MRA Conference Reflection

As I’m ½ way through day two of a state wide conference outside of my content area, I’m having some beliefs reaffirmed. In education, all too often we lock ourselves in our silos and forget to take a step back and see the broader picture.

What I’ve learned at MRA has less to do with specific individual techniques about guided reading, or writers workshop and more to do with the shifting paradigm of teaching and learning. Great teaching in any content area inspires students to ask big questions about the world around them, shows them a need to learn deeply (in order to answer their own questions), and as a result, inspires curiosity inside them to continue the learning. If we authentically create these learning processes in literacy or any other subject we will be showing students that they have the ability to impact the world now, instead of asking them what they want to be when they grow up.

In the opening keynote Alfred Tatum said that one of his goals for his students is to help them become “urgent souls.” I deeply believe that becoming an urgent souls has very little to do with the content standards that we cover but has EVERYTHING to do with the way we cover the standards.

Are we growing students who will be connected to each other solving problems in careers we don’t know will exist yet or are we growing factory workers for jobs that are being eliminated every day?