It’s hard not to know what you know but sometimes your expertise and knowledge can obscure innovation that could transform your classroom and school.  We have been doing classrooms and schools the same way for a long time.  As humans, we are drawn to routine and school cultures give us that.  We are more likely to walk along a path that has been worn than to create anew path. Most of us experienced a traditional education for a very long time and that path is well worn.  Even though it may seem counter-intuitive, adding the much craved structure and routine to our lives can  increase our ability to embrace novel ideas.  Because structure and routine gives us comfort, sometimes that is just what we need in order to be creative and innovative in our classrooms.  We all exhibit resistance to change.  I feel it every time I consider doing things differently.  As I work with teachers who exhibit this very human and normal reaction to novelty, It has been useful to identify the strategies I use to combat my own resistance.

I Kick My Own But’s

When I hear myself thinking that I can’t imagine what something would look like in my classroom, with my kids or in a particular subject, I remind myself that it has probably been done under all those conditions.  I challenge my thoughts by asking myself “what could it look like in my classroom? With my kids? In a particular subject?”.  I pretend there is no other option. I ask myself other probing questions that require me to think outside of what I know.  What if there were no math tests? What if there were no five paragraph essays? I push my thinking and record my ideas.

I Imagine

Sometimes I use my imagination to get off the beaten path in my head. I imagine the classroom is somewhere totally different; a fire station, a museum, a water park.  I imagine teaching a lesson in one of those places and see what new ideas come up for delivering lessons.  If that’s too crazy, I might try simply changing the classroom environment; I imagine there are no chairs or desks in my classroom.  What would instruction look like? Imagine there are carpets or no carpets.  No lighting? This past summer I took a class and we held our morning discussion outside by a fountain.  The water was so loud that we couldn’t really hear each other.  At the end of the discussion we walked back to class the long way with a focus question to discuss.  Just changing the location and not the method of instruction really didn’t work but when the instruction changed based on the environment, it was very effective.  It is easy to change the environment in your head but fall back to the same instructional path. The key to this strategy is to imagine how the instruction would look different.

I Video

Discomfort is a sure sign of learning.  Documenting your own teaching practice through video is probably one of the most unappealing tasks.  Nobody likes to hear their recorded voice.  Everyone fears the embarrassment they will feel as they watch themselves presenting new information.  This discomfort is equivalent to the realizations that are made and the learning that takes place once the videos are reviewed.  I once counted myself saying “um” 26 times while giving instructions. It is most useful when I choose something specific that I want to improve or something new I want to try.  I have done many online lectures through video and documenting just 10 or 15 minutes rather than an entire lesson can be just as useful and is somewhat less threatening.  Documenting students might be another safe option.  Viewing student responses to instruction can be just as enlightening as viewing the instruction itself.  Check out The Teaching Channel for some help with this.

I Pretend I am someone else

Sometimes, especially on a particularly rough day, I find myself imagining that I am a parent walking into the room.  What would someone think about my classroom from that perspective? How would a student feel at a particular moment during my teaching? What would my principal or superintendent say if they walked in? What if my own child was in the classroom? How would they see the issue or solve the problem?

I Visualize it

When I am having a difficult time envisioning how a new practice might play out in our current system or when an innovative idea seems unattainable, it helps me to visualize it in another way.  I try imagining the idea as an image. Making a graphic organizer that connects the idea to other ideas in the

subject or course helps me find similarities between the new idea and existing ideas, creating a bridge to the new idea so to speak.  Sometimes creating a visual metaphor for the idea can help build that bridge as well.  If you have something that you have put aside because it seems unattainable, comment and we’ll try to wear a #newpath.