‘Camp’ seeks to support transformative education efforts

By Trace Pickering

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We hear many calls for education “reform” when we should be hearing calls for “transform.”

Demanding that an education system designed for a completely different purpose be improved and tweaked to get more kids “proficient” is like demanding the jet airliner be improved to get us to space. Our schools can't simply be better versions of what they have been. They must look, feel, and perform very differently. Why?

Because our educational system was designed for the clear purpose of sorting and selecting children based on which kids “got it” fast and which ones didn't. Those who didn't had good-paying Industrial Age jobs to go to; those who did moved on to more learning.

This sort-and-select model of school was characterized by school structures and processes such as: strict timelines, batching kids in grades by their chronological age, testing them at the end on content mastery, and grading them like commodities. This is no longer desirable or effective. We face a world where every child needs to reach his or her highest potential in order to compete and for us to maintain and develop our quality and way of life.

This Saturday, 80 Iowans passionate about our children's education will gather in Cedar Rapids for the first of what will become many community events around this subject. This event, called the “Co-Creators Camp for Transforming Education,” is designed to foster connections, collaboration and forward movement among teachers, students, parents, legislators and administrators who are exploring ways to transform our educational system to match and prepare students for today's society and economy.

The word “transformation” is used purposefully. Our debate and discussion around education today focuses on “reform.” But reform and transform are fundamentally different things.

Reform means to leave things pretty much as they are and continue to adjust and improve what we are currently doing to get a better result - like trying to coax the airplane into space.

Transform means to redefine the very purpose of education and redesign appropriate structures and processes to fit those desired ends - like creating a craft specifically designed for space travel. Our “ends” have dramatically changed from the factory-age ideal of sorting and selecting kids toward an information-age ideal of unfolding the potential of every child.

So, on Saturday, professionals, citizens, students and elected officials are coming together to craft a compelling and exciting picture of what this transformed education might look like. But they won't stop there. From that vision, they will begin to share what they are doing now to help their community and school move toward the unfolding of every child's potential and develop ways of better showing the public what 21st-century learning can look like.

The camp represents a grass-roots, voluntary effort to build community understanding, trust, permission and support for transforming Iowa's education system.

Saturday's camp is at capacity, but everyone is invited to follow and join the discussion on Twitter using the hashtag #co

create. Afterward, visit www.iowatransformed.com to see the results of their work unfold and consider engaging in this work with us.

Trace Pickering is Director of Community Building at The Gazette Company, part of SourceMedia Group, a diverse local media enterprise serving the Eastern Iowa region through The Gazette newspaper, KCRG TV-9, and websites including TheGazette.com and KCRG.com. Comments: trace.pickering@source

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