Sharing: 9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should “Unsettle” Us

9 Elephants in the (Class)Room That Should “Unsettle” Us – Will Richardson

Lately, I’ve become increasingly frustrated with our unwillingness to acknowledge these “elephants in the (class)room,” if you will, because the new contexts for modern learning forged by the networked world in which we now live are creating an imperative for new ways of thinking about our work in schools. I’ve been collecting a list of these “things that we don’t really want to talk about in education” in hopes that it might challenge us to bring those elephants out into the open and ignite some much needed conversation about how to deal with them.

I’m beginning to believe that a lot of what we view as resistance to change is not resistance. It is nostalgia, which can be a very powerful force in its own right. Good or bad, we sometimes transport ourselves to the classrooms of our youth, where we sat in rows, ordered by last name, completing workbooks.