Innovation counts! If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have such truisms as “Necessity is the mother of invention!” People who are innovative are able to survive the mazes of life through their creativity.
Just this week, I watched football with my husband and saw a college team that lost its coach for a reason I do not know. I was told that many of the players left the college and the team to show their support of that coach. I was amazed to see the remaining team members and their new coach use a very innovative approach to playing the number one team in the nation. They did not give up or cry over what might have been. Instead, they planned a strategy which left me breathless just watching them perform it. I really am not sure that my own alma mater wouldn’t be beaten by the pace of that team’s play.
Too many people reach a puzzling situation and then just give up and admit defeat. This is one reason we established Lawton Academy…to inspire our students and staff to think outside of the box! Innovation and new ways of looking at life’s problems doesn’t come to a person easily. Our brains must be trained to make connections, to find common elements, to look at a problem from many different angles, and then to ask ourselves: what would happen if….”
I feel the pandemic we’ve experienced has caused many people to settle for whatever happens to come their way. Depression and apathy have entered our society at alarming rates. How happy I am that we added a new dimension to our Intermediate grades at LAAS. Our new faculty member has begun “Genius Hour” with our fifth and sixth graders. She truly understands that genius means someone who seeks knowledge. Our students have been undertaking research into areas of their interest, compiling information for a presentation, and then demonstrating or presenting the knowledge they’ve gained to their classmates. The level of enthusiasm has been wonderful.
One of the blessings we have at Lawton Academy is that we own the school and therefore can make innovative changes without going through the hours and miles of red tape that bureaucratic schools must endure before seeing their innovations come to fruition. Mrs. Smith took over scheduling, which was something I hated to do, having worn myself out in the public school during my 32 years there. So, instead of me meeting the necessary needs to fulfill the law, or to place classes efficiently, she is able to do it with excitement and a flair of innovation. Staff and students are then able to add to her innovations any improvements which they think might help make it better.
I have seen teachers who do the same bulletin boards the same way every year of their careers on the same day of the same month. They also use the same tests year after year until it is a joke, as students foretell other students not only what is on the tests but the acceptable answers as well. Thank goodness, I have not been stuck with such faculty members. Just last night I was talking to a recently retired teacher who is about to start substituting in the local school system. She knew from other substitutes that many teachers leave no lesson plans for their class while they are gone. It is extremely difficult to keep order in many of those classes as a substitute. However, this teacher has had many years of teaching experience, and she smiled as she told me, “I’ll just take my bag of tricks with me!” At least she is preparing to be innovative in case she draws a class for which there are no instructions or lesson plans!
- Kay