Excitement, hope, and eagerness are just some of the adjectives of a new school year approaching. While I certainly experience many of these same emotions, this time of year usually brings me deep thought and reflection. Today is no different. For many years now we've been hearing about the need to innovate our practice. If you've been in education for any amount of time you've heard this. Our education system is dated and was created to support an economy that no longer exists.
Today I heard a great conceptual idea from Tony Wagner. He suggested that schools invest money in Research and Design. It's ok, I probably would have rolled my eyes at this several years ago as well. I get it, budgets are tight, the needs of the kids make it tough to think about reallocating funds to such an undertaking and much of the research is done without schools having to invest a penny (not really, but more on that in a minute). There's also the underlying feeling that such a position would be nothing more than an expedited way to filter central office initiatives down to the campus level. They're all very valid concerns. Any significant change doesn't come without a reason to be concerned and/or cautious. It's the gains I believe a school district would make that make this a valid undertaking. First of all, think of how much a school district spends on purchasing the work of the research that's already been done. Think of the speakers that are paid to come, the books that are bought to be read. The list could go on. What if a school was creating all of this (and more) on their own? Not only would it pay for itself, but it would also change the daily climate and eventually the culture. Work for us (and our students), by us and because of us. Work, research and design that's tailored to what we need in the here and now. Who knows, it just might lead to some great exposure for your district on top of all the other benefits. It might not take much. Simply having a "Director of Innovation" with the ability to connect and work with all professionals from across an entire school district looking for ways to innovate our practices. "What could replace a faculty meeting?" What impact is "X" having on our students?" "How do staff feel about..." You could devote days with teachers to travel to multiple campuses in search of great and innovative practices or creating networks of district-wide PLC's You could also utilize this structure to connect to your community in ways you haven't before. Connect with businesses, community governments, and others to showcase what your students are doing in school and see if it's truly meeting the real-world application threshold. You could also get great ideas on what it is these community partners are doing daily to further the authenticity of your curriculum. I am certain that the possibilities for this are far greater than anything I could illustrate in any single blog post. Each summer we ask our employees to invest some time in R&R and we're better off for it. The same would be true if we invested in some R&D.
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A memory crept back into my mind today, and it was one I hadn't thought about in quite awhile. Some of the events from this memory weren't even all that worthy of being remembered. In fact, it was a memory rooted in my own mediocre performance.
I was a 7th grade Texas History teacher at the time. We were in one of my favorite units, the Texas cattle drive days. I know it doesn't sound all that fun, but trust me, there is so much you can do with this content to bring it to life. So many of my lessons in this unit were great. We roped cows, went out and learned to live off the land and so much more. We spent more time outside the classroom than we did inside it. But it was a day inside the classroom during this unit that changed so much about how I would move forward as a teacher. At the end of this mediocre lesson one of my most challenging students came and talked to me about how much he had enjoyed class that day. I was shocked, this was middle of the road at best but yet there he was. It changed the course of the year we had together. So I asked him the question that wound up changing my teaching moving forward: "What worked for you today?" That was the moment that led me to think at the end of the day that it really isn't about how great I thought my teaching was, it was about whether or not it resonated with kids. Prior to that day I would spend a lot of time in isolation reflecting on my craft. I would talk to other adults but never the kids. When I started reflecting with kids on not just the learning, but the learning process I was transformed as was my teaching. I learned that some of things I thought were so great were really missing the mark. I learned that you don't have to teach the same lesson 4 class periods in a row. And I learned that there is both a transformative power and release from a burden when embrace the reality that your greatest resources sit right in front of you each and every day. So get out of reflecting alone, or in your small concentrated room of "adults know best" planning sessions. Do something innovative like plan WITH your students, not for your students. Don't just let kids give you feedback, encourage them to, including critical feedback. Above all, empower yourself with the realization that it's not about your teaching, it's about their learning. It's a discussion that comes up all the time? What are we preparing kids for? What do they need to learn? We convene meetings of education boards at the local and state levels and have great debates over what should or should not be in a particular subjects curriculum. There's a whole lot more to school than curriculum though. For today's students, it's not just what you know, it's what you do with what you know. It's what you'll do that will make something better than the way you found it. It's about skills as much as it's about knowledge. So what skills seem to set people apart? 1. Bringing the best out of those around you One of the best skills you can have is being a "maximizer." It's not good enough anymore just to bring your own "A" game anymore. You have to be able to help those around you find theirs as well. Being able to inspire people can be the most helpful skill in life. You'll find that you don't always have every answer. You'll also find that the smartest person in the room is the room. The question is, what is your impact towards making those in the room find their best? 2. The ability to self-direct learning
