Tuesday, 27 February 2018

Why MIT, The Escalator Metaphor

Over the weekend I was privileged to be part of the first Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher Hui. During the weekend to talk a lot about our inquiries, the problems our learners face and the people who may help us on our journey to finding new innovative ways to tackle these problems.

As we started our journey we talked a lot about the WHY.

Our first why was the why Manaiakalani and the why MIT (Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher).

I am extremely lucky to have had the wonderful Dorothy Burt as a mentor throughout my teacher Journey so far and this is how she explain the importance of innovative practices that support learners from years 0-13.


She describe education as an escalator or rather a set of escalators. The first is the the one on the left. It is going up. Learners on this escalator normally have a settle home life, support, parents who value education and assist them. The right hand escalator is the down one. Learner on this escalator have a number of circumstances beyond their control that mean they are constantly running up and escalator that is going down and if they stop learning for any reason they slide back down and have a longer distance to climb.

As teachers we are the cheer team support these learners running up the down escalator. Providing them with a helping hand and support as they face challenge after challenge. Innovative thinking and targeting problems is one way we help these learners climb that escalator.

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