This past week our learning space transformation was revealed and The Launch Pad is open for business. My fingers are still stinging from the glue gun burns and fingernails stained with enamel spray paint, but the ribbon was cut and the door was open for our teachers and students. As kids were coming in, seeing the room for the first time after months of anticipation, I got to watch their eyes light up, again and again. And that? It’s what learning should be. Shouldn’t we blow kids minds sometimes (or as Kevin Jarrett said… often?), and then give them opportunities to blow our minds, too? Of course we should.
I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for this classroom. It’s a cross between the classroom I dreamed of having when I was an 8 year old buried in a pile of worksheets, and the classroom based on awesome planning and learning from the team of innovative colleagues I’m surrounded by daily. People who push me, inspire me, support me, and who remind me what matters.
The days, weeks, and months ahead will be filled with challenges, rethinking, integrating, transforming, making, creating, and most of all…. learning. It’s exciting to think about all that lies ahead.
On the giant Apple Watch hanging on the wall is a quote by Steve Jobs that reads, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” The kind of work that drives you to reach into your soul, wakes you up in the middle of the night with ideas you have to write down, and pushes your thinking until your brain hurts in the best way possible. Work where creativity is not only invited, but innovation is expected. Work that will be messy, and difficult, and hard. And it’s that very thing that makes it awesome and totally worth it.
