We had our major end-of-the-year Middle School Faculty meeting today where a number of important (and non-important) issues are discussed and extrapolated to all sorts of Euclidean extremes.

I’m excited to be a teacher in 2011 for many reasons. Of course the chance to work with bright and curious 13-15 year olds on a daily basis for 3/4 of the year is phenomenally fun. Even though it’s “summer” (or Training Season as we teachers like to think of it), I still ask to run camps for 5-9th graders so I can keep my blade sharp. I cannot wait for my Robotics, Mythbusters and iOS development camps this summer. I wish I were doing 30 of them instead of just those three.

However, the bigger reason why I’m excited to be a teacher right here right now (whatever happened to those guys??) is that we’re, cliches aside, on the cliff of a revolution in realizing how young people learn, become leaders and become critical thinkers. That possibility of taping into the brains of each of my students (or better… co-learners) to help me make more insightful inferences about the nature of the universe is literally breath-taking and mind-bending.

I wonder where next year will take our little school? Are we headed for some magical Coltrane-esque sequence of mini-apocalypses with each new day? Or are we trying to make our way back to some ordinary world that is comfortable and easy for us teachers and not-all-that-challenging for our students (I hope not)?

So the question is, do we look ahead or look back (hence the video above… I wasn’t an Obama supporter until I saw this speech in person that night and I realized he was a leader that I’d be proud to call my president.)? “Don’t tell me change isn’t possible…”

The fierce urgency of now is more than just political rhetoric. I believe in that sentiment and it burns in my soul as it has for so many people willing to stand up for what they believe in and be crazy enough to change the world. For me, that means not settling for the way we’ve always “done” school. We can make things better. We have to. Yes we can.

In a lengthy meeting with my headmaster over whether or not I was going to be back for another year at my school, he reminded me that patience is not one of my virtues. He had a good point. It’s not something I do very well, and I know that over time the hairs on my head will continue to become gray and my temperament will become more… tempered. However, I will never lose this burning passion to work for my students and make things better, whatever the cost and in the face of whatever tradition or assumptions we think are essential for how school is done.

Is patience a virtue? Probably so. I need more of it. I’m working on that. However, there are many things my 8th graders need to have authentic individualized learning experiences and I’m willing to push hard for that while my hair gets more and more white and while my time on this pale blue dot grows increasingly and exponentially shorter.