No Business Like Show Business

We are in the business of educating and enlightening minds, but anyone who loves their job knows there's always a bit of show-business. We need to remember that when it comes to show-biz, it's the business of showing, not telling. We can and should model the practices and strategies we want our student to employ or develop, and we have to skillfully tread the line of igniting excitement and setting the mood without revealing the best parts, interfering with discovery, and without doing their thinking for them! 

Every innovation strategy or practice I've seen or read about in recent years is designed to either capture or generate that spark, but we can't be tempted to take shortcuts. There's no pre-packaged retail "MakerBox" full of directions and diagrams that beats exploration and creation for generating that spirit. 

"A-ha moments" are just that- moments of discovery for students, and for us as well. We are reminded that when students create, design, synthesize or draw meaningful conclusions, it is an emotional act that literally forges new pathways in their minds.  When lightning strikes, it's magic, but it's no show-biz trick!

I think about all the clever names and ways that libraries and multi-purpose rooms are being transformed into innovation stations, eureka labs, construction zones or learning commons, all to generate these moments of discovery. The spaces have been reimagined, but more importantly, the focus of what happens within those walls has been reimagined as well.  We have just decided to shift or prioritize our focus. Inventing and creating are not new skills, after all. There's a reason teachers have been saving paper towel tubes and yogurt cups forever.

At ISTE, you couldn't stroll into a session without hearing about Makerspaces, and for good reason. BUT, a Makerspace is not about the space, or even what materials reside within it, but about the invitation and opportunity for students to create, engineer and design.  It's space and time devoted to exploration.  A set of directions or "right way" of completing a project goes against the very idea of the environment, unless we are just trying to grow direction-followers. Instead, prompts and problems can serve to launch thinking, but that should be all. That's why clever teachers are making (and spending) more than a few bucks on Teachers-pay-Teachers sharing inspiring prompts and classroom/individual STEM challenges.

Getting back to the show, it's equally as critical for students to be able to share and showcase their creations. It's not a performance, but we can provide the audience.  Reluctant writers and quiet-corner kids come to life if we give the right tools to reflect and share their thinking. At the moment, my tool of choice begins and ends with Seesaw to archive projects (before eventual disassembly), whether it's audio, video, written, or just a captioned photo.

Is it a revolution? Not quite, but it is it an exciting time to be a teacher, when the skills and opportunities that bring our classroom circuses and vaudeville halls to life are the latest trend.
(And we get to be the ringmasters!)