A Guide to Modernizing Your School Without Increasing Workload | Richard Wells | 3 Min Read

STEP 1: Create Your Crossword Curriculum

Despite thousands of initiatives around the world, it remains difficult to change the hearts and minds and especially habits of both schools and their communities to change or modernize their priorities for learning in the 21st century. After all, we spent 100 years developing what we think school is and should be. I speak from experience having tried many initiatives myself as a school leader. Those experiences have helped me become a stronger leader and very much a realist. I am enjoying the challenge of helping teachers move their practice forward in ways they agree with, and that keeps the community comfortable. It is also crucial to minimize or eliminate adding extra workload to teachers who have suffered from having to deal with so many initiatives over the last 20 years.

To choose one first step for a school still practicing essentially the traditional 20th-century model of separate lessons in separate subject silos, I have found it useful to use the analogy of crossword in doing something that many schools have tried but not maintained long term. The first crossword appeared in 1913 in New York and as we all know became an…

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Richard Wells

Richard Wells is a world-recognized educator, author and blogger on future education trends. He has presented around the world and has been rated in the top 50 world influencers for educational technology use. He currently works in school leadership and is passionate about moving schools forward to better represent the needs of the 21st century. Richard is an EdTech influencer who founded EduWells, a top 10 education blog. He is the author of A Learner's Paradise, a book in which he explains how education can operate without classrooms, lessons, subjects, and tests. Richard proudly started his career with a degree in Fine Art from Manchester in England. He worked in IT before contracting to work in schools, digitalizing their workflows in the late 1990s. He became an educator in 2003.