When you make a decision about something… anything… big or small you are setting a precedent for things to follow. The bigger that decision is the more people will remember it and turn to it in the future as a guide for other, similar decisions.
As a school those decisions often become part of the institutional memory and students, parents, faculty, administration and the board aren’t soon to forget.
I mention this as I uncovered an old video of a news report that ABC (New York) did of our school’s decision NOT to go with a 1:1 program back in the later 90’s.
Our decision not to go with a 1:1 Initiative all those many years ago was something that we would need to overcome as we investigated and planned for doing something we had already said no to once.
It provided us with a good sense of what we would need to do differently and the questions we would have to ask and answer to make our new case. It allowed us to go in different directions and informed the visits we would make to other schools.
We would engage in as many conversations wherever possible about what would make our program work this time and allow us to achieve the newly defined learning goals we would establish. This time we would take a broader look at student learning and include things like organization, note-taking, collaboration as well as how our initiative would improve assessment and feedback.
I was not small task doing it and our journey to our 1:1 Initiative would take years, not months, but by learning from and overcoming our past mistakes, questions and decisions would allow us to design and implement a program that we are truly proud of.
