tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81797405652678285462024-03-14T07:42:28.533-07:00The Learning NationRealizations from the side of the desk of a Principal. It's education. There is no more money. There is no more time: there are 24 hours in the day. It's also the greatest job in the world, so let's get on with it.birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.comBlogger166125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-33822844382045740762017-08-25T12:05:00.001-07:002017-08-25T12:05:29.422-07:00Leading the Day One Experience in School<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJZ0OttTMJHs85K4zPKohsBmsQN38lxRknlnSPukwwXNJrj9RxdMWXfFvPdglr291ClKrE6yNhp3ghtxNydfTT4OdElqRcoUpJSJgHNFM_DVeEGOxtYDTGinBDk7FQnjgA9lznK83lmSo/s1600/LCD+graphic.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJZ0OttTMJHs85K4zPKohsBmsQN38lxRknlnSPukwwXNJrj9RxdMWXfFvPdglr291ClKrE6yNhp3ghtxNydfTT4OdElqRcoUpJSJgHNFM_DVeEGOxtYDTGinBDk7FQnjgA9lznK83lmSo/s320/LCD+graphic.png" width="319" /></a></div>
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As a school Principal, I remember feeling like the night before Day One was not dissimilar to New Year’s Eve. I would always be filled with resolutions about how I was going to make the first day, first week, and first month special for our learners--our students, teachers, and parents. Two weeks prior to school before anyone came back, I would begin to plan that first day experience for the kids, the opening staff meeting activities for the staff, and picture how I was going to make parents (both new and returning) feel special at our school. My whiteboard would be filled with ideas, I would be checking YouTube for the funniest and most inspirational videos, and I would be scouring Twitter to see the cool ideas that others in my PLN were going to try in their schools and districts around the world. And while I had the best of intentions about that first day of school, each year I was making the same notable mistake. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wasn’t using the people who were going to experience Day One in our school to design Day One in our school. </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Day One is an experience. We all remember it, don’t we? As students we all remember running to the front door of the school to see “The List”--the long sheets of paper that told us which teacher we were going to have, and who was going to be in our class. We looked forward to reconnecting with friends and reminiscing about barbecues, camping trips, and the occasional summer job mishap that made us a little happier to be coming back to our classes. And as educators, while we might not want to admit it, we still didn’t sleep all that well night before the first day of school: even as the most seasoned of veterans, we couldn’t help but feel a few jitters just like we did when we first started teaching. Day One can be a special time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So how could we make a Day One experience that surprises our students? One that has our parents raving in the coffee shops and on the sidelines of the soccer fields? And one that inspires our teachers to feel that same excitement on Day Two, Day Three, and even Day 180?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">#1 - Appreciate the Current Learner Experience</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As school leaders, we have our experiences with Day One,but what does that first day feel like for a new student or new parent? One thing that school leaders can do is reach out to students and parents who went through the experience in the last year or two and ask a basic question:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“What was the first day of school like for you?” </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How about the opening staff meeting? School leaders often design this on their own, yet why not get a team of staff members together to ask them this same question? Doing our educational ethnography is key--we need to listen, and to find those ‘pain points’ that people might have so that we can turn them into opportunities. It is also vital to get multiple and varied perspectives: we can’t just ask those staff members who we might like, or who are our “go-to” staff members, we need to get an authentic cross-section of perspectives (Yes, that means listening to people you might not normally ask!)</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At a conference a couple of years ago, a colleague said something that has resonated with me to this day--”If you want to know the experience that people are having at your schools, why don’t you ask THEM?”. Seems simple, yet it is something that we often overlook.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">#2 - Co-create an illustration of the ideal Learning Experience (LX).</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A quick off-ramp that we can take as leaders is to get a whole host of perspectives and information through our ethnography and then run back to our office and try to make learning experiences all by ourselves. Designing the LX is a team sport! When you have all of that valuable ‘Day One Dirt’, bring it to a small team of ‘experts’ (that would be students, teachers, and or parents), and work together to create the vision! As a basic question like</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“What are the things we’ve experienced in the past that continue to inspire us today?</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and then...listen! Ask people to talk about lasting inspirational experiences that they have had, and not just in schools! Each of us has had an experience that has deeply impacted us, and inspired us to action. What were the elements that inspired us? Which of those elements could we borrow from outside of education that we could bring back INTO education? And as a result, what would we want people to be saying or producing during this experience? These pieces help us form our criteria for success.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">#3 - Come up with dozens of ideas that bring your illustration the LX to life.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Remember, this is not just YOU coming up with ideas. I’m just going to say it, you haven’t cornered the market on good ideas: no matter how creative you might be, you alone are no match for a group of people who had already HAD the experience, and are GOING TO EXPERIENCE the LX. Get it? Ask the team a question like </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“How might we create a kick-off activity that inspires us and we are talking about for the whole year?”</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and see what people come up with. Volume is key here--don’t stop at what seems like a great idea, go for dozens of ideas, even hundreds of ideas! The first good idea is rarely the best idea. When your group is slowing down, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you are entering fertile ground</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; this is where the craziest thoughts tend to come to the surface, the ones you think are not possible (but are VERY possible). When people are starting to giggle from ‘absurd idea’-fatigue, you are getting close.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">#4 - Test the best</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now that you’ve got a few ideas that have some potential to inspire the whole year through, it’s tempting to just pick one and go with it. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t do it</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As Saul Kaplan from the Business Innovation Factor says </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Get off the whiteboard and get into the real world!”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It’s time to grab some of your ideas and have OTHERS take them for a test drive! Do they work? What needs tweaking? What do we need more of? What do we need to let go of? We must get feedback we get from ACTUAL consumers of the Learning Experience--not from the people in our design team. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our design team should be seen as conduits to others--have parents take the idea to other parents, kids to try it with other kids, and staff members to go to even the most reluctant of our colleagues to find out what they think. They will get the real dirt for you! If it doesn’t work with others, don’t stop--ask, “What could make this better!”. As Ronald Heifetz reminds us, in adaptive leadership we cannot see things as “immovable stakes in the ground”, but rather as experiments where we seek to learn more about what is working and what is not. Our measuring stick for success is how close we get to the criteria we created when we co-created our vision for an inspiring experience.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">#5 - Get it out there </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once you have battle-tested the pieces of your Day One experience, it’s time to put them together and execute! At this point, you know you have hit the mark if your B to E ratio is high--your “barf to excitement ratio”! You know those butterflies that you get before you do something that is really exciting? If you and your team have those feelings, it is because you care a great deal about those who are going to have this experience--that’s exactly what you should be doing! But because you have worked with a team of learners right from the start and have involved other learners the whole way through, enjoy the moment. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We often choose to celebrate the completion of the project, but remember, it’s not just about the end product. Firstly, our success is in the experience that others have, not in ‘finishing the job’. While you and your team have done a great deal of work, the Learner-Experience is KEY! You should be constantly collecting feedback to make the best even better. But right alongside of the experience you and the team have created for Day One is the experience you and your team have HAD. We create relationships through the time we spend and the things we do with each other--we develop our collective efficacy through doing things that are important and that make a difference to the learners in our schools. (Hattie says that’s pretty important, I hear). </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I know, I know. This sounds like it might take a lot of time. But think about those experiences in your life that have made a difference to you, that have TRULY inspired you to do something different. Were they worth it for you? And imagine that you can co-create a Day One experience for your students, your parents, and your teachers that is truly memorable, and develop collective efficacy at the same time. Does that sound like leadership?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This year, lead the creation of the Day One experience WITH your learners. I think you will be surprised by where it takes you and your school.</span></span></div>
<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-66591439826601281722016-11-19T07:02:00.002-08:002017-01-07T01:44:28.601-08:00Cross Industry Innovation in K-12 Education<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I don't like speeding tickets all that much. In fact, I think I would be hard pressed to find many people that do. The whole experience from the initial gasp when you see the red and blue lights in the rearview mirror right up until the moment you realize that you are not escaping with a stern warning is both maddening and embarrassing all at once. Yes, I might have been going a bit quickly, but I was running late and the kids needed to be picked up, and I was only 10 m.p.h.....ok maybe 15 m.p.h. over the limit, officer. Sigh...just give me the ticket. Head shake on cue.<br />
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For years, we have used the same few methods to stop people from speeding--signs, stern warnings, photo radar, and of course, the threat of getting a fine for being a bit of a lead foot. Yet despite efforts to change people's driving habits, in a study in 2008 of a thousand random drivers, 100% of them thought that it was fine to exceed the posted limit by 5 mph, and 36% felt that it was ok to drive at 20 mph over the limit. Hmm. Another head shake.<br />
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What if we took a different approach? Typically, we lock ourselves into a traditional means of solving problems, where we try to take what we currently do and do it just a little bit better. Or we do what we have always done, but just a little bit differently. "We'll find a faster horse!", we shout with vigor. But what if we looked into other, completely different sectors to see if there were practices that we could borrow and apply to our own situation? What if we decided that we weren't going to look for a 'faster horse', like bigger speed signs or more stringent ticket fines, but rather would adopt a completely different approach that we could adapt from a different situation altogether? <br />
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What if it were FUN to obey the speed limit? And a tiny bit of 'fun', even when we got caught?<br />
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Well, that sounds like a different approach.<br />
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<a href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41TQcRxgRdL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41TQcRxgRdL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg" /></a></div>
In a new and thought-provoking book called "Cross-Industry Innovation -- Not Invented Here", Ramon Vullings and Marc Heleven describe <a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi3lKaBh7XQAhXMyoMKHaNIDskQtwIIJzAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DiynzHWwJXaA&usg=AFQjCNHqMoPIigzYSzF2cV5q0Q-4-K8uDA&sig2=qWJ_mS6Cl709ViLbjIxMQA&bvm=bv.139250283,d.amc" target="_blank">"The Speed Camera Lottery", created as part of The Fun Project by Volkswagen</a>. In Copenhagen, there was a particular section of road that was known to be a place where people ignored the posted speed signs. In "The Speed Camera Lottery", a speed camera was used to photograph and measure the speed of all of the drivers on this stretch of road. Using a camera to photograph drivers in itself was not revolutionary, of course. Nor was the fact that those drivers who were speeding were levied a fine for their traffic violation. But what was truly unique was that the fines collected from the speeders were put into a pot, and those who were not speeding were out into a draw for the money that was collected! "The Speed Camera Lottery" was born, drivers slowed down an average of 22% while having a totally speed enforcement experience.<br />
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Sometimes I feel as though I am annoying friends and colleagues with my constant questions around the "the delight factor", or absence thereof. Too often we find reasons not to look for that unique 'something' in the experiences at our schools that makes them meaningful for our students, our parents, and our educators. "When did we decide we have to be boring?", I often wonder, many times with regret when I ponder some of my lessons as a classroom teacher. As a result, one of the pieces that our learning experience design team takes pride in is ensuring that we find an element of "surprise and delight" for the participants in the inservice or professional development days that we create so they remember the experience that we created.<br />
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Recently, one of our district schools came to our team with a project--they wanted us to create a learning experience that would immerse their teachers in project-based learning. Typically, when such a request is made, professional development providers pull out a tried and true, one-day lesson template that they have in their lesson bank, modify a couple of bits to suit the age bracket that the teachers work with, and get ready to go. While convenient for the PD provider, planning such as this often misses the mark for the educators for one simple reason--the PD provider doesn't take the time to do the research to find out who their audience is, and more importantly, how they learn best and what their current struggles with professional learning might be. The result is an uneducated guess as to what the needs of the group might be and a subsequently ineffective inservice day. Yes, I said 'uneducated'--simply focusing on the content of a PD day represents a small part of the equation, the real artistry is in the design of the learning experience.<br />
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Earlier this year, I visited Continuum, the internationally recognized design firm in Boston that created iconic items such as the Reebok Pump, the Swiffer, and numerous other product and service solutions across the globe. Ken Gordon, colleague and friend at Continuum talked to me about 'pain points': he said "You really need to turn up the 'emotional hearing aid' when you are listening to your clients. You need to find the the pleasure points and the pain points. Once you find those, that's the gold. Pain points are opportunities."<br />
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Fortunately, much like Continuum and their focus on human-centred design, our team has adopted the process of Learner-Centred Design: the team is disciplined in considering the needs of the learner first. Not only does the team spend an inordinate amount of time getting to know the wants, wishes and pain points of the group they are serving, they co-design a vision of the ideal, and go wild with ideas of a 'surprise and delight' factor that will make the day memorable. <br />
<br />
During our process of educational ethnography (where we spend time interviewing the group we are designing for), we found out a few things about the school. They were a fun-loving bunch who liked to be social, who liked competition, and who really needed hands on activities--they wanted to learn by doing. But because the team was able to quickly develop a positive relationship with the school, we also found out something that was interesting: one of the teachers we interviewed smiled and said "Sometimes we aren't always on task.". The other teachers from the school agreed, "We are like our kids! We might need to be held accountable.". Ahhhh, the pain point. Ken Gordon would be smiling.<br />
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So we now had our opportunity! Much like the speeding ticket scenario in Copenhagen where they found a way to surprise and delight people in holding them accountable to the speed limit, we needed to find a way to surprise and delight the school in holding them accountable to learning about professional development. One of our designers asked a key question that was phrased in just such a way to make us think differently. She could have asked, "How can we hold people accountable?", but instead she said "Who is one person no one can say "no" to?". Our project team laughed, and another one of the designers yelled "Grandma!".<br />
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The room got quiet, and suddenly we all began to smile. Seniors! <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYCZRnfZXm7AuLKq8t1R6GxUA2PxWxNGK-_PNyuh7G0ZeHTdwkuhQ8fL547vgIinUI642FfuA_dFotHo21NPsFEWDC83r4WF9xeBgU7GnVDtuv__CDtAtFFWxF0V6e5NDnTGfEK0OHqGs/s1600/20160516_095416.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYCZRnfZXm7AuLKq8t1R6GxUA2PxWxNGK-_PNyuh7G0ZeHTdwkuhQ8fL547vgIinUI642FfuA_dFotHo21NPsFEWDC83r4WF9xeBgU7GnVDtuv__CDtAtFFWxF0V6e5NDnTGfEK0OHqGs/s400/20160516_095416.jpg" width="400" /></a>So while we designed a professional development day that was immersive, hands-on, competitive, and had people learn the work by doing the work, we also surprised the staff by giving them the opportunity to connect to our local seniors community through the PBL design challenge that we had <br />
created. And by having them design something for an authentic (and loving) audience, the team found a way to hold people 'accountable' in a way that delighted rather than dictated. No policy. No rule. Just Grandma. And Grandpa. And a lot of smiles and memories.<br />
<br />
Schools don't have to be boring. By choosing to get to know our school communities, and developing an understanding of their 'pain points' in a process that is so commonly used by industries outside of education, we can 'surprise and delight' the students, parents and teachers in our school communities.<br />
<br />
And if it can be done with speeding tickets, it certainly can be done in our classrooms.birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-37805864594048524262016-09-06T14:50:00.001-07:002016-09-06T14:55:47.733-07:00Are You Committed To Feedback?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmhafkYGusBUgOsoeOYena2f2VQ1ygaq2-FbkZOIR3LGC_ybtFci9Q2DpeJvXFOZAiDf0Tt7NCuuuWmnZNBZKmJmExHglrAkHaxjjgC172dJzYkuoB9iTAb-RPcuV3T35EaZSctXxTsDE/s1600/20160906_144813.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmhafkYGusBUgOsoeOYena2f2VQ1ygaq2-FbkZOIR3LGC_ybtFci9Q2DpeJvXFOZAiDf0Tt7NCuuuWmnZNBZKmJmExHglrAkHaxjjgC172dJzYkuoB9iTAb-RPcuV3T35EaZSctXxTsDE/s400/20160906_144813.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 1994, Proctor and Gamble approached Continuum, a design consulting firm, in search of a new cleaning product. Together, they felt that the method of filling up a bucket with soap and water, soaking, squeezing, and mopping floors could be improved. Continuum took an approach to this problem that was beautiful in it’s simplicity: they went into people’s homes and watched them mop. Amongst their observations, they found that people spent nearly as much time cleaning their mop as they did cleaning their floor! By observing and developing empathy for the user and understanding their challenges, Continuum developed a prototype that was called “Fast Clean”, which evolved into the Swiffer that has become a mainstay in household cleaning around the world.</span></div>
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-961c1a89-0132-c137-2438-1e12fb42840b" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Proctor and Gamble could have chosen to make different modifications to their current selection of mops. Their designers might have hypothesized that by creating a mop with a more ergonomically correct handle, they would have helped the average person by reducing the strain that mopping puts on on us when we are cleaning floors. Or they could have assumed that a better spring-loaded squeezing mechanism would help people by more thoroughly wringing out the mop itself. They might have guessed that a change in packaging and appearance to capture the attention of the shopper with a sleek, modern looking mop would have boosted sales over their competitors. But through observation and empathy for the end-user in human-centered design, Proctor and Gamble created something that is a now lexicon (“I just need to Swiffer the floor before our company comes over for dinner!”) and to date nets more than $500 million dollar per year in sales.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not unlike Proctor and Gamble, with their suite of products they offer to consumers, schools have their current selection of classes, courses, educators, extracurricular activities, communication tools, services, and facilities that they provide to their school community. Collectively, these different points comprise the spaces where schools interact with their learner community. IDEO uses the term “touch-point”, and considers “every product touch-point as an opportunity to surprise, delight and deliver benefits to users.” If we think of a learner in the community as the user that IDEO refers to, we too have opportunities in education: we can take the different “touch-points” that we have with students, parents and teachers and turn them into experiences that “surprise, delight, and deliver benefit”. But these points of contact are opportunities, and opportunities alone: how we choose to approach these opportunities in our schools is very much up to us.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how do we get started on getting a better understanding of these interactions that take place with our school or district? While there are dozens of face-to-face, personal experiences that take place each day, and even more examples of abstract experiences such as those that visitors get when they walk in through the front entrance of our school or read our newsletter, we need to have a narrower focus: a useful way to start might be to consider three experiences that our each of our students, parents, and educators have with our school or district. But not just any three experiences, let’s pick three ‘high impact’ or “HI” experiences. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>For our purposes, let’s define a HI experience as one which has the potential to significantly impact the culture and/or learning environment of our school.</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In other words, if these HI experiences were exceptionally effective, and we ‘delighted’ this group with these experiences, the learning environment would change significantly for the better. For example, while ensuring that our school grounds are neat and free of litter is important, it is unlikely that having a litter-free playground will result in a dramatic change to the learning in classrooms. And although having a litter-free school property might be a challenge that would benefit from a Learner-Centered Design approach at some point, we must prioritize the learning environment first--as we know, with finite amounts of time and stretched budgets, we can only focus on what is truly going to make a difference to teaching and learning. We can use the chart below to determine three HI experiences for students, for parents, and for educators.</span></div>
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<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="195"></col><col width="125"></col><col width="122"></col><col width="149"></col></colgroup><tbody>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td rowspan="2" style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td colspan="3" style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Group</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Student</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parents</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Educators</span></div>
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<tr style="height: 0px;"><td rowspan="3" style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">HI Experience</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td></tr>
<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></td></tr>
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</div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Figure 1 Determining HI experiences.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For example, a school leader might choose to fill out the chart like this:</span></div>
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<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="95"></col><col width="172"></col><col width="167"></col><col width="158"></col></colgroup><tbody>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Group</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Students</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Parents</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Educators</b></span></div>
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<br />
<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>HI Experience</b></span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Classroom Learning</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Communication of learning</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Faculty meetings</span></div>
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<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teacher Relationships</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Parent-Teacher Conferences</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Professional Development</span></div>
