It is about knowing and trusting where your students are in their learning. It is about trusting your technology to be there for you when you need it. It is about trusting what it means to be a teacher is not tied up within a particular lecture or a format that you established just out of college.
But, the trust goes deeper than this. The trust that we place in Blended Learning as an innovator and a way of getting us to the future of education is immense. We are placing our trust in something new, in something that has only been really tested within the last 10 years. We have a long history of reform in education, but it hasn’t looked quite like this.
So, we must look to our traditions and look to the spaces where we know what works. We must construct mentorship models where we can learn from one another and apprentice ourselves with one another.
Our trust is not a blind date. It is building on what our innovations have led to, as Blended Learning is standing on the shoulders of giants. While we are creating something new here, it isn’t newness for its own sake. It is the way that we will build the future of education, but it isn’t a bridge too far. It isn’t the single revolutionary step, but rather it is the missing link.
We’ve been doing differentiation in our classrooms for at least 100 years. We have been asking “essential questions” and allowing students to “own” their learning through big ideas for just as long. We just haven’t had the same capacity to do so for each and every learner and to connect all of those learners (and their teachers) together in an open network. That, is truly new.
