3 New Year's resolutions for the future focussed educator

So you think of yourself future focussed? Maybe you are aspiring to be more future focussed? Perhaps you are a fan of the work of the inspirational education authors like Grant Lichtman, Keri Facer, Jane Gilbert and Rachel Bolstad? Most of us know that being a future focussed educator means a lot more than e-learning and and modern learning environments. It's not just iPads. Google Apps for Education, and bean bags, but rather a complete transformation in how we think about the world and our role in it.

For me, being a future focussed educator means that I am actively helping my students build a positive future for themselves, their children, their communities, New Zealand and the world. I believe that being a future focussed educator means letting go of the paradigms from the past, and choosing a new set that is appropriate for the advances we have made, socially, scientifically, technologically, and elsewhere.

As educators we often say that we are preparing students for the future. We often suggest that we are preparing students for jobs. In fact, many us us would go so far as to say that we have our students' and our children's best interests at heart. But do we really? How can we possibly have the best interests of our young people at heart, if our everyday choices contribute massively towards a pretty dark future, one of radical inequality, food scarcity, economical and political instability... Let me explain.

Can we call ourselves future focussed educators, if we are not actively striving to become more sustainable? Living a life that actively damages the resources of current and future generations, fiercely undermines all our beliefs of education as having an egalitarian purpose (egalitarian: "believing in or based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities").

• Climate change threatens the very economy of New Zealand. Since our agricultural industry is currently heavily dependant on climate, it means that extended droughts, floods, etc. may impact our exports, the jobs provided through our export trade, and even our ability to feed ourselves. This of course has major impact on communities that depend on agriculture for their income. 
• The current rate at which fish is being caught in the world, means that we are likely to run out of fish as a food source in my lifetime. Take a second to think about the huge number of communities around the world that depend on fishing as one of their primary food sources. How will this impact them? Did you know that Snapper, our fish and chips on the beach kiwi favourite is one of the worst possible choices you could make? Not only is some if caught through bottom trawling that completely destroys habitats, but it also further endangers our Maui's dolphin (PS: Check out the awesome Best Fish app from New Zealand Forest and Bird).

We also need to think about our throw away culture. Just think about the past two weeks, as many of us celebrated the festive season. How much did we throw away? How much of what we purchased were 'nice to haves', rather than 'have to haves'? And what was the collective environmental impact of all those 'nice to haves'? What did we throw away that could have been recycled or repurposed, reducing its environmental impact? What did we buy that was new, where second hand would have been just fine? How much extra carbon and environmental destruction did our festivities contribute?

Back to that egalitarian purpose of education, where we believe in equality. Do your choices as a consumer reflect the equality that you believe in? Take a second to look at the clothes you are wearing. Do you know where they came from? A sweat shop in China or Bangladesh? Just because you don't know where your clothes came from, does not make you any less responsible for the cycles you continue to propagate through your choices as a consumer. This might also be a good time to mention that the fast fashion industry is one of the largest contributors towards our global carbon production. If we believe in equality, then how can we justify our unethical clothing choices? What kind of a message does that send to our young people? What kind of a world does that create?

For some of us, we also might also like to think about whether our food is ethically produced? So you buy free range eggs, but is your mayonnaise made from free range eggs? Was your Christmas ham from an SPCA approved farm?

Now what?
The above are huge issues with both local and global impact. Hence, if I hope to help the students I teach be happy and successful in their futures, if I truly have their best interests at heart, then it is time I make some changes in my personal life too, not just in my pedagogy. Being a future focussed educator in my mind requires a transformational change. A change where educators take responsibility for more than just content and the best way to transmit it. Being a future focussed educator means taking responsibility for our place and impact in the world.

If, like me, you believe in helping build the best possible future for the students that we teach, then I would encourage you to join me in taking on some resolutions for 2017.

Resolution one: Accept responsibility.
I can not change you, but I can change me. I can not change the world alone, but I can certainly do my part. I will educate myself about the global issues that threaten the success of our young people, so that I might actively guard against ways that my actions might contribute in aggravating the many wicked problems looming.  But I will also change my actions, through being a more conscious consumer, choosing products with sustainability and ethics in mind. I will increase the amount I recycle, reuse, repurpose.

Resolution two: Live a more sustainable life. 
All those literacy, numeracy and test results will seem utterly trivial if we don't stand up and protect the critical resources all our young people need for a happy, successful future - our planet. It would be a shame if one day in the future the history books showed us too worried about tests, numeracy and literacy, than the fate of the planet.

Resolution three: Live a more ethical life.
What are we teaching our students and children about priorities? Are those new running shoes more important than the wellbeing of the people who produced them? Is a bargain for you more important than establishing whether the source of the product is ethical?

Self doubt and juggling plates

As I got home tonight, I couldn't pull myself away from watching Gilmore Girls on Netflix. It's the show I watch when I'm feeling mentally paralysed by exhaustion and stress. And yes, I know it's only day three of term. I know the show so well that I can watch it with my eyes closed, hence why it's the perfect show for this kind of mood. It's a combination of stress relief, denial, comic relief, great movie and music references, and more.

What had me so stressed you might wonder? It might have something to do with the fact that I am a mega edu-busybody. Right now I am juggling my full time job as e-SCT and Learning Community Leader at Hobsonville Point Secondary School, my masters project and finding participants to interview and time to read and write literature reviews, and the upcoming #edchatNZ conference, and our #edchatNZ chat nights, and some involvement with the Education Startup Weekend happening in Auckland in November. Ridiculous right? No wonder I am feeling stressed!

