Why teachers should visit other schools

A friend of mine who works construction told me that his profession shifted his world-view.

"Now when I look around a room I don't think of the walls a barriers; everything can be moved. If you don't like the wall, we can knock it down, or cut a hole in it, or put a door there. Nothing is static—paint it, bevel it, hammer it—there really aren't any boundaries."

Today I visited another high school down the block from mine and received a similar reminder that everything is transitory. The teachers at University of Hawaii Lab School ask themselves the same questions I ask myself daily (should I prioritize skill over content? Should I seat friends together or separate them with a seating arrangement? What is the best thing I can do to help my students gain proficiency in writing? Should I wear this skirt with those shoes?) yet they answered them differently.

What I saw:

-Music class with 7th grades belting out traditional Hawaiian songs.
-A social studies class re-enacting the French revolution with all of the peasants sitting on the floor to show their status.
-A fifth grade class studying algebraic principles.
-A thirty-student orchestra practicing the string section in a satellite building with shiny new violas.
-Students waving "Hi Mr. Bricket!" to the principal as we walked the campus.

What a wonderful reminder of just how much we have to play with in this profession. We should all pop our heads in other school buildings once in a while and remember that the walls aren't a constant after all.