Dr. John Kotter (2013) said that in order for change to happen, there needs to be a sense of urgency. Finding the reason why you want to change is the key to getting others to buy in to what you want to do. My why is a big one. At my school, we are realizing that our students lack the motivation to do a lot of what we ask them to do. It doesn't matter what our approach is, the students don't respond well. We need for them to make more effort to learn what needs to be learned so that they can be prepared for what the future brings.

 

I want to make some changes to how we teach, but there will need to be some big appeals to the hearts of teachers and students both to see it happen. There are some teachers who are stuck in their ways (including myself), while others don't seem to really teach much at all. A lot of the students are only at school because they have to be, so they try everything to avoid working on what they need to do. 

​

My innovation project is to use a flipped classroom approach to teaching. If my students can watch a short video about the topic being taught the next day, we can spend more time in class doing group work and activities which are more interactive than a worksheet. Getting students to buy in will be a big challenge, but if class gets to be a little more fun, I believe that learning will be more engaging and permanent.

​

For teachers, it will require leaving their comfort zone of teaching. Deep down, most of us know our teaching methods aren't working well. We need to think about what is best for our students and make the changes necessary. Today's students aren't the same as we were in school, so we can't teach the same way we learned.