A Plan Comes Together...Slowly

The innovation plan at the heart of my work in the Digital Learning and Leading program is intended to provide teachers a path toward helping their students engage in deep learning and develop growth mindset thinking. In true constructivist fashion, teachers learn to help their students do this by doing it themselves, examing their own learning process and investigating ways to apply that process to the discipline in which they teach.

Looking Back Into The Abyss

Like most people my age who were educated in American schools, I spent my school career being given assignments with strict guidelines and expectations: “Read this book, and write a 5-paragraph essay on the author’s use of metaphor.” In luckier circumstances, some choice was offered: “Choose one of these four books, read it, and write a 5-paragraph essay on the author’s use of metaphor.” In the best-case scenarios, these assignments involved an activity that interested me, or at least seemed useful. I loved reading and exploring the art of writing, and I saw the practical value in learning the science of how the world works.