The Messages

I'm sitting here in the second floor corridor of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia watching the flow of "EduCon 2.3" - a conference supposedly about educational innovation. I "know" it is about "educational innovation" because everybody says it is. Just as I "know" the SLA is an innovative success because everybody tells me that.

Traditional student/teacher status divider,
Science Leadership Academy

My goal is not to be cruel or negative. But I guess my goals are to wonder how we effect change if we never change the structures, if we only challenge the small issues?

So if a high school consists of classrooms and time periods and grades, can it really be a "game changer"?

And if a conference begins a day with an hour plus long lecture by powerpoint, and is held in discrete sessions in classrooms on a time grid, can it show people how to "change that game"?

Because I talked to a student yesterday who said, "If the teacher didn't give me a grade I wouldn't know if I was learning." And today the conference organizer seemed troubled that I was 'not in class.'

And that shows, doesn't it?, that we're modelling the same old thing?

- Ira Socol