, where everyone was engaged and left with a positive outlook toward making school better. Some highlights:
FROM THE GROUP:·            We need to develop stronger partnerships that help those who we  receive or send our students to (parents and colleges) understand our vision as a school and the importance we are giving to authentic, real world, skills based education.
·            The school vision should be communicated consistently, thoroughly and across constituents.
·            Break the equation: College = good letter grades + excellent test scores + traditional leadership.
·            How does our college counseling office explain our school? Following a traditional mode or by explaining our uniqueness and forward thinking pedagogy. How should our school be represented to colleges? Can our college counseling office share these thoughts with the JK-12^th grade faculty?·            As a group we value the need to learn from our failures; we grow from reflecting on our mistakes; how do we reinforce this with our parent body?
·            The admissions team should be a voice for our teaching and learning; we want them in our spaces!·            Creativity, play and downtime for students is essential. We must do the best we can to build it into our lessons and programs. This requires flexibility from all.·            We respect, recognize and need organization and structure in our school lives and programs; but we also want more spontaneity and opportunities for creative endeavors in our specialist areas. We strive to find this balance although we are unsure of how to achieve it.
·            We value the resources and global connections we use through Web 2.0 tools, but we believe in the importance of human connections and relationships in our learning.

VALUABLE FEEDBACK I RECEIVED ON WHAT SPECIALIST TEACHERS NEED TO ENHANCE THEIR TEACHING:·            Ability to plan and execute without stepping through so many hoops!·            Freedom to diversify, augment and rethink our programs.·            Don’t over plan and over schedule.·            Provide flexibility  of time when needed.·            Trust us as experts in our field.·            Understand that collaboration happens naturally among us when needed yielding effective results (examples came up in the conversation!)

THE SPECIALIST TEACHERS NOTED THE FOLLOW NEEDS AS MOST IMPORTANT TO THEIR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING:·            More open ended, unconferencing opportunities to work together.·            Time for dialog.·            School commitment toward reflection – allowing time for dialog and other reflection strategies.
·            Slow down, don’t rush (us or the kids!)

Thank you for your time and commitment colleagues – I truly appreciate it!