Don't Close That Shop Door

Don't Close That Shop Door

In my opinion one of the most exciting things as educators we can do to help students find growth is to implement or have an intervention in place to help those students who struggle to find their "light switch". That moment of A'HA! is personally one of the biggest reasons I and many others want to be in education. Recently, if you follow me on Twitter ( NigelJHorton) I had one of these moments after an independent read. It was powerful and filled my tank for my own energy bus for at least the next year.

At times though as educators we find ourselves asking the question of "where to turn next" when what we are doing just isn't working. We as professionals know, hear and agree that we want "all students" to be successful. It's ingrained into us and is why we as teachers come to work everyday with that being our goal. With that said, imagine being a car-mechanic in today's age with all of the computers, gidgets & gadgets and trying to solve every problem by closing your shop door and getting to work. It can't be done; car mechanics have to rely on constant training, peers for help and research from people who are smarter than them.

Teachers are the same - we can't rely on shutting our shop door and getting to work. We have to rely on tons of help to be successful. These include our peers, our social learning network, blogs, tweets & shares, #edchats, conferences and research to help guide us when we need some new ideas or help to back all of these ideas up.

Recently through the help of Tina Wahlert at our Green Hills AEA we were introduced to a very simple, comprehensive website that helps us find research on many of these thoughts and ideas we are introduced to. It's called the "What Works Clearinghouse" (Link below)  and is put out by the Institute of Education Services that uses research to give us educators outcomes and results for how well the different interventions work and then grades and scores them.

For me personally, it was great to find research not being provided to you by a company, or author but instead someone independent. As this compares it to all interventions that have been submitted to them. It also helped guide me in making those hard choices of "what to do next".

As an educator, I challenge you to go out and look at it and reflect back on your teachings, maybe you'll find something you didn't know about. With that challenge, I encourage you to not be afraid of change because that "light switch" moment is right around the corner!

What Works Clearinghouse