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I have done quite a bit of traveling over the past few months – nothing exotic, but each trip was a visit to a different part of the country. Some places I have seen before and others were new to me. I did some of the traveling alone and others with a co-worker or family member. Each place I visited held different experiences. When traveling, most of us expect a “different” experience or a change from our everyday routines and experiences.
As we return from a trip, we settle back into our homes and expect a return to our typical routine; it is comfortable. We are not seeking change or looking for new experiences. We do not look forward to something different happening each day; we mostly follow the same routine. This is often true of our work lives as well. We want the predictability of each work day and do not necessarily want anything to change.
However, we all know that sometimes change is necessary. Our world is changing faster than ever before. We need to adapt and change with it. It is often more comfortable to maintain the systems and routines that we have followed than to seek new ones. This is the time of year in the life of schools when things change. Students move up to the next grade or graduate to attend their next school. As the school year ends, there is the anticipation of all that summer brings. There are also questions about the future and what the next year may bring.
Change. It happens whether we are ready or not. How do you respond to change?
That just about says it all. We can never know everything about everything. It is simply not possible. Schools teach a body of knowledge striving to ensure that children evolve into literate and educated adults. No matter what is included in that body of knowledge, no matter what electives students choose as they move through school, and no matter how long they are in school, they will leave not knowing things. That is the paradox of education. We are in school to learn; we leave with more knowledge than we started with and even more things we don’t know.
Schools are interesting places. When I was in school, students remained many steps removed from the adults in the community. A distance was set by the adults, and it was not crossed. Not so today. Research shows time and again that building relationships between teachers, families and students is the best way to support learning.
New math. Digital literacy. Executive function. Soft skills. None of these things were “things” when we were in school. Education seemed straightforward to us. We were taught something, memorized it, shared it on the test and moved on to the next topic. Most of us had no clue as to how rules of language, math or science came to be. We accepted what we were taught. The end. 
