{"id":357,"date":"2013-10-16T10:27:36","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T14:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/?p=357"},"modified":"2013-10-16T10:27:36","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T14:27:36","slug":"transforming-education-october-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/2013\/10\/16\/transforming-education-october-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Transforming Education- October 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Be the Designers Students Deserve<\/strong>\"Ena-Shelley12\"<\/a>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/b>\u201cWe may not all be Dali or Degas. But today we must all be designers<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind<\/em>
\nAt the Butler Homecoming this month, it was wonderful to see so many alumni return and reconnect with members of the College of Education.<\/p>\n

As I listened to our graduates who are educators in many settings (schools, parenting, businesses, and retirement), the theme of \u201cdesign\u201d emerged for me.<\/p>\n

From conversations on becoming a parent and trying to find balance in life, deciding upon a career move, facing challenges in the culture of a school or district, or finding new opportunities in retirement, I was reminded of Margaret Wheatley\u2019s statement, \u201cWe can\u2019t be creative if we refuse to be confused.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is not one \u201cright answer\u201d to any of the issues the alumni were describing but perhaps a good solution for one moment in time. So how do we design <\/strong>our lives, and what does it involve? I provide the following to spark your creative process:<\/p>\n

D<\/strong>are to be willing to be confused and to take risks.
\nE<\/strong><\/b>xamine your environment and situation carefully to see new possibilities.
\nS<\/strong><\/b>peak more with questions than with answers.
\nImagine how your daily life will change by making small, incremental, and creative changes.
\nG<\/strong>o forward with courage; don\u2019t wait one more minute to begin developing your dreams. N<\/strong>ever believe that you do not have the power to make necessary changes to move forward.<\/p>\n

A very dear friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Louise Cadwell, shared the following piece written by Superintendent Linda Henke of Maplewood Richmond Heights School District in St. Louis. Dr. Henke wrote this piece for her graduate students in a school principal preparation program. I share these powerful words with you to provoke your thinking about the role of design in your life.<\/p>\n

To My Wonderful Students<\/p>\n

Be designers\u2026first and foremost\u2026design.
\nDesign with a glorious childhood in mind,
\nnot just a good education;
\nDesign toward an amazing future,
\nnot just a reaction to the past;
\nDesign with an engaged heart and spirit,
\nnot just with your analytic mind;
\nDesign with a fearless sense of possibility,
\nnot with the anxiety of compliance;
\nDesign with your dance shoes on
\nand your butterfly net in hand,
\nnot just in your work clothes;
\nDesign as a gentle warrior for children,
\nnot as a bureaucrat longing for certainty,
\nseeking comfort in numbers;
\nDesign\u2026our children desperately need you
\nto design new schools that celebrate childhood,
\nnot try to remediate it.
\nI am constantly thinking about how we must continue to design <\/strong>the education that our children deserve. After all, we are educating them for a future we will never see, but the greatest gift we can give them is the ability to constantly design and redesign.<\/p>\n

My challenge to you is to share your design story<\/strong> with others on the COE blog,<\/b><\/a> Facebook,<\/b><\/a> or Twitter.<\/b><\/a> Wherever you are in life, what are you dreaming, designing, and creating? I will be waiting to hear from you!<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026and the wonderful thing about possibilities are that they are endless\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Howard Gardner
\nUntil next month,<\/p>\n

Dr. Ena Shelley<\/em>
\nDean, College of Education<\/p>\n

Explore the archives<\/b><\/a> of previous Transforming Education<\/em> entries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Be the Designers Students Deserve \u201cWe may not all be Dali or Degas. But today we must all be designers.\u201d \u2014 Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind At the Butler Homecoming this month, it was wonderful to see so many… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1683,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123338,123329],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dean-ena-shelley","category-deans-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/coe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}