Common Assignment Teacher Shares Views on Innovation

 Guest post by:  Brison Harvey, social studies teacher at Lafayette High School in Lexington & one of the Common Assignment  Study teachers

Innovation inspires change. Thinking of a new way to wash the car or grocery shop can shoot an ambitious business person to the top, reaping the rewards of the invention along the way. It provides an exciting, autonomous and rewarding journey to solving a problem or making the existing world slightly more efficient and enjoyable. Creating an environment of innovation climbs to the top of many corporate goals; perhaps it is time for education to take the same step.

In order to innovate, a teacher needs some boundaries, resources and safety nets. Standards create an adequate starting point for the boundaries that a teacher should not cross. The standards help to create some level of uniformity within the classrooms across schools, districts and states. Likewise, some level of accountability for student growth and achievement creates a certain amount of containment to the innovation. However, that containment is necessary to ensure that students do not lose out in the course of experimenting within the classroom. It may keep the "mad scientist" from creating a monster hole in the natural growth of the students in their classroom.

Inventors in any field need some type of resources in order to create their new invention. "Edventors" also need the supplies to create a new product that will help students learn. The simplest resource to provide teachers with is time. Creating additional time to think, invent, test and revise will help create a more polished and effective result. The largest deficiency within schools across the country has been access to the technological resources, which limit the scope of their growth to their physical classroom. Digital learning requires the doors of the internet to be open to all students at anytime during the learning process. However, all growth does not occur through the tech; some innovation will take place in the improvisation that happens daily in the classroom.

School administrators have the authority needed to support projects and "experiments" within the classroom. The expectation shouldn't be for teachers be successful in every class that they teach. Instead, it should be a constant  stream of ingenuity and creativity coming out of a classroom, with teachers growing and learning from each lesson as much as students. As any teacher will tell you,  the growth of students is uneven and not every assignment has a successful conclusion. Administrators must note this concept, that in the course of inventing new and exciting ways of teaching will not always lead to successful results. However, it is important for "edventors" to track their progress so that they can grow from failures and build upon successes until the project is final. For administrators, it is important to allow teachers to fail so that they can grow even stronger in the classroom.

If teachers take this new mindset of innovation into the classroom, I believe some exciting things will begin to take place. Teachers will want to stay in the classroom. The feeling of some level of autonomy and freedom will make the profession more appealing. Teachers will create some new ways of building student success. Students will be the true winners of this movement when new ideas are spread across states into new classrooms. Teachers will become more invested in their own classroom and effectiveness. Results and assessment will find a renewed meaning for teachers who invent. Just like a chef wants to taste his new recipe, a teacher will want to know if the strategies and inventions in the classroom are effective through the use of assessment.

For educators, the time is now. Invention will key the change of education. Creating an environment of innovation will only benefit the students of tomorrow.