All week I have been thinking about the blog prompt “What do you see as the purpose of education? Why might innovation be crucial in education?” I have written, revised, deleted and rewrote my blog post numerous times this week. Each iteration I wrote, sounding less like my actual voice.
The more I struggled with this and the more I read other’s posts, the more cliche my response was sounding to me. I felt I had nothing new or better to contribute to the conversation. My original working title of the post was going to be the 3 Cs by way of the 4 Ps. Curiosity, Creativity & Community via Passion, Play, Projects & Peers.
Anyone who is familiar with Scratch and the great work of the MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten would already know where I was headed in my post but I am going to stop short on elaborating further, other then to share Mitch Resnick words below.
“To thrive(children), they must learn to design innovative solutions to the unexpected problems that will undoubtedly arise in their lives. Their success and satisfaction will be based on their ability to think and act creatively. Knowledge alone is not enough: they must learn how to use their knowledge creatively.” Mitch Resnick
This so succinctly sums up all that is rattling through my head and what I believe to be true to my bones. I can say it no better (and believe me I tried) and my take on it was not innovative(new or better), so instead I want to tell you my story.
I was always a good student in school, I was one of those students who were “good at school.” However, being good at school left me passionless with no clear direction in life. I went to college and had difficulty with choosing a major. I finally settle on computer science(now not to give away my age), but this was way back in 1982. My classes were tedious and boring. I remember writing programs that were dictated to me by my professors, none of which were meaningful or authentic. Never did it even occurred to me that I could use computers to create or express my ideas. It was not encouraging, what was important was that I learned the syntax of languages such as Fortran or Pascal. I hated it! I persisted and earned my degree but with no intentions of pursuing computer science. I left school, relieved I was finally done! No love of learning, no curiosity, only worrying about finding a job and establishing myself in a career.
Not to bore you with all the careers I have had over the years, I will only tell you that I had quite a few from a Casino Dealer, to a Claims Adjuster, to Restauranteur and many more. It was not until I fell(that a whole another story, maybe for another day) into my current position that I discovered my passion. Like the Beatles song, it was a long and winding road!
Sometime in the mid-’90s, I discovered that I like playing on my computer. The more I played around with it, the more I learned. I taught myself photoshop, and I started making all kinds of projects. I was curious about anything to do with technology. I spent hours teaching myself. When I was hired to teach technology, I knew nothing about education, I was hired because of my degree in Computer Science. Over the last 8 years, I have spent hours reading, participating in MOOCs and webinars, attending conferences and finding mentors from which I could learn all I could think about learning and teaching. I have been lucky enough to connect with some truly brilliant and inspiring educators and have developed a supportive community to share and learn with together.
So, this is my story. I am hoping that you can see in my own personal journey the value of the 3 Cs, Curiosity, Creativity & Community, and the need of the 4 Ps, Passion, Play, Projects & Peers. My learning that lead to my passion and happiness happen outside of school but my mission is for my students to have this experience inside of school, in my class.