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<tr style="height: 0px;"><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Extracurricular Opportunities</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Front Office</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Figure 2 Sample of HI experiences.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once we have brainstormed some ideas of HI experiences, it is important to stop and reflect: if our school had a process that transformed each of these touch-points into experiences that were not just satisfactory, they were truly exceptional for these learner groups, would we believe that we were changing the school experience? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A way to assess your responses to this question might be to examine each column in Figure 2 in a vertical fashion. In the 'Educators' column, for example, if a newly hired teacher was talking to a veteran faculty member at your school, and your staff member told them that this school was known across the school district for its outstanding faculty meetings, engaging professional development opportunities, and meaningful collaboration time with colleagues, do you believe that new teacher would be excited to be a member of your staff? Under 'Students', if a new student was moving to town, and when they came to your school for orientation, one of your current students told them “The learning we do in our classrooms is wicked, our teachers care about us SO much, and we have a sick sports program!”, do you think that new student would want to come to your school? </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Conversely, do you think a parent’s ears might perk up when they overhear another parent in the Starbucks lineup say “Wow, last night I went to the worst Parent-Teacher interviews I have ever attended. We couldn’t find his teachers, the front office told us we should have been more prepared, and when we finally got to the interviews, the teacher kept calling our son “Jack” instead of Jake. The night was horrible.” If the items that you listed in Figure 2 have the potential to elicit responses such as these, you likely are on the right track. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But here's the rub: we likely will not be present when people are describing their take on our high-impact experiences. For example, while we</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.08px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> might assume that the large turnout at Parent-Teacher conferences is a sign of success, attendance and satisfaction are two different things: the experiences that people have at those Parent-Teacher conferences will fuel the conversations in the coffee shop, on the sidelines at the soccer game, and across social media channels. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our perception of an experience is one very small piece of the overall experience puzzle. Yet </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">if we are not typically part of the conversations that our people are having about these HI experiences, what is our process for understanding their perspectives? How do we demonstrate our commitment to ‘gathering intel’ and getting feedback?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">In truth, I believe we do a lousy job of seeking feedback in education. And while we can speculate as to why we seek so little feedback about HI experiences and do even less with the input that we do actually collect, at the end of the day most of us are not truly committed to gathering and using feedback to improve the experience of school. And while some school leaders demonstrate their commitment to responding to what they hear from their communities, we can do better. Much better. To help us get started in assessing our current commitment to feedback, we can use something like the Learning Experience Inventory Tool below:</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-440535c5-0159-8861-d821-4a7f64206d61"><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Uploaded by Awesome Screenshot Extension" height="316" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/cN_pMpQ44EwPHmSsz7R3_6YynjtWq7Na9Hxnr35o9rHIW5Lpr9EGxlqoEBPF2oHH3oTvfbVzcAhOt_l4GbIBVtFToPNw68hrZY44lqGrjCNO3eEWoj60_MZKA8Smx2LBwJBjXU87" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="602" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let's see an example of how we might have filled tool out considering our 'parent' group:</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-440535c5-015d-528b-b4ff-8e06ad5613fb"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Uploaded by Awesome Screenshot Extension" height="384" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/gQh3eqNhaxlMsYJMvA5sGD9HhtRbcDy4VLB-dP0EMcLDTXzIZcvIOXussW7cndrnRUvpc045m2QFjiGBQ3sWWy5VCiVzwiC0nEr5LwCQJjqZMn5X2KEEi8PE2uOD26veqFYrSmUK" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="602" /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we de-construct the highlighted example and read it (roughly) from right to left--while we consider this particular experience to be one that has the potential to have significant impact, not only do we fail to collect feedback, we don't even have a feedback tool developed, and our current prediction of that user's experience would be fair at best? And what if we take out 'Parent Teacher Nights' and substitute 'Faculty Meetings' for our educators, or 'Classroom Experience' for students?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ouch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unlike the example of Continuum going out to watch, listen, and be empathetic with those who were doing the mopping so they create a floor cleaning system that better met the needs of the end user, I realized that I wasn't collecting nearly enough feedback to created any sort of positive experience, never mind one that 'delighted' the people in my school. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you use the Learning Experience Inventory tool to consider the experiences in your own school, you may discover the same thing that I did: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you have an experience that you predicted would be 'HIGH' in terms of importance, but 'FAIR' or 'POOR' in terms of the experience you feel a group at your school would have AND you don't collect any feedback, then at best you have left the way that group will characterize this experience completely and totally to chance. At worst? Well, by continuing to approach this particular experience, you might not only be alienating this group by not understanding their experience and changing to better meet their needs, you might actually be inviting them to experience something that is going to be truly unsatisfying for them at your school.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As we start the school year, we must commit to understanding the experiences that students, parents, and educators are having in our schools and districts, especially in those High Impact areas. The question is, are we willing to do it? If we take this first step, we are beginning the process of Learner-Centered Design, and I believe that we can transform the school experience for our communities.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">This post is based on an excerpt from "Re-Designing the School Experience", due to be published in 2017.</span></i></span></div>
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birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-87979038414490442882016-08-24T13:20:00.002-07:002016-08-24T13:20:12.737-07:00Cracking The C.O.D.E of Teacher Learning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSHHO4-7jfQVhPtMbqHJtFSkaGUC94XeQeHMl5QL6TsQxYxa3S4Rg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSHHO4-7jfQVhPtMbqHJtFSkaGUC94XeQeHMl5QL6TsQxYxa3S4Rg" width="400" /></a></div>
Professional Learning Communities.<br />
Response To Intervention.<br />
Instructional Rounds.<br />
Flipped Learning.<br />
BYOD.<br />
PBIS.<br />
PBL.<br />
AFL.<br />
1:1.<br />
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Sigh. Have you ever taken five minutes to jot down the initiatives that you have going in your school or district? Or the ones that you have had going at some point in the past? Or even those programs that, if you squinted, you might still see remnants of them--you know, the ones that no one can quite determine when they started or ended--they just seemed to fade into the background, much like the once-splashy posters on our Counselling Office billboards or the rotating messages on our electronic signs. If you are anything like me, you likely find it difficult to recall and much harder to reconcile the amount of time and money each of us has spent chasing after the next 'holy grail'-like program that came our way when we know that the resources required to make them successful are so woefully scarce in supply.<br />
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Earlier this month, as a member of the <a href="http://www.agileschools.com/" target="_blank">Agile Schools</a> Faculty, I had the chance to work along side <a href="https://twitter.com/SimonBreakspear" target="_blank">Dr. Simon Breakspear</a> at the summer Educational Leadership Academy (<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ataleads16" target="_blank">#ataleads16</a>) put on by <a href="https://twitter.com/ipadeducators" target="_blank">Jeff Johnson</a> and the Alberta Teachers' Association in Edmonton. It was both inspiring and challenging to take a deep dive into designing research-based, high-impact projects with classroom, school and district leaders for five intense, immersive and practical days. During one of the early sessions, Simon asked each of the participants to do a "stock-take" (on this side of the Pacific, we would say "inventory") of the initiatives they had done or were currently doing in their schools. Many generated lists similar to the one above, and even more created ones that were much longer. But then Simon asked the group to examine their lists to determine which ones they felt were <u>actually</u> making a tangible difference to student learning in the classroom. After a number of people began ruefully shaking their heads, Simon said something that truly resonated with the entire group (including me):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXi9l5QSKcVCpaW7PRGd0KlF4wmsJY9TNV61l1Ekb9ugmmNTcpg6tdFam7cq28VqZ-78k90qhKSx7_pwobHf4CwfHFQnKSEisgRDe-ht37Naj02yF_BdLEwwT-NWyxWE0f23lsDJTeoLc/s1600/SimonQuote+Prepackaged.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXi9l5QSKcVCpaW7PRGd0KlF4wmsJY9TNV61l1Ekb9ugmmNTcpg6tdFam7cq28VqZ-78k90qhKSx7_pwobHf4CwfHFQnKSEisgRDe-ht37Naj02yF_BdLEwwT-NWyxWE0f23lsDJTeoLc/s320/SimonQuote+Prepackaged.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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But here's the thing: no one was saying that it was 'wrong' for schools and districts to look for promising new approaches to improving classroom practice, nor was anyone saying it was 'wrong' to attempt organize our time, efforts and resources around practices that are research-based and genuinely improve classroom practice and student learning. But before we jump headlong into 'the next big thing', we need to have a laser-like focus on the actual impact that the initiative has on student learning <u>and</u> the type of learning that educators will need in order to help them effectively implement the initiative in a way that makes a visible difference at the classroom level. As we know, the goal of an educational initiative is not to be 'doing' a program, it is to improve teaching and learning. Does it matter if we have become a professional learning community if we don't see a change to teaching and learning in our classrooms? Does it matter if we "do" Instructional Rounds in our schools if we continuously have the same problem of practice? Nope. Not a bit.<br />
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In preparation for the Education Leadership Academy, Simon and I spent a great deal of time pushing each other about the composite pieces that we felt were important for teacher learning. Simon spoke from his experiences as a teacher and as a researcher in seeing and working with dozens of educational jurisdictions around the globe, who use a multitude of methods to engage teachers in professional learning. I came at it from the point of view of a Principal who has attempted to implement the approaches listed in the "stock-take" at the beginning of this post with subsequent results that ranged from moderate success to complete and abject failure. In the end, our thinking led us to a lens through which school leaders could look critically at their own "stock-take" of initiatives to determine whether those ideas had real potential to have a deep and lasting impact on the learning in their classrooms and with their educators.<br />
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We can determine whether the initiative can crack the <b>C.O.D.E</b> of teacher learning. <br />
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If the initiative, approach, or professional development is <b>Connected, Observable, Developmental, and Embedded</b> for teachers, it can significantly impact teaching and learning at the classroom level.<br />
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<b>CONNECTED...to the classroom, learning, and to each other </b><br />
Do you enjoy being electrocuted? Being immersed in water so cold that the ice in it doesn't melt? Having your clothes and skin torn by barbed wire? Sounds like a barrel of monkeys, doesn't it? So why do thousands of people around the globe voluntarily do these things to themselves in events like the Tough Mudder? Doing something challenging with a group of like-minded people connects us to the task, but more importantly, it connects us to each other. Learning is social, and while learning about new approaches to teaching and learning is not the same as being immersed in an ice bath, changing classroom practices can represent a significant shock to the system. As a result, it is vital that the learning experiences that come from initiatives or pro-d connect our teachers to one another: we must create a supportive, encouraging, and laterally accountable environment (much like a Tough Mudder team) to deal with obstacles that they will encounter along the way. <br />
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Earlier this year, I sat across from Dylan Wiliam at dinner after learning from him earlier in the day at a conference session. He looked at me and said something that has resonated with me ever since. He said "I don't know why Principals would spend one second trying to implement something that isn't proven by research to improve learning." If there is no research to connect the initiative to improvement in student learning, he said, schools and districts don't have the money or time to waste on it. Period. I listened. I learned. While we all have ideas about what we think 'works' and 'doesn't<br />
work' in classrooms, if there is no foundation of research to the initiative we are considering, Dylan is right, we don't have the time to bother.<br />
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Dr. Richard Elmore of the Harvard Graduate School of Education describes the importance of professional development being directly connected to the classroom. In one of his "laws" of professional development, he says "the impact of professional development is inverse to the square of its distance from the classroom". Professional development that requires educators to really chew on meaty instructional issues with each other and grapple with approaches in their own setting is professional development that is worth doing. Inasmuch as there can be value to offsite professional development, the more connected that educators are to their own classroom situation when they are learning, the higher the likelihood that the initiative will make a visible difference in their own classroom. <br />
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<b>OBSERVABLE...to all of us, BY all of us</b><br />
The products of any professional development that we do should be readily and plainly observable. When facilitating Instructional Rounds in schools, I ask educators to focus on what students are saying, doing, writing, and producing as a result of the tasks they have been assigned and the instruction they have been given. But how often do we consider what our educators saying, doing, writing and producing at an inservice or conference that they are attending? If educators are sitting passively in a large conference listening to a witty and charming 'edutainer' show pictures and YouTube clips while telling amusing anecdotes, what is the evidence that our educators have learned a single thing? The age-old proclamation of "If you get one good thing out of a conference, it was a good conference" doesn't fly anymore: with shrinking PD budgets and more demands on our time, the educational return on a $2000 investment needs to be better than that. WAY better. When we are considering any initiative, we should be able to clearly articulate what an observer would see in our classrooms as a result. <br />
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But who is observing? One of the saddest revelations that I had as a Principal happened when I was doing teacher observations. Not because of what I was observing in the classroom, but because I was the only one who was doing the observing! Far too often, the people who are doing the bulk of teacher observations are not teachers--this is wrong. More of our professional development needs to be directly connected to the classroom, with teachers observing and working with other teachers. And if we are to use the excuse that there isn't enough money, consider that $2000 conference bill to send one teacher to a conference to get "one good thing", as we have all done far too often in the past. That same $2000 is the cost of five or six release days--or 10 or 12 half days. How much could be done by releasing four teachers for three half days to observe and work with other teachers?<br />
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<b>DEVELOPMENTAL...it meets us where we are at</b><br />
Would we ask a new swimmer to jump off of the high diving board? A novice skier to head down a double-black diamond run? Or would we tell someone that the only car they should buy is a new Mercedes Benz when we know they only have a $10000 budget? While each of these scenarios seems absurd, imagine what it feels like for an educator to be asked to "do Project-Based Learning" in their classes, or to "welcome observers into their classroom" when they are used to being left on their own behind a closed classroom door to teach the way that they have found to be successful for themselves and their students. While there may be a research-base to an educational initiative that supports a positive change in classroom practice, research does not automatically open classroom doors: having a colleague or a team come to observe their classroom can truly be a 'double-black diamond' moment for many educators. And rightfully so! In most cases, we have not taken them down a 'green run' with ideas like PBL or classroom observation.<br />
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Educational initiatives and professional development must provide multiple entry points for our educators, and provide the appropriate level of challenge at each level. In his book <i>"Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience"</i>, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "mee-hi, cheek-sent-me-hi" if you're curious) talks about the importance of "flow" when we are considering whether the activities we design allow participants to get into "the zone". However, we must not only acknowledge the challenge level of the activity, we have to ensure a certain skill level of our educators so we help them move from a state of anxiety or boredom to a place where they are optimally engaged.<br />
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With something like classroom observation, we might create multiple entry points for our educators like this:<br />
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<ul>
<li><u>Level 1:</u> examining sample classroom tasks to develop common, specific and non-judgmental language to describe the learning that takes place as a result of those tasks</li>
<li><u>Level 2:</u> examining our own classroom tasks to develop common, specific and non-judgmental language to describe the learning that takes place as a result of our tasks</li>
<li><u>Level 3:</u> video observation of sample classes to develop common, specific and non-judgmental language to describe the learning that takes place as a result of the tasks and activities in the lessons we see</li>
<li><u>Level 4:</u> individual video observation of our own class to describe and reflect upon our own practices using specific and non-judgmental language to describe the learning that takes place as a result of our tasks and activities</li>
<li><u>Level 5:</u> small group/department video observation of our own classes to describe and reflect upon our own practices using specific and non-judgmental language to describe the learning that takes place as a result of our tasks and activities</li>
<li><u>Level 6:</u> external colleague/group live observations using specific and non-judgmental language to describe the learning that takes place as a result of our tasks and activities across our school</li>
</ul>
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Whether it is peer observation, formative assessment, collaboration, or any other approach or initiative, it needs to meet people where they are at and engage them to move forward.</div>
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<b>EMBEDDED...in what we do, in our context</b></div>
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In what we do.</div>
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Every day. </div>
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With the people that we have.</div>
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With the money that we have.</div>
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With the time that we have.</div>
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Education conferences and workshops can have tremendous value, as can visits to other schools, jurisdictions and countries: having scholars and practitioners synthesize their research and experiences can save us huge amounts of time and effort. There is no doubt that it is difficult to see what others are doing when we are in the 'trenches' of everyday school business! It is important for us to 'get to the hilltops' to see what is possible for us from a different perspective: to understand new ideas, to be inspired, and to get outside of ourselves and our own learning situations. However, before we leave our own schools and districts, we not only need to have a very clear vision of our own context, we need to imagine how we can re-combine the people and talents that exist in OUR contexts and in OUR classrooms given the information that we are learning about. </div>
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As much as there is no more time, and there will never be more money, we DO have the time and the money that we currently spend on things that do not crack the C.O.D.E. of teacher learning. We just have to find them, name them, and file them in the appropriate place.</div>
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So, as each of us comes off of a refreshing and recharging summer filled with excitement and ideas about how we can impact student and educator learning, we need to ask ourselves one question before we jump at the next promising practice or idea that comes our way:</div>
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<b>"Does this crack the C.O.D.E of teacher learning?"</b></div>
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<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-62406820542262541772016-06-03T13:11:00.001-07:002016-12-10T06:13:48.519-08:00How Would You Rather Spend Your Time?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPUzBQ06sei3NQpYC8ag7anxuR1-kOiOTyyo5LkW_shycJoIXMUBykVBYbgoXHYStH1TXqPALer7HnRJsNaRJoLfLHbxUoDHjb2IIEoj6tp2Y2_FCu3SUrsgYMRx4NqTIVsmpG4P1qX44/s1600/Cale+Proof+sans+words.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPUzBQ06sei3NQpYC8ag7anxuR1-kOiOTyyo5LkW_shycJoIXMUBykVBYbgoXHYStH1TXqPALer7HnRJsNaRJoLfLHbxUoDHjb2IIEoj6tp2Y2_FCu3SUrsgYMRx4NqTIVsmpG4P1qX44/s320/Cale+Proof+sans+words.jpg" width="312" /></a></div>
Over the last year, I have been using a model to help schools solve complex educational issues utilizing the existing capacities and resources that they already have at their disposal in their buildings. The premise behind the model is simple "We have no more time, and there is no more money coming, but we have tons of unused capacity, so let's get on with it!". It has been an interesting and iterative process, and through the help of critical friends, I have slowly been able to tweak the model so that it guides problem-solving in a repeatable and sustainable fashion. As a result, we are starting to see a higher frequency of unique solutions to problems that we have in schools, and perhaps more importantly, I am seeing a broader development of capacity at all levels of our organization to co-design solutions.<br />
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The LCD process is one that requires thoughtful planning on the front end, a commitment to truly understanding the needs of the learner and co-creating with them throughout, and a thirst for feedback and willingness to tinker on the back end, regardless of how we feel the solution was received. In other words, it takes effort, and it takes time. And in my experience, the moment that you tell someone that a process such as this is going to take effort and time, they often tend to lose interest.<br />
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As a school principal, there were so many parts of my job that I liked, such as working with students, parents and teachers, solving challenging problems, collaborating with colleagues, learning new things and trying different ideas. (<a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2015/10/do-you-give-brain-candy.html" target="_blank">These were the 'brain candy' activities that I described in a previous post.</a>). There were also parts of being a principal that were less enjoyable: dealing with complaints from students, teachers and parents, disappointing people with decisions that I had made, and having to work through issues that happened in the school that I might not have directly triggered, but certainly became my responsibility as the principal of the school. The activities that I enjoyed were mostly 'proactive', and the ones that I enjoyed less were often 'reactive'.<br />
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When I deconstruct the types of situations that led me to be reactive, there were some common pieces that tended to surface: <br />
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<ol>
<li>There were often issues around communication. Often there was little or no communication about the issue, or the communication came at a time when it was too late to be usable or make a difference.</li>
<li>There was an assumption or series of assumptions made.</li>
<li>A decision was made independently of those who the decision would impact, often at the organizational level.</li>
<li>There was little or no follow-up or attempt to proactively collect feedback to determine whether the solution was satisfactory--the "no-news is good news" philosophy.</li>
</ol>
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As a result of one or a combination of all of these factors, the time that I spent on the back end of these sorts of issues in 'reaction mode' was not only unpleasant, it often protracted over days, or even weeks or months! </div>
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When we create assumption-based solutions independently of those who the solution will impact, and then fail to collect feedback on how the solution worked, we have become "organization-centered". For example, if after a sparsely attended Parent-Teacher conference night, we spend some front-end time (FET) considering the issue, choose to change the times of the interviews from evenings to mornings because we assume that parents would rather come to meet with teachers before work, we have taken an organization-centered (OC) approach to this problem. This might be represented like this, with each block representing the amount of time we spend</div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-eb7c4cb8-17c4-914a-cfd5-294cc5d6a5de"><br /></span>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FET</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organization-Centric Solution</span></div>
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This can often be called "solution-itis", the affliction that we as educators contract when we move rapidly from problem to solution without involving the people in our school community in the process. And while this approach takes much less time, and we <u>might</u> get lucky and hit a home-run by taking this sort of tack, the odds of creating a positive experience for people who are never involved in the solution are low, and the odds that we have developed any capacity for our community to help us solve future problems is zero. And in terms of that 'reactive' time on the back end...well, get ready. This situation could be represented this way.</div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-eb7c4cb8-17c5-8658-6e5b-0ab2b4ba1326"><br /></span>
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<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="34"></col><col width="115"></col><col width="474"></col></colgroup><tbody>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FET</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organization-Centric Solution</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back-end (Reactive) Time</span></div>
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In 2013, the Alberta Teachers' Association and the Canadian Association of Principals conducted 40 focus groups with 500 principals from across Canada over the span of two years, and created a document called the "Future of the Principalship in Canada". This document listed five 'ways forward' to overcome the challenges that take place in schools. One of these 'ways forward' was "to collaborate and build professional capacities in school staff." A second was to "build family and community relationships" through "finding new ways to connect with parents and communities".</div>
