Positive Steps for Educational Reform

Today people are blogging about positive steps we can take for educational reform. The truth of the matter is that since that very first Tweet that mentioned "Waiting for Superman"I have been promoting that we need to take a positive approach to the whole situation. Therefore here are the steps I believe we need to take.

1. Focus on the Positive- There are a number if not a majority of excellent teachers doing amazing things in their classrooms. Let us focus on what they are doing and model and promote those teachers rather than only hearing about all the negative
2. Empower teachers- Teachers need to be given the freedom and the power to create a certain environment in their own classroom that promotes learning without fear that they are going to be judged by what a bubble test shows.
3. Trust- All stakeholders need to be able to trust one another. We are all professionals and deserve a certain amount of trust that we know what we are doing.
4. Communication- Once you have developed trust we all need to communicate with one another in a respectful way to bring about the change we want
5. A willingness to grow and change - There needs to an understanding that movie or no movie we need to improve student learning and that means we need to change perhaps radically what we have been doing and here again this attitude needs to be adopted by all stakeholders.

I have said from the beginning that if we put student needs first and student learning was our true focus than I believe we can all agree on some very real and positive changes to help us accomplish that goal.

Akevy