Transparency

I believe in transparency. I believe that the more we, as teachers, can share and show about our practice, the more parents and others at school can support us in our work. Transparency supports families, students and colleagues. It builds connections between home and school. Transparency can also kick start professional conversations.

Transparency can connects us. It throws open closed classroom doors.

I came to this belief online during the early years of the dial-up Internet. In the late nineties, our first access to the internet enable computers to connect via the Florida Information Resource Network (FIRN).

We had to dial in. It sounded like this.

The connection was slow compared to the broadband and wifi connections we have today, but the doors to worlds of information were opened.  The more I discovered from other teacher's classrooms and virtual filing cabinets, the more I grew in my own practice.

I am not teaching in a classroom this year. Transparency is still vitally important.

As our curriculum team discusses curriculum, assessment, and data from a systems view,  how do we keep doors and windows open for teachers and the community?

How do we make our thinking visible about systems' level tools and processes --even as those tools shift and change as our thinking is refined?

How do we work transparently so that educators across our system have opportunities to engage, debate, discuss, provide input and shape systemic thinking?