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So what if we took an LCD approach, where we truly <b>appreciate</b> where our learner (student, parent, educator) is at, <b>co-create</b> a vision of what it is that we want, <b>ideate</b> together to great possible solutions, <b>iterate </b>when we test these ideas with those who will live with the solution, and then <b>proliferate </b>the idea to other situations once we determine what makes the best experience for our learner? "We would like to...but who has time?", we hear. Well, if we represent the LCD process with blocks of time, it could be represented this way.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FET</span></div>
</td><td style="border-bottom: solid #000000 1px; border-left: solid #000000 1px; border-right: solid #000000 1px; border-top: solid #000000 1px; padding: 7px 7px 7px 7px; vertical-align: top;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">LCD/Solution/</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Feedback</span></div>
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which truthfully is much more time and effort than the organization-centric method.</div>
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<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="34"></col><col width="115"></col></colgroup><tbody>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FET</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organization-Centric Solution</span></div>
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until you factor in the reactive piece....<br />
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<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="34"></col><col width="115"></col><col width="474"></col></colgroup><tbody>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FET</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Organization-Centric Solution</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back-end (Reactive) Time</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 12px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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But let's say that even with the back end time factored in, <u>the LCD approach took longer, and even had some reactive time associated with it</u>...</div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-eb7c4cb8-17d2-1501-39db-a1d2186e2c24"></span><br />
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<table style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none;"><colgroup><col width="60"></col><col width="491"></col><col width="72"></col></colgroup><tbody>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FET</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Learner-Centered Design/Solution/Feedback </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri"; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back-end (Reactive) Time</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-eb7c4cb8-17d2-1501-39db-a1d2186e2c24">
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-eb7c4cb8-17d2-1501-39db-a1d2186e2c24">the question is, where would you rather spend your time? For me, as I said above, the parts of my job that I enjoyed less were dealing with complaints from students, teachers and parents, disappointing people with decisions that I had made, and having to work through issues that happened in the school that I might not have directly triggered, but certainly became my responsibility as the principal of the school. Having these types of experiences are more probable if I choose to solve a significant school issue solely from the perspective of the organization, or with the needs of the organization placed before the needs of the learner. The parts most enjoyed as a Principal were working with students, parents and teachers, solving challenging problems, collaborating with colleagues, learning new things and trying different ideas. These sound a lot more like the pieces that would occur when we take an approach of appreciate, co-create, ideate, iterate, and proliferate like that in the Learner-Centered Design process. Not only are the odds much higher that the collective school community will come up with a better solution, by involving our community in the co-design process, we will have developed our collective capacity in a way that connects all of us to our school.</span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-eb7c4cb8-17d2-1501-39db-a1d2186e2c24">I am pretty sure I know how I want to spend my time.</span></div>
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birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-64860055411446754302016-04-30T17:19:00.001-07:002016-04-30T17:19:41.650-07:00Human-Centered Leadership<b id="docs-internal-guid-cd002546-69ac-c3a6-438a-ff54b0e807b5" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiptGPj8F50rvpxA34od0VBB1JzR_BpVk00TGMn2xokGYyJvivcpjduhcvJdPlJfQNKJaQglhFlDXsu-7uGGMYtCdkh0OVL3jOkeppR-1Bfj4ALlDIyOaxm970ojOjYQwS-X7AounY73BQ/s1600/edcan-v56-n1-birk.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiptGPj8F50rvpxA34od0VBB1JzR_BpVk00TGMn2xokGYyJvivcpjduhcvJdPlJfQNKJaQglhFlDXsu-7uGGMYtCdkh0OVL3jOkeppR-1Bfj4ALlDIyOaxm970ojOjYQwS-X7AounY73BQ/s320/edcan-v56-n1-birk.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Imagine you have just moved into a new area, and on that first night in town, you and your wife and children are hungry for a meal. What better way to get acquainted with the new neighbourhood than to take the family for a bite and a walk around? You pop open your laptop and search for restaurants that are in the vicinity, and find that there is only one within walking distance. You click on the link to the local restaurant and while the site isn’t particularly flashy or eye-catching, you notice is that there is a barbecue buffet special on Saturday! However, your perceptive thirteen year old daughter notices that the date for that special ended two years ago, and that the site hasn’t been updated. You decide to click on the “Menu” button to see some other choices, but the dreaded ‘404 - File Not Found’ screen pops up. A bit puzzled, you decide to give the restaurant a call, but after several rings, an automated message asks you to enter the local of the employee you would like to speak to, or to leave a message after the tone so someone can get right back to you about reservations. You hang up.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’m hungry!” groans your eleven year old boy, and you make the executive decision to walk to the restaurant. After a pleasant ten minute walk, you arrive out front. The restaurant is in an older building, and you notice there are a few weeds poking out of the sidewalk, and the one of the letters on the restaurant sign has fallen off. However, the family is getting hungry and restless--they need to eat! You walk in, and a sign says ‘Please Wait To Be Seated’, but there is no one at the desk to greet you. After a minute or two, you peek around the corner and gently call “Hello?”, to which a voice responds with “I’ll be with you as quickly as I can.”. A few moments later, a host comes around the corner and says “Sorry, we are SO short staffed in this place. Do you have a reservation?”. You inform the host that you tried to call, but there was no answer. The host says “We ask that people leave a message so that we can put a reservation in, but I guess you didn’t do that.” He looks at a reservation book and shrugs. “Well, we don’t have anything available for at least another hour.” You notice that there is a large set of tables that are empty, and ask if you could sit there--the family is starving! The host looks at you and says “Those people made a reservation, sorry. When you make a reservation, it makes it a lot easier for us to get you in.”. Frustrated and hungry, you and the family head home so you can drive somewhere else to get something to eat. “I don’t want to live here!” moans your daughter.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now take this situation, and replace ‘local restaurant’ with ‘local school’. Substitute the idea of your children being hungry for something to eat with their being excited and nervous to start a new school year. Think about the angst involved in moving to a new area, and how you and your children would feel if you went to the website of their new, neighbourhood school and the pages were out of date and filled with dead links. Or when you tried to call to get any information, you couldn’t get a person to help you on the other end. And then when you finally decided to just show up at the new school with your children to register because you couldn’t figure out a better way, you were made to feel that it was inconvenient for the people that worked there that you came when you did. All you wanted was to register your children, and in the end, your user experience was poor at best.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the business world, creating a rich and positive UX (user experience) for a customer or clients is essential for successful enterprises. Yet UX can often be a distant afterthought for us when it comes to considering the experiences that our students, parents, and even educators have in our schools each day. What makes this lack of attention to UX even more perplexing is the fact that we have virtually unlimited and direct access to input and feedback from our clients every day--they are in front of us in our classrooms, in the staff room, and in the parking lot of our schools each day. As a lead digital marketer of a large multi-national corporation said to me at a recent business conference “I could only wish to have the access to our customers that schools have to their customers.”.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the hustle and bustle of the everyday lives of educators, solving problems as quickly as possible is often the order of the day. When an issue comes to us in our classrooms, schools, or districts, we want to ensure we handle it professionally and carefully, but also in a timely manner because we know there will be another issue cropping up shortly after! And by our very nature we are helpers in education; we want to give our learners and our school community the assistance they need when they come to us with a problem. Yet often times in the spirit of efficiency, we implement solutions without involving those who are having the problem: our students and parents, and even our teachers and principals when we are in district leadership positions. And while we might feel as though we are being more efficient, we can be missing out on a tremendous opportunity to collaborate with and empower the members of our school community.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When it comes to different approaches to solving problems, I believe the field of education can learn a great deal from the design sector: leading design firms such as IDEO and the Stanford D-School use a human-centered approach to spark new and creative solutions. In IDEO’s Design Thinking method, they “consider every product touch-point as an opportunity to surprise, delight and deliver benefits to users.” and actively collaborate with those who use that particular product or service. As working cooperatively with our partners in education is so vital to our success, I believe adopting a collaborative, human-centered leadership style has enormous potential to help us ensure a more positive user experience for our partner groups and concurrently build their leadership capacity at every level. I believe this can be done by following a few steps:</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Recruit a diverse, eclectic, problem-seeking team.</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Considering the user-experience you are considering in your classroom, faculty meeting school or district, who are the people that you might assemble to ensure that you get a wide variety of ideas and perspectives? For example, if you are considering communication from your classroom, collaborating with students and parents is key: they can provide you with authentic, personal experiences that they have had inside and outside of the class. Not to mention, effective communication is important to any workplace, and parents may be able to bring new and fresh ideas from other sectors that are applicable to the school setting.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Start with questions that promote divergent thinking.</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When approaching issues in our schools, we frequently begin by asking questions that can narrow our focus, such as “How can we make better parent-teacher conferences?”. By beginning with a vision of something that we have previously done, we can inadvertently limit conversation and constrain ourselves to making minor ‘tweaks’ to existing processes or structures. When we have a think tank of problem-seekers with different experiences and skill sets, it is important to ask questions that elicit different reactions and spark new ideas: the last thing we want to do is limit the creative capacity of the group! A question that promotes divergent thinking such as “What is the experience that we want our parents to have when they are learning about their student’s progress?” starts a different conversation, and encourages the team to think about the end user before the end product. It is vital at this stage to be an active listener and encourage each of our partners to speak--they are the true leaders in this process because they are the experts on describing their personal experiences.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Co-create your MVP (minimally-viable product).</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A common approach to teaching and learning can be “know then do”: we often feel like we must preload learners with a requisite set of skills before they can be released to try them out in a more hands-on environment. However, in doing this, we are attempting to anticipate each of the skills that a learner may need to solve a particular problem. An alternative approach is to “do then know”. If we co-create prototypes with our diverse group as early as possible in the design process and observe our end users trying these ‘minimally viable products’, we can better understand the strengths and flaws of our models. As David Kelley, founder of IDEO said “If you want to improve a piece of software all you have to do is watch people using it and see when they grimace, and then you can fix that”. With our parent conference example, if the group chose to try a model using fifteen-minute, student-led conferences featuring a presentation of learning, we would want to test this concept with a small number of students doing presentations to a few adults before we adopted the model. By taking a “do then know” stance in co-creating and testing prototypes of our ideas, we can ‘walk a mile’ in the shoes of our students and parents, but we can cultivate a true sense of ownership over the iteration process.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Be hungry for feedback.</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> When we encourage our end users try our prototypes, we create fertile ground for observation, and we need to harvest any feedback that we can get! Sitting and watching a small group of our students and parents go through a process of fifteen minute, student-led conferences can tell us a multitude of things. We can determine if the physical setting is right, whether the allotted time is sufficient, if the size of the audience is appropriate, and other observable salient details. But we must also ensure that we take advantage of having our end users there in front of us: interviewing our kids and parents for warm feedback, cool feedback, and suggestions can provide us with rich insights that only they can provide. We need to create an open and collaborative environment where they feel empowered to be specific and honest. We also must demonstrate that we value their contributions by making the changes that result from their feedback. Try having one of them carry a video camera with them when they go through the process so you can see the experience through their eyes!</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Experience before product.</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> We can spend a great deal of time, effort and energy in creating multiple iterations of our minimally viable products. We might tweak and test our student-led conferences six or seven times as a result of numerous observations, and think we have truly ‘nailed it’ on the final product. For example, perhaps we have created an amazing format for our student-led conferences that fits perfectly into our schedule for that particular day, but it only ‘works’ if we have a three minute transition between each conference. However, the feedback from our test parents and students tells us that when they have tried the three minute transition, students are unable to do a proper breakdown and setup of their presentations. Furthermore, parents with more than one child at the school would be late to their second presentation. While it can be very easy to “just go with it” and hope for the best, all of the positive work that we have done with our group to co-create the amazing student led-conferences can be quickly negated if clinging to a product (such as the time for transition) becomes more important than the experience of the user. Iterations can occur at any time during the creative process, right up until the rollout when we think we have landed on that one ‘perfect’ solution. And when these iterations do come up and make the product more user-friendly, it is vital to ensure that we are more committed to those who are using our product rather than the product itself.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<ol start="6" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Make de-briefing a habit.</b></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Once the experience for our users has occurred, it is not uncommon for us to simply move on to the next task: schools are busy places, and as soon as we have crossed one item off of the ‘to do’ list, we know there will be two more to replace it. But while the experience is fresh in people’s minds, get feedback, and lots of it! Chat with people, use a brief survey, and bring a focus group in so that you and your team can get a true sense of what could be altered so that the experience is even better in the future. Even if you feel the event has gone exceedingly well, there is still much to be learned from those who had the experience. Make sure you re-visit the initial prototype: seeing the journey from the initial to the final product is a powerful reminder of the group's responsiveness to feedback.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.656; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 18.666666666666664px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Taking a human-centered, inquiry-based approach and involving end-users in co-creating positive user experiences in education has many benefits. Not only will we come up with solutions that better suit the needs of our students, parents, and educators, we empower them to make a difference in the areas that truly matter--the experiences they have in our schools on a daily basis. By having our partners work with us in diverse ‘think tank’-style groups, we develop their capacity as leaders in the design, feedback and iterative process. And perhaps most importantly, we build relationships with those that we serve by doing something meaningful that makes a difference. So whether it is parent-teacher conferences, elementary to high school transition for students, implementation of new grading software for teachers, or reviewing policy for administrators, when we adopt a more collaborative, human-centered leadership style, we can transform our classrooms, schools and districts to be truly responsive to the needs and experiences of our students, parents, and educators that learn in them.</span></div>
<br />*<i>this article appeared in Education Canada Magazine, March 2016</i>birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-40030989331366326632016-03-07T11:48:00.002-08:002016-04-26T12:12:09.880-07:00Modeling 'Learning Beyond The Content'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS6mFJvfPf1487VaXyttclQLGOADLH8kZX8jaWbBa3y_t_gvoPY" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS6mFJvfPf1487VaXyttclQLGOADLH8kZX8jaWbBa3y_t_gvoPY" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For those that may have attended some of the workshops and presentations that I have done over the past few years, they would know that one of the ideas that I repeatedly stress is the idea of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“learning beyond the content”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As I have maintained since I started my blog (and it has been on the mast head since day one), “There is no more money. There is no more time: there are 24 hours in the day. It’s also the greatest job in the world, so let’s get on with it.”, and as a result, I feel that we have a responsibility to make the most of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">every</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> moment of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">every</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> learning opportunity that we provide to support our educators. As my good friends from Fort Worth said to me last year, “We don’t have time for “sit ‘n’ git”!”. So whenever I attend a conference or professional development session as a participant, I like to try to find ways to take important messages and turn them into activities for faculty meetings or workshops that not only allow participants to ‘interact’ with these concepts, but to do so in a way that allows them to simultaneously learn other skills. So if you are looking to dig deeper with your staff with some ‘learning beyond the content’ for an upcoming faculty meeting, administrator meeting, or workshop, the model used in this post might work well for you!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>The 'Content':</u></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In February, I had the opportunity to attend FISA 2016 in Vancouver, and was able to attend a session by Yong Zhao. He underscored the importance of developing an entrepreneurial spirit in our students so they can begin to envision and take advantage of the emerging opportunities that arise out of innovations and technologies that are being prototyped, tested, and unveiled all around us on a daily basis. The example Yong Zhao gave was around the driverless car, and he asked us to consider what driverless cars could mean to society from an entrepreneurial perspective: what jobs will arise as a result of driverless cars?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the drive home after the conference, I reflected that while I might have a functional knowledge of the schools and a few hypotheses about “the next curve” in education, my perspective beyond the K-12 system is actually quite limited. I don’t usually spend a great deal of time thinking about things such as the future of biotechnology, working with ‘big data’, or becoming a ‘simulation developer’. Not to mention, I certainly haven’t drilled down to think of how I might prepare learners to find opportunities in new and emerging industry spaces. And if I was feeling this way, I wondered if other educators would be able help learners to ‘spot the opportunities’ in emerging innovations. </span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u style="line-height: 17.664px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The 'Activity':</u></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As a result of what I heard from Yong Zhao at FISA, I have been testing an activity called “Spot the Opportunity”. In this exercise, I have participants create and present a short, four-slide Google presentation using new or emerging technologies as the content (ie. driverless cars, drones, smart contact lenses). The Google slide deck (I provide blank templates to save time) needs to have four elements, each on a slide with a infographic, picture, or very short (30 second) video:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">a description of the new innovation/technology</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">some ideas about what that new innovation/technology might replace in our current society</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">some forward thinking and hypothesizing about potential entrepreneurial spin offs </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the skills and training that students would require to leverage these entrepreneurial opportunities.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Steps:</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have the group divide into groups of two with one piece of technology (ie. chromebook or something similar)</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I send them the link to a ‘force-copy’ slide deck with four slides.</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I show the group the ‘Research Tool’, and how to drag an image into the slide deck.</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I start the timer. The participants then have 10-12 minutes to develop this short, 1-2 minute presentation. Having short timelines keeps the activity crisp.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5KyisCWqnlS6qVXNdf0uPBMNoEq68d88-g6ToRj5x1zA2cGLUzyxdnGZwdlXP62u175AUaGldOFtiuWkxNODWDuP4oKgFSdQgcOvd1wUV7j182otFL80pU7mUan0bQPtJ_GvvK8_qvto/s1600/Spot_Opp_Drones.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5KyisCWqnlS6qVXNdf0uPBMNoEq68d88-g6ToRj5x1zA2cGLUzyxdnGZwdlXP62u175AUaGldOFtiuWkxNODWDuP4oKgFSdQgcOvd1wUV7j182otFL80pU7mUan0bQPtJ_GvvK8_qvto/s320/Spot_Opp_Drones.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Opportunity" slide on an innovation (drone technology)</td></tr>
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</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To model the iterative cycle, partners do an ‘iteration presentation’ to another set of partners. The other partners have two minutes to give warm feedback, cool feedback and suggestions for 2 minutes, and then the roles are reversed. This takes 8 minutes (4 minutes per group)</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Groups have 3 minutes to make any changes, and clean-up.</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Groups do a final presentation to a different pair. </span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the end, I ask one or two groups to present to everyone. In total, the creation and presentation phase of this activity takes 30-35 minutes.</span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>The "Learning Beyond The Content"</u></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After the presentations, I have participants reflect for five minutes to analyze the task that they just completed. I ask the participants to list and provide evidence of the skills that they had to demonstrate in creating this very brief slide deck through the lens of “What were you saying, doing, writing or producing that is evidence of you demonstrating this skill?” (In BC, I also have participants analyze the task through the lens of our re-designed curricular competencies so they become familiar with the process of task analysis, and being able to plan for what students would be saying, doing, writing, and/or producing as a result of activities such as these.)</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the true spirit of ‘learning beyond the content’, participants get to learn about an innovation such as the driverless car, and they begin to think critically about the entrepreneurial skills that students might need to leverage the new innovation, along with the other criteria for the slide deck. But at the same time, they also</span></span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">create content using Google slides</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">use the Google research tool </span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">learn how to drag and drop pictures, video, and/or citations</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">practice giving and receiving feedback</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">iterate as a result of feedback</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">learn about effective slide design</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">present to their peers</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">analyze a task and reflect upon the skills they have learned</span></span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">and….?</span></span></div>
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</ul>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To this point, I have tested this activity with a couple of groups and had another group test it on their own. "Spot the Opportunity" has been well-received, so if</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this is an activity that might work for your faculty or district meeting, give it a shot! All I ask is that you share it back when you make it better. As well, if the idea of creating 'learning beyond the content'-style activities inspires you to create others, please share them as well! </span></div>
