It’s About Time

(I had the opportunity to write for CBE182 again this year. It is a forum to share great learning coming from the Calgary Board of Education, and it is great to follow! http://cbe182.weebly.com/)

It’s about time…

It’s all about time. It takes time for great learning, whether its students engaged in learning to be amazing citizens or teachers engaging in professional learning.

Ponder how you personally learn best… My greatest learning happens through:

• Discussion with amazing colleagues
• Building on ideas we create and shape
• Working on innovative enhancements for learning (which is my passion and my work)
• Taking risks and being willing to fail
• Writing for and sharing with an authentic audience (https://unravelingnewfrontiers.wordpress.com/)
• Reflecting on success and failure and the work I do every day

How do we set up conditions for students to learn in the same best ways that we ourselves learn?

• Discussion with others
• Creating ideas and building understandings
• Becoming passionate about their work and learning
• Learning to take risks and fail (and learn from failure…)
• Writing for and sharing with an authentic audience (not just their teacher)
• Reflecting on success and failure and the work they do every day

This year, we are creating time for our teachers:

• For discussion, creating ideas, working on passions, risk taking, sharing, and reflecting
• The admin team is releasing teaching teams so that teams have more time to work together
• We are limiting staff meeting time and using a Google Doc for information items
• Staff will have time to BUILD (BelPark Unleashing Innovative Learning & Doing) to work on ideas and research to make learning even better! (Sorry, I love acronyms…)

Hopefully, the “timely” risk taking pays off!

Keep learning tons!

Derek

Derek Rakowski (@derekrakowski) has been a CBE student, teacher, and principal. He still thinks he has the best job in the world, as he is learning each and every day…