Three Sides to Every Coin

In the recent past our school opened a new wing for our Jr. High students to enjoy.  As we took our fledglings under our new wing we hoped to see development toward a new and innovative approach to the system called "school".

Created on the iPad2 by @dramaticscience with cinemagr.am

My own goals included:
a) the ability of students to modify their space to suit their learning needs
b) the ability for teachers to modify their space to suit their learning needs
c) the ability for all to use technology that was appropriate to them
d) the ability for all to disrupt the status quo to discover new ways of doing age-old things.

...backfire...

It worked well, but it's happening in the wrong places, or for the wrong reasons.

From wikipedia:
A back-fire or backfire is an explosion produced by a running internal combustion engine that occurs in the air intake or exhaust system rather than inside the combustion chamber. The same term is used when unburned fuel or hydrocarbons are ignited somewhere in the exhaust system. A visible flame may momentarily shoot out of the exhaust pipe. Either condition causes an objectionable popping noise, together with possible loss of power and forward motion.

But a coin has two sides doesn't it?  When I sit back to look at this scenario it is easy to see both.

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Side 1 @dramaticscience: This wk stdnts have switched their own scheds around, prioritized work-time over reg class time, & assumed control of learning life.#yay?

Side 2 @dramaticscience:  I.O.W. they skipped drama class to work on science projects last minute. Am I kewl with that? #morethanyoumightexpect

Side 3
But there's a third side, isn't there? The side of the coin that connects the two sides.  The side that circles both, and the side that you can carefully and precariously balance the coin on.  That's the side that we tend to forget about.  That's the side that sometimes we need to look at.

When we don't go together in a unified direction, when we don't support each other as we take risks to innovate, to improve, and to progress then we end up on two sides of the same coin, and that means we will fight to decide which side is up.

The tendency is to want to be on one side or the other.  Why not bring the two sides together and stand together on the third?  Perhaps then we'll prevent the backfires.