Three Questions

Jason Glass, Terry Branstad's appointee for the Director of the Iowa Department of Education, posted the following on his blog . . .

One of the great things about working in education is that you get the chance to meet so many tremendous leaders who are real practitioners of the servant-leadership concept. One of these tremendous leaders is the Executive Director forBattelle for Kids, Dr. Jim Mahoney.

I had the chance to talk with Dr. Mahoney about my “entry plan” for Iowa being to spend a lot of time up front simply listening. He really liked this approach and he suggested to me a structure for these conversations that includes 3 questions for Iowa education:

1. What should we stop doing?

2. What should we keep doing?

3. What should we start doing?

I love these three questions!  Perhaps I will start asking myself these more often~

Over the past several days, several people have offered a variety of suggestions.  I decided that I should chime in as well.  Below you will find my post.  You might notice that I didn't add anything in the "Stop" category.  This isn't because I think we should continue everything that is going on but rather some comments left by Trace Pickering had me convinced that we need to "transform" rather than reform.  This got me thinking that perhaps the best way to do so would be to stop everything and start with the new transformation.  Pretty idealistic, huh?!  Anyway, here is what I wrote.  To read more, go to:  http://trunc.it/dqrva

Keep

• Learning at the center of education

• High expectations

• Preschool Education

• Some sort of system for mentoring new teachers

Start

• Treating all learners as individuals that learn differently and in different environments and in different timeframes

• Promoting partnerships and communication between all tiers of education (State level, AEAs, LEAs, IHE) so that we speak a common language

• Dialogue about a continuum of learning standards from PK-12 through teacher preparation through induction through career. (InTASC and Iowa Teaching Standards . . . can align but why do we need separateness?)

• Offering increased opportunities for immersion experiences during educator preparation

• Restructuring of the PK-12 teacher work day to include time to collaborate, create and envision as a facilitator for student learning for the next generation of learners

• Encouraging professional learning as ongoing growth and personal challenge for all those that choose to become educatorEmbracing environmental education and place-based education as connections to local communities and allows for experiences rich in critical thinking, complex communication, creativity, collaboration, flexibility, productivity and accountability