What do we mean when we say “innovation?” Education, maybe more than any other professional field, present a large glut of words – detractors will often call them buzzwords – that hover in the minds of teachers. These words and their intents inform the way teachers are told they should teach. Usually, these words do not come from the teachers themselves, but come from someone else: a principal, a superintendent, a consultant. As a result, the teacher has little connection to the word or its application to their practice in anything more than an abstract way. It’s no wonder they think them to be buzzwords. With so many buzzwords flying around teachers heads, they’re like insects. Like insects, teachers often swat them away.
Part of this problem is that we don’t give teachers time or ability to buy into the concepts. I’m glad that we have these sessions, because this presents an opportunity for teachers to come together and better understand what innovation means and how it relates to our practice. When you think about it, this is actually a colossal investment that is being made on the strength of a single word. So to prevent this from becoming a weak foundation on which to build our understanding, we must define it. Winnipeg School Division has done our work for us, it would seem. From the latest memo, we see the definition – protected by copyright! – that reads that “Innovation is creating new and improved ways of thinking and doing that inspire and empower learners ~©Winnipeg School Division” Hopefully they are not set in stone on this definition and will let teachers contribute to this definition. Hopefully there is not a fee involving changing copyright. Because time and time again, initiatives with “buzzwords” fail when teachers do not feel involved.
Not that there is anything wrong with this definition at all. It is a perfectly good definition, and I hope that all teachers embrace it. However, we will always run the risk of initiatives faltering when teachers feel like they are being talked at and not with. This is the same of a good classroom. We want students to explore and think before arriving at a solution. This is the same of our teachers. We want them to imagine what innovation means. We want them to get stuck and flummoxed and find their way. This is the way of learning. We need them to ask, “What happens, for example, when industry defines “innovation” in a different way? How will we react?” Certainly educational definitions of words such as these vary in different professional discourses. How will we not only define innovation for ourselves, but how will we navigate a world where these definitions can mean different things?
This is more than wondering which social media platform we’ll use in the class or how we’ll do things differently. But if we don’t understand what we mean by what we say, then what we say means nothing.

Devin King
Sister High School