We Are Making a Square Peg Go Into a Round Hole
I've always enjoyed the movie "Apollo 13." There are so many good messages in it - about hope in a seemingly hopeless situation, about courage in the face of danger (and possibly even death), about creative problem solving for problems that are not "contingencies we remotely looked at."
This scene is where we are right now with education -
We have been asked to "invent a way to put a square peg in a round hole - quickly." And now we are in the room (or this course) looking at what is available to make that happen. We have the resources, we have the tools...we now need to make it happen. We are going to be innovative, creative, and make this work. We are going to fail and have inelegant, imperfect solutions, but we will get solutions. And we will continue to refine them until the emergency is over.
One of my concerns is - and this is something often seen with students working on a problem - if we spend time on a solution that we think is going to work, and it becomes evident it is not a good solution, can we be brave enough to step away from it and start with something new? Or will we stubbornly stick to what we thought would work? Or will we "give up" and walk away?
My other concern is that we realize WHILE WORKING ON THE PROBLEM that the solution we create should inform the future, not be the solution for the future. I hardly think the solution created for making the filter work was one that NASA used on future flights - I feel fairly confident saying they used what they learned to make an overhaul in case this need ever arose again. We will need to reflect on what we did AFTER this "emergency" is over. We will need to evaluate what can be continued going forward. We will need to look at how we have changed as educators, and how that will inform our teaching whatever environment we are teaching in. We may need to "overhaul" our methods of teaching because we may find that we can relate to our students emotions and needs in ways better than we ever have before.
This scene is where we are right now with education -
We have been asked to "invent a way to put a square peg in a round hole - quickly." And now we are in the room (or this course) looking at what is available to make that happen. We have the resources, we have the tools...we now need to make it happen. We are going to be innovative, creative, and make this work. We are going to fail and have inelegant, imperfect solutions, but we will get solutions. And we will continue to refine them until the emergency is over.
One of my concerns is - and this is something often seen with students working on a problem - if we spend time on a solution that we think is going to work, and it becomes evident it is not a good solution, can we be brave enough to step away from it and start with something new? Or will we stubbornly stick to what we thought would work? Or will we "give up" and walk away?
My other concern is that we realize WHILE WORKING ON THE PROBLEM that the solution we create should inform the future, not be the solution for the future. I hardly think the solution created for making the filter work was one that NASA used on future flights - I feel fairly confident saying they used what they learned to make an overhaul in case this need ever arose again. We will need to reflect on what we did AFTER this "emergency" is over. We will need to evaluate what can be continued going forward. We will need to look at how we have changed as educators, and how that will inform our teaching whatever environment we are teaching in. We may need to "overhaul" our methods of teaching because we may find that we can relate to our students emotions and needs in ways better than we ever have before.
