[RE]LEARN 2020 - The Learning Innovation Festival

This last year has thrown most educators into an exhausting disequilibrium when it comes to their thinking about schools. In some ways, the various pandemics we've faced (COVID, social justice, fake news) have forced us to change a great deal. They have sped up our embrace of technology, challenged our dependence on assessments, and surfaced a host of questions about equality, justice, literacy, and the future, among others. We've been forced to at least consider some bigger questions about the purpose of schools and our roles in them.

Yet, one of my BIG questions is "How much has REALLY changed?" On the surface, things do look and feel a bit different. But underneath, arguably, we are still being driven by the same outcomes, the same practices, and the same mental models that we've developed over centuries about classrooms, teachers, and learning. That's why so many of us are itching to "get back to normal."

In this session, I'll explore why real change in schools is needed now, offer a framework for shifting the way we think about our work in a post-pandemic world, and discuss some ways to embrace an increasingly uncertain future.