Building – and sustaining – innovation – FUTUREMAKERS
With nearly 45 years of experience working in education, I find myself reflecting on exactly what it is I have achieved in that time. With each of my own kids now pursuing their own life ambitions, and now my eldest grand-kids at the age where they’re thinking about the ways they might contribute to society – there are often times we find ourselves discussing exactly what’s important in life. Generally we arrive back at the same place – we all want to have ‘made a difference’ in some way.
I didn’t really think of doing anything but becoming a teacher when I was young. There was something that appealed to me about the opportunities that teachers have to make a difference – remembering particularly some special teachers I’d had who made a difference for me.
From the start of my career I relished the freedom and opportunity I had to do different things, try different approaches. I was always the one who was first to embrace the new technology as it arrived (which led to a stint as an Ed Tech lecturer some years later), and was constantly trying different layouts in my classroom and using the outdoors as a learning environment (which explains my interest in MLE/ILE configurations later on).
In my educational career I’ve been blessed to have had the guidance and support of some extremely good leaders, who have given me permission to ‘stretch’ and try new ideas. I’ve never been satisfied with simply accepting the status quo – especially when the status quo isn’t working.
I’ve had the privilege of being involved in some wonderfully ground-breaking initiatives in my career which, on reflection, have allowed me to pursue my passion for ensuring our approach to education is future-focused and addressing areas of inequity caused by the present systems and structures that constrain us. As I reflect back I can think of…
I’m not sharing this in an effort to claim personal recognition, and I’m certainly not claiming that all of these things were my idea only, or that I was the only person responsible. Each was the result of a team effort. It’s simply that they are all examples of innovations in education that I have been very closely associated with at the start-up stage.
As I reflect back now, I have had the opportunity to see the cycles of innovation that are written about by so many others, and what makes some things sustainable, while others work for only a short period of time. Here are some of the things I have noted:
So what are the negatives? Here are just three key things that negatively impact the ability to sustain innovation based on my reflections of these projects: