Innovate

If you've done it the same way for two years, look at it carefully.  After five years, look at it with suspicion.  After ten years, throw it away and start over.   Alfred Perlman

Ten years ago I made a bold move in my first grade classroom: I banned erasers.  All of ‘em.  Ripped ‘em off the ends of pencils, sent the rectangular hand-held variety home.  Colleagues were aghast, parents stunned, students reduced to tears.  This was no whim, however; I had given much thought to this simple, yet radical move.  I found erasers to be inefficient, an excuse to focus backwards on work rather than move forward.  More importantly, erasers were unrealistic tools.  How often in life do we get to erase mistakes?  Rather than disappear or hide mistakes, I wanted my students to own their mistakes, learn from their mistakes, overcome their fears of making mistakes.  And now, ten years later, what’s a hotly trending topic in education?  The importance of failure, the benefits of making mistakes.

Seven years ago I had had enough of seeing my lowest performing students yanked all over the school in the name of “support services”.  While everyone working with these students had their hearts in the right place, none took the time to view such an approach through the eyes of the students.  These poor kids, who had a very hard time attending to lessons and scaffolding new information with old, were constantly moving in and out of the classroom, in and out of lessons and work time.  Rather than a consistent approach to improving their skills they received pieces of instruction from a variety of teachers in various locations.  I put my foot down.  No more would kids leave my room, my instruction, for any reason.  Support teachers would join my room, my lessons, and enhance the learning that had begun rather than stop one set of learning to begin another.  That class became the highest growth class I had ever taught up to that point.  Seven years later, what approach does my school use to deliver support to struggling students?  A push-in approach, where support teachers join kids in classrooms and enhance whatever the classroom teacher is teaching.

Do I share these anecdotes as a way to brag about my trend-setting ability?  No.  A little.  No.  I share not to brag, but to encourage.  Steer yourself out of the flow, folks.  Take a hike along a new path when yours becomes worn.  Don’t just follow the beat of your own drummer – form your own band!  When the parade of life keeps aimlessly wandering up and down Main Street take a hard left down Innovation Avenue.

We’ve all heard it – “it’s never too late to change!”  I disagree.  By the time most folks make a career change, parenting change, relationship change, or philosophical change it’s because of a “feeling they’ve had”…which means the desire to change has been present, but the act has been delayed....and the change is late.  Maybe not too late, but not on time.  By no means am I advocating change for the sake of change or wild abandonment of your tried and true – I am very much a “toes in the water one foot at a time” agent of change.  Rather, my encouragement is for reflection and introspection, consideration and deliberation.  Finding that one thing that you’ve always had a hunch could be that much better if…. 

“Innovation” is one of the buzz-words right now in education, business, agriculture….everything but politics (unfortunately).  My student support innovation was an attempt to solve what I viewed as a problem.  My eraser innovation wasn’t so much a solution as an advancement towards something greater, a more powerful student.  Both were successes.  Both were the result of identifying what could be, planning how to make it be, summoning the courage to move towards what could be, and having the persistence to continue along the road less traveled until what could be was.

So, who can innovate?  Anyone!  When is the best time to innovate?  Probably yesterday!  Why should you innovate?  Because doing what you’ve always done will only get you what you’ve always had.  What should you innovate?  That one has to be your answer.  But your answer is out there….or in there, I suppose.  Pick an area of your life that feels stagnant, analyze it, and then innovate it.  Innovation is liberating, exhilarating…and who knows – maybe in seven to ten years you’ll look back and see that your simple innovation was ahead of its time.