The amount of information will continue to grow at an exponential rate. The rate of change in the world will only accelerate, it won't be stagnant. Change will be the new constant. With all those things in mind the ability to self-direct learning is critical. The days of waiting for people to tell you what's important and what's not are gone. Students in today's world must emerge with an ability to self-direct their learning and guide themselves to the answers for questions that they've generated. The key here is the questions they've generated. Do not misconstrue someone's ability to find the answer to a question you gave them as self-directed learning. It's only half the process. You have to be able to generate your own questions and curiosities. 3. Having your own definition of success Who's standards are you going to use? Success can be measured so many different ways. It could be a achieving a certain level of education, developing a certain skill or hobby, it could be wealth and it could just about anything else. The point is you have to know what success will look like for you. I know people who are wealthy. Some feel successful, some don't. The wealthy one's who feel successful and happy are that way because they followed their passion and created their own definition of success. Those who are wealthy and don't feel successful and happy are that way because they listened to someone else tell them that they could find their success by doing _______. The question "what would make you successful?" doesn't have a right or wrong answer unless you let someone else answer it for you. The greatest skill in teaching today is in providing opportunities for students to foster these skill alongside what they're being taught. If we're going to do what's best for kids we have to go beyond a world where kids just answer questions we pose to them. We have to bring out the best in each other and realize that our successes may or may not be the same. We have to empower, we can't just educate. Yep, it's a line from a Goo Goo Dolls song that exploded on to the pop-music scene in 1998. It's also a line that I fall back on when I talk to people about building relationships with kids, parents and other community members. You see, we all look the same when we put on a good suit, we all sound the same when we throw around our best education speak, and we all leave the same mark on someone in doing these things. What's that mark? The mark of the unspectacular. A forgettable moment lost amongst so many others in time. The beige of the color spectrum.
People don't remember us for our job titles, for our ability to blend in. They remember us for what makes us us. The things we're passionate about. Things that don't come across as calculated hype or cliche. This week I will have an opportunity that I am always grateful for, one that will allow me to let people into who I am. A teacher at my school (where I am new this year) has given me the opportunity to come and speak to her class. I've done this before. In fact, I approached her about doing it. She teaches a class called Human Growth and Development and one of their units just happens to be on families. To make a long story short I have a unique perspective on families. I was adopted as a child and I have also adopted a child of my own. Adoption is something very near and dear to my heart. I believe that all kids deserve a chance at a quality life. It's why I became an educator. I'm excited to speak to them because I am passionate about the subject, but I am also passionate about people getting to know me, getting to know what drives me, inspires me, makes me smile and makes me cry. I don't want to be just another guy with a button down collar that likes kids. I want kids, teachers, parents, community members and all the other stakeholders to know me. Beyond just getting to know me, my hope is that my own words will be someone else's inspiration, become their why, or be the thing they've been needing to hear. Something that lets them know they're not alone. Brad Meltzer said "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind always." His point is spot on but let me say, you may not know anything about the battle that person is fighting, but you may just hold the right words to deliver them from their struggles just by sharing about what makes you, you. It's in this that we impact lives. We have a chance to do this as educators and I am hoping that my endeavors this week are just the beginning of many moments like that this year. I've come to realize lately that the people I enjoy working with the most are the one's that don't always share my same opinions, approaches or solutions. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree. As long as we can do it respectfully, disagreement usually works out for the better in the long run. For me, this is particularly true for the people I supervise or do performance reviews with.
