A repost:
So there are empty sandboxes and then there are sandboxes with (CI) sand in them, from which stories and all sorts of fun things emerge. How can this image be explored more deeply? Specifically, how can it be applied to teachers?
Think of kids. What would happen on a real playground if a group of kids were playing in a (CI) sandbox and in the same playground there were some kids playing in a box without sand? Most probably, the kids would end up playing together in the box with sand in it.
But let’s think about this image with teachers, not students. Does this happen? Do teachers play together like kids, learning new things and having fun doing what they do?
One can tell a lot about a person in how they react to new things. Kids in the empty sandbox would be invited – in a spirit of fun, discovery and play – into the box with sand by the kids there, but it is becoming clear that many teachers, faced with the facts, have to make a decision as to whether to stay in the old sandbox or to accept the invitations they receive from CI teachers to play in the new sand box.
We change when we take risks, to work hard at something new, to go way outside of their normal comfort zone. Those teachers who are used to the emptiness of their sandboxes often just don’t accept the invitation of the teacher down the hall to play. The decision they make is unfortunate.
When teachers who know that there is another sandbox on the playground and refuse to explore the sandbox with the (CI) sand, their actions fly in the face of what education should be. Doesn’t the word “university” come from a desire to explore things universally, to leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of knowledge?
What is the sandbox situation in your building?
It makes me think of this great quote by Soren Kierkegaard in Either/Or: A Fragment of Life:
“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.”