Who do we trust?

Re-imagining a school. Can we do that? Should we do that?What do I remember from school? It was such a long time ago that it is hard to think about what I actually did there. I know I found it a challenging place to be and a place where I did not always feel a sense of belonging. It was a place where I leant facts and figures to regurgitate during an examination. A place where I was inspired by some teachers and bored by others. A place were a learnt a lot of stuff and wrote a lot of essays. That was 30 years ago has anything changed for the pupils today......well we use more technology - naturally as we have that technology. But do we do anything differently with this? I would say no - they still produce the essays the only difference is that it is in electronic format. They still cram for written exams that still test mostly knowledge and less application.What would I like to see. To be honest I have no real concrete ideas, just a list of thoughts: 

• I would like to see less subject based learning and more projects - where skills are used across all subjects. I would love these to have minimal structured marking so that the pupils can take these projects in many directions and we can coach rather than teach.

• I would like to see more room for true creativity - not enforced creativity. You need to do this creative thing now is not real creativity - it is enforced. Give them a brief and a realistic time period and allow them to make choices for the process undertaken.

• Reduce documentation of evidence - no-one has ever spoken about how much they have learnt from annotating screenshots and describing processes.

• Be imaginative - if massive organisations like Google, DropBox, Facebook...have creative areas for "play" as it stimulates creativity then maybe we should as well. Either timetabled time  or a free choice on their lesson structure (crazy thought) for them to do something that they want to, with no strings attached just a place to imagine or re-imagine.

We should let them flyImage by Cate Jarvis

I guess it is about trust. Do we trust pupils to do what is right for them? Do we trust ourselves to sit back and allow them to experiement or fail?