As a leader in a school system today, it can be difficult to make the choice to move forward with a districtwide change, knowing that the team around you may not fully endorse your decision. For us, the implementation of personalized learning across Freehold Township Schools in New Jersey was a move we knew would require all hands on-deck. It was the best decision for our students, and our teachers were going to be the ones making major changes to their lessons. Because of this, we made sure to include many teachers in the process from the start—building excitement and early buy-in for the work. This is how we made change happen—and how you can, too. Make it fun As we embarked on our journey, the first activity we performed as a team was the Marshmallow Challenge—to show the power of iteration and that it is OK to fail forward. For those unfamiliar with it, the Marshmallow Challenge is a team-building activity where you are given 18 minutes to build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow. When the time runs out,the structure must be standing with ...
This article originally appeared on DA magazine. Read the full article here.