Guidelines for Educational Revolutionaries

I am in the middle of a multi-part podcast series I have titled, “Guidelines for Educational Revolutionaries.” This is not an educational policy discussion: These are specific suggestions for classroom teachers, campus principals, district administrators, school board members, parents, and anyone else interested in constructively championing the cause of educational reform in the early 21st century. Part 1 included reflections on “Cultures of Control and Creativity in Schools.” Yesterday I recorded part two, which includes commentary on guidelines # 1 – #7, that I will publish later today. Here is the complete list of guidelines I have brainstormed so far– please feel free to suggest others or comment on these thoughts here or on the podcast entries. 🙂

Make time in the classroom for activities that matter: Tasks that are authentically “educative.”
Focus on level 2 (transformative) technology use.
Seek and celebrate incremental victories.
Promote conversations and messy assessment.
Embrace reasoned risk taking, along with trial and error / discovery learning.
Celebrate failure! Adapt and learn, teach, model and use the “failure bow.”
Seek leaders who support this vision, and support further development of administrative technology leadership vision.
Be patient and have faith. Changing is coming, but the process often seems too slow to visionaries.
Resilience and persistence will win the day more than short-term enthusiasm.
Seek novel, safe experiences that invite curiosity and stretch existing perceptions.
Feed dreams and imagination: For yourself and your students.
Be flexible and adaptable. (Live in a truly flexible frame.)
Use the language of teaching and learning, more than the language of technology.
Maintain a spirit of humility and servanthood to others, never an attitude of arrogance or exasperation.
Seek edification and renewal locally and globally, through F2F conversations and the edublogosphere.
Be courageous: instructionally and ethically. Remember Margaret Mead’s quotation: “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Many of my previous podcasts also touch on these issues. A few that stand out include:

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On this day..