I had very mixed feelings about the book Drive. I loved the concepts and ideas, but I had trouble envisioning how some of them would work in the classroom.
In particular, I really liked 20% time. It would be AMAZING to have 20% of my time in school go towards something of my choosing (also unbelievable!!). It's incredible to think about how much more relaxed, de-stressed, and creative I would be with that kind of free time. I'm sure many other teachers have the same problem I do with time: there's not enough of it and the my to-do list is never ending. There's always more grading, more meetings, more interventions, more study sessions, more conferences, more curriculum issues, more filing, etc. Having 20% of my time dedicated to creativity and innovation would completely change the make-up of my job (in an amazing way!).
My general worry about the idea of 20% time would be that the school district would find more items to fill it, thus ruining the whole idea! : )
One of the questions about schools now is "are they sustainable?" Can they continue to operate in the manner that they now operate? Your concern with Drive's ideas is the same question.
ReplyDeleteWe make decisions about what is important in schools all the time...from the length of the school day, to the textbooks selected, to how many specialists (in place of classroom teachers?) we have.
No reason why we can't use time the way it is needed...instead of how it is used now. Think of all the teacher time spent on covering study halls, covering lunch periods and patrolling the halls, and many more. Is this productive use of time?