While a member of the New York Mets RA Dickey won the CY Young Award - emblematic of the best pitcher in baseball. Knuckleball pitchers don't win the Cy Young Award. Dickey was the first to do so.
When Dickey accepted his Cy Young Award he said:
We live in a culture now that's got a very progressive mentality, which is fantastic as far as the association of the knuckleball goes. And that's a compliment to the vision and the imagination of the writers who voted. They didn't see the knuckleball as a trick pitch. They didn't see it as some kind of illegitimate weapon that you can use that isn't worthy. They saw it as a legitimate weapon.
So what does RA Dickey winning the Cy Young Award have to do with innovation in education?
Perhaps, and this is just a hunch on my part, we are turning a corner. Perhaps, we are beginning to see that it is the outcome that is most important and not the means.
RA Dickey won the CY Young Award because he won a lot of games. It didn't matter that he threw the knuckleball. It didn't matter that he was not a typical fastball, curve ball kind of pitcher. He won because he won.
Schools exist to help students learn. We should use any means available to us to help students learn.
In the past we have viewed learning as "legitimate" only if it was teacher directed. Teachers were rated as effective if they were the primary "talkers" in the classroom. Teachers were rated as effective if they commanded the attention of the students in the room.
But that is not how students learn anymore.
Students are more independent. Students have a voice.
Student have developed their voice by gaining access to information through the Internet, by connecting with people from around the world through gaming platforms, by sharing ideas through Twitter and Snapchat.
We can no longer say that students should not have a voice in our classrooms. We cannot say that the only legitimate learning that occurs is in the classroom between the hours of 8:00 and 4:00.
Learning occurs throughout the day, throughout the night, throughout the year.
The definition of legitimate learning has to expand. Students have access to too much information.
The question is how do schools capitalize on this and expand learning opportunities inside of our schools?
The baseball writers accept that the knuckleball is now a "legitimate" pitch.
Can we as educators accept that student learning is different now than it has been in the past? And if we can accept that, how does it change how we do business?