Beliefs...

 flickr photo via shanzy 294

When I was in graduate school one of my assignments was to reflect on and create a set of beliefs about education and leadership. I posted a couple of these a while back. My intent was to roll one out every week or so until I had written about each one of them at KARE Givers. I wanted to compare what I thought of as my personal beliefs back then, to how they may have changed since then. My intentions were good, but other things came up and I didn't follow through.

I came across the list the other day and decided to revisit sharing my beliefs about teaching and learning. As I read through it once again, I realized that my beliefs haven't changed much at all since I wrote them down over the two year period I was in graduate school. I took the reflective assignment very seriously, and I maintain my perspective that teachers must be serious about what they believe.

Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. -Mahatma Gandhi

In order for teachers to be sincere and purposeful about what they do, they must be grounded in a set of philosophical principles that guide their practice... their practice being the words, actions, habits and values that they choose to articulate every day in the classroom. To this end, I'm including my complete list here in this post. I will follow up over the next while to expand on each one of my beliefs about education and leadership with the intent to elicit conversations that challenge them. I think teachers need to challenge their beliefs perpetually if they are to continue seeking better ways to do what they do.

Why is it always about the funding?

flickr Cc image via Images_of_Money

In the business of teaching and learning it seems to always be about the money. Whenever a desire to improve the practise or quality of the education system emerges, it isn't long before the calculators are fired up and we're attempting as quickly as we can to put a price on the reform. Not surprisingly, government funding sources propose the cheapest way to achieve the reform goal, and teacher unions demand maximum financial support. This continuum perpetuates every year at budget time and the battle of wits begins; the ministry wants the biggest bang for their buck, and the profession cries foul in its claim that the job can't be done without more cash.

Understanding that politics is politics, (party agendas, personal political aspirations, fiscal realities and the never-ending quest for power are obvious factors that affect not just the funding of education, but every publicly funded institution,) when it comes to education reform, I'm left pondering a different consciousness. What if those of us who are passionate about teaching and learning purposefully asked ourselves what could be done to improve education that wouldn't cost a dime?

Obviously funds are required to support many elements of the education system. Teachers need to get paid, resources need to be supplied and schools need to be built and maintained, however, when it comes to ideas supporting better practise, I would submit that perhaps the best education reforms require no financial support whatsoever.

As intelligent professionals who know tacitly what works and what doesn't in their classrooms and schools, teachers typically integrate and synthesize their philosophical thoughts in an effort to reform their personal practise and refine their craft. I've also had enough professional conversations with my teaching colleagues to know that collectively, we also have a lot to say about how these efforts can be extrapolated to a broader education reform context. I want to hear from any teacher who believes they have an idea that could improve the way teachers teach and students learn, and that doesn't require a penny of funding to do so.

Please share your ideas here, however simple or complex, or you can respond by following me on Twitter @graingered