It's time for a change...

Teaching and learning is changing. No longer are classrooms an environment for students to 'know their place', listen to long lectures and rote learn information fed to them. No longer are education services focused on the purely academic, the memorisation of facts and the need to repeat them back. Our world is changing. Education is changing.

This blog is titled Mirrors into Windows. Stanley J. Harris, an American 20th century journalist is credited with writing that 'the whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows'. This, succinctly put, sums up my philosophy of education. When students ask ...'why are we learning this?  or what's the point?'... too many times have I heard the response... 'because we need to' or 'we have to. It's in the syllabus'. It's in human nature to search for meaning. To make meaning. To be meaningful. To find meaning. It is baffling that we would deny our students opportunities to make meaning from their learning. And that we, as educators, find ourselves teaching something that we can't explain it's purpose.

To teach without understanding of meaning and purpose adopts a mirror approach. Asking students to reflect what is already known.
Repeat back to me the facts I just told you.
Write down these notes from the board and then memorise them for the next exam.
Read this text and then answer the questions. 
We need to keep moving on as we have to get through all this content. 

As an educator, it's quite scary that despite all the rhetoric around student-led inquiry learning, mastery learning and authenticity, the system still fosters what I call 'mirror' teaching and learning. I am passionate about education that turns these mirrors into windows. Windows opening into a greater understanding of the world and understanding of self. That education might enable students to discover how they might make a difference in the world, to seize opportunities and find their unique gifting and voice. So an approach to teaching and learning that is driven by purpose and what really matters for students exiting secondary education in the 21st century is one I call a 'window' approach.

I feel extremely privileged to be working with a school that seriously considers current research about how student's learn, best pedagogical approaches, what really matters and how prepare students for an increasing complex world. A school that acknowledges that the current education system is broken. Rather than perpetuate this brokenness this school actively takes risks to make education meaningful and authentic.

So I, along with the students, am excited to be on this learning journey.