Transformations

I've been contemplating the future a lot lately. The future of libraries, generally, and my school library program in particular. In what ways do things need to transform to best meet the needs of the learners at my school and help push things forward in a meaningful, substantive way? I've been contemplating transformations.

Today I looked and read several things that made me continue to contemplate. No action plans here, yet, rather just an awareness and openness that these ideas are rattling around in my brain not quite ready to be cohesive.

I saw the presentation deck from a session called "Field Guide for Change Agents" which was posted by Ben Hazard and came from the EduCon conference.

Field Guide For Change Agents

View more presentations from Ben Hazzard.

I saw the slide deck from a talk given by Dr. Michael Stephens for the Australian School Library Association called "The Hyperlinked School Library".

One of my goals this week was to read at least three dissertations. One of the works I read by Carol Revelle relied heavily of the work of Paolo Friere, an educational philosopher who I am inspired by, and it got me thinking more about transformations.

Where do I go from here? I'm not sure yet. But whatever shape the future takes I'm excited about it! Any ideas?

Freedom to Fail

A few weekends ago I got back to my car after a trip and found it dead. After jumping all the hurdles that this caused including buying jumper cables, figuring out how to use them, dealing with being in a dark parking garage, getting the car alarm to shut off, I finally got the car in working order again. As I drove, I realized that I had left a light on inside the car. My mistake was the cause of all that hassle! And I felt horrible about it.

This got me thinking about failure. I don't deal with it well. I'm a bit of a perfectionist which may be my nature, but this tendency was probably exacerbated by my experiences in school. The emphasis, at least in my experience, was always to cram things in my brain or create fantastic projects with the aim of earning an A. Watching students where I teach now, for the lion's share of them, that seems to be their M.O. as well.

However, when I think about how I learn most meaningfully and how I learn for my own personal growth, usually it is trial and error. When I'm interested in something I like to play with it to figure out what works and what doesn't. When I get stuck I seek out expertise, whether it is takes the form of another person or information in one of its many forms that will help me.

How do we shift what we do in schools to move from the culture of perfect to a culture of experimentation when we learn it's ok to fail on the way to breakthroughs? How can I transform my thinking to reflect this in my teaching? How can I help design experiences to make this happen for the students and staff with whom I work?