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birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-13790874069856112492016-02-24T11:49:00.001-08:002016-02-24T11:49:35.927-08:00Human-Centered School Improvement Plans<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfxApqmSxr59Hclxp5IbFhY0uMTWINj473XNKhIJqBrmldocmE2mV3qSj5JHLOgtZyn0_dEm2VkxvWRYZjgcuvU_EmGgdDqbalL0Ik655SHOcqA6I5bjhPN9d6YJCJA8LJPUyjJCJp_EA/s1600/together_imagelarge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfxApqmSxr59Hclxp5IbFhY0uMTWINj473XNKhIJqBrmldocmE2mV3qSj5JHLOgtZyn0_dEm2VkxvWRYZjgcuvU_EmGgdDqbalL0Ik655SHOcqA6I5bjhPN9d6YJCJA8LJPUyjJCJp_EA/s320/together_imagelarge.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Six years ago, I wrote my fifth blog post ever: it was called "School Improvement Plans Suck! (And why they don't have to). And while I look back and shake my head at the lack of subtlety in title that I chose, upon reflection I realize that I was expressing my own frustration with the plans that I had created when I was a Principal. Despite the hard work and absolute best of intentions by all parties involved, many of the plans that I submitted were created by myself and a small team of teachers, approved by a small group of parents, read by a small fraction of our school community and usually led to small, incremental gains in the improvement of student achievement.</span></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-c03d13f5-14bb-83ef-bfba-a399958daf84" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Big effort. Small gains. Or, as my friends from Texas might say: “A lot of hat...not much cattle.”. So, in the spirit of design thinking, I tried to reframe the issue in a way that might promote different thought as a design challenge. </span></span></div>
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>“How can we create a plan for learning that delights our school community?”</b></span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To me, when someone is ‘delighted’, they are beyond ‘satisfied’ with the experience that they have just had: they are shaking their head in wonderment, with a smile on their face and a tear in their eye. The experience has been so rich that they want to share the memories with others, both with friends and people that they might not know so well. So rich that they hope to do it again but wonder if it could ever be replicated. I like the word ‘delight’. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I do not know many ‘delightful’ school plans, so I began to think of the experiences in education and schools that do actually delight people to see if I could find some common threads that could be pulled into the planning experience. One experience came to mind for me: it was when I was at a Parent Advisory Council meeting at my former school, and four of our students came to present to the parents about “Operation Guatemala”. The PAC had helped to sponsor our students to go to Guatemala, and the students wanted to report back and to express their gratitude for being afforded such a unique opportunity. Operation Guatemala was a two week trip to a small, mountainous community in Guatemala led by a group of 12 of our students and a sponsor teacher. The purpose of the trip was to build homes for families who were unable to build homes for themselves. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4wmX7ElfXR3KnhvQTwKOQjo_ntRLhgN5eiwO8JfLIWdWXLAMN-0TJeA39sq61mcxh-e7X9crkmM74GF2-7RF7FfnDJKhSaVVbm42_VaBCWFBThXVBo2sNmJObe8_KqRLvUUOsRNSafGs/s1600/OpGuat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4wmX7ElfXR3KnhvQTwKOQjo_ntRLhgN5eiwO8JfLIWdWXLAMN-0TJeA39sq61mcxh-e7X9crkmM74GF2-7RF7FfnDJKhSaVVbm42_VaBCWFBThXVBo2sNmJObe8_KqRLvUUOsRNSafGs/s1600/OpGuat.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Sa-Hali Operation Guatemala Team</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The students showed pictures of the area, the people they met, the children they played with, and the work that they did to build small, one-room, cinder-block homes for a number of families. And then they began to talk about one family in particular who was so thankful for what they did. The young father was not able to work because he had a severely broken leg and required surgery; an operation that they could not afford. As a result, the mother and their young child were making braided jewelry to sell in the village to try to make ends meet, however, they were not making ends meet. The family was so thankful for the work done by our students because the house that was built would give the family a tiny bit of a leg up in their very difficult life. Our students could not believe the joy they brought to this family. So touched were our students by this family that Operation Guatemala decided they would raise the money here at home for the father’s surgery and send it to the family. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I looked around at the participants at the PAC meeting. Everyone was crying. They could not believe the impact that this group of students had made. The experience went so far beyond the expectations of the our students and the Parent Advisory Council that people spoke about it for weeks afterwards. They shared their memories with others, both with friends and with those they didn’t know so well. This was the type of experience that we want in schools: one that delights the participants.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The main thread that I pulled from this experience? The students of Operation Guatemala were solving a meaningful, real-life problem, and the learning that these students was far beyond any content that they could have covered in a classroom. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Real-life, and learning beyond the content.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then it hit me. A plan that uses parts of human-centered design. That solves a real-life problem. And that involves those who the solution will impact in the creation of the plan.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Community Improvement Plan.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What if our school improvement plans were not just focused on improving student achievement? Instead, what if our plans were about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">improving student achievement through solving a real-life problem in the community?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Through making our community a better place for everyone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s how it could look.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Planning:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the Spring of a school year, students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members come together to brainstorm around a question such as “How can we create a plan for learning that delights our school community?”. People would brainstorm about issues in the community; issues that are lofty, that stretch us, but things that, were they to be solved, they would make a significant impact in the community. Perhaps the group comes up with the following challenge:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“How can our school ensure the local food bank is full for the summer?”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maybe they choose this issue because they felt that the food bank was full at Christmas, but was often near-empty during the summer months, even though the demand for food was still just as high. They would then start to come up with ideas and questions about how each student, each class, each teacher, and each administrator would be involved along with members of the community. People would have to begin to think about things such as ‘What’s involved in making sure the food bank is full?’ , ‘Who could help us?’, ‘What is the capacity of the food bank?’, ‘How could we gather interest?’, ‘Where would we get food?’, and ‘How would it be transported?’, just to name a few things. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These ideas would be taken back to the staff so that they could not only look at how best their classrooms would be involved, they could start to look at some of the teaching and learning that could be gleaned from filling the local food bank. What is the math involved in filling a food bank? The science behind nutritious foods and foods that last a long time? The language arts involved in effective methods of communication to seek help from volunteers and to promote the project? The media arts and technology involved to document the learning that would take place? The possibilities would be endless, as would the opportunities to engage students, teachers and the community in something meaningful.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tuning:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once the framework of the plan was developed, the school would want to get some outside eyes on the plan. Using something like the </span><a href="http://gse.hightechhigh.org/WASC/Capacity_and_Preparatory_Review_Report/O_Protocols%20for%20looking%20at%20work.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">High Tech High Tuning Protocol</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a small team could meet with another partner school (or in our District, their Family of Schools) to get warm feedback, cool feedback and suggestions about different aspects of the plan, including key knowledge that students and teachers would need, and how best it could be launched to capture the imagination of the larger school community. Kids need to be a part of this--if we want them to get excited, we have to test out whether our ‘cool ideas’ are ‘sick’ (or whatever term our kids use today to say that something is awesome).</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Launch:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once the school had iterated as a result of the feedback, the opening ‘kick-off assembly’ of the year would be totally geared to getting students and teachers excited about helping their community. Presentations from the community, engaging and interactive videos showing the importance of every person in the community having food, statistics that highlight the issue--whatever our students and educators felt would start everyone off on the right foot to solve the issue.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Scaffolding and Sustained Inquiry:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Over the course of the year, classes would constantly re-visit the question through each of the content areas to work through the steps to solve their piece of issue. Project-leaders and teams would be in each class to help teachers co-create the steps, supports, and products that would be the benchmarks for their part the project. There would be critique of each of the pieces, and iteration as a result, while archivists were constantly taking pictures and videos to show the process and progress that each of the classes were making toward the overarching goal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Presentation of Learning to the Community/Celebration:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As the school came closer to finishing the project for the year, they would begin to work on how best to share their learning with the community. Using the authentic products and artifacts collected by class archivists, the school would begin to coalesce the events over the course of the year into something that truly reflected the learning that had taken place and the progress that the school had made toward achieving their goal. Perhaps the school would have their presentation of learning at the food bank and invite the community and local media to see presentations from each of the classes. In those presentations, each class would talk about what they learned from doing this project, including the math, the science, the language arts, and the content areas. But they would also talk about the other competencies that they had developed (like the ones in the new and exciting BC Ed Plan curriculum). There could be an unveiling of the shelves of the food bank, filled to the brim prior to the summer. Or maybe they are not full, but partially filled, and the school talks about the challenges that they had, and things that they would do differently in the future. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now these are just ideas, and I know that others will have better ones about how they could create a Community Improvement Plan. But I think of the positives as a result of a plan that works with the community to solve a community issue:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the students would feel like they have done something meaningful and that they have learned content areas in a real-life, hands-on context.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the staff would feels as though they have done something that has made a difference. Even for people that think such a plan might be a crazy idea, no one can deny that helping the community is a good thing. A really good thing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">the community would be ecstatic--a large group would have taken a real run at a community issue. They also would have gotten a true window into the learning that has taken place in the school.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In our district, we have more than 40 schools. Imagine if each of our 40 schools created a plan that was targeted to improve student learning through solving a community issue? Imagine how the community would feel about school plans? </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And more importantly, imagine the difference that our schools would make to the community.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That is a community that I want to be a part of, and this idea is something that I am going to examine in our district.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you have thoughts about this, please comment: I would love to hear about them.</span></span><br />
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birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-4440721533891780172016-02-12T10:16:00.004-08:002016-02-12T10:16:43.323-08:00Failure: Can You Pivot?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last Spring, I was presenting at a breakout session at the Canadian Association of Principals Conference at Whistler. One of the things that I try to do with my presentations is to make them as interactive as possible, regardless of the size of the group. Whether it is through co-creating a 'getting to know each other' Google presentation, crowd-sourcing with the group using a collaborative document, using literacy strategies have participants engage with each other after watching short video clips, or simply having them do the infamous Fenway Five (you have to come to one of my sessions if you want to know more about that one), my goal is to have educators experience and use tools they can immediately take home to their own learning situation. And for my colleagues at Whistler, I was primed, and ready to go. <br />
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Participants filed in. They sat down, pulled out devices, opened up laptops, and began merrily creating their own individual slides on our online, shared presentation for the day. They were adding pictures of themselves from Google, playing with fonts, and laughing at what others had put up. I gave the one-minute warning to let people know that we were about to begin, and then....it happened.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9jDpgB8D0lhemtu7j-Dr6bUq3snoWtPTFGtBxWbIVsVbqBcsNxRWdFxpJQdk7O9eL8g_jMJ18ExVw4vr9le6zsxYGSyWS4OHLbqRhLGkP1ttJRfcrxxpo2FNRh0fOnseWCdHB26RuQGY/s1600/epic_fail_tweet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9jDpgB8D0lhemtu7j-Dr6bUq3snoWtPTFGtBxWbIVsVbqBcsNxRWdFxpJQdk7O9eL8g_jMJ18ExVw4vr9le6zsxYGSyWS4OHLbqRhLGkP1ttJRfcrxxpo2FNRh0fOnseWCdHB26RuQGY/s320/epic_fail_tweet.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Yes, the only room in the entire conference that suddenly 'black boxed' (meaning no one's wifi or 4G on <u>any</u> device worked, including phones) was mine. Three minutes before the presentation started, everything was great. 30 seconds after, the whole place crashed. Tech people from the hotel raced in and surrounded my laptop like paramedics trying to give CPR to an unconscious heart attack victim. They tried one network, and another, then their own networks on their phones. And then they looked at me with sadness in their eyes, slowly looked down at the floor, and shook their heads. The CPR didn't work, and the heart attack victim...you guessed it: it was me, standing in front of 80 people with one hour and twenty-two minutes left in my allotted time to present on how to be an engaging administrator using online tools.<br />
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#doesanyonehaveanoverheadprojector?<br />
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Sitting in the front row was educational luminary, Simon Breakspear. Much to my chagrin, he had a huge smile on his face as he shouted one word for all to hear.<br />
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"Pivot!"<br />
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He was right. The horse was dead--stop beating it and take a different tack. Get nimble. Get agile. And most of all, get going, because there are 80 people here waiting for you to engage them.<br />
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So, I quickly tried to salvage the pieces of the presentation that I could: I grabbed some screenshots that I had taken from past presentations that captured the essence of the online interactive bits, and I used activities that I had done at faculty meetings in the past to model things that administrators could do if they wanted something low-tech, but still required high participation. In the end, the presentation was not exactly an oil painting, but the gracious participants told me that they got a number of things they could use in their own faculty meetings. Not a total loss.<br />
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I won't lie, I was pretty frustrated afterward. Friends who were presenting at the same time in the two rooms adjacent to me were shocked--their wifi was perfect! I was irritated with the wifi, and irritated even more with myself that I hadn't made my presentation 'wifi proof' (how many of us still feel we have to do this?). So, I went back to my room and made a series of changes to my presentation to capture the same points, but in a way that wasn't so 'wifi dependent'. And as I was tidying it up and bouncing the alterations off of a colleague who was with me, he said something about my new iteration:<br />
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"It's better. Way better."<br />
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I presented two more times, and he was right, the sessions were better! (Of course at this point, the hotel had now given me my own dedicated, lightning fast and bulletproof wifi channel for my presentation, which I ended up using about one-third as much as I would have on the first day). The feedback that I collected from the participants was positive--they had gotten five or six practical strategies that they could immediately use with their own schools and faculties. Mission accomplished. My 'pivot' was successful.<br />
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In my work around innovation, I have become fascinated with how people or organizations change when things don't go exactly as planned, or how they pivot when they have an 'epic failure'. I believe that we don't share enough stories like this. I think we often feel like admitting our mistakes somehow makes us appear weak or incompetent. Yet what I am finding right now is I have become an "iteration junkie": I am not nearly as interested in failure (or success, for that matter) as I am to hear about how someone overcame a challenge, embraced a parameter, or gathered and used feedback to make their product or service better. <br />
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In creating the conditions for innovation, it is vital that leaders are open and honest about some of their epic fails. First and foremost, on an emotional level, I have found that as time passes, most of our epic fails turn into raucous stories at the pub or punch lines at retirement dinners. More importantly, from a leadership perspective, when leaders can not only talk about these failures, but they can show how they and their organization changed as a result of what they have learned, those failures are not failures at all, they become examples of innovation through iteration.<br />
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I saw a poster once that said <b><i>"I don't mind learning from my mistakes, I just don't want to earn a Ph.D."</i></b>, and I agree, I don't want to be so reckless that 'epic failure' becomes the norm. But being able to take some of those 'epic fails' and pivot as a result is a way that we can truly lead innovation in our classrooms and our schools.<br />
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Can you pivot?birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-63112920767848905962016-02-09T09:47:00.003-08:002016-02-09T13:57:53.768-08:00I Want A Doctor To Use Google<br />
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This past week, I was fortunate enough to be in Vancouver to attend FISA 2016, the education conference for independent schools across British Columbia. Although my work is in the public system, I was keenly interested to learn from a number of the speakers in the lineup, including <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielPink" target="_blank">Daniel Pink</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/yongzhaoed" target="_blank">Yong Zhao</a>, and <a href="http://curriculumredesign.org/about/team/" target="_blank">Dr. Charles Fadel</a> from Harvard. There were a number of pieces that resonated with me from each of the speakers, but a couple of shots in particular hit me squarely between the eyes, especially in light of my work in helping to implement <a href="https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies" target="_blank">BC's new competency-based curriculum</a> across our district.</div>
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Last year, I got into a spirited conversation with a colleague about "kids these days": she was expressing her frustration with the new curriculum. She felt like that by focusing on what she saw as some of the broader, more ethereal concepts like personal identity and creative thinking, we were losing the rigor of the content standards that our current curriculum requires students to learn. "Whether kids like it or not, there are some facts that they just <u>need to know</u>!". Without trying to be too obtuse, I asked her "So which facts are the ones that kids 'need to know'?". And moreover, given the diversity of our schools, our learners and their individual backgrounds, I asked her how we were supposed to determine which facts were 'the right ones'. Exasperated, she laughed and said: <br />
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<i><b>"I just never want to be sitting in my doctor's office and have him need to look something up on Google!"</b></i><br />
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And while I know that she was using this specific example to make a general statement that students can't simply depend on Google, I have thought about our conversation for a long time since. As a point of interest, I have subsequently asked numerous doctors (including specialists such as a radiologist and an internalist) if they had ever used Google (or some sort of search engine/online tool/connection) to help them in their job as a physician. And while I am certainly not Gallup, I can say without equivocation that every one of them said 'yes'. And usually not just 'yes', more often it was 'absolutely!'.<br />
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During his compelling talk that took the FISA audience into the future of artificial intelliegence and curriculum re-design, Charles Fadel made a statement that underscored my thoughts. He said:<br />
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<b><i>"Would you rather take the chance that your oncologist has read the ten thousand plus articles on your particular cancer, or would you rather that they are working with an AI assistant that actually <u>has</u> read and summarized the knowledge from those ten thousand articles?"</i></b><br />
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In the outstanding video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC_T9ePzANg" target="_blank">"Future Learning"</a> (please take 12 minutes to watch it), Sugata Mitra talks about a curriculum that he would write to best prepare students in K-12 for life beyond 2030. It only had three parts: reading comprehension, search and retrieval skills, and the ability to believe, and therefore 'avoid doctrine'.<br />
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In the context of Charles Fadel's question, I want my doctor to have incredible reading and comprehension skills, to be able to have outstanding search and retrieval skills to enable he or she to be as informed with current research and techniques as is humanly and 'inhumanly' (with technology) possible, and to be able to avoid doctrine and believe, so they are able to determine what is real, and what is nonsense, as Sugata Mitra says.<br />
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So, would you want your doctor to use Google? I would.<br />
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<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-86345028111095518292016-02-02T10:51:00.001-08:002016-02-02T13:54:44.726-08:00The Teaching Fab Lab <a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRetZlY5KM37K7ty0d4pJw1K92ia6hxv0XS1vVIeob-WpFOX1M-YA" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRetZlY5KM37K7ty0d4pJw1K92ia6hxv0XS1vVIeob-WpFOX1M-YA" /></a><br />
<i>"We need more risk-takers!"</i><br />
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<i>"We need to build a culture that not only accepts failure, it rewards it."</i><br />
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<i>"I just want people to take a few chances around here. You know, to try some new things."</i><br />
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In my position as District Principal of Innovation, I am constantly hearing these sorts of expressions from educators throughout the system about their students, their colleagues, and the organizations where they work. If you spend a even a few minutes on social media, you will find tweets, Facebook links, LinkedIn posts and blogs talking about the importance of developing a mindset of "failing fast and often", "doing then knowing", or "iterate, iterate, and then iterate". Are you puffing your chest out about having a Learning Commons? Be careful, someone might walk by you and whisper "That is <u>so</u> 2010.". People are talking about maker spaces, hacker spaces, green screen rooms, and think tanks. And let's be real, in my visits to schools and districts in British Columbia, I have yet to hear someone say "we need to be less innovative". <br />
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But what are we actually doing to develop and scale innovative practices? Make no mistake, we would be hard-pressed to find a school or district that doesn't have exciting and interesting things happening, at least in small pockets. But we often are so tunneled into the day-to-day goings-on in our districts, in our schools, and in our classrooms that if someone were to ask us about an innovation at a neighboring school or nearby district, we most likely would be unable to answer.<br />
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And I get it! Everyone is busy. Coordinating schedules can be challenging. Releasing people to be able to visit other schools is expensive, and sending them to other districts even more so.<br />
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In his book <a href="http://bmif.businessinnovationfactory.com/" target="_blank">The Business Model Innovation Factory</a>, <a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjl5qWC1tnKAhUQ6WMKHQQqA5YQ6F4IGzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fskap5%3Fref_src%3Dtwsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Eauthor&usg=AFQjCNEl7aTK6OqKRIxLh5-XKQHUDmnDZQ&sig2=9JQVrkvH5958TQGRh2WFuQ&bvm=bv.113034660,d.cGc" target="_blank">Saul Kaplan</a> talks about creating "the adjacent possible", a place in an organization where new ideas and service models can be live-tested in a real environment with actual clients. This 'adjacent possible' environment still has the benefits of being a part of the larger organization, and is able to take advantage of the infrastructure and economies of scale that the company has to offer, but it is able to test out radically different models and ideas in a low-risk, high-reality setting with the goal of informing future practice. It is a recipe for success, and without it, companies who focus solely on their current business model tend to fail miserably, or "get Netflixed", as Blockbuster Video found out. Those who have their current model and think about new models by creating "the adjacent possible" are the organizations that will remain nimble, responsive and relevant as the needs of their clients change. <br />
