As a full-time education consultant, Allison Zmuda works with educators to grow ideas on how to make learning for students challenging, possible and worthy of the attempt. Over the past 19 years, Zmuda has shared curricular, assessment, and instructional ideas, shown illustrative examples, and offered practical strategies of how to get started.
By Melissa McQuarrie
Have you ever felt like you couldn’t wait to grow up and ‘get started’ living your life? Have you ever wondered how to connect the things you do every day, right now, with the things you really want to do? The good news is that reality is right now, for you and everyone around you. Students today have more opportunities to act upon their environment than ever before—more than your parents, their grandparents, and even your own teachers today!
It’s not true that the dreams and ideas that float inside your mind aren’t meaningful. In fact, those are the things that make you special, that make you unique. Most people just don’t give themselves enough credit for the good ideas that they have. They keep them inside, bottled up, saved for another day. Why? Because most of us are afraid; afraid of being laughed at, having our ideas put down, or for feeling inadequate—feeling like we can’t DO anything about the dreams that we have. If you weren’t afraid, if you had all the power in the world, what would you DO?