Our Go Beyond Challenge for the 2021-2022 School Year

Last spring, at the annual MACUL conference, I raised the question of whether we would go back to normal in the new school year, or go beyond. Of course, I encouraged them to take all that we learned about digital tools and go beyond.

It's easy to say that at a conference. It's hard to make it happen with everything else that came along in this school year. To help teachers in my district make it happen, I formalized what I'm calling the Go Beyond Challenge. I asked several of them to join me in doing a project or learning activity that meets this criteria:

1. It has to be (at least somewhat) new for the teacher. New steps toward deeper learning and best practices for tech integration will be encouraged, but this is open ended.
2. It has to allow for student voice, personality and creativity to be apparent.
3. It must have a final product we can share beyond the classroom.

I'm not putting a learning goal in the challenge, since that's a given. No one has time to slip in a project that doesn't focus on appropriate learning targets.

I am happy to say every teacher I have asked about this so far has agreed to try this. My goal is to get at least two teachers in each of our buildings involved at first, with at least 20% of them taking part by the end of the school year. 

Some have been concerned they can't do an impressive enough final product, but I assured them that's not the primary goal. Ultimately I want students to learn important content, practice or uncover some talents and experience a sense of accomplishment.

These goals stem from my studies of Liz Kolb's Triple E Framework and Scott McLeod's 4 Shifts Protocol. It's also what has survived from my own Teaching Like an Artist work over the years.

Hopefully this will be the first post of many about this Challenge and what results from it this year!