Bright Spots in Education

Imagine that something unexpected just happened.  You weren't expecting this change, and now you have a huge problem to solve.  You don't know where to start and feel hopeless.  What should you do?

The answer is to look at the bright spots.  Bright spots are the areas that are working well.  There are numerous bright spots in education, and we need to look closer at these bright spots to ignite positive change.    

I learned about bright spots in a book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.  Chip Heath and Dan Heath (brothers) suggest that we look at bright spots and copy the success of bright spots when there is a problem.  Looking at bright spots forces us to look at strengths instead of weaknesses.  Everywhere around us there are bright spots in education.  We need to use these positive examples to create positive change in education.  If we spotlight the strengths in education instead of the weaknesses, we can increase our impact.  Dan Heath further explains bright spots in the video below.

Bright spots can be found in teachers in classrooms all over our schools.  Teachers are amazing at what they do.  Teachers need to be celebrated for the amazing things they accomplish with students every day.  We need to celebrate these bright spots and use what is happening in these classrooms as examples to others to copy their success and create positive change.  My hope is to highlight these teachers who are bright spots in education and give practical steps on how we can recreate their success.

Bright spots can also be found in research.  Research can show us what works best in education.  One example of research that I use often is Visible Learning.  Professor John Hattie, researcher in education, has analyzed more than 800 meta-analyses in his work on Visible Learning.  The purpose of Visible Learning is to show educators “what works best” in the classroom.  I use the research from Visible Learning as bright spots for teachers when planning lessons in the classroom.  My goal is introduce instructional strategies here that will increase student learning based on research.  Learn more about John Hattie's research on Visible Learning here.

Bright spots can also be found in data.  We cannot relay on good intentions alone or the feeling that a lesson went well.  We need to collect data to support our impact on student learning.  This can be done through formative assessment, artifacts from lessons, observations of students, and interviewing students about their own learning.  Data should inform both our instruction as educators and next steps for instruction for individual students.  When we examine data, we need to look at the bright spots to see what is working well and copy the success.

My goal is to purposefully look for bright spots in education and share what works best in education here.  I am excited about this journey in searching for bright spots, and I hope you will join me in this exploration.