Sunday, July 23, 2006

One Wise Man

At the beginning of Chapter 10 in The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman includes a quote from Albert Einstein:
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.

I was thinking about this and my classroom for the next year. As I embark on a new chapter of my career I think that there will be a lot of discord and difficulty. How I look at these items will determine how my attitude changes each day. As a team we are going to go ahead and try to find out one to one notebook instruction in a public school. There is little that I have seen on how to do this effectively in a Chemistry classroom. I know that there are ways to do this but I am afraid that I will fall back on the ways that have worked in the past. Time is the biggest struggle when trying to implement this type of change in a classroom.

What will my classroom look like? How will the students respond? How will I adapt and respond? What will the next few years look like? Is this the next level for instruction in my classes?

I do think that stretching teachers, outside of their comfort zones, is what will pushthe students to new levels. For this outlook, I am excited to be a part of this reform in schooling and proud to be a part of it.

1 comment:

Karl Fisch said...

Hmm, I'm thinking three wise men . . . Thomas, Albert and Brian.