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Just like the needs of our students are changing.<br />
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As a result, I believe we must to create the "adjacent possible" in education. In every school and district. We could call it "The Teaching Fab Lab". And it would be right down the hallway. <br />
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Any teacher in the school could book into the Fab Lab, and once in there, they would be free to test out new and interesting teaching practices, knowing that they might work, and knowing they might not. Maybe for a day. Maybe for a week. Or longer. And fellow educators would not have to take release days and travel hundreds of miles to see the inquiry process in action, or Project-Based Learning, or genius hour, or whatever was on display in the Fab Lab. They could just wander down the hall and have a look! They could ask their administrator or another teacher to watch their class for a few minutes or a period, and even jump in an co-teach for a bit with the Fab Lab host, just to get a feel for the activity. <br />
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Naysayers might be jumping up and down right now yelling "People can't just teach however they want!", or "But what if it doesn't work?", or "We can't waste time, we have too much content to cover!". I guess so, but I am thinking that we could respond by saying things like<br />
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<i>"We need more risk-takers!"</i><br />
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<i>"We need to build a culture that not only accepts failure, it rewards it."</i><br />
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<i>"I just want people to take a few chances around here. You know, to try some new things."</i><br />
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I am going to do some more digging into this. If you have examples of these in your schools or districts, please comment so I can come and visit!birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-2266552676713139292016-01-12T12:39:00.003-08:002016-02-02T20:06:24.640-08:00Learning Can't Wait<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://imcclass.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/nike-just-do-it-logo.jpg?w=584" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://imcclass.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/nike-just-do-it-logo.jpg?w=584" height="160" width="400" /></span></a><span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The more I think about new initiatives and changing education, the more I believe that Dan Weiden got it right.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In August of 1988, when there would have been a high degree of likelihood that I was sporting acid wash jeans and a styled perm, the aforementioned Mr. Weiden coined a phrase in his work as a Portland advertising executive. You might have heard of it...</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Just Do It"</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">From that point forward, the words "Just Do It" became not only the key branding phrase for Nike, but a part of the English lexicon forever more. When you close your eyes and say those words, you can probably envision the font in which the phrase was written and the little black Swoosh right below it. How many t-shirts did we own with those three words emblazoned somewhere on the front or back?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I believe that now more than ever in education, we need to adopt a "Just Do It" philosophy. For a variety of reasons too numerous to list, we seem to be suffering from an insatiable desire to ensure that any new initiative, program, or philosophy that we are even thinking about trying is both foolproof and battle-tested to a level of imperviability that rivals kevlar or kryptonite. We feel like we need to find the correct timing in the future for us to unveil a new idea so that we maximize the 'wow factor' and minimize negative exposure. Or that we must determine the exact point at which the percentage of supporters is likely to outweigh the naysayers by a wide enough margin. Or to discover the moment during the year when people have the correct mix of enthusiasm, energy, and separation between writing report cards, submitting improvement plans, doing budgets, getting ready for standardized tests, holidays, and the last full moon. And please make sure it falls in the correct block during the rotation, because we have hit period four three times in the last four months.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My point? People are always busy--in fact, we can't even say we are busy anymore, we have to out-do each other with our descriptors of busy. Wildly busy. Crazy busy. INSANELY busy. It seems the more bleary-eyed, disheveled and haggard that we can look while doing our work and the closer we can get to the lunatic fringe of frenetic activity, the greater status we feel we have with our colleagues. Schools are busy places; they should be. Schools and classrooms should be thriving, and filled with meaningful and significant events that are rich for students and educators alike--they should be insanely busy. Budgets always need to be managed, staffing needs to be done, exams need to be administered, and there are always projects to finish and deadlines to meet. And when we throw all of this stuff into our Google Calendars, one fact becomes clear and immutable: there is no perfect time to start anything.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But there is one other clear and immutable fact, and it comes from Saul Kaplan (<a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjjub3xjaXKAhVI2GMKHY1eAm8Q6F4IGzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fskap5%3Fref_src%3Dtwsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Eauthor&usg=AFQjCNEl7aTK6OqKRIxLh5-XKQHUDmnDZQ&sig2=ipfS2Kl1xeqz9hYOSsb1uQ&bvm=bv.111677986,d.cGc" target="_blank">@skap5</a>), founder and "Chief Catalyst" (love that) at the Business Innovation Factory in Providence, RI. He said something that resonated with me (especially as a father of two young children in the school system) when I was at the BIF Conference last September:</span><br />
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<b>A decade is a terrible thing to waste.</b></span><br />
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Wow. How right is that. He and his team at the Business Innovation Factory pleaded with the organizations they work with to "get off of the white board and on to the real world". To "go from napkin-sketch to prototype". To "stop studying it and <u>just do it</u>". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A couple of years ago, I was having lunch with colleague and friend Chris Kennedy (<a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiW_dyOjqXKAhVOw2MKHRHgAn4Q6F4IGzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fchrkennedy%3Fref_src%3Dtwsrc%255Egoogle%257Ctwcamp%255Eserp%257Ctwgr%255Eauthor&usg=AFQjCNHx7hfhCGCmxCueC7Fc0q4Bnt4Z_g&sig2=fmxc1Jxv9xWEll3cOW3v6Q&bvm=bv.111677986,d.cGc" target="_blank">@chrkennedy</a>), the highly-regarded and forward-thinking Superintendent of the West Vancouver School District. One of the things that I always have admired about Chris is the fact that he still gets into classrooms and teaches students about digital literacy and future skills. So I asked him "How do you do it? How do you find the time to get into classrooms when you are the Superintendent?". He looked at me and said "I want to be in classrooms with students, so I make time for it. It's a choice.".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">#simple</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But let's quickly dispense with the false dichotomies that inevitably will follow. So does that mean that we should do everything? No. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Say 'yes' to everything? Nope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chase after every initiative? No, that would be inefficient, irresponsible, unsustainable, and make us INSANELY busy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We have to work within the box that we live, and manage the parameters that we have. There is likely no more money (my next post will be about how to create money out of thin air, BTW). There are only 24 hours in the day. <a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2015/08/getting-started-with-frugal-innovation_4.html" target="_blank">These are obstacles that we can't push to the side--we must embrace them!</a> (Sounds a lot like 'Frugal Innovation')</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But Chris's comment underscores something that is paramount for me: we must choose what we want to do and DO it. And I believe that we help ourselves to do this by following four steps.</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix1Ul5jTI9VKDsUdOQyiASRv8o5cQYY23SQ3drNlZ3-AQPzcZ7aajhODMXNdCo-Ks2D0W4oUA3o5TiioOxlmD31MKhpQQ4HaHvh0E9-1PTrHUckmzxBdiHQWaJXLZG-hFJDtCPecXWe8c/s1600/Saying_Doing_Writing_2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix1Ul5jTI9VKDsUdOQyiASRv8o5cQYY23SQ3drNlZ3-AQPzcZ7aajhODMXNdCo-Ks2D0W4oUA3o5TiioOxlmD31MKhpQQ4HaHvh0E9-1PTrHUckmzxBdiHQWaJXLZG-hFJDtCPecXWe8c/s400/Saying_Doing_Writing_2.png" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What will students say, do and write?</span></td></tr>
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjqkPHS_aTKAhVC6GMKHThDB7IQFgghMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthelearningnation.blogspot.com%2F2013%2F09%2Fa-fun-method-to-create-vision-for.html&usg=AFQjCNF0LsrPWBHDIfHkdDqXHD6cU0hC-A&sig2=DT7JKJBtHwhBHqlkCiP20w&bvm=bv.111677986,d.cGc" target="_blank">Co-create a vision for your learner</a> (this could be a student, teacher, support staff member, administrator, or even a parent in the community)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Co-define what they would be saying, doing, or producing when they are demonstrating this vision (as in this image from an improvement plan that gets right down to specifics.)</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Determine your learner's current reality <a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2015/02/instructional-rounds-what-are-they.html" target="_blank">through observations by a team of educators that provide specific, descriptive, and non-judgmental feedback relative to your vision</a> using a network-based approach like Instructional Rounds (and <a href="http://instructionalroundskamloops.eventbrite.ca/" target="_blank">come to the Rounds Institute in Kamloops in April</a> with dozens of other fantastic educators!)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2014/12/dont-worry-be-crappy.html" target="_blank">Co-design potential solutions</a> knowing that while they might not be perfect and they might not work the way you thought you would, that you will learn about the learning taking place in your building, regardless.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Follow what Saul Kaplan says: "get off of the white board and on to the real world", "go from napkin-sketch to prototype", and to "stop studying it and <u>just do it</u>".</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Because learning can't wait, our students can't wait, and neither can we. </span><br />
<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-12159226909197343392015-12-10T11:44:00.000-08:002015-12-10T11:44:03.165-08:00Do You Do LCD? (Learner-Centered Design)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://publish.illinois.edu/digitalmaking/files/2015/02/human-c.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://publish.illinois.edu/digitalmaking/files/2015/02/human-c.jpeg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
Think about the last time you did some unit planning. What was that experience like? If it was anything like mine, it was often on a Sunday afternoon in front of a television, with a computer on my lap, a textbook on the coffee table, after a weekend of swimming lessons for the kids, yard work, and the other things that make up Life 101. It was always almost always a solitary activity, and the lessons, tasks, and activities that I created were usually my own, based on the content I felt was important for the kids to know, and my own experiences in learning and teaching. An introductory lesson with vocabulary and questions, some videos that I thought might be exciting, questions from the textbook and a few worksheets, a quiz or two, a lab that brought together a few of the concepts, and some sort of culminating assessment. All of these interspersed with interesting anecdotes and analogies (interesting for me, at least) that I thought would have helped the concepts resonate with the students long enough so they might be able to parrot them back to me on my chapter test. <br />
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(Note: it is not lost on me that I just referred to my unit assessment as my 'chapter test'--I am not proud to say that in my career, there were too many occasions where my 'units' involved whatever might have been covered in a particular chapter, with a smattering of whatever creative bits that I could muster.)<br />
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But what if there was another way to plan our units?<br />
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As opposed to starting with the material that we need to cover and using our experiences and opinions to guide us, what if we began the design of every unit and task with our learner in mind? As obvious as 'start with the learner' sounds, when it comes to unit planning, sometimes 'just get it done' can trump 'start with the learner'. But what if we looked at a model that might guide us through our lesson planning in a different, learner-centered way?<br />
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<b>Human-centered design</b> is an empathy-based, creative problem-solving process which <u>starts by determining the issues that face the end user</u> in a particular situation and ends with iterative solutions that help the end user successfully navigate these issues. This method has been successfully used by design leaders such as IDEO and the Stanford D-School to solve numerous problems across a variety of disciplines, including education! IDEO has created a "how to" manual called <a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=wallet" target="_blank">"Design Thinking For Educators"</a> to guide teachers through this process, and the D-School has created an engaging design challenge activity called <b>"<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XOHAiVK8m_DwOrQMl6E2E9Md9WuHRg53N5PbnbK3H8TpEkLl69uFH-7DLqGdijt_EaoLKT2PoYJOg_Ms" target="_blank">The Wallet Project</a>"</b> where learners experience human-centered design in a 'learn by doing' environment. <a href="https://vimeo.com/33690707" target="_blank">Here is a brief video summary, just to whet your appetite</a> (I highly recommend that you try this activity with your staff and have them try it with their students).<br />
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At the School District #73 Professional Development day that took place on Monday in Kamloops, a group of highly enthusiastic educators from our four rural schools did The Wallet Project to immerse themselves in the experience of designing and creating something based on a set of wants and needs of a client. And while the group was designing a wallet, the wallet was symbolic of a unit plan: <b>how could we design a unit plan in a learner-centered way by adapting the process of designing a product in a human-centered way?</b> <br />
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The wallet challenge requires participants to use a number of activities to create something that reflects the needs of their client These activities can be summarized into different phases:<br />
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<li><b>Planning for design</b>, which includes a team developing probing questions and interviewing the client so that they can seek to understand what it is that the client truly wants and to empathize with their current reality.</li>
<li><b>Creating a prototype</b>, which involves using the feedback given from the client to develop a number of iterations, and then presenting these prototypes to the client for further feedback to get closer and closer to a product that could meet their needs.</li>
<li><b>Building, testing,</b> <b>presenting and reflecting,</b> which has the group actually create a product that is presented to the client to get warm feedback, cool feedback and suggestions about whether that product has met (or maybe exceeded!) their needs, followed up by a reflection on what might have been done differently.</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/8rExU4yMImiIsFXXbmxWfyRqsxetcqQGKqjWLkUsrPz12OYWczHKaWY5kEgCUIbb1pd_ZknJML5Oa4w8_aQjxTYTVAibdDH716z0WyQRFrMIBUsfBjiz0imCSCUzecmqExO4FAdcmeUbFu4MzQzoMXbVow8Aary8M2Nc91Ew7sjP-meYAVRvYt_YJ51SpJQC6o1B8f9NAQOorr2jWEYM3HscW92jAu7qdPgMOkGiiBNY6jDSaep5Kiw4-5fhYvGd0QDWl4ntF52EPyIDfujQhq0uLi5PXXe_4PFgs_HGJ3Lc7q2oalMvmzOL1GHZluwxmVBGqzbLBspwx-hDfULp4haK7AL6bCbz88bsCOENkaw0fTpP105ZdgnD-zZrIMwytWJ6Yw_upxbVaqo4DCAcDl7gCVGImp6WhUtucsAIyycwyuewR-RZ-uRaqaWKfnWWx-1zuXdtblpBXbnYgSdf6YwbdhHSKFsOR0pHLhUA6U9cVoEX0Gkq-9CymwNA6CRZD1rCuPV3ToeJuIs2NLoAmloRGqP3N2IMxIVXMS7I4UzFgPt6AAMmw4BSF2ihptRHby48ug=w897-h725-no" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/8rExU4yMImiIsFXXbmxWfyRqsxetcqQGKqjWLkUsrPz12OYWczHKaWY5kEgCUIbb1pd_ZknJML5Oa4w8_aQjxTYTVAibdDH716z0WyQRFrMIBUsfBjiz0imCSCUzecmqExO4FAdcmeUbFu4MzQzoMXbVow8Aary8M2Nc91Ew7sjP-meYAVRvYt_YJ51SpJQC6o1B8f9NAQOorr2jWEYM3HscW92jAu7qdPgMOkGiiBNY6jDSaep5Kiw4-5fhYvGd0QDWl4ntF52EPyIDfujQhq0uLi5PXXe_4PFgs_HGJ3Lc7q2oalMvmzOL1GHZluwxmVBGqzbLBspwx-hDfULp4haK7AL6bCbz88bsCOENkaw0fTpP105ZdgnD-zZrIMwytWJ6Yw_upxbVaqo4DCAcDl7gCVGImp6WhUtucsAIyycwyuewR-RZ-uRaqaWKfnWWx-1zuXdtblpBXbnYgSdf6YwbdhHSKFsOR0pHLhUA6U9cVoEX0Gkq-9CymwNA6CRZD1rCuPV3ToeJuIs2NLoAmloRGqP3N2IMxIVXMS7I4UzFgPt6AAMmw4BSF2ihptRHby48ug=w897-h725-no" width="200" /></a><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/TDxVsHu9rlrkDwYoSjpDCUmHAyW53tkb72BZBfWtgDnw3i8sTIVzNskxjqDT9SnwiTzQKx2QlIySjhms56_qzO6AwD75uc8SbDGtLm2CO2i2DO0TYj2F2jOO9rSrWfE4_UHFGBWQr3n1kU4KGcSzlqKgH-o5KwFnVQsxN-iPqLyrVXLwEfW4F37hDbvpSCnF-pHiB3SAszx-a__r2hJGZEFVWLP0PHBnr2cLFxILTAUI88JcfMxEILgGKRYG5XO0MyvztObC-ucRPrTMOrVT4C2Af4lRbcwiQXn9webbS9zO-j2CYMXZJg-Z6yQCbsNAavj0pGaSV2mRrqsFhKNl7j1sJ0EP-YN-vfaiSvIO_GpNzyjq8n_k2IdBcqVIcejBXz67aRRiTod25bBnugywPnzsQp8okD4z4fgWl7LPq9EHkDEa8Y_sYKF4lAKdX-MWDAxAiu1grOmtOCsjwz-hXDamJJnln4JH-wQMlQapfAAmI5vSrY9CgovA0yicIXNCasxVMYPzCfw-A7kgjgENHZR4LcRLGrJYqoxfPrsnarK5AuWsS6vZJv_vQ379xWXjL6fjZQ=w510-h906-no" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/TDxVsHu9rlrkDwYoSjpDCUmHAyW53tkb72BZBfWtgDnw3i8sTIVzNskxjqDT9SnwiTzQKx2QlIySjhms56_qzO6AwD75uc8SbDGtLm2CO2i2DO0TYj2F2jOO9rSrWfE4_UHFGBWQr3n1kU4KGcSzlqKgH-o5KwFnVQsxN-iPqLyrVXLwEfW4F37hDbvpSCnF-pHiB3SAszx-a__r2hJGZEFVWLP0PHBnr2cLFxILTAUI88JcfMxEILgGKRYG5XO0MyvztObC-ucRPrTMOrVT4C2Af4lRbcwiQXn9webbS9zO-j2CYMXZJg-Z6yQCbsNAavj0pGaSV2mRrqsFhKNl7j1sJ0EP-YN-vfaiSvIO_GpNzyjq8n_k2IdBcqVIcejBXz67aRRiTod25bBnugywPnzsQp8okD4z4fgWl7LPq9EHkDEa8Y_sYKF4lAKdX-MWDAxAiu1grOmtOCsjwz-hXDamJJnln4JH-wQMlQapfAAmI5vSrY9CgovA0yicIXNCasxVMYPzCfw-A7kgjgENHZR4LcRLGrJYqoxfPrsnarK5AuWsS6vZJv_vQ379xWXjL6fjZQ=w510-h906-no" width="112" /></a>The engagement of the group was extraordinary: as the wallet activity requires a number of supplies (think 'Dollar Store') that were located on a central table, this group of calm, good-natured professionals turned into a raging, mosh pit of wallet designers, fighting for every last piece of duct tape and tube of glitter glue to create a product that would delight their client. People were yelling "We need more time!", and "who wants to trade red duct tape for scissors?"</div>
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<a href="https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipP0PEcUkWGwdLSyMjE9qq2S-94Ca643bMjMiWWr"></a><a href="https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipP0PEcUkWGwdLSyMjE9qq2S-94Ca643bMjMiWWr"></a></div>
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<a href="https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipP0PEcUkWGwdLSyMjE9qq2S-94Ca643bMjMiWWr"></a></div>
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After each phase, the group was asked to reflect on how the user-focus felt, on how this user-centered approach might be reflected in a learner-centered approach to their own unit and lesson designs. The participants were also asked to reflect on <a href="https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies" target="_blank">which of the competencies from the new competency-based curriculum they were having to demonstrate by doing this activity</a> in 'learn by doing fashion'. What we found was that frequently, for a variety of different reasons, unit planning for many people often looked like the solitary, 'Sunday afternoon' experience that I described at the beginning of this post.</div>
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So how could we adapt the concept of human-centered design and the wallet project to help us be learner-centered designers with our units? If we consider the three parts to the wallet exercise from above, I think there are a few tweaks that we could make to the process to make students our 'clients', and create units that not only require deep learning from our students, but units that exceed their expectations and :</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Planning for design</b></li>
<ul>
<li>What if we did some pre-investigation and loading before we started a unit with our students? For example, if we were doing a unit on reptiles in biology, we could ask students questions <u>prior to developing the unit</u> in an informal (but highly informative) session like the interview in the wallet exercise. Questions like</li>
<ul>
<li>What are your experiences with reptiles?</li>
<li>Which reptiles are you interested in?</li>
<li>What are the most interesting things about reptiles for you?</li>
<li>Which reptiles would you like to know more about?</li>
<li>Which ones might you consider having as a pet? Which ones would you never have as a pet? Why?</li>
<li>Which ones might the average person be afraid of? Why might they be afraid of them?</li>
<li>Do these 'scary' reptiles have any features about them that might be helpful?</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<li><b>Creating a prototype</b></li>
<ul>
<li>As a result of the answers to these questions from our students, we could begin to develop an outline of a project. Using something like our <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gGVOpO7ViodneTY1p3MNSSjS698yyYeYFMC0H0ePfzA/copy" target="_blank">draft School District #73 unit Planning Template</a> as a planning tool (which we are running through focus groups as we speak to see whether it 'delights' our teachers) we decide that we are going to have small groups of students create a comic book (which could be hand drawn or computer generated) about the scariest reptile that they were interested in so they could work through a driving question "How can we develop a comic that makes a reptile less scary?".</li>
<li>We create our own mini-comic book to actually try the project ourselves so we can experience the competencies that students will need to demonstrate, the content that students will need to do their project, the challenges students might have, and what scaffolding might be needed to create a product that was both visually appealing and loaded with the science of reptiles that we need students to deeply learn.</li>
<li>Because we know we can't do this on our own, we take this idea and our comic book prototype to a small but focused group of our colleagues <u>and two students</u> over a sandwich at lunch <a href="http://www.hightechhigh.org/projects/projectFiles/.../PROJECT_TUNING.pdf" target="_blank">using the High Tech High tuning protocol</a> to get warm feedback, cool feedback and suggestions about how to make this project awesome, right from launch to presentation of learning. (PS. You will be stunned at what these teams will come up with to help you--I promise).</li>
</ul>
<li><b>Building, testing,</b> <b>presenting and reflecting</b></li>
<ul>
<li>Armed with our tuned project and prototype, we launch into the unit, designing and adapting our lessons according to the needs of our students as they progress through the project. There will be certain checkpoints that need to be hit and certain pieces of content that need to be covered. However, in stark contrast to a more traditional, stand and deliver lesson with questions, worksheets, and tests, <u>students will be asking you for the content</u> (and if you don't believe me, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK0LZs_awP0&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">watch this - a video testimonial of one of the teachers who changed to a problem-based approach</a>).</li>
<li>We constantly facilitate, coach, cheerlead, encourage, and guide students towards the finished product, and a presentation of their learning (POL) to a public audience that shows not only that product, but the process and multiple iterations as a result of the feedback that made the project the best that it could be.</li>
<li>Then we and our students reflect together on how the project went, from launch to POL, so that we can make it better in the future.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
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Sound like a lot of work? In the initial, preparatory stages, yes. But in a more traditional approach, we are doing a great deal of work anyhow, aren't we? Aren't we lecturing in front of classes? Creating powerpoints with notes? Finding videos for kids to watch? Creating worksheets and selecting questions at the end of the chapter? Coming up with good summative examinations? That seems to be a lot of work too. </div>
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Perhaps a more salient question to consider would be this: in a more traditional approach <u>who is doing the lion's share of the meaningful work</u>? The creating, curating, and critical thinking about what is important. Trying to determine the identities of the learners in the class so they might find meaning and make connections, to create activities that engage the learner, and to present them in a cohesive and interesting manner. <b>In a traditional approach, it is the TEACHER that is getting better at these vital skills, while students can often passively determine whether they wish to be involved or not. </b></div>
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#oops</div>
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In a learner-centered, inquiry, PBL-style approach, there is a lot of work, but the teacher and the students are doing the meaningful work <u>together</u>. Students are selecting which reptile is important to them, and what features make it a reptile (as oppposed to say, a mammal). They are having to discover the features that they think might scare people, and might have to do some cross-curricular research into a phobia or find interviews with people who find snakes scary on the internet. They are heading to the art room to try and get the best supplies, and scouring YouTube to learn how best to draw cartoons. They are giving and getting feedback from their peers about the positive features that they have selected about their reptiles, their artwork, and curating the best bits of all of it so they can make a presentation for a real audience. The list goes on and on, and they will keep going b<b>ecause you have taken the time to design something that will delight them.</b></div>
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Learner-centered design. Might be something worth trying.</div>
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birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-10684768824901532352015-11-10T10:18:00.003-08:002015-11-12T08:42:37.732-08:00Helping Our Students Stand Out - What is Our "Value-Added"?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTNP1pgMyf5U7WpN7wrrn4CFbqkwSNYWwUtMsSRMtkJtp7oJBvl" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTNP1pgMyf5U7WpN7wrrn4CFbqkwSNYWwUtMsSRMtkJtp7oJBvl" /></a></div>
Over the past several months, I have found myself using business terms to describe different facets of our current education system. Terms like UX and UI to describe the user-experience that our students and parents have with us and the user-interface that they interact with when searching us online. Or ROI, our return on investment when considering different topics and formats for professional development. And while mixing business and education can often cause a certain level of discomfort for some, I think there is much for us to learn from the business world when it comes to being insatiably curious about the needs of our clients, our students and parents, at the center of what we do each day. <br />
