In the past few years I've had the chance to hear some excellent speakers like George Couros, Todd Whitaker and Liz Murray (who many may know as the Homeless to Harvard story). They bring passion, excitement and inspire a sense of determination that can bring you back to center, that is, to remind you why you became an educator in the first place. They also have a common theme in their message despite going about it in different ways. That message is simply that learning and artificial timelines don't go together.
We continue to say that we want to innovate our schools, rewire our school culture and breakthrough boundaries to ensure that all students learn, yet we continue to live in a system that imposes timelines on learning. As I've said many times: I get it, we don't control many of these factors but I do think that far more of them are within our control than we let on. Do you use a pacing guide? This is just one of the practices we have more control over than we'd like to admit. They go by all different names but the premise is the same; spend this much time on this topic and then be sure that you move on to repeat the same archaic process over and over again. Do we ever question why 3 weeks is enough time to learn stoichiometry? Or do we fear that asking questions like that is seen as stepping out of line so we just continue to do what we've always done. There aren't many other things that work this way in life. Home builders don't build homes this way. Sure, they know about how long it will take but there are factors like weather that can allow them to finish early or run behind. Either way, the process must be completed. They don't just walk off the job after 7 months and say "I know you're we didn't get to paint or lay carpet but we have to move on because time is up. Why do you need to be in 8th Grade before you can take Algebra I? Why would you need to take it by 9th grade? Is taking Algebra in 7th or 10th grade some kind of scarlet letter that you'll wear for the rest of your life? I'm not singling out math, it just makes the easiest example as the class most often "leveled" within our current system. Who decided that these were the ages for these things to be "learned?" Apple began it's initial work as early as 2002. They even shut the project down for a little bit to focus on a tablet computer (the beginnings of the iPad) before coming back to the iPhone. Think about that. Not only was there not an artificial timeline where by if we don't do it by "x" we will never do it, they put it aside and came back to it. The iPhone launched in 2007. I mentioned Liz Murray earlier. In telling her story she discusses at length the very small amount of time she spent in school prior to being 16-17 years old. How many of us would tell a kid in that same situation that time has run out on them? That there's not much left to learn and college is certainly out of the question? Why? Why would we impose a similar artificial timeline on a person. Liz Murray went on to attend Harvard University. We have to get away from our artificial timelines if we're truly going to innovate education. It's never too late, too early or anything else regarding time when it comes to learning. We can put learning of something to the side and come back to it later because maybe today just isn't the day. We will never be too old to make it to Harvard and we shouldn't ever think that someone is to young to become something (see THIS STORY about a 7-year-old who made $11 Million on his YouTube channel). Timelines are artificial, and it feels like they're hindering authentic learning.
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AuthorJeff Lahey Archives
January 2020
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