An item for my Kiwi readers as they begin their week.

FutureMakers Update 14 January 2023 Welcome back to the 2023 school year! I hope that, like me, you’ve taken the opportunity to have some ‘time out’ and reflect on the past year and pondered on what 2023 offers as a chance to start with a fresh vision of what we want to achieve for our students as we prepare them for their future. I’ve shared some thoughts in this newsletter that may be useful as you prepare to welcome students back into your classrooms. In this newsletter… Choose to become a Future Maker What’s Driving or Inhibiting Transformation? Bring Back the Joy of Learning! Boldly Go – Valuing our Life on Earth Shifting  to Equitable, Learner-Centred Education Choose to Become a Future Maker We live in a world of uncertainty and change. The planet we call home is increasingly stressed as a direct result of the impact of human activity. As a consequence, the generation of young people in our educational organisations today will face far greater challenges than their parents and grandparents. These challenges will require us to find solutions and live in ways we haven’t yet imagined. We need to embrace the understanding that the complex issues confronting our world will likely be solved not by us, but by those we are educating, and this will require a transformation of our current systems and structures, practices and policies, and the beliefs and ideologies that underpin these. I believe that educators, and indeed, anyone who is involved in helping with the development of young minds and lives, have a primary responsibility to consider the investment they make in young people as an investment in the future of society and of the planet. As such we are more than simply teachers, facilitators or guides to learning – we are future makers! What might you do in this coming year to be a future maker? Check out how FutureMakers might be able to assist on the FutureMakers Services page. What’s driving or inhibiting transformation? Thanks to all of those who have contributed to our Roadblocks and Drivers survey – some great ideas emerging. If you haven’t done so already, please take some time to add your response to two simple questions to help understand what is driving and what is getting in the way of educational transformation. We’re now keeping this open until 10 February in order to allow for more contributions from the start of the school year. Please pass this survey on to any friends, colleagues or parents to help provide as rich a response as possible. You may also choose to include this as a discussion point in your beginning year Teacher Only Day, and provide teachers with a few moments to contribute responses then. We plan to have the initial analysis of responses available by mid-March. Go to the blog post and survey... Bring Back the Joy of Learning! I’m excited to be speaking at the @NewPedagogies Deep Learning Lab in Anaheim, April 16-18 2023. To learn more please visit https://bit.ly/NPDLL23 or to register directly https://bit.ly/NPDL23REG I’d love to see some of my FutureMakers readers there! Boldly Go – valuing our life on earth. I was interested to read an article about William Shatner’s reflections on his voyage into space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021, taken from his recently published book, Boldly Go! At the age of 90, the Start Trek actor became the oldest living person to travel into space, but as captured in the extract below, he was surprised by his own reaction to the experience. This is what captures my imagination for the work of FutureMakers – ensuring our kids are equipped with the capabilities to create a better future for themselves and the planet. “It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.” (William Shatner) Shifting  to Equitable, Learner-Centred Education Despite the promise of equitable, learner-centered education, too many schools struggle to move beyond the pilot phase. This recent report from the Aurora Institute presents a theoretical rationale for an approach to designing professional learning that embraces the learning sciences. The authors show how explicitly addressing teachers’ mental models, motivations, and moves in our design of professional learning could help bring about more substantive changes more effectively and more efficiently than our current efforts alone. Some really useful stuff in here to consider as we start the new school year, and design in-school professional learning. But wait, there’s more… At FutureMakers we use a range of forums to curate good ideas and resources. Check out the following… Derek’s Blog – regular posts available on the FutureMakers website Previous newsletters – access all of the previous editions of the FutureMakers newsletter from this one place Resilient Schools Online Community – brought to you in partnership with Transcend My slideshows from recent presentations curated on SlideShare Modern Learning Practice – a curated set of links on Scoop.It Hybrid Learning – a collection of resources on the FutureMakers website Learner Agency – another collection of resources on the FutureMakers website If you’ve enjoyed reading this newsletter please feel free to forward it to others to read, or better yet, ask them to become a FutureMakers subscriber so they will receive their own updates delivered to their mailbox. I’m always interested to hear your feedback or ideas about what you’d like to see included in future newsletters – please use the link below to email me with your suggestions. Email Derek

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