The Time is Now

A few weeks ago, I attended the 2017 CUE National Conference and I had the opportunity and privilege of taking eight teachers and two administrators with me.  It was an outstanding learning experience for all.  If you ever have the chance to attend a CUE National Conference - I highly recommend it.

I always come home with some fun and useful things I've learned, but this year I came home with much more than that - in fact, my whole team did.  It is an overwhelming sense of urgency.  The time is now.

I think we can all recognize that there are some significant shifts happening in education right now.  The way our students learn and relate to their world, the skills they will need to be successful in their future jobs, and the way teaching and learning need to change due to the presence of technology.  This list can go on and on.  We are irrefutably in the midst of a huge transformation in our education system.  At this point, we can agree technology isn't a fad - it isn't going anywhere.  Our students learn differently and have different needs because of the way our world has changed.  Don't we owe it to them to change the way we educate them to match the world we are educating them for?

We are at the point where we can no longer wait and see how things go.  We can't keep saying, "I'll try it next year, next unit, next time."  The time is now.  Right now.  We cannot continue to stand on the sidelines and watch others do the changing.  It is time to jump into the trenches as fellow teachers and figure this stuff out!  We are told our students need more collaboration - it's true - but so do we!  Let's hunker down together and try new things, share our successes and our failures, observe each other and learn from one another.  The time has come to take our toes out of the water and dive in.  The time has come to try new things and learn through all the victories and the mistakes.

"The best chance you have to change the future walks through your classroom doors every morning." - James Sanders 

Look at your students as they walk through the door.  They need us.  They need us to climb out of our comfort zones, set aside our fears - of failure, of technology, of going "off the lesson plan".  They need us today.  The time is now.