Stumbling around the net early this morning I found this article, Using the Wrong Camera Creates a Bad Picture.

You take a snapshot of the first class via a one-shot standardized test and that teacher looks great. Take the same shot the next year and that same teacher seems incompetent.

The problem isn’t the teacher. The problem isn’t even the students.

The problem is the camera.

Image by MaestroBen via Flickr

Teaching isn’t the kind of thing you can capture in a snapshot.

The problem is that most people aren’t using the right lens, the right camera to get the contrast right. Deven Black, Education On The Plate, Apr 2010

I was thinking about Deven’s notion that the camera is part of our problem.

Devin Black compares the single snapshot to a single standardized test and suggests that we need more information. We need a wide angle lens.  We need a video camera.

I suggest we take that metaphor further and engage it in everything we do.  What is the lens through which we look inside the world in which we live?

We think we can walk into a room and because of a snapshot, know what is going on – or not going on.  A teacher walks into her neighbor’s class and sees kids on the floor rolling around, a principal walks in and sees a child sleeping, a director churns through the hallway and finds no adult supervision, a parent arrives at the front office and hears an argument between a staff member and a student, a legislator reads a report and sees flat test scores for an entire state over the past year.  Do these snapshots make a complete picture?

No.

And, I don’t think any one of those persons think that they do.

Perhaps the true issue is that the lens through which we look through the world are our own eyes – and our eyes are connected to our hearts and mind and our souls. And sometimes because of the hustle and bustle and tension and frustration we muffle our hearts and see only with our mechanical lens.

What if we allowed ourselves to slow down just a bit, so that when we step into classrooms, conversations in the halls, rooms filled with persons meeting or learning, we remember to look with our heart as well as our eyes – might we see a very different picture?

You should read the whole article.