This Ken Robinson talk makes me proud of the work we’re doing with the Civic Mirror and Action-Ed. More thoughts below.

It’s funny because the biggest challenges and hurdles we’ve faced in helping teachers implement the Civic Mirror is trying to integrate it into the linear model of schools today. The program provides so many rich opportunities for exploration, discovery, and break-out activities that the organic learning environment it provides teachers and students with literally competes with the linear status quo. Sometimes so much so that it can cause distress (which is always overshadowed by excitement and enthusiasm).  To use one teacher’s question as an example,

“How is it that the Civic Mirror has me debating Keynesian economics with my student, online, on a Friday night?”

After watching this video, I think the answer to her question is quite simple:

It’s because the school system you teach in doesn’t provide you with opportunities to have that discussion at school … where it be should be taking place and ideally in a way that would allow others to listen and participate too.

Anyway, I just want to shout out to all those teachers, principals, and school systems who want to take part in the revolution Ken Robinson’s talking about:

We’re here! We’re ready and waiting! And if you want to use a program that creates the educational change Ken Robinson is talking about - literally over night - you know how to get a hold of us!

Did our hunting and gathering ancestors offer courses in mammoth-hunt approach tactics?

Did they ask their youth to review, remember, and randomly recall Chief Ug’s 10 Step Procedure for tracking the next kill before they were allowed to pursue their own?

Were the children allowed out of the cave during the day to watch and learn from the adults, who each possessed a lifetime of valuable information?

Who made their standardized tests? And could they have marked them without paper!?

Sometimes I wonder these things as 90+ teenagers funnel in and out of my classroom each and every day, bored and confused and unsure about what they want to do when they finish school.

At the 2009 BC Social Studies Teachers Association’s Annual Conference, president Raquel Chin awarded Regan Ross with the “Innovator of the Year” award for developing The Civic Mirror and working with teachers to integrate it into their classrooms.

This is the second award Regan has received for his pioneering work with The Civic Mirror, the first being the Prime Minister’s Certificate of Teaching Excellence in 2008.

Have you ever wondered what role the available learning resources in our schools play in preventing and/or promoting educational change? I have, and it’s more significant than you’d think.

From what I’ve observed, here’s what happens just about every day when teachers are preparing lessons and units for a new course.

You’re in a rush. You search the library, or the teacher prep room, or both. You find learning resources that are related to your upcoming lesson. There’s not many, so you pick …

teacher prep room

The book series your school purchased three years ago, or

You show the videos that your department head’s got locked up in the video cupboard, or

The extension questions everyone recommends from the state/provincial curriculum study guide, or

The neat internet lesson that you just saw in a workshop - but … oh wait! - the computer lab’s booked, so you go back and consider one of the previous ones.

Aaah! It’s late. You’re in a mad rush. The warning bell’s rung. Grab it! Grab it! Grab it! Grab what you can get.

This is the reality!

And then it’s a year, two years, five years later. You’re teaching the same course again. You’re busy and you think, “I’ve already prepped for that course. So I’ll just use that text, or video, or question pack and add a little of this and a little of that.”

The teaching and learning status quo - as perpetuated by the learning resources available to you and educators everywhere - remains!

This process, in my humble opinion, is maybe the biggest factors preventing educational change and promoting the status quo.

grabable learning resources

Most “grabable” learning resources promote the status quo because they dictate what teachers and students will be doing with
a) the course curriculum, and
b) with each other …

And teachers are too busy to grab learning resources that require them to learn beforehand new and different kind of pedagogy, so

The learning resource publishers produce materials that will be used teachers - ones that are “grabable.”  It’s not their fault; they need to make money in order to remain in existence. They produce what sells.

They’re books.

They’re videos.

They’re things we teachers can fall back on in that last-second rush to “cover” our prescribed curriculum.

They’re resources that fit within the existing paradigm.

They’re ones teachers can use when in haste.

Ones we teachers can confidently say afterward, “What are you talking about? Of course my students covered those learning outcomes! They read pages 222 to 242, I showed them Video X, and they did these questions.”

Most teachers I know want to teach in exciting ways. But there’s just not enough time to find and/or create their own learning resources that shake the foundation of the status quo. So they use what exists and add their own tweaks and flavors.

Learning resource publishers know that teachers want simple-to-use products with minimal learning curves. Minimal learning curves in and of themselves promote the status quo because there’s no new pedagogical learning going on. So, given the realities of teaching, the most practically useful tools educators want - by default - are tools that prevent educational change and promote the status quo.

This is the reality in thousands and thousands of schools. The job is crazy. Teachers grab what they can get. And what they grab perpetuates the existing teacher-student paradigm, that paradigm that drives so many of us busy teachers crazy.

It’s a rat race that’s tough to get out of. And only few do.

I’ve had lots of conversations the last couple weeks with fellow educators who are frustrated by their colleague’s lack of enthusiasm and acceptance about their new and exciting ideas. I get it. It stinks. But I’ve kept saying over and over, “Change is not for everyone.”

There are three kinds of people:

1. People who look at the world and think, “If we did it this way, things would be better,”

2. People who just don’t look at the world that way and like things the way they are, and

3. People who aware that things could be better if x, y, and z were to occur, but don’t want to do it it themselves.

The #2 people don’t want change. They just don’t think that way.

The #3 people want change, but they don’t want to instigate it. Change requires energy. Change requires convincing. Change requires sticking out. Being different. Drawing a line in the sand between how things are and how things “could” be.  That requires gusto. That requires courage. That requires energy they’d rather use somewhere else.

The thing is this: The world is predominantly made-up of #3 people: People who want change but don’t want to expend the energy to make it happen, whether that be the time required or the social “shazam” of sticking their necks out to make it happen.

The #1 people - the change makers - look at things critically and have within them a burning desire to make things better. To improve. To progress. To correct what they don’t like about the present state of things compared to what they think would make things better. The #1 people don’t care about the flack or the criticism that their “different way of doing things” creates because they know that, in the long run, it will make a difference. A difference that will make things better.

So who do you want to be? Do you want to be a bastion of the status quo? Do you want to be one of the silent critics of the status quo … who never really does anything? Or do you want to be one of the people who sticks their neck out and make things happen.