Shift Happens: Three Ways to Make my Year Better

I've been working my way through Teaching as Leadership: the Highly Effective Teacher's Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap by Steven Farr (of Teach for America). It was recommended to me by my fellow sophomore teacher.  It would have been a great book for me to read during my education program in college.  Tangentially related is an article that came across my feed from a blog on Education Week.  It references a neat video that describes the vastness of globalization, especially the idea that "We are preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet...in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet." [The link is to the original video; there have been numerous updates since 2007 when it was first produced.]

The authors of the blog post, Jill Berkowicz and Ann Myers, describe our current educational community: "We are faced with a world that is continuing to change at an increasingly accelerated pace and we are charged with leading learning institutions inside of the tornado that has become our life." They regularly cull through research and blogs and articles on improving education, and offer three very helpful directions for making this school year a better one:

1. Take Control of Your Time

2. Set Priorities and Stick to them

3. Invite More Perspectives into the Conversation

I'm a very detail-oriented person; it's good for me to remember the big picture every so often.