“Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others are willing to follow you – not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to.” –Simon Sinek

Week 2 of the revolution is history and again, teachers have executed the daily schedule well and implemented revolutionary practices into their day. Instead of walking around the building, dipping in and out of classrooms just to be visible; I’m more excited to get out and about to see and learn about the innovative happenings because our students appear engaged and leading their learning. Being a witness to students having voice and choice (learner agency) in their learning, which is a part of our district’s strategic plan, is groundbreaking! 

The efforts teachers are putting forth to execute this revolution is notbecause of anything I said in particular, but because we believe our students today deserve an education that includes relevant learning from the students’ perspective. As I began questioning why are we doing some of the things we’ve always done…my questioning has become contagious and more teachers are starting to question the things they used to do and why they did it.

I started throwing out ideas of how we could change some traditional practices, teachers started throwing out their own ideas of how to “revolutionize” traditional practices…so this revolution is spreading like a virus throughout our building and teachers are sharing their revolutionary ideas with one another and our community. Now, don’t get me wrong, we all are not there yet…we are a work in progress and every teacher is working to think in an innovative way. But traditions are hard to break and traditional schooling is engraved into our society. Even some parents are questioning why change? But our question is why not? What research says traditional schooling is effective for ALL students? Last time I checked, there was an achievement/opportunity gap going on in our country…has that changed?

On a side note, I presented at the GAFE (Google Apps for Education) Summit this past Tuesday! My presentation was entitled How to Market Your School Using Google+ Communities.