This year's #edchatNZ conference is only a few weeks away. Like most people, I have a thousand swirling questions, doubts and fears in my head. What if nobody turns up? What if we disappoint people? It's already a zero profit conference (on purpose) so negative money comes out of my bank account... What if the Waikato doesn't care enough to actually get themselves to the conference? What if? What if? What if? What if it's a failure?

Yes, despite a previous successful conference, many a successful #edchatNZ nights, a MOOC, podcasts and more, this does not mean that I don't feel the fear and the self doubt. Yes indeed, I, like probably the rest of you, am completely and utterly human and doubt both myself and my ideas.

Sometimes however, we have to take action despite the fear and self doubt, and do things simply because it is the right thing to do. Moral courage and all that. You see, I believe, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our schools are no longer adequate (despite the best efforts of many teachers and school leaders). This might seem harsh, but bare with me. I think that as long as I believe in the egalitarian purpose of school (believing in or based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities), I cannot accept that there are large groups of students for whom our schools just do not work. There are students who are unhappy, students who feel undervalued, and students who are ultimately set up from primary school to think of themselves as failures or below the standard because they don't fit into the moulds of our standardised system dating from the 1800s. Then I haven't even started to talk about the implicit and explicit messages we send around competition over collaboration, getting back to work (and not learning), you should study and work harder because... (insert doom and gloom message laden with threats about not getting a job).

Hence, if I believe that things need to change, I need to actually do something about that change. Even if we sometimes are juggling bundles of self doubt alongside our hopes and dreams.

Cue the 2016 #edchatNZ conference... A future focussed education conference.

To start with, I believe that future focussed means sustainability. If we are truly future focussed, then we should be thinking really hard about the genuine reality of environmental degradation and climate change, and the impact this will have on the lives of the learners in our schools and their communities. Hence, this year's #edchatNZ conference is as eco-friendly as we can possible make it. We are aiming to reduce waste, no paper flyers, no disposable coffee cups. The caters were asked to serve meals using biodegradable materials and that meat and eggs should be free range. There is certainly a lot more that we could do to make this conference even more eco-friendly, but we have to start somewhere.

I also believe that future focussed means diversity. Diversity in people, places and more. It seems thats Auckland dominates the spotlight in many conversations these days. Property, grammar zones, traffic, etc. But, what about the many other great places and spaces, towns and communities in New Zealand? I am happy that this year's conference has moved out of Auckland in order to celebrate a different part of New Zealand and give a different group of people easier access to the learning. I am excited that Hamilton will be stealing the spotlight! Additionally, on my very first visit to Rototuna Junior High School in Hamilton, this year's conference venue, Deputy Principal Mel Moore talked about the huge cultural significance of the land on which the school was built. Even though it seems that it is MUCH tougher getting people, particularly Aucklanders, to Hamilton, I feel that it is important that I make the effort to celebrate this great place, and the great people in it. I believe that truly valuing diversity in place and space is one of the keys to helping unlock many of the sticky wicked problems that New Zealand and the world is facing. After all, it's divergent, not convergent thinking that leads to creativity...

I also believe in equity and accessibility. So this year's conference is again, dirt cheap. For only $30, delegates get to experience an incredible two days learning from some incredible people! As you can imagine, it takes some hard, creative and time consuming thinking and work to make this a reality. But again, if I really believe that equity and accessibility is important, my actions and the things I can control must reflect this. Great learning to empower the passionate educators across our country should never be hard to come by if we want the best for our learners.

Finally, I also believe in the power of people. The #edchatNZ conference, and all of it's other projects and events is entirely organised by volunteers. I do not have the words to express the gratitude that I have for the people who have made me feel that a future so bright that we can hardly imagine it, is truly within our reach. Philippa Antipas, Mel Moore, Jane Gilbert, Megan Peterson, Steve Mouldey, Bryce Clapham, Claire Amos, Maurie Abraham, Pete Hall and a whole bunch of other people not only help me believe, but they help me keep faith in myself and help me to juggle the many plates I am spinning. They also show me everyday, that it is not by doing everything myself that great things happen, it is when we draw on the diverse strengths of each of us that we truly make a difference. And on top of this, I am grateful to the #edchatNZ crowd who have been turning up for nearly four years now to learn and think together, because they genuinely care about their students, as well as their students' futures and communities. We are also lucky to have huge support in an assortment of education companies including Core Education, Evaluation Associates, N4L and more.

I am sure that in the weeks leading up to the conference I will have more self doubt, nightmares that nobody will turn up, or feelings that I forgot to do something important. I will feel like I just don't know how to do something and that I don't know how to solve a problem. The moral of the story is to feel the fear and do it anyways if you know that it is the right thing to do. And that when you put your heart on the line, and you genuinely embrace the diverse skills and expertise of those around you, both physically and in vision, that great things can be done. So please, take a moment to write some personal emails to a few of your contacts, inviting and encouraging them to become part of this incredible community. It will be great for them I promise, but also it would really help me sleep at night!

The other moral is that the first week of term is a bad time to quit eating so much sugar. I worked out that actually it's the absence of sugar that is leading to my levels of exhaustion and agitation. I believe they call it withdrawals...