Rotten Apples

Many of our ways have gone bad, decaying rotten apples we cling to out of ease, familiarity and comfort. At the core, ‘rotten apples’ are outdated practices, ideas, routines, ways of thinking and beliefs. They are ways of doing and being that have been around for a long time, kept even after going bad and when fresh, new fruit sits in plain sight.

Rotten Apples feel safe and known, and for this reason, are difficult to put down. We feel their staleness yet it’s challenging to harness our Creative Courage and replace them. But we need to, for they don’t serve us or our learners.

The choices we make about how we teach, show up and run our classrooms impacts how our learners learn. If we want our students to be learners and to thrive, we need to teach lessons worth learning and in ways that develop skills worth possessing. We can choose to consciously replace our rotten apples, and noticing and naming them is the first step.

We simply can’t cling to the ways we’ve always taught. In his book, Educating Ruby, Guy Claxton suggests that schools might teach lessons worth learning by focusing on developing transferrable lifelong skills, learning attitudes and beliefs, the ability to think and a creative curiosity when approaching problem-solving. He suggests that intentional focus on the nurturing of character and alongside academic understanding and skills might be the goal of the modern educator.

Committing to reflecting on and pivoting our practice allows us to provide schooling that is responsive and relevant to today’s learner. No longer are we preparing our students for an industrialised world, but for an unknown, rapidly-changing world where a foundation of 21st Century Skills is an essential component of an education worth having. In order for our children to flourish, we must commit to growing and becoming new; to transform from Knowers to Learners ourselves.

Rotten apples are holding us back. It’s time to unearth and replace them in order to teach our children what they really need to learn. There’s no shame in identifying a rotten apple, only courage.