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Right now, the term that is at the forefront of my thinking is "value-added". Wikipedia summarizes "value added" as 'extra' features of an product, service, or person that goes beyond the standard expectations, and provides something 'more', even if the cost is higher. Bearing this in mind, the question that keeps bouncing around in my head is this:<br />
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<b><i>"What is the "value-added" piece that we can give to our students in the K-12 system in British Columbia that will make the difference for them in the future?"</i></b><br />
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Right now, I find it difficult to give a satisfactory answer to this question. Consider the following:<br />
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Take a moment and think back to when you applied for your first job. Not your first teaching job, or job in your chosen profession. I mean your first job <u>ever</u>, the one you got when you had spots on your face, your feet were too big for the rest of your body, and mom or dad had to pick you up after your shift because you weren't yet old enough to drive a car.<br />
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I applied for my first job in the tenth grade. I grew up in a small town in northern British Columbia, where the job options for a teen were few and far between. So when an opportunity game up at a local gas station to be a cashier and cook for the summer, I jumped at the chance to try and earn a little extra cash to pay for my extra-curricular sports. As you can imagine, the employer required a resume and cover letter as part of the application process, and they would select a few promising candidates for an interview. <br />
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Unfortunately, this posed a few minor challenges for me.<br />
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Specifically, I had never written a cover letter, I had a nothing to put in my resume, and I most certainly had never had any sort of an interview with an adult that I had not previously met. But paying for volleyball camp was important to me, so I was prepared to give the application my best shot. I found a Consumer Education textbook that my older brother had forgotten to return to the school library with a couple of sample resumes in it, and began my attempt to document the salient bits of my life to that point according to the sections set out by the experts at Nelson Publishing.<br />
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Name, Address, Phone Number....ok, got that.<br />
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Experience? Seeing as this would be my first job--pretty tough to expand on this section. Let's move on.<br />
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Education? Hmmm. Well, I had been in the K-12 system for a few years, just like any other kid. I felt like I was a pretty good student--but how was I supposed to make that evident? I guess I could staple my June report card to my resume, but that too was a bit of a problem: when I looked at it, it said things like "Course: Science 10; Grade: B; Work Habit: G; Comment: Have a great summer!". Even in Grade 10, I remember thinking that a comment like that didn't tell my prospective employer much about me.<br />
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Skills? Uh, well, I could hit a volleyball pretty hard, but I was guessing that wasn't going to help me cook chicken or give correct change. I did take woodwork in Grade 9, but the miniature shark paperweight that I made out of cedar using some hand tools and sandpaper didn't seem to bring any real-world skills to the table. I had a "B" in math, but sometimes I struggled with the homework and got an "S" for my work habit grade as a result. It wasn't for lack of effort on my part: my father often worked in the evenings, so I didn't have someone to help me at home when I had questions about the problems that I couldn't solve. I assumed that math was going to be seen as pretty important for this job, considering I would likely be required to give correct change and count cash at the end of the night. And while I was really good at that sort of math, I wasn't great at logarithms. Yet all my report card told my employer was that I didn't have a good work ethic, which I thought was unfair. Who used stupid logarithms anyway? <br />
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No experience. The same education as anyone else. And I could sand the heck out of a piece of cedar. According to the "value added" piece that I brought to the table, I felt as though I was qualified to pursue a career at a pencil sharpening factory.<br />
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As a young person, I remember being really frustrated: I did all my chores, helped my dad get firewood for us in the fall, read every night before bed, was a solid student who tried hard, and played every sport my father could afford so I could stay healthy and active. Wasn't I a good kid? I didn't get into trouble, I did all the right things at home, and yet I didn't have anything to show for it to get me even the most basic of jobs. All I wanted to do was to take my stupid shark and throw it with some gasoline on a big pile of logarithms and light it on fire. In terms of value-added, I felt like I was doing all I could as a young person to make myself valuable, but my schooling wasn't really helping me when I needed it most. The content that I had learned in English, Socials, Math and Science wasn't getting me through the door of a prospective employer--I was beating my head on the mail slot. And if you are waiting for the happy ending, forget it, I didn't get the job: someone else got to pump gas and make chicken. No volleyball camp for me.<br />
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While that was in the mid-80s, I wonder how many of our students today leave the K-12 system feeling this way? Even worse, how many students leave university with similar prospects, along with the a $27000 kick in the pants in the form of a student loan to contend with (the average student loan debt in Canada, as calculated by the Canadian Federation of Students last year--mine was closer to $50000). A recent Newsweek article called <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/millennial-college-graduates-young-educated-jobless-335821.html" target="_blank">"Millenial College Graduates: Young, Educated, Jobless"</a>, paints a similar picture for young people in the US. Anthony Carnevale, a Director and Professor for Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce, says that a high school diploma is not enough anymore: "They (millenials) are the first generation who needs to have a college degree and experience to compete, before they even enter the workplace.". <br />
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Ahhhh...wait a minute. Let's repeat that last bit. "...college degree <u>and</u> experience, BEFORE they even enter the workplace.". <u>Now</u> we have something that we can work with. While we may not be able to give students a college degree from K-12, we <u>can</u> start to think of the kind of experiences that we can give our students during their time in our elementary and secondary schools that will prepare them to be contributing members of society. Yong Zhao calls this idea <a href="http://zhaolearning.com/2014/07/02/college-ready-vs-out-of-basement-ready-shifting-the-education-paradigm/" target="_blank">"Out of the Basement-Ready"</a>, which I believe could be the real 'value added' piece for us going forward in elementary and secondary schools. And with the new <a href="https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies" target="_blank">competency-based curriculum</a> that is coming to classrooms here in BC over the next eighteen months, the opportunity for us to catapult our students forward in to the future with authentic, 'value added' skills that are above and beyond the content that has been so much of a focus of the past has never been greater. <br />
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Just imagine how excited an employer would be if they had a young person who came to a job interview <u>able to tangibly demonstrate transferable skills through experiences that they had already had</u> in the K-12 system? Imagine the quality of an interview of a typical student from a PBL-focused school such as Manor New Tech, as described by their Principal here (zip forward to 3m30s to hear his description of their students, or watch the whole thing and be amazed):<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-OWX6KZQDoE?t=3m30s" width="560"></iframe><br />
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200 presentations of their learning by time they graduate! Do you think these students feel comfortable communicating? Speaking to adults? Curating their work? Defending their position? Do you think these students would have dozens of artifacts to choose from to represent their identity in a positive way? And dozens of experiences that would make a resume leap off of your desk?<br />
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Most importantly, would you hire them to pump gas, count cash, and make chicken? <br />
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I would guess that these students learned a similar amount of content to what I learned and what our students in BC learn during their time in the K-12 system. But in terms of the "value-added" pieces that will prepare them for a changing future, well, these from Manor New Tech students would have a huge leg up, because they would have already developed and demonstrated skills in areas such as<br />
<ul>
<li>communication</li>
<li>critical thinking</li>
<li>creative thinking</li>
<li>positive personal and cultural identity</li>
<li>personal awareness and responsibility</li>
<li>social responsibility</li>
</ul>
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Which, by the way, happen to be <a href="http://www.bcedplan.ca/assets/pdf/bcs_education_plan_2015.pdf" target="_blank">the very competencies that the new curriculum in BC is calling for us to focus upon in our elementary and secondary schools</a>. And there are <u>so many ways</u> that we can help students develop these skills at every level through their Kindergarten to Grade 12 journey. Things like:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>finding high interest, real-world challenges and problems that require students to <u>need</u> content to solve them for real-world audiences (such as <a href="https://youtu.be/jUT4ap4PpbM?t=31m45s" target="_blank">the Kiva project that Bill Ferriter describes in this video</a> with his Grade 6 students, or the <a href="https://youtu.be/5RGID5BzoIE?t=1m9s" target="_blank">hands-on work that students do at the NorKam Trades and Tech School</a>)</li>
<li>developing tasks (<a href="http://bie.org/project_search" target="_blank">like the ones in the searchable database for the Buck Institute</a>) for students that require the production of tangible products that they can archive in a digital portfolio like an <a href="http://myriverside.sd43.bc.ca/cassidye-2013/" target="_blank">example</a> (or <a href="http://myriverside.sd43.bc.ca/josies-2013/" target="_blank">two</a> or <a href="http://myriverside.sd43.bc.ca/brendas-2013/" target="_blank">three</a>) of the amazing digital portfolios at Riverside Secondary School in Coquitlam)</li>
<li>helping students learn to curate and improve their work through the process of peer editing and iteration, as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqh1MRWZjms" target="_blank">Ron Berger illustrates for us in Austin's Butterfly</a></li>
<li>having students get hands-on experiences in the work place through meaningful, mandatory internships like the <a href="http://www.uscrossier.org/ceg/products-and-services/promising-practices-compendium/education-programs-of-charter-schools/high-tech-high-charter-school-the-academic-internship/" target="_blank">High Tech High Academic Internship Program</a> through the Graduation Transitions course that is required for all students in British Columbia</li>
<li>having students <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PjaZF9o9uE" target="_blank">present their learning to small and large groups of individuals, right from kindergarten</a> (follow the link to watch what kindergarten kids can do!) through to Grade 12 (<a href="https://youtu.be/xhsNFgElouk?t=1m52s" target="_blank">like the 'juried portfolios' at Beattie School of the Arts</a>)</li>
</ul>
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Just to name a few ideas.<br />
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Over the next few months in our district, we will be sending another team to High Tech High to discover, learn more about and implement problem-based tasks that require students to demonstrate our competencies in each of our classrooms. In order to increase the capacity of our educators and educators across BC to observe and scale these effective tasks, Kamloops will be hosting an Instructional Rounds Institute on April 10th-14th with Harvard Professors Dr. Stefanie Reinhorn and Dr. Sarah Fiarman. And in the fall, we will look to host a PBL institute to further cement these effective practices across our district. We must get moving.<br />
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My daughters are currently in kindergarten and the second grade, and I could not be more excited about the opportunity that we have in BC to truly give our students a real leg up as they move through our system. However, we must make the most of this opportunity, because that is all it is--an opportunity. But if we use the new curriculum coming out in BC as a vehicle to teach and require students to demonstrate these competencies and constantly focus on the learning that must take place beyond the content through ideas such as inquiry-based and problem-based learning, we will truly have created a "value-added" learning environment for our clients across British Columbia.<br />
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<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-44635395353481499422015-11-02T11:59:00.002-08:002015-11-09T20:31:45.908-08:00You Have No Grit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRq6pDyzLCfA3hgrHC_c7zMQH1RRAPvy0jk67rzMRgVI2yWol0bJQ" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRq6pDyzLCfA3hgrHC_c7zMQH1RRAPvy0jk67rzMRgVI2yWol0bJQ" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No grit? Ouch. That hurts, doesn't it?</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-5dabadc9-c9bd-3aac-b13e-49d07dc823a1" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe the person who said that to you tries to couch it a bit, and says, something like "Well, maybe not you, but educators...they have no grit. And they certainly have no sense of reality." Ouch again. You are an educator, and you feel like you have grit, and not just a little bit. Reality? They have NO idea about your reality. Come walk a mile in my shoes, fella. "Why is this person stereotyping me?", you think.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Have you heard these types of statements about 'kids these days'? I have, and continue to hear things like this wherever I go, almost regardless of the crowd that I happen to be chatting with.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids these days have no grit."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids have too much screen time"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids never walk to school anymore"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids don't want to pay attention in class"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids today have no sense of reality--they live in a dream world."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I won't lie, there was a point in my teaching career when I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">made</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> these types of comments: that was a long time ago, and I don't make them anymore because I realize that I was being condescending and, more importantly, I was being hypocritical. In education, we can often be quick to point our fingers at kids, but I feel like we need to have a quick peek in the mirror, especially when it comes to the piece about 'reality'. To do this, let's consider the five "Kids..." statements above with the finger pointed the other way---right back in our own noses.</span><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As adults, do we have grit?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Let's take an example such as implementing technology. How many times have you heard "we need to go slow with this stuff", and "we need to make this really easy for people", and "we really need to honor that people are going to find this difficult and respect them as learners". Why do we feel that kids, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who so clearly have less skills and experience than we do</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, need to experience (and enjoy?) more challenging things than we do as adults? How many times have you been introducing something like a Google Doc, only to hear people holler "This isn't working! I need some help over here." and roll their eyes, only to wander over and click one link for them, and have them say something like "Well, that wasn't working a minute ago.". Technology aside, it seems that we have to "be strategic" when we are introducing new concepts, ideas or pedagogies to us as educators because "people struggle with change". And heaven forbid we actually move forward with something new and it doesn't work perfectly in the early stages--the chorus of comments such as "I knew this was a bad idea", or "I told you this wouldn't work" will be deafening. If a panel of students were watching a group of us learn about a new application or piece of software, would they consider us to be "gritty"?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As adults, do we limit our screen time?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> While there are those of us who don't watch TV, who don't play on their iPad at night, who don't look at their phones first thing in the morning, who don't text and drive, and who don't have a 'date night' with their spouse that looks suspiciously like two adults in sweatpants with their laptops open in front of this week's episode of 'Shark Tank', there are many of us that DO spend this much time in front of a screen, not to mention the few (or several?) hours per day that we spend on our computers at work! I am not too proud to admit that I am starting to look at progressive contact lenses because my eyes are on a screen for much of the day. A typical student spends </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no where near</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> this amount of time in front of a screen that many of us might as educators, and even if they wanted to, most of them have to 'power down' in the places where it would be most helpful and relevant to be 'powered up'--schools!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As adults, do we walk to school? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Seriously. I don't even get out of my vehicle to get a coffee: I go through the drive-thru at Starbucks so often that my daughter actually said "Dad, I think you are going to turn into a Grande Dark Roast.". Let's not even get started on adult levels of physical activity: I used to be able to dunk a basketball, and now I would pop an Achilles tendon even trying to touch the net. And the best part is, as adults we have no excuse, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we should know better</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: we know that we should be modeling healthy eating and physical activity, and yet the actual number of us who consistently demonstrate these sorts of positive and healthy behaviors does not even remotely garner us the credibility to judge kids on their levels of health and fitness.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As adults. do we 'pay attention in class'?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Are you always 'locked in' at a faculty or district meeting? At a professional development day? At a conference? Do you check your email, text a friend seated at another table, do marking or prep, or just self-regulate during these 'classes'? Especially if the format is "sit 'n' git", where someone is standing at the front and lecturing you without creating a task that allows you to interact with your colleagues and the content that you are working on? I will be the first to admit, I am not. If there is a task that requires me to engage with my colleagues my tech is tossed to the side, but if there isn't, well....I am addicted to my devices.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As adults, do we truly have a sense of reality? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Maybe. In fact, let's pretend we do. Let's pretend that we know the skills that students will need to be successful in 2030 and beyond, and we are well down the road in creating literate, critically-thinking problem-seekers who can collaborate with others all over the globe to solve issues before they become issues. And let's pretend that our experiences that we have gained over our thirty, forty or fifty plus years on this earth have allowed us to determine each of the parameters and pitfalls that will confront our Utopian, idealistic children. And let's also pretend that the 'realities' of our past are the same realities that our children will face in the future (which we know is complete absurdity, but let's continue to delude ourselves). Even if we pretend that our reality paints a remotely accurate picture of the future, my question is:</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do we want the next generation </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">that is going to be taking care of us in the future</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to be doubting themselves right out of the gate, and thinking their ideas are 'impossible' because we have never done them? </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Do we want our imposed 'realities' to take the multi-colored and animated vision that our children have and turn it into monochrome, black and white? Coming back to our initial "Kids..." statement, how is bestowing our view of 'reality' about our students' ideas promoting 'grit'? I myself have created, prototyped, tested, iterated and launched exactly ZERO things or ideas, so I don't know that I am particularly qualified to limit the thoughts of our youth with my 'realities'.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In her amazing TED talk to a large group of adults called "What Adults Can Learn From Kids", teenager Adora Svitak says</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Maybe you have had grand plans before, but stopped yourself, thinking "That's impossible," or "That costs too much," or "That won't benefit me." For better or for worse, we kids aren't hampered as much when it comes to thinking about reasons why not to do things. Kids can be full of inspiring aspirations and hopeful thinking, such as my wish that no one went hungry, or that everything were free.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How many of you still dream like that, and believe in the possibilities? Sometimes, a knowledge of history and past failures of Utopian ideals can be a burden....we kids still dream about perfection. And that's a good thing, because in order to make anything a reality, you have to dream about it first."</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Things such as grit, moderation of screen time, health and exercise, and attentiveness are things that are issues with some of our youth...just as there are issues in these areas with some of our adults. As adults, not only do we have to recognize ourselves as role models and demonstrate the things that we expect from kids such as grit and healthy choices, we must also recognize that there is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">much to learn from our youth and what they model through their actions</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, specifically when it comes to dreaming of new ideas without the the 'experiential baggage' acquired from a vastly different era.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Call me Polyanna, but perhaps we can re-jig the "Kids.."statements to things like...</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids these days have a tremendous amount of grit when they are given tasks that challenge and engage them."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids will use technology to learn about things that are important to them at almost any hour of the day"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids walk to school as much as we walk to work"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids pay attention to things that are important, just like we do"</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and maybe most importantly,</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Kids have no sense of reality--they live in a dream world. Let's help them dream as long as they can." </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take 20 minutes to watch Adora, and perhaps even show it at a faculty meeting--it will spark all sorts of interesting discussion.</span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V-bjOJzB7LY" width="560"></iframe>birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-78949638621533205262015-10-07T14:13:00.003-07:002015-10-09T08:49:25.613-07:00Do You Give 'Brain Candy'?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGrSB37wiIMZHpz4nRHLFE9OyIDoViLB8U8OXJMn8vVh8WhvQU85a0zBZnPCovrxNKpxg_gQApQSQWI5sQWJjnyl_7AwgC8JO1cBkCEhMHRnKBZgH7FLs9E5Cvi_JkcE1hp2CToE9H70U/s1600/Brain_Candy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGrSB37wiIMZHpz4nRHLFE9OyIDoViLB8U8OXJMn8vVh8WhvQU85a0zBZnPCovrxNKpxg_gQApQSQWI5sQWJjnyl_7AwgC8JO1cBkCEhMHRnKBZgH7FLs9E5Cvi_JkcE1hp2CToE9H70U/s320/Brain_Candy.png" width="196" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Opportunities for brain candy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Being an educator is an exciting and fulfilling profession: each day brings different challenges as well as opportunities to make a significant difference in the lives of learners. But like any profession, there seems to be a nearly endless amount of minutia that is part of what we do each day. Whether it is taking attendance, marking labs, assigning lockers, or doing budgets, there is a litany of 'stuff' that we must attend to in order for our system to run in a reasonably smooth and orderly fashion. Speaking from experience, it is very easy to become consumed with these technical, managerial bits of education whether you are a teacher, principal, or member of district staff. And here's the bad news: that is not going to change. No matter how hard we try or wish it to happen, it is highly unlikely that we will be able to tell our teachers and administrators "Starting tomorrow, you will no longer have to deal with 'day-to-day operations'!". <br />
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Ouch. So what can we do?<br />
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I think we can give educators 'brain candy'. As much brain candy as we can possibly muster, in fact.<br />
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In our school district, we typically have between ten and twenty faculty meetings per year. Ten team leader meetings per year. Thirty collaboration periods per year. Six professional development days. Dozens of in-service offerings. And then numerous, random, formal and informal meetings dotted on the calendar at various times during the year (which are not included in the image above). I would postulate that each of these are opportunities to give our teachers and leaders brain candy.<br />
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But what is this 'brain candy'?<br />
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Last week, I was watching a documentary called "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMPHPac8vuw" target="_blank">San Francisco, 2.0</a>", a polarizing reflection by a San Franciscan describing the changes to her city as a result of the exploding technology industry that has taken over The City by The Bay. And while the show was fascinating enough, the piece of it that was of particular interest to me was the first few minutes, where the viewer got to get a look inside some of the most innovative companies (both of the established and 'start-up' variety) in the world. A few things jumped out at me in these companies that augmented what I had already been reading about think tanks and innovative environments:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>People were working together in groups</li>
<li>They were doing something they felt was meaningful</li>
<li>They were trying to solve a real problem</li>
<li>They were relaxed, and working in comfortable environment</li>
<li>They were optimistic--they felt they could make a difference</li>
</ol>
<br />
