You Can’t be Great if you Refuse to Create!
I think we’ve all heard the saying, “don’t reinvent the wheel” — as educators, we’ve probably even used it as an excuse to “teach” our students using someone else’s lessons (that we may or may not have actually read through before delivering) or resources that we probably should have stopped using or, at the very least, updated. For some reason, many of us refuse to take risks when it comes to how our lessons are put together: we’re creatures of habit, we “know what works”, we already have the whole unit done (hey, can I get a photocopy of that?) — there are more feeble explanations for our lack of creativity in addressing the needs of our learners (which will change every year!), but I’ll stop here.
It’s a cliché at this point, but we are living in a time where the creative possibilities are nearly boundless. We have tools that allow our students to be creative and expressive in how they demonstrate their understanding and, from our teacher’s perspective, we have tools that can energize and amplify our teaching in ways that we have yet to experience. This is all true IF we are willing to CREATE — and that’s where the problem lies in many cases. We seem to be looking for technology to replace our teaching…you see, when we use text books, a tough day can equal a 30-minute teaching block where “open your text to page 45, read the first three paragraphs and do questions…