I know it's intimidating to most people to think about disagreeing with their supervisor. Honestly, experience tells me it's intimidating for most people to come to ask for a reference so I can't imagine how most people feel the first time they actually voice a difference of opinion, As intimidating as it may seem, experience also tells me it's essential in ensuring the process and performance continue to operate at a top-notch level. Yes, there's a small art-form to it but there's a lot to read on the subject about how to do it like this Harvard Business Journal Article. Henry Ford, maybe unintentionally illustrated my point better than anyone in history when he said "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." This quote is often used when citing innovative practices, and rightfully so, but it also illustrates a simple truth about those innovative practices: we can't innovate if we simply exist as "yes bobbleheads." We might just end up with a bunch of faster horses that have simply been genetically modified, and nobody likes GMO's; at least according to my favorite TV commercials. Go ahead, have some polite and courteous disagreement. We work well together when we truly understand where one another is coming from. We will never fully learn about each other by biting our tongues and withholding our own solutions. Learn how to contribute your thoughts and ideas. Together we'll learn how to approach complex situations and we'll never be afraid to address and correct the elephant in the room. Always being agreeable leads you down the path of least resistance, but that path doesn't ever bring you to the top of the mountain. There's been enough writing done on how change will always be a part of life and how we will need to embrace it or be conquered by it. Fair enough. In a world where the average time a company is in the S&P 500 ( a stock market measure) has shrunk from 33 years to less than 20 years, you can see that change effects, people, businesses and so much more at a pace not yet seen. Yes, those not adapting to change are often getting left behind.
But why? Why do we need to change? We get that the way we've always done it may not work anymore, but why? Honestly, I have never had a great answer for this until this week. Ironically, it's simplistic enough to write, a little bit of an oxymoron, but it sure seems to work. Credit for this idea has to go to Cordel Robinson. He is the Pastor of Leadership Development at the church my family attends and his message this past week really made me see the why behind why change is essential. "The key to growing old is living new." That's it. That's why. While Mr. Robinson was speaking to the spiritual side of things, the truth is, that's why we have to change in education, or any other industry. The key to growing old (which we'll define as becoming rooted and established as a school, district or industry) is to live new, Think about it. It's how we're designed as humans. From the time of our birth until the time of our death, our bodies spend our entire lives making us new again. You shed your entire top layer of your skin about once per month. Your body replenishes over 200 billion red blood cells per day. You shed your baby teeth for your permanent teeth. Your hair goes from... well, we won't go there. You get my point. It's our human design. We grow old by living new. Education has to do the same, we have to grow old by living new. That's why we have to continue to change, often times at a rate we're not comfortable with. While we might wish we could slow down sometimes, at least we're not responsible for rebuilding something 200 billion times a day. Before going on vacation, a long weekend getaway, or even just to a day-long meeting, many people will set their out of office auto-reply up on their email. Well, I'm thinking of doing this permanently. No, I'm not resigning my position or going completely off the grid (but we've all thought about doing that before), I'm thinking of doing some of my more "daily" functions that don't require strict confidentiality etc. outside of my office next school year. Specifically, I'd like to find a teacher or teachers that would allow me to come into their rooms as a shared space.
I've tried this before with using flex spaces and other types of areas but the disconnect between the pulse of the school and myself still feels the same. I want to go into classrooms, possibly even when their in the middle of something. I don't want to distract or take away from the learning, I just want to see what that days to my perception and understanding of the school environment. Will I feel or view things differently? Would it do anything for the way a teacher views an administrator? Hopefully, I will get some takers for this little experiment of mine. I've been struggling with a term and idea that I've heard a lot of lately: "evidence-based practices" has been all over the education world and with it, a notion that all of our instructional practices should be rooted there. All the practices I know are very good, sound, instructional practices that are good for kids. My problem isn't with the practices, it's with people saying that you need to implement evidence-based practices in a way that comes off as if it should be a singular approach. Before you go blowing up my comments section about my blasphemous rantings, follow me down the rabbit hole for just a second. Alice was glad she did.
