I began my next course in my DLL journey this past week and find myself overwhelmed with ideas for my upcoming innovation plan. I keep asking myself, what do I want to accomplish in my classroom, school or district that can disrupt the traditional model that I get frustrated with on a daily basis? I just want to try to implement so many ideas and I need to get a better focus on what my direction should be to best help, my students. Being that my classroom is 1 to 1 with Chromebooks and having access to a school license of Education Galaxy; I feel like this could help me create an innovation plan that can benefit not only my students but all of the students in my school. Where do I begin though?
As I learn about blended learning and some of the best practices that are used in other classrooms, I find myself getting excited and nervous at the same time. Which direction would be the best fit for my classroom, and can I pull this off in the middle of the school year? This will be one of my challenges during the creating of the innovation plan. I will need to be patient and methodical during this decision process. I believe the best course of action and the first step will be to implement a small part of my innovation plan with my current students to work out any issues that arise and adjust the plan to work as efficient as possible.
My initial idea for my classroom stems from what my classroom looked like last year. I used centers in both Math & Science to give students opportunities to learn in different ways. I feel like that was a small baby step toward what I plan to implement as a part of my innovation plan. I can pull from my experience though, and make sure that I reflect on what worked and did not work previously. I believe that the example that intrigued me the most was from Acton Academy, where students are free to move at their own pace and students are not bound by grade levels, but by mastery of the content (Horn, Staker, Christensen 2017). There are so many schools that have moved toward blended learning models, and that inspires me to try it as well.
References
Horn, M. B., Staker, H., & Christensen, C. M. (2017). Blended: using disruptive innovation to improve schools. Jossey-Bass.
Mischnick Mindset 