Habits that Lead to Educational Innovation

In a recent article published on the Edudemic website, Katie Lepi used an infographic to show the history of education innovation. At the bottom of her graphic she listed five ways to bring more innovation into your world.

The five strategies she listed were embrace change, experiment more often, never stop learning, be an early adopter and take a chance. For some, this is part of their regular practice. However, there are a great number of educators who still are reluctant to innovate. In her article the author mentioned that innovation was not reserved for a chosen few but rather something that everyone can participate in. I agree with this completely and would like to think that we could develop a culture of instructional innovation in our building. I think if you look again at those 5 strategies, you will see that not only are these feasible but also strongly encouraged in our building. If being innovative is something that you strive for, reach out to other teachers that are experimenting and taking chances. In our building we have a strong foundation of educators that are not only willing to innovate, but to help as well. If I could add one thing to this list of strategies, it would be to share success and difficulties with the other educators in our building. There are great educators doing great things in classrooms in our building and I think we need to do a better job of getting the word out about those things. Even if that is to share something that didn't have the success you desired, continually communicating and sharing with other staff members will help develop a culture of innovation.