My problem lies with us saying we need to be grounded in evidence-based practices without any thought or consideration given to how we might innovate and develop the next "evidence-based practice." By their definition, evidence-based practices are not highly innovative. There's evidence to support what they do, how well they do it and what some expected outcomes might be by implementing them. The long and short, they've been studied and they've been done before. That's great and wonderful. We should do things like this. My question is who started this practice and what evidence did they have to support it? The answer? None. Someone was innovative, Somebody designed something that they thought would work well and put it in place. We must be innovative too. We can't focus our entire approach on the use of evidence-based practice. We need innovators, someone to create something that works or something that doesn't. We need those risk takers to keep us moving forward. We have to be like a starting pitcher in baseball, we need more than a good fastball to get us through an outing. There was a really interesting article I read in the Los Angeles Times by Brian Caplan today. I came across it after it was shared by George Couros (@gcouros) on Twitter. I've linked to the full article at the end of this post. There was one paragraph in particular that I found very interesting, slightly controversial but just about 100% accurate in its' assessment. It reads: The last line in that paragraph is what really grabbed my attention. As I thought about that statement, I couldn't ignore the way it resonated with me. It sadly seems all to true. Thinking back on my college days I think Mr. Caplan's assessment is spot on. I don't remember a lot of people checking attendance, making sure that you had paid the appropriate tuition to attend a class or anything of the sort. In fact, I don't dare say I could have taken 80% or greater of my classes without having paid one nickel to the school. I could have learned nearly everything I learned as a paying college student with the one exception that is identified, I wouldn't have left with a diploma.
Truthfully, the diploma is what I was there for. The diploma was the essential ingredient to getting employed, and that's coming from someone who chose to be an educator; a profession in which we allegedly value the learning above anything and everything. Interestingly enough, after 13 years in that profession I still have never been asked a question on a job interview about what I learned. I've been asked to review my credentials, certifications and diplomas, but nobody has ever asked me about the learning. I think the sad truth is that we don't value the learning. We value the networking, the credentials, the licensure and certifications, but the learning seems to fall by the wayside. As Mr. Caplan writes "most of education's payoff comes from graduation, crossing the academic finish line." I think this is the reason why we hear about so many successful entrepreneurs, President's and many others having been "C" (or worse) students. They didn't conform. They got by but they actually applied what they learned in a way that it resonated with them, not the way someone else wanted it to resonate with them. Personally, I value the learning. I don't feel validated by having a degree nor do I believe that having a degree means I have accomplished a great deal. In fact, I believe I have learned more in my last year or so since I started engaging in Twitter chats, blogging and other on-demand learning activities than I did in six years of undergraduate and graduate school combined. That's what makes me proud of where I am; the way I have challenged and grown my own thinking on this journey. FULL ARTICLE: www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-caplan-education-credentials-20180211-story.html If you're like me you've seen a lot of infographics about learning in your professional life. Yes, a picture is worth a thousands words and a visual often lends clarity to an idea expressed in words. However, one thing I have noticed is how many times we equate learning to a cyclical pattern. It's an idea that has never sat quite right with me. In recent years there has become a great acceptance around the idea that learning is messy. We've embraced mistakes as learning opportunities and removed the notion that learning was meant to be done with the teacher at the front of the classroom, students in rows and the sound of silence filling the moments when the teacher wasn't talking. My question is if learning is so messy, how come we still put together such neat, uni-directional flowcharts and graphics to describe the learning process? Why do we embrace the idea that a cycle or flow-chart with arrows only pointing in one direction is a true representation of learning design and implementation? I think the learning process and learning design is much closer to a scatter plot than a cycle or flow-chart. Why? Because the needs of every learner are different. Their experiences and prior knowledge are different. The rate at which they will learn information not only varies from student to student, but from topic to topic and subject to subject within each individual student. You see, in learning we have to be prepared to be at any point at any given time. We also have to be prepared to move to a different point on a moments notice. That movement may go against the flow of your standard cyclical process, it might go with the flow, it might jump to a point further away or even to a point that wasn't even originally on the continuum in the first place. Learning is messy. Learning design and execution are messy, and that's exactly what makes them learning experiences. Learning is...
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