I took my computer applications class outside to work in February in Chicago and this happened…
Today is February 22nd and my high school is in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, USA. Typically the temperature is bone chilling. It’s not unheard of to be negative 10 on some days with a foot of snow on the ground. Today, it is 70 degrees and sunny. I have a computer class and they are in a darker room everyday for 6th period. Today I tried something new in class. I asked the students to grab their Chromebooks and go outside with me. Students looked at me strangely. They grabbed their Chromebooks and followed me out the front door. We gathered in a sunny area just out the front door with a seating area. By the end of the period, every student did more work than usual. Productivity was the highest I’ve observed all year!
Try something new in your class everyday.
The moral of the story is to try something new in your class every day. It doesn’t have to be big. Sometimes things will work, sometimes things will not. Regardless of the outcome, you will model to your students that taking small risks can be rewarding. Also, you will teach students that failures are not final when your daily experiment doesn’t work. You are modeling learning from failure. It’s a win-win situation. So try something new in your classroom every day and you will begin to #disrupteducation.