When interviewed, the employees were almost crackling with energy! They were so excited to be working with others on a project team on something that was important to them. Yes, you know what I am going to say: it was like they had eaten 'brain candy'.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4cQy8CKiDkWN9M7Oc4YINPTVzgPxp8duNr_B7Ju_ooQJ6Ocaw1Uz1IJUT-bq9vfH_9UJhbaTFp3jN4j83ZoKS0zrfd3Is96oja_5LflQlC4n4w56Cr0Wpqp3AIOlBn-i1MeQHOGAV0xU/s1600/vnps1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4cQy8CKiDkWN9M7Oc4YINPTVzgPxp8duNr_B7Ju_ooQJ6Ocaw1Uz1IJUT-bq9vfH_9UJhbaTFp3jN4j83ZoKS0zrfd3Is96oja_5LflQlC4n4w56Cr0Wpqp3AIOlBn-i1MeQHOGAV0xU/s320/vnps1.jpg" width="179" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Working on VNPS</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Early last week, I got to 'eat' some brain candy: At an after school professional development session set up by our Math Coordinator Amanda Russett, I was fortunate enough to work with <a href="http://www.peterliljedahl.com/" target="_blank">Dr. Peter Lilljedahl</a> and a group of other educators to learn more about the uses of vertical, non-permanent surfaces (yes, this could be a whiteboard) and their significant, positive impact on learning. And guess who'd believe it...<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>We were working in groups (random, in this case, and randomized for every task we did), and we were relaxed. </li>
<li>We were working on a method for students to learn math in a more effective manner, which is a topic that is highly relevant for educators in the K-12 system. </li>
<li>We were very comfortable--we were standing up together, able to move, fidget, write, chat, stretch and self-regulate the whole time. There were some snacks and coffee within arms reach as well. </li>
<li>We were hugely optimistic--we were 'learning by doing', and experiencing success ourselves with Peter's ideas and techniques, and could immediately see their application in any learning setting. </li>
</ul>
And next thing you know, an hour had passed in the blink of an eye, and we were still going. And going. And going. And for those who judge activities in a slightly more 'millenial' fashion? Not one person looked at or picked up their cell phone the entire time. <br />
<br />
Brain candy.<br />
<br />
Later last week, along with our staff at the Henry Grube Education Center, I was charged with the task of taking a group of more than 100 teachers and administrators through an exercise that would get their hands on the exciting new competency based curriculum being unveiled in BC in 2016. So how could we make this 'brain candy' for the participants? We could have handed out a paper copy of the document, or had people look through it on their devices to see what had changed from the last document. However, we felt that would have been like 'brain Brussels sprouts' (with all due respect to those few people who like those things--ugh).<br />
<br />
But instead we...<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Had a key address from our Superintendent saying how excited he was for the day.</li>
<li>Sat people comfortable chairs at round tables, in groups, and had food and beverages available to them within arms' reach</li>
<li>Started with an interactive warm up competition by Tech Coordinator <a href="https://twitter.com/tracypoelzer" target="_blank">Tracy Poelzer</a> where groups had to come up with a sexy name for the new curriculum and vote a winner using <a href="http://www.socrative.com/" target="_blank">Socrative</a> (I believe the winner was "50 Shades of Learning".)</li>
<li>Began <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_mgUUqKVoAVCd18duxF97c5WQozc1sZVREP8z_GlmcY/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">the presentation</a> by showing a fun video (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZBB9jU5Syc" target="_blank">Jeff Gordon's Pepsi Max 'Test Drive'</a>), a clip that has a great deal of symbolism in terms of our new curriculum, someone who was 'ready to take our new curriculum for a spin', and someone who was a bit of a 'nervous passenger'.</li>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKauxvpajyLfVXiAu4NCzmPxKxsaaOnhisY-bt7R50K-C33IChtjPMLdcxuYnq4A04QW6boNUDDwxPcL1aDMcIzK_eIVopaHwMfLJ_Uj1gc1nlmZ1uspem6bPQZzqnwYuhnFYUqGVRi3w/s1600/EdplanPD1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKauxvpajyLfVXiAu4NCzmPxKxsaaOnhisY-bt7R50K-C33IChtjPMLdcxuYnq4A04QW6boNUDDwxPcL1aDMcIzK_eIVopaHwMfLJ_Uj1gc1nlmZ1uspem6bPQZzqnwYuhnFYUqGVRi3w/s320/EdplanPD1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px; text-align: center;">Groups working on VNPS - productive, messy and fun!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<li>Did a jigsaw, where each group member had to go out and become an expert on one part of the curriculum and then bring back their knowledge to the group in the form of an 'elevator speech'.</li>
<li>Had vertical, non-permanent spaces for people to write their ideas about how they might do this in their own school.</li>
<li>Had them work on <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lb7K5IsDlf5b-x0rzpxSkpoLuzbFaOm6aRT98ZRCZ_w/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">collaborative document</a> as a large group to crowd-source ideas (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbe5S6sG6GA" target="_blank">see the screencast here</a>) on what excited them about the new curriculum, what concerned them, and what they felt they needed to implement this curriculum in an effective way going forward.</li>
<li>Finished with another online Kahoot where groups were quizzed on the parts of the new curriculum plan.</li>
</ol>
<div>
And we did this on a Friday afternoon! Friday afternoon is a great time, by the way--people are less encumbered with thoughts of "what do I have to do tomorrow". The feedback was overwhelmingly positive for a number of reasons:</div>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3QdsxMfy3HDl5xQY_A-yh-DocwtMWeATiP__6WEBZB1cxDU9RF3LuqfkCtj5s_TpqSWP8AGniJV3-kKg1v8DJkrbS6i6A-OxWl5LBNevph2r5fa7zKaFe8A3JToVJoCa7-63MQoBmIjs/s1600/Learning_Beyond_Content_-_EdPlanPD.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3QdsxMfy3HDl5xQY_A-yh-DocwtMWeATiP__6WEBZB1cxDU9RF3LuqfkCtj5s_TpqSWP8AGniJV3-kKg1v8DJkrbS6i6A-OxWl5LBNevph2r5fa7zKaFe8A3JToVJoCa7-63MQoBmIjs/s200/Learning_Beyond_Content_-_EdPlanPD.png" width="200" /></a><br />
<ul>
<li>the content- about the curriculum document itself, the competencies, and some implementation ideas for back at our own schools</li>
<li>the learning beyond the content, and <u>actually experiencing the competencies</u> as they are written in the new curriculum</li>
<li>the format - getting to interact with peers in a fun, comfortable environment around a task that was important, and that would make an immediate difference to their classrooms and learning situations.</li>
</ul>
<div>
For my money, it was brain candy at every level. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There will always be minutia in education--it is part of the job we do. However, if we can take every opportunity we have available to feed ourselves and our educators 'brain candy' in terms of meaningful collaborative work that solves real problems, I believe we can make the technical managerial bits in our busy days more manageable, and focus on the things that make a difference for us and for the students we serve.</div>
<br />
<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-5363765648497290202015-09-09T10:04:00.001-07:002015-09-09T10:04:06.969-07:00Get Hungry For Feedback<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5s3trEJ2YYTY9zkMKDfbmZPyhW1LWotiI_dCYhuVxEjYpZCeG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5s3trEJ2YYTY9zkMKDfbmZPyhW1LWotiI_dCYhuVxEjYpZCeG" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
Today was the first day of school for students and teachers across British Columbia, and no matter if it is your 'first' first day of school as a student, parent or educator or your twentieth, it is always exciting an exciting day. The halls are noisy as students who haven't seen each other for 8 weeks re-connect to talk about their summer holidays. Parents are dropping kids off and playfully pretending they are relieved that summer is over while concurrently shaking their heads in wonderment as to where the time has gone as they watch their children grow right before their eyes. Teachers are buzzing about, attending to last minute details, printing class lists, and making sure their rooms are ready to go. Administrators are putting out spot fires--giving directions to classrooms, finding keys for new teachers, meeting with parents, and smiling the entire time. It is exciting, semi-organized chaos. And before you know it, in the blink of an eye, it's done. <br />
<br />
So how did it go?<br />
<br />
As tempting as can be to 'just move on' to Day Two, October, Christmas Break, and the month of AprilMayJune, I am realizing more and more how important it is to get immediate feedback on 'how things went' as quickly as we possibly can so that we can make adjustments for our school community. But do we actually take the time to do this? <br />
<br />
Over the last few months, I have seen a notable increase in the number of 'pop-up'-style surveys coming my way from websites that I search or online tools that I use. There are nights that I will be tapping away on Google Drive, and a little box will appear asking me if I want to 'rate my experience' when I use different Google applications. With 'Back to School' sales and online shopping, it seems as though I can't click on a page without some window showing up saying something like "Take our survey and receive an additional 20% off of your next purchase", or "Help us make this experience better for you AND be entered into a draw for a $1000 shopping spree" or some other enticement-based feedback mechanism to lure me in to giving my opinion on a particular product. Every once in a while I provide some feedback, but most times I click "No thanks" and move on.<br />
<br />
Right now, businesses worldwide are not hungry for feedback--they are starving. Companies have long since realized that if they are not hyper-sensitive and responsive to the experience that their customers are having, those customers quickly move on. And in a worst-case scenario, those customers don't just move on, they tell future customers about their negative experience through websites such as TripAdvisor or Yelp, or the litany of other online review sites. (Note: if you are curious about the impact of online reviews, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/report-user-reviews-have-a-powerful-impact-online-and-offline/623537" target="_blank">read a few articles like this to see how online reviews influence us as consumers</a>). As a result, when companies wonder about something such as why their website is not being accessed as much by their customers, their marketing departments and R & D people don't typically sit with each other and try to guess why that might be occurring. And they certainly don't make sweeping changes to the services they offer based on speculation. They scratch and claw to get real-time, authentic data from their clients. And because it is so difficult to access large numbers of their end-users, they use mechanisms like online surveys with completion incentives to get this feedback so that they can quickly pivot and make required changes.<br />
<br />
So what does this have to do with education? Well, in many ways, it doesn't. I say that because when we are in schools with students, <u>we do not have the same challenges that private businesses have in accessing their 'end users'</u>. We are so fortunate to have our 'end-users' are sitting right in front of us for over a thousand hours per year: they are our students. Or that show up at 3:00 each day to pick up their children, come to parent teacher evenings, and attend sports events and concerts: they are our parents. And don't forget the 'end-users' who come to our offices, faculty meetings and professional development sessions dozens of times: they are our educators. <br />
<br />
And they are all right there in front of us, every single day of the school year.<br />
<br />
In the context of Day One, we have an glowing opportunity to ask questions such as:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>"How did registration go for you this year, and how could we have made it better?" </li>
<li>"How did your first class go, and what could we have done differently?"</li>
<li>"What was your experience like during our first faculty meeting, and how can we change it?".</li>
</ul>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
so that we can make our own real-time changes that make the experiences for our students, parents, and faculty even better in our schools. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As busy as we are, I believe that we need to ensure that we do three things when it comes to getting and utilizing feedback:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>We need to ensure that after any meeting, day, or event that we feel is important, we set aside a block of time to reflect on the process. </li>
<li>We need to ensure that we are hungry for authentic feedback from what <a href="http://www.designkit.org/methods/45" target="_blank">IDEO calls "extremes and mainstreams"</a>, people who we might not think to ask for feedback along with those that seem obvious.</li>
<li>We need to take this feedback, and apply it by making a prototype that we can test out with actual users (even using something like the <a href="http://www.hightechhigh.org/projects/projectFiles/.../PROJECT_TUNING.pdf" target="_blank">High Tech High Tuning Protocol</a>) with time built in prior to our next use so we can make any necessary adjustments.</li>
</ol>
<div>
As much as these three things may take some time and planning, I believe that if we do them well, we can instantly make the experiences that we create in our schools better. And by empowering our students, parents and staff (aka. our 'end-users') in the process, we are modeling a culture that is nimble, innovative, and responsive to our school community.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
All by truly 'getting hungry for feedback'.</div>
birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-32357573260085614192015-08-17T11:18:00.000-07:002017-02-04T11:34:21.925-08:00What Are The EXPERIENCES You Create?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;">
</div>
<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR4_7yV0oUl97_mmAYEOEtZprCLM6uFnpRfH9G7CJU6lofpQuKV6Q" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR4_7yV0oUl97_mmAYEOEtZprCLM6uFnpRfH9G7CJU6lofpQuKV6Q" /></a><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In British Columbia, we are still basking in the sun of summer holidays, but in a very short couple of weeks, administrators will be locked in and lining up the schedule for start-up, teachers will be preparing for their new classes, and students and their parents will be getting ready for a new school year. It's a very exciting time! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">For a number of our students and parents, this September will have represent some sort of 'first' in their educational journey. A student may be moving from elementary school to a middle school or high school and having their first day with their peers in a new setting. Alternatively, for a variety of reasons, the student may be moving to a different school in their district, or moving to an entirely new district altogether as their family has relocated to a new community. Perhaps it is that most momentous of occasions, the first day that the little learner is ever going to school as a fresh and new kindergarten student (which my wife and I will be experiencing with our second child next month). Or it could simply just be the first day of another school year for a student as they move their way through the K-12 system.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Each of these 'firsts' is incredibly important, as are the 'firsts' that are going to happen for our students throughout the year...first impressions, first day activities, first assemblies, lessons, assignments, quizzes, report cards: the list is of 'firsts' is endless. As providers in the education system, it is my belief that how we approach these 'firsts' is pivotal. And it is also my belief that by asking ourselves a very targeted question, we can begin to articulate co-developed values that allow us to approach these 'firsts' in a consistent, student-centered, and innovative way that truly values our students and parents and costs us very little! The targeted question is this:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"<b>How can we make the EXPERIENCE that our __________ (students/parents) have when they ___________ (walk into our building/register at our school/go to our website, etc) SO POSITIVE that they want to communicate this experience with others?".</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Whenever I think about this question, I remember an example of an experience that my daughter and I had last summer at one of my favorite hotels, The Four Seasons in Vancouver. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am not much of a camper. I did a great deal of camping as a child, but for right now, if I am going to be out of my house for an evening, typically I would choose a hotel over a campsite. Don't judge me, I am just telling it like it is. Last year, my daughter had a great year in kindergarten, so I told her that I would take her on a date in Vancouver, which would include a trip to the aquarium, a dinner wherever she wanted, and a night at a downtown hotel, and as much swimming at the pool as she wanted. We were both excited. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I made a reservation at the Four Seasons, and let them know that my five year old daughter would be with me. When we showed up at the hotel...</span></div>
<br />
<ul><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-xOQiSJXi8-HzadTlMNR3JnZiEenldHBKaFdc1m7bGaVfvs6uSGZgcGLIBcoaMIzTGa2jDAIcbmmyTVuh4c2be7me-7xLMZi4ssWl6BjPXri74luB_RYaIU_jCB5EvdTq31Y4j5wRy8/s1600/Four+Seasons+Paige.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-xOQiSJXi8-HzadTlMNR3JnZiEenldHBKaFdc1m7bGaVfvs6uSGZgcGLIBcoaMIzTGa2jDAIcbmmyTVuh4c2be7me-7xLMZi4ssWl6BjPXri74luB_RYaIU_jCB5EvdTq31Y4j5wRy8/s200/Four+Seasons+Paige.jpg" width="150" /></a>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">we were welcomed as Mr. and Miss Birk, and the concierge made a point of asking my daughter whether this was her first visit to the city and to the Four Seasons, and what she hoped to do during her visit. Paige was enchanted. </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">we went up to the room, and on the beds were two bathrobes laid out on the bed, one for Dad, and a miniature one for Paige, complete with a chocolate, moose-shaped lollipop on it. Paige immediately put on her robe, and asked if we could just stay in! </span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">we left the room and walked back to the lobby, the concierge called 'Miss Birk' over and asked if she enjoyed her moose-lollipop, and asked us what our plans were. I said we were off to the aquarium, and without my asking, offered to call us a taxi. He then asked if we had dinner plans, and Paige said she would like to go to Earl's Restaurant. The concierge asked us what time, and then made a second call to the closest Earl's and made our reservation for us before we left for our outing. </span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I could go on and on, because the service only got better that night and the following day. And to top it all off, we received an email 24 hours after our visit asking if everything was to our satisfaction, and was there anything they could have improved on to make our visit even more enjoyable. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The point is this--our EXPERIENCE was so amazing and felt so personalized that when anyone asks Paige or I about where we would stay in Vancouver, we don't just say "The Four Seasons", we tell the whole story of the service we received to anyone who will listen--we are instant, authentic advertising! And while it is likely that there are 'nicer' hotels downtown, and there are certainly more expensive ones, because of the experience that we had, we tell our story for The Four Seasons and get absolutely nothing in return! </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Coming back to the context of schools, in my last post, I gave a starting definition of something that <a href="http://www.simonbreakspear.com/" target="_blank">Simon Breakspear</a> and I are working on-- 'frugal innovation in education'.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"frugal innovation is the co-creation of iterations of solutions to educational issues that contravene our co-developed values while embracing the 'immovable' parameters that impact our day-to-day operations"</span></i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></i></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">By considering each of the different experiences that our students and parents have each day with our schools, we are actually beginning the process of frugal innovation. From my last post, the initial steps to frugal innovation include</span></div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">developing a process to co-create their values with each of these partner groups</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">determining basic rules for innovative solutions (sounds contrary, but actually essential)</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">creating diverse and eclectic groups of thinkers within the greater school community</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So how could we apply this to experiences in our schools? We could begin by using the question stem posed above as the basis for a design challenge, and use an example like our websites for our students and parents. It might look like this...</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"<b>How can we make the EXPERIENCE that our students and parents have when interact with our website so positive that they want to communicate this experience to others?".</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I just think of how many other questions this type of challenge triggers for me: How best might we answer this question? Who should we have involved? Who can we learn from? Who are people that we have not thought of that might be able to help us with this challenge? What would a process look like if we had a group of these different people together? What might the norms or rules for innovation be? How can we best collect the information about this challenge from this diverse and eclectic group? </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And those are just a few questions in the first part of the process! </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It sounds like a lot of work, but think of the upside. Imagine creating a website for your school that your parents and students <u>raved</u> about. A website that was so dynamic and packed with stuff for students and parents that all of their questions were answered, their expectations were met, and when they were chatting with other parents or community members at the local Starbucks over coffee, they were telling them how informative and user-friendly your website was for them.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now take that design challenge question and substitute 'website' for 'registration day', 'parent teacher interviews', or 'report cards' for your parents or students. How could you think about those things in a different way? A human-centered way?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Or, if you are a teacher, take that design challenge and make it into something like this:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"<b>How can I make EXPERIENCE that my students have when they first walk into my classroom so positive that they want to communicate this experience to their fellow students, parents, and friends?".</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Or, if you are an administrator, perhaps a challenge such as this is important:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"<b>How can we make EXPERIENCE that our teachers have when they leave our first faculty meeting so positive that they want to communicate this experience to others?".</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are so many experiences that we can create that can truly transform the culture of our schools, but because there is no more time in our day, and no influx of money coming to education, being innovative in our approach to the 'firsts' for our students, parents and teachers can be a continuous challenge. But we HAVE to get started, because we <u>owe</u> it to our students and our parents to take an innovative approach to all aspects of our schools for our learners. And because we must embrace the parameters that we work with each day, the mindset of frugal innovation is one that we must adopt. And if the moral imperative is not enough, the ability for our students and parents to rapidly amplify their story about their 'firsts' and experiences through social media makes one thing absolutely certain: </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Whether our students or parents have an experience at our school</b><b> </b><b>that is positive OR negative, they WILL communicate that experience to others.</b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, what are the the "Four Seasons"-style experiences that you can create in your school?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-47692373133138024972015-08-04T12:50:00.000-07:002015-08-12T19:56:16.168-07:00Getting Started With Frugal Innovation<br />
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<img src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSRY4J-hGTPUR8SNL5JI1Mej2Lcc6lLtArVUceLUVDKcOt4jmgJ" height="241" width="320" /></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I first created my blog page, I included the header message:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><b>"It's education. There is no more money. There is no more time: there are only 24 hours in the day. It's also the greatest job in the world, so let's get on with it.".</b></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">After five years of blogging and reflection, I believe in this statement even more today. Regardless of the increasing cost pressures due to things such as tech purchases, infrastructure upgrades and professional development requirements, there has been no sudden, magic influx of money. And with an ever expanding number of initiatives being introduced along with the concurrent pressures to produce students that are creative, collaborative and resilient contributors to society now and in the future, the time that we can dedicate to any one program to improve student and educator learning has actually decreased--we seem to be cramming more and more in to our 24 hour day. "Do more with less!", we groan together in unison.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Several years ago, I was listening to Douglas Reeves speak at the Effective Schools Conference in Phoenix. He asked the audience to make a list of all of the initiatives that they had been working on in their schools or districts over the last five years, or what we were planning to work on in the upcoming year. I proudly wrote down a dozen or so initiatives that I felt were going on at our school, and then added a few that I was interested in investigating for the future. Many of the participants around me had similar lists, and some were much longer!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He then asked us how many initiatives we had STOPPED doing in the last five years. A nervous smattering of laughter rippled through the audience, and everyone quickly got the point: we never seem to stop doing anything, we just keep going.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Bearing this overriding philosophy in education, of course our plates are full! We keep going back to the educational buffet table and filling our plates without actually removing anything that is already there. We wonder why we have no money for new initiatives when we continue to spend resources on programs that may (or may not) be having the desired impact that we envisioned when they began. Yet how many times have we actually turned over all of the stones in our schools and districts to see whether there are some things that we, well...just need to scrap.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the past few months, I have seen an incredible proliferation of the term 'innovation' in tweets and blog posts across my learning network. Teachers, administrators, schools and districts are beginning to dedicate time and resources to becoming 'more innovative', even if we don't quite know what being 'more innovative' is actually going to look like. Even with my new position as "District Principal of Innovation" for our school district, a number of my colleagues have asked me "So what exactly will you be doing for us in the school district?". Many believe that my job will revolve around technology. Many others feel that I should be helping to transform classrooms into '21st century' (groan...we are 15 years in...) learning spaces, or that I should investigate and then facilitate professional development on new apps or gadgets that make life better in the classroom. Not that these ideas are bad ones, however, I think I have a bit of a different answer for them. This answer is based in some ideas that one might call 'frugal innovation' in education.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Along with friend and colleague <a href="http://www.simonbreakspear.com/" target="_blank">Simon Breakspear</a>, I have been kicking around this idea of frugal innovation for the past few months. While frugal innovation is a term that is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frugal_innovation" target="_blank">often used in fields outside of education</a>, and there have been a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Frugal-Innovation-more-Economist-Books/dp/1610395050" target="_blank">number of books</a> about the concept, it can be adapted to education with a definition such as this:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<b><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">"frugal innovation is the co-creation of iterations of solutions to educational issues that contravene our co-developed values while embracing the 'immovable' parameters that impact our day-to-day operations"</span></i></b><br />
