It's Never Too Late to Make Changes

I started posting on this blog again around the time of EduCon 2.6 this year. I was able to meet some great people over that weekend and had my first opportunity to talk with someone in person about one of my posts. The information I took out of the conversation sessions is priceless and I still have a list of people I want to follow on Twitter and communicate with about ideas that were shared.

The biggest takeaway I had from EduCon and the weeks that have followed is that it is never too late to make changes. I've been very set in the ways of what I do, even though it never has the results I'm looking for. Making changes has either been "too much work" or "too much of a risk" for me. Once I started really thinking about what I needed to do, I started to realize that "too much work" is a sorry excuse for just saying "I don't feel like it right now." As for "too much of a risk," since I haven't been getting the results I was hoping to get, I figured what do I have to lose.

For your enjoyment (mostly mine, but you are welcome to enjoy them too) here are four major changes that are taking place with me right now.

• Change 1: Classwork System
• Change 2: Gamification
• Change 3: CrossFit/Whole30/Paleo
• Change 4: Making and Tracking Goals

Compliance or Learning?

What do we want from our students? 

It's obvious that we want them to learn. That we want them to WANT to learn. For themselves and not just for a grade. But we also want them to do more. We want them to be on time and be in uniform and be prepared and do homework and study and on and on and on. When does this list of demands get too long and start to take away from the most important part?

There has to be a time where we sit back and start asking the same question that the students are always asking us: Why?

And follow it up with this question: How will that affect learning?

My school's uniform policy prompted me to start thinking about this issue. The uniform is pretty simple: black pants and gray school polo shirt. Seems easy enough but there are students who don't wear it everyday. There could be a good reason for the wardrobe malfunction, but most of the time, they are choosing to be non-compliant.

Once that happens, the administrators and teachers have to make a decision about how to handle it. Call home? Suspend? Let it slide for a day? What happens the next time the student is out of uniform?