The Agile Classroom?

One of the many habits I have throughout the school year, is to create a folder of links to articles and what not that I find interesting, but don't have time at that immediate moment to really "get into it".  When summer rolls around and I am watching the Reds, I will start to go through that folder and pick something that jumps out to me at that moment.

Since summer has started, my 5-year old girl has become nice and accustomed to waking up ate, leaving her pajamas on for half the day, and more general laziness than even I can tolerate.  So while the Reds were stomping on the Cubs, and the Spurs were stomping on the Heat, I decided to go through that list of links and came across this Lifehacker post about treating your kids like a team of agile program developers to lower family stress.  Already tired of saying the same things over and over to my daughter I watched the TED presentation by Bruce Feiler about a management method called agile development that has been in Silicon Valley for years, but he and other families have applied it to their daily family routines with some pretty positive results.  I could give you blow-by-blow details, but I think watching the video will give you a better understanding of how it works.

Overall, I think the overall messages from this talk are the most important.  Kids in my classroom are always looking to make a checkmark!  It is amazing the motivation a checkmark can do. Also, giving students input in how the classroom operates on a daily basis can empower the students to create meaningful accomplishments.  Lastly, I cannot stress the importance of "quick wins" in the classroom.  Testing culture has made students scared to do anything wrong in the classroom.  As an Art/Tech teacher, I want my students to embrace the "experimentation" aspect of my classroom and want to continue making students feel like they can push forward to try new things, knowing that wins and losses are fleeting, and that we can quickly move on knowing that we learned something in the process.

Some of the portions of this talk that I would like to put into place in my classroom might be a classroom manifesto, monthly meetings, and possibly checklists for each project that students can use to make sure they are focusing on the important aspects of the projects.  I'll keep you posted as I move forward with some of these ideas.

I will also keep you in the loop as I try this at home with a stubborn, but overall creative, sweet, and opinionated daughter who is always looking to make people happy.