Teaching is not Rocket Science!

"Teaching is not rocket science. 

It is, in fact, far more complex and demanding work than rocket science."

Richard Elmore

I discovered the Greg Whitby's 'bluyonder' blog by accident but it is another real gem. Greg Whitby is the Executive Director of Schools and leads a system of approximately 80 Catholic schools serving greater Western Sydney. He has 30 years combined experience in schooling and senior system leadership. He is a regular speaker at national and international conferences, focusing on the development of a new model of schooling for today’s world: de-privatising teacher practice, personalising student learning and ICT as enablers to facilitate deep learning. Understanding the critical link between good teaching and learning outcomes, Greg is working to build the capacity of school leaders and teachers through a whole system approach to professional learning. These are two snippets from 'bluyonder'...

"One of the challenges facing educational leaders today is the ability to conceptualise how we go about reframing schooling and then articulating the key drivers for change. Many educational leaders suffer from what I call ‘conceptual construct disorder’ (CCD). This is a condition in which we define and develop responses to schooling by what has gone before and not on what is to come. Edward de Bono classifies this mode of thinking as traditional – it is dominated by the left brain (logical and linear). What educational leaders need to do is more right brain problem solving. de Bono calls this design thinking – based on perception and possibility. "We need more thinking. Not more of the traditional judgment thinking but more design thinking. More of ‘what-can-be’, not more of ‘what-is’. We need not only to develop more and more technology but to design value concepts to deliver value from the technology." March 2011

"Professor Richard Elmore from the Harvard Graduate School of Education was in Australia recently working with Victorian teachers on leadership issues to improve learning and teaching. While here, he wrote a letter responding to an opinion piece claiming that ‘teaching is not rocket science.’ As an objective observer, Elmore believes Australia must re-build its education system into one that is highly professionalised. He suggests that if you invest across the system, you’ll improve the results across all classrooms.... The learning space of the 21st century is not a classroom, it is more like a studio where learners enegage in “ensemble pieces” either alone or in groups in collaboration with the teacher. The skills required by the teacher in this environment would test the best professional in any field. So rather than trivialise the task, why not help contribute to supporting this critical work."September 2007

You can read the complete posts, find out more, and, I guarantee it, be inspired, by visiting bluyonder's brilliant blog at www.bluyonder.wordpress.com/.
Chris