Take care of the seeds and they will grow…

growing-seeds

Image credit – http://flolly.com/how-to-grow-seeds/

Now, in the summer of 2016, I have a year of teacher training behind me. Ten teachers chose voluntarily to attend in service training in Guided Inquiry here in Sweden. I have re-read Guided Inquiry Design and have tried to put the teachers in the position of the students. I have tried to model, encourage and listen. We had some kind of a crisis at Explore – believe that most of them had the intention of start skipping class and blaming me and their fellow group members for the fact that we were not getting anywhere, neither individually nor as a group. But we hung in there and at Share and Evaluate our principal was attending – of course by coincidence, but what would we be without it? And I had “a sense of completion suited to the audience.” And also a sense of pride in the room.

I am at this point invited into a number of teams, in school and at other schools. The most important aspect for me right now is that I have stayed true to my vision and my method, what suited me and that it worked for us. We don’t know if and in that case how it will spread but we feel confident that something is achieved. We have taken care of the seeds and some of them are definitely thriving.

I have seen myself as a half. I believe I know certain things and the teachers believe they know certain things. When we meet we learn both about what we thought we knew but also about what the others thought they knew. The difficult part is to get the meeting. Me being the person that has taken every single initiative also tends to put me in the position of the one who is supposed to know. So to have the courage to back off from those expectations but keep the teachers in the conversation is an advanced assignment.

So far I have been the one telling stories. Like the one you’ve just read. The story of me and my journey with ISP/GI, the story of third space, the story of student voices from evaluations and now the voices of teachers’ evaluations from their journey this year. I would like to move on from there. And I believe I am.

A couple of colleagues from another school were so inspired by my stories that they applied for and will attend the summer school at Rutgers this summer, my much younger colleague here at my school is involved in all the digital tools projects that exist here, a couple of teachers are in charge of a full day programme at an in service training for teachers in our region and another teacher is including GID material in an educational website that she’s creating for the Swedish National Board of Education. There will be a chapter about us in the book about the varieties of inquiry across the globe by Lee Fitzgerald coming… sooner or later.

So, I thank you so much for having me on this blog and if anyone would like to get in touch for asking questions of any kind, please do. my email – Lena.Fogelberg-Carlsson@linkoping.se

I wish you all the strength, imagination and persistence to keep on giving young people the best education in the world.

Lena Fogelberg Carlsson

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