Technolandy

Day 24 (of SOL 2025) Summer of Learning… Dear Dr  @chrkennedy -what to do with experience? I go a bit ‘off the grid’ (even for me…)

In his annual year end blog, Chris had some good questions… here is question 

24. How do we honour our most experienced teachers while still challenging them to grow?

1. Rich conversations – I shared with my new superintendent that I have never felt better about instructional coaching than since I joined my Provincial Online Learning School as everybody is wanting to work out how to best reach students that are mainly with us for one of two reasons – one being the families believe in learning at home and this is their first choice…the other being a disconnect that has them seeking different, and my team recognizes that does not mean ‘more of the same’ and they’re meeting students where they are (literally and metaphorically) not where/how they wish they were. Need more of this❤️

Honouring and challenging are not opposites… they reinforce each other when rooted in respect, autonomy, and relationship.

Let’s start  little wild: (spoiler: the biggie is t the bottom!)

1. “Legacy Lab” Residency

Honour them as “teaching artists-in-residence” who design, experiment, and archive legacy projects.

• Treat veteran educators like master craftspeople. Give them time, space, and support to:

• Design a signature unit or practice to document and share.

• Collaborate across grades or schools as “resident experts.”

• Create a “legacy artifact” — a podcast, zine, comic, or video doc of their philosophy and stories.

Why it works: Respects their mastery while inviting creative growth. Their legacy becomes part of school culture and Pro-D.

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🔹 2. Reverse Mentorship Pairings

Pair experienced teachers with new educators or student teachers… but the mentee drives the learning.

• Flip the script: early-career teachers or even students coach veteran teachers on:

• AI tools or digital learning platforms

• Gamification strategies or emerging pedagogies

• New social-emotional frameworks (e.g., trauma-informed practice)

Why it works: Reinforces the idea that everyone has something to offer — and growth is reciprocal, not top-down.

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🔹 3. The “Unretirement Fellowship”

Create a sabbatical-style program for late-career teachers to go deep — not out.

• A year or semester with reduced teaching load and increased autonomy to:

• Co-lead district innovation projects

• Study a question they’ve never had time for

• Teach one “dream course” they design from scratch

Why it works: Says: “Your career isn’t winding down — it’s cresting into something new.” Invites energy rather than exhaustion.

More ‘fitting the current system’

1. Honour Expertise & Experience

• Acknowledge Legacy and Impact: Celebrate the influence veteran teachers have had on students, colleagues, and school culture — not just in ceremonies, but in day-to-day respect.

• Use Their Stories: Their lived experiences with curriculum changes, past reform cycles, and community relationships are vital institutional knowledge. Leverage these stories in mentorship and induction programs.

• Lived Credentials: honour that not everything needs certification from a tuition-driven institute, and perhaps all should be able to explore and experience all of what k-12 has to offer

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🔹 2. Create Space for Leadership Without Hierarchy

• Offer mentorship roles that aren’t evaluative but collaborative — e.g., co-planning days with newer teachers. Oooh or create extra time for co-teaching opportunities (imagine GameChanger but for a block of learning! Ooh – I think im gonna try that next year…)

• Invite them to facilitate pro-d sessions on pedagogy they’ve refined or strategies they’ve adapted over the years.

• Encourage them to lead inquiry groups, especially around issues that matter to them. Once gin, imagine if we offered the 20%time that Google once gave that led to great innovations (not everything can/should/needs be research-based/supported!)

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🔹 3. Reframe Growth as Legacy and Relevance

• Position professional growth not as a deficit but as an evolution — continuing to adapt because they are experienced and know students change.

• Focus on learning that links to their values: UDL, equity, literacy, or new ways to engage students with timeless content.

• Explore non-education conferences nd reading to make connections that can enrich education – UDL came from the school of architecture after all!

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🔹 4. Invite, Don’t Impose

• Growth comes best from curiosity, not compliance. Offer provocations that inspire (“What if your best years of teaching are still ahead?”) rather than mandates.

• Reminders that we ‘get to’ do this, rarely do we ‘have to’…

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Then an idea AI and I collaborated on that I think Sir Ken would love:

The Most Extreme, Outside-the-Box Initiative:

“The Veteran Educator Time Machine” 🚀

Concept:

What if experienced teachers could literally step out of traditional schooling — and into the future of learning — while still being embedded in the system?

This would be a full-year, alternate-reality teaching experiment where seasoned educators are empowered to:

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🔹 Design and Lead a “School of the Future” (within or outside their district)

• No bell schedule, no grade levels, no traditional assessments.

• Multi-age, interdisciplinary, community-connected learning.

• They co-design the curriculum with students, based on inquiry, passion, and place-based projects.

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🔹 Choose Their Role (Radically)

• Some might teach without teaching — becoming “learning architects,” co-learners, or narrative designers.

• Others might act as curators of curiosity, creating immersive environments like:

• A comic studio for visual storytelling as curriculum

• A “WonderLab” where kids explore unsolved problems

• A “Time Capsule School” where history is re-experienced rather than taught

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🔹 Open-Access Documentation

• Everything is chronicled in real time: podcasts, blogs, documentaries.

• They host open days for visiting teachers and students — turning their experiment into a live learning lab.

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🔹 Or for a year, they are not educators — they are apprentices in a field totally outside education:

A year with an Indigenous community learning land-based knowledge.

A residency with a theater company, urban planning team, AI think tank, coral reef conservation crew, or culinary collective.

Immersed as beginners — with no responsibility to teach. Just to learn.

Then come back with outside-the-system ideas…

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🔹 Why It’s Powerful

• It honours experienced educators by trusting them to reinvent the very system they’ve worked within.

• It challenges them to unlearn habits, innovate boldly, and stay at the edge of their practice.

• It inspires the whole profession by saying: “What if we didn’t just tweak schools — but reinvented them, with our most experienced minds at the helm?”