What if…Wednesday

What if we looked at the end of the school year for opportunities to design better learning?

I’ve been wondering about how we have fairly fixed expectations about how the end of a school year works.  We have expectations about how it should feel and what we will  do.  I don’t think those expectations, feelings, and doings are inherently bad.  I love habit, routine, and ritual.  I just wonder about how the end of the year is a time full of habits, routines, and rituals that go unexamined (in part because we perceive we have no time for any examination that’s not an exam).  I been wondering how I want things to end in my classes, and I wonder if I have set up the habits, routines, and rituals to make that ending come true.  There are elements of this time of year (in our school and in my classroom) that seem to be unconsidered truths with inherent value.  I suspect some elements are valuable and others no longer serve us as well as they did once upon a time.