{"id":50,"date":"2017-11-15T02:19:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-15T02:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/?p=50"},"modified":"2017-11-15T02:30:18","modified_gmt":"2017-11-15T02:30:18","slug":"if-you-judge-a-fish-on-its-ability-to-climb-a-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/2017\/11\/15\/if-you-judge-a-fish-on-its-ability-to-climb-a-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIf you Judge a Fish on it\u2019s Ability to Climb a Tree\u2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, my colleague and I passed two grade 11 students in the hallway who were extremely engaged in an intense and, in my opinion, random conversation on \u201cthe school system killing creativity\u201d. It was one of those moments in my life when all I could think was, \u201cWow! They are talking about school outside the classroom walls\u2026 Amazing!\u201d. I also had the reaction of, &#8220;what the heck are these kids talking about!&#8221;. I couldn\u2019t help but stop and ask how this conversation came about as I have been teaching these students for the past six years and was slightly caught off guard that this was a topic of interest. They showed me this clip from YouTube by Richard Williams, a spoken word artist and speaker from St. Louis, Missouri (which I encourage you all to watch!). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"I SUED THE SCHOOL SYSTEM (2024)\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dqTTojTija8?start=174&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What really struck me in this conversation was they have the <\/span><b>exact<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> same worry as I do a<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">s a teacher, the same challenge that I wrote about just two days ago (what are the chances!). If I make all these changes to my classroom that he is suggesting in the video, am I preparing students for post-secondary education? Is that not my job, to prepare them for what comes next? Where do we draw the line on what this \u201cstructure\u201d looks like? <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But then I have this little elf on my shoulder saying, \u201cwe need to progress as the world is progressing, it only makes sense.\u201d Why would we not? Everyone else is. Should we not follow? Absolutely. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of this to say, students care much more than we may realize. As a community of teachers, more of us need to care and make time to try new things, reflect on what we are doing each day, and step outside our comfort zone as a community of teachers. I have been a little insecure about my \u201cessential question\u201d and have been asking myself, \u201cis it one that really matters?\u201d This conversation brought me insane clarity. The kids also want to see this balance, so how can I make this happen?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, my colleague and I passed two grade 11 students in the hallway who were extremely engaged in an intense and, in my opinion, random conversation on \u201cthe school system killing creativity\u201d. It was one of those moments in my life when all I could think was, \u201cWow! They are talking about school outside the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/2017\/11\/15\/if-you-judge-a-fish-on-its-ability-to-climb-a-tree\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;\u201cIf you Judge a Fish on it\u2019s Ability to Climb a Tree\u2026\u201d&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-plan","category-classroom-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}