Maybe it’s your first week of school, maybe it’s your second or even third.  No matter where you are in your year, if you are making the change to concepts-based teaching and learning there will be a moment when you’ll think to yourself “change is tough.”
When you get to that moment remember these two quotations (in this order):

image credit: uniteddiversity.coop

1. “In the 21st century humanity faces some of its most daunting challenges.  Our best resource is to cultivate our singular abilities of imagination, creativity and innovation.  Our greatest peril would be to face the future without investing fully in those abilities.”

–Sir Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds; Learning to be Creative

 2.  We advocate for “a change in curriculum goals from broad survey of too much academic knowledge and too many discrete skills to a focus on a few big ideas and essential questions…These are chosen because they are fundamental to the discipline, thought-provoking, and support transfer of learning to new situations.  Because the curriculum is more focused, there is greater opportunity for in-depth learning and infusion of 21st century skills.”   
–Jay McTighe & Elliott Seif, 21st Century Skills; Rethinking How Students Learn
Have a great Thursday.