<b><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i></b>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As a result of this line of thinking, I believe that my new job will be to work with educators, administrators, students, parents and their local school community to</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">develop a process to co-create their values with each of these partner groups</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">determine basic rules for innovative solutions (sounds contrary, but actually essential)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">create diverse and eclectic groups of thinkers within the greater school community</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">harness and increase the capacity of these groups to solve problems by developing mindsets such as those in the <a href="https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCMQFjABahUKEwj3koaLlpDHAhVCOogKHQCdBG8&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ideo.com%2Fwork%2Fhuman-centered-design-toolkit%2F&ei=3RPBVbewKsL0oASAupL4Bg&usg=AFQjCNG7otjzIZCSQQFUuVA5FZZHzf05qg&sig2=JCvW5LV6WR_IjOYvwLrNMA&bvm=bv.99261572,d.cGU" target="_blank">Field Guide to Human Centered Design from IDEO</a>, such as creative confidence, learning from failure, empathy, embracing ambiguity, optimism, and iteration</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">determine the parameters which contravene these co-developed values</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">decide which parameters are truly 'immovable', and which ones are instead constructs that we have created on our own and can actually change (or let go of, as Douglas Reeves pointed out)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">make, reflect upon, and share solutions that not only work within but embrace these parameters</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">continue to iterate, and not to lock in to any one solution to the point that it obscures ideas that can be gleaned from other solutions</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Frugal innovation is going to be my focus for the foreseeable future in my new position. In the next few weeks, I am going to be tapping in to the talents of other educators in my PLN to develop tasks and activities for workshops in each of these areas. It will be both exciting and daunting all at the same time, but I know that there is no more money in education, and there certainly is no more time in the day. But I truly believe educators have the greatest job on earth, so it's time to get on with it and embrace the parameters that confront our educational values. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's time to get started with frugal innovation in education.</span></div>
birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-84476422542889815712015-06-18T16:02:00.000-07:002015-06-19T08:08:44.154-07:00Making Marking Meaningful<br />
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<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/DhJwsCltnR6lMVpJBexa8PY0eK8rHu9afyozV0evkHQ_CH6gQu8OOZAI5ZO0Wj2aj8r_bLoUK17s9gR2WlgYJW45ThS8Tnh2xjB8BFTtmCMlCXDU_IHVO3TVg6WZg93TYyM1RH8" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/DhJwsCltnR6lMVpJBexa8PY0eK8rHu9afyozV0evkHQ_CH6gQu8OOZAI5ZO0Wj2aj8r_bLoUK17s9gR2WlgYJW45ThS8Tnh2xjB8BFTtmCMlCXDU_IHVO3TVg6WZg93TYyM1RH8" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; transform: rotate(0rad); white-space: pre-wrap;" width="400" /></a>I haven't been a classroom teacher for a number of years, but there is one thing that is burned into my memory from my years of teaching Biology and Science--I hated marking. I remember late nights in my living room with mounds of paper on one side of me and cups of coffee and red markers on the other, wading through virtually identical student responses to the stacks of assignments, quizzes, tests, and labs that I had given to each of my classes. Tattooed into my brain are the steps in DNA replication, synthesis and decomposition reactions, terms like 'carbaminohemoglobin' (I still love that word) and a myriad of other trivial scientific factoids as a result of my marking thousands of assignments that asked for rote answers from students on topics that I had just taught them. Marking was dreadfully tedious.</div>
<br />
<br />
But what if we approached marking in a way that made it much more enjoyable and meaningful for us? More specifically, what if the assignments that we gave to kids highlighted the content through topics that we as teachers didn't know everything (or dare I say 'anything'?) about? What if we used students as our researchers, as a team that was going to find out new and unique things that they would share with us and their peers that made all of us more knowledgeable? <br />
<br />
At Sa-Hali, we have a large proportion of international students: we are a hub for the International Education Program here in the district. Each year, we get students from every corner of the world coming to us, and not surprisingly, we have found that this can be quite stressful for those students and their parents, especially in the weeks leading up to their arrival at the school. So bearing this issue in mind, and after a few informal conversations about our online presence for our international students and parents, our amazing language teacher Susanne Blohm decided to do her problem-based learning unit around the driving question of<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>"How can we use our website to make our international students feel comfortable coming to our school even before they get here?" </b><br />
<br />
As adults, we often assume that we know what our students need, be they our local students or students from abroad. And when presented with a question such as this, many of us would jump to a number of conclusions based on our own needs and biases, and more 'fixed' mindset in terms of what we have experienced in the past. However, when kids are confronted with such a task, they have some distinct advantages over adults: they have a student perspective, they don't have some of the experiences that adults have, and they are truly interested in finding out what other kids think, especially those from other countries. In other words, they tend to be more curious researchers who are going to find out all sorts of things that we likely never would have considered.<br />
<br />
So the students looked at our website and a variety of others through a student lens, and then interviewed our international students to understand what would have helped them and their parents feel more comfortable coming to our school. They collected incredibly rich data. Data that Ms. Blohm didn't know. And data that, as Principal, I was keenly interested in discovering so that we can make our website speak for our school.<br />
<br />
Oh, and by the way...<br />
<ul>
<li>the students had to create and present their project in Spanish, as the PBL unit was for Ms. Blohm's Introductory Spanish class. </li>
<li>by the very nature of the class, the students had little experience in Spanish, so they would need to find the relevant content of the course that would help them discover the best ways to communicate their ideas to a face-to-face audience in their Presentations of Learning and online international audience</li>
<li>the students had zero experience in web design</li>
</ul>
Ms. Blohm could have had her students do worksheets. She could have used the textbook questions. She could have done grammar and spelling tests. She could have done the same style of activities that I did in my science classes to 'cover content' that kids might never actually use. And she too could have brewed up a pot of java to help her mark stacks of paper with identical answers until her eyes crossed late into the evening, learning absolutely nothing in the process other than how little she enjoyed marking. And we aren't even talking about what the students would have (or have not) learned by a more traditional approach.<br />
<br />
Instead, Ms. Blohm got to see a variety of different projects and methods of presentation, and she got to LEARN from her students: the students gave her all sorts of different things that the international students would have liked to have seen, and then they created websites with all of these different elements. Suddenly, Ms. Blohm was not having to do mundane marking, she was assessing something that was truly interesting: she was getting a new perspective from her students and students from around the world. The marking becomes so much more meaningful when the marker is learning something new.<br />
<br />
As for the students, they developed skills as interviewers and researchers, as contributors to a group, as web designers, as content editors, as peer assessors, and as presenters to a live audience of other students, teachers, and parents, as well as real international students and parents when we link their work to our website in a "A day in the life of a Sa-Hali Student" section of our website this summer. Oh, and I almost forgot: the students also learned the Spanish content to best communicate their ideas on their websites. And in reflecting with Susanne afterward, she said that without question, because the students were interested and had an authentic purpose for learning the Spanish content, they went light years farther than she would have expected an Intro Spanish student to go with a more traditional classroom approach. In speaking to the students, the biggest issue they found was time--they wished they had MORE time to spend on it so they could have made their projects even better for the international students.<br />
<br />
When is the last time you heard students wishing they could spend more time on worksheets?<br />
<br />
In the last few months, I know that I have been extolling the virtues of designing lessons that require divergent thinking and outputs through PBL with our staff from the perspective of student learning. However, I believe if we want to make our assessment of students more meaningful and interesting from an educator's perspective, creating tasks for students <u>that allow us to learn from their work</u> is just one more reason why I believe PBL is an effective tool in engaging students and educators alike.<br />
<br />
And if there is any way to make marking meaningful, I know our teachers would be all in for that.<br />
<br />
<i>*cross-posted at "The Sa-Hali Educational Sandbox"</i><br />
<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-32658296689314020602015-05-20T13:58:00.002-07:002015-05-20T13:58:29.448-07:00The Age of the Shiny Object<br />
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<img src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRRrveOYtwgsDco3h6Y4q2yN6JguSpFN3j2EDZw01mwDP7etlqLHQ" /></div>
<br />
"What would a school that was totally focused on student and teacher learning look like?"<br />
<br />
I believe that this is a question that, as educators, we are often quick to answer. We might talk about how the building might look, how the classrooms would be organized, the classes that would be offered, the resources and technology that would adorn each of the classrooms, and the teaching that would take place. However, the more time I spend in my school and others, the more I realize that we would be better served by responding to this question with another question, which would be<br />
<br />
<b>"What is the type of learning that we want?"</b><br />
<br />
Right now in education, we are in the age of the shiny object. Tablets, smartboards, mini iPads, smartphones, document cameras, chromebooks--you name it, schools and districts seem to be in a pseudo-technological 'arms race' in which the ultimate goal seems to fall somewhere between student learning and the ability to espouse sound bites like "we have a 1:1 tablet program in our Grade 4 classrooms".<br />
<br />
We are also in the age of flashy programs--PRTI, PBIS, AVID, STE(A)M, Assessment For Learning, Inquiry-Based Learning, and Problem-Based Learning are just a few of the appetizers in the buffet of programs and initiatives that are available for schools to sample when they are hungry to go in a new direction. "We do PLCs!" we shout with pride.<br />
<br />
Some of our structures are changing as well. We have maker spaces, learning commons, creative corners, collaborative zones, green rooms, whiteboards in washrooms, and spots to house a litany of supplies and tech tidbits that people can use. <br />
<br />
We have even created new positions in districts to operationalize these technologies and programs in schools: Directors of Instruction, District Technology Leaders, and even ones like my own upcoming new post as District Principal of Innovation are popping up in jurisdictions all across North America. There are so many more of these types of jobs today that a colleague asked me "Is it even that innovative anymore to have someone in a district who is focused on innovation?". A valid question!<br />
<br />
But before we buy one bit of technology, send a single person to a conference, begin piloting a program, or create new spaces or positions, we need to ask the question "What is the type of learning that we want?", and clearly define what students and teachers would be saying, doing and writing when they are demonstrating this learning. <br />
<br />
For example, if we want our learners to be 'collaborators in a digital age', we might jump to buy 30 tablets on a portable cart, using the "if we build it, they will come" mantra. We might give the cart to a couple of eager teachers to use in their classes, and hope for digital collaboration to be a contagion that spreads through out the school. And for a period of time, these teachers may use the tablets in their classes, but then come and say something like, "We are seeing some collaboration, but the kids are really having a hard time typing on the tablets, can we get keyboards?", or "The one cart is great, however, to get them to collaborate with another class, we need another class set. Is there a way to get another one?". And so the 'arms race' begins.<br />
<br />
Another way we might approach this could be to look at this problem as a <a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designkit.org%2Fmethods%2F3&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHu18FIZxC4JdvNHvPge9FlfygV1g" target="_blank">design challenge</a>, and<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Frame a design question such as "How might we improve the collaborative capabilities of our students?", with thoughts of the impact that we want to have on student learning and applications beyond school. </li>
<li>Assemble a diverse group of students and staff members together to think about possible solutions to the problem. Within this context, we might need to define 'collaborator' in terms of what students would be saying, doing and writing when they are effectively collaborating. Low tech and high tech possibilities might be a result of this conversation, and there may be some surprises, such as a student asking a question like "Why don't we just use our phones? I don't have an iPad at home, so couldn't we just get kids to use what they have?" </li>
<li>Determine some of the constraints that exist in our particular context--funding, time for training, time 'away from the curriculum', lesson structure, sustainability, upkeep and maintenance might come out of this portion of the conversation.</li>
<li>Interview sample students and teachers about their hopes, fears, and ambitions about becoming a collaborator, why it is important to them in their context, and what they might use to get better at collaboration.</li>
<li>Do a task inventory through the lens of "Are the tasks students do requiring them to be collaborators?", and perhaps augment this with Instructional Rounds-style observations with specific and non-judgmental feedback. </li>
<li>As a result of the feedback garnered from observations, debrief during PLC collaborative time to do a root-cause analysis (<a href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mindtools.com%2Fpages%2Farticle%2FnewTMC_5W.htm&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNFyVlhVvnGXv89A7w8zrzaGfwYzYQ" target="_blank">such as "The 5 Whys" exercise</a>) to determine the structures and antecedents to the observed successful teaching of collaboration</li>
<li>Gather the brainstorm of the possible solutions, constraints, task inventory, and root-cause analysis together to determine which strategies/technologies could be high leverage given the constraints that exist (this might include PD sessions that focus on designing and implementing collaborative tasks augmented with technology that students have)</li>
<li>Determine the collaborative technologies that fit within the constraints that were defined.</li>
<li>Pilot two or three possible tech solutions, and get immediate specific feedback on whether they helped improve the collaborative capabilities of students.</li>
<li>Re-assemble the group, and make a tech decision based on the information that you have collected.</li>
<li>Be prepared to get more feedback on how things are going so we can quickly and nimbly iterate, and iterate some more.</li>
</ol>
<br />
As a result of a process like this, we would have a co-developed, focused and targeted plan for our purchase and the associated PD that meets the needs of our design question.<br />
<br />
Wow. This looks like a lot of work. And truthfully, approaching something like a technology purchase SHOULD be a lot of work. But for me, here is the thing: there is no more money, and there are only 24 hours in the day. Our resources are precious and often scarce, and as a result, we need to create realistic and sustainable solutions that honour the parameters within which we must work. And if the process to effectively utilize our scarce and precious resources to get the learning that we want for students takes a bit more time, it's what we have to do. Not to mention, if we do this type of process enough, we get better and better at meeting design challenges in our schools and districts.<br />
<br />
A shiny object is just that--an object. And with the proliferation of technology, programs, and positions that seem to be leading us down a pathway toward innovation, we need to see past the sparkle and ensure that the objects that we pursue are those which truly reflect the learning that we want in our schools and our districts. <br />
<br />
<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-49056004514081571672015-04-17T15:09:00.001-07:002016-02-18T08:04:15.436-08:00Faculty Meetings - Learning By Doing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQiREr-10vGeH1asBFNzL_E7bbhaLG0gpBepYHYWzuc6_oGAKDD" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQiREr-10vGeH1asBFNzL_E7bbhaLG0gpBepYHYWzuc6_oGAKDD" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
Several weeks ago, <a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2015/03/educational-intoxication.html" target="_blank">a team of Sa-Hali teachers and myself went to San Diego to visit High Tech High</a>. A few weeks prior to the trip, we received a series of <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx-k6Axuf33RY0NnR21IckZrUEk/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Next Level of Work plans</a> from our<a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2015/02/instructional-rounds-what-are-they.html" target="_blank"> Instructional Rounds observers in February</a> that indicated that we needed to design and implement tasks that required resilience for our students. A trip to a school that utilizes Project-Based Learning fit perfectly into our Next Level of Work, and as a result, we determined that we had four areas of focus for our trip to San Diego. We wanted to follow up on our <a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2014/05/working-with-high-tech-high-part-1.html" target="_blank">May Professional Development day that we had with High Tech High teachers Chris Wakefield and Anthony Conwright</a>; to find projects and inspiration for projects that we could bring back to our setting; to observe Presentations of Learning, and; to ask as many questions as we could on behalf of our staff. <br />
<br />
As I said in my previous post, it was hard to describe our experience at HTH. Personally, one of the things I am trying to get better at avoiding is helping our staff avoid the dreaded "wet dog" syndrome: I know that my staff tends to cringe when I go away to a conference or PD session, because I tend to come home, stand in the middle of a faculty meeting, and "shake off" the new ideas like a Labrador Retriever coming out of a lake. Not to mention, I could imagine little worse than simply sitting and listening to a group who had just returned from a trip to San Diego wax poetically about all the great things about a school other than our own. Ugh.<br />
<br />
With this thought in mind. I approached our HTH Exploratory Team with my usual "shortest question possible" (the idea I steal over and over again from the TED talk which has had a tremendous influence on me--<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qocAoN4jNwc" target="_blank">Dan Meyer's 'Math Class Needs a Makeover'</a>). My short question was "How do we help our staff <u>experience</u> what we observed at High Tech High?". I have found that when you involve a group of people with the mindset of "How would I learn this best?" around a short question, they tend to come up with tremendous ideas--and again, I was not disappointed.<br />
<br />
Three of main themes that we observed at HTH were:<br />
<ul>
<li>a relaxed, can-do, and collaborative environment attitude where educators help one another </li>
<li>peer-editing and iteration based in 'warm' and 'cool' feedback</li>
<li>a selfless, 'service to others' mentality</li>
<li>everything with purpose</li>
</ul>
<div>
But how could we re-create these themes at a faculty meeting? A couple of things fell in to place for us: first of all, our team of teachers that went to HTH were champing at the bit to get started on some projects in their classes, and secondly, we were in the process of co-developing our school improvement plan. As a result, the faculty activities that we came up with for the April Staff Meeting (after Good News and a few logistics) came to look like this:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<u>Part One:</u> </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Each of HTH Exploratory Team member got 1-2 minutes to speak about their experience at HTH, with a <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZlXvEC5aIk4OjUyuTR9hwddvQBC2Ev8n62b0sJEDBwM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">picture-heavy slide show</a> (co-developed with another school here in our district) up in the background to provide some visuals and help us describe what we saw</li>
<li>Three of the team members presented their ideas for projects to be completed between now and the end of the year. Their projects were:</li>
<ul>
<li>Students creating a collaborative kinetic sculpture to demonstrate the concepts of Physics 11 and 12.</li>
<li>Creating/redesigning a library space where 'everyone wants to go'.</li>
<li>Creating travel blog posts about the Maghreb region, a French-speaking region of Northern Africa in order to be able to apply and get a job at <a href="http://www.worldofwanderlust.com/">www.worldofwanderlust.com</a> to travel the world and write blog posts.</li>
</ul>
<li>The three project leaders asked the staff to be a part of a <a href="http://www.hightechhigh.org/projects/projectFiles/62b71eda34c5facd43a5dbe4cfed90a2/PROJECT_TUNING.pdf" target="_blank">Project Tuning Protocol</a> so that they could get new ideas and help to make their projects even better.</li>
<li>The three other team members (and myself) facilitated the Project Tune (<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx-k6Axuf33RUDVzbjY0VVBNTjA/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">listen in on one of the discussions here</a>)</li>
<li>The staff members self-organized into three collaborative groups according to the project they felt they were interested in and/or would have something to contribute and 'tune' project for their colleague.</li>
<li>Each group reflected on the process of "Project Tuning".</li>
</ul>
<div>
<u>Part Two:</u></div>
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpmE0ElkUuk_8BZtFs4BEEx4X9zwRNa5PKzCBFkKjHoySddU-1HHvheyWttUEDcRSYUOfwxEzBG0iq_w8p6k9x5N6BXK7lntXLcJV_Wfx88HZa65Zp2aFk1PUyqeHZLYb6fD0pZpsZ1-s/s1600/20150413_162506.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpmE0ElkUuk_8BZtFs4BEEx4X9zwRNa5PKzCBFkKjHoySddU-1HHvheyWttUEDcRSYUOfwxEzBG0iq_w8p6k9x5N6BXK7lntXLcJV_Wfx88HZa65Zp2aFk1PUyqeHZLYb6fD0pZpsZ1-s/s1600/20150413_162506.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peer-editing our School Improvement Plan</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<ul>
<li>As each department was in progess with creating their <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-RIXOASw-bu9QshAvHfpWsMXTu-VmjcQiqlyEANHd3s/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">CCR (our attributes of creativity, collaboration, and resilience)-based School Improvement Plan matrix</a>, they needed a 'second set of eyes' to give them 'warm and cool feedback'</li>
<li>Each department matrix was printed on poster paper</li>
<li>Each department gave their matrix to a 'partner department' that would act as a critical friend to <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HZDAd0rSckFJUGYfvrE2ilhoPpurlstrCX3YCmwP0gA/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">give warm and cool feedback on their plan according to a set of guiding questions</a></li>
<li>Each department then presented their feedback to their critical friend group, and iterated to help their departmental plan get better.</li>
</ul>
<div>
In each activity, I saw rich dialogue. I saw people laughing, smiling, and working hard. I saw people digging in and really trying to give critical feedback to their peers through the project tune and the peer-editing because people needed the feedback. I saw frustration, and people trying to figure our the best way to articulate their thoughts to each other, and to the potential student and community audiences that will be participating in the projects and viewing our School Improvement Plan. I also saw a couple of people that were sitting back at different points and taking everything in, and that too was good: people have different ways of processing, and we need to honor that. However, because each staff member knew that they had a task to accomplish for someone else, each staff member got involved.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
<br />
<div>
By doing this activity, our faculty members </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>got to work with each other in a relaxed, non-threatening manner</li>
<li>did two different styles of peer-editing through the project tune and through the SIP analysis</li>
<li>helped each other and did peer-editing with a purpose--they did it because they wanted to help their colleagues -- people needed their feedback in the form of a second set of eyes. </li>
<li>got to do a great deal of "Learning Beyond The Content" (my next post--stay tuned).</li>
</ul>
While I would have loved to have taken our entire staff to High Tech High in San Diego, it was just not possible. And although we will continue to send exploratory teams to California as we travel the PBL journey that we have embarked upon, we need to keep our entire faculty engaged and involved along the way. By determining the most important pieces that we observed and developing activities that would help our faculty experience what we observed in the spirit of "learning by doing", I hope we whet people's appetites even more for Project-Based Learning!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>I would like to acknowledge the work of Jordan Backman, Susanne Blohm, Jen Cacaci, Tanya Cail, Cecile McVittie, and Kirk Smith, our HTH Exploratory Team. The leadership they continue to show about PBL has been truly inspirational.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>*cross posted at The Sa-Hali Educational Sandbox</i></div>
birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-6443255598442209212015-03-14T09:21:00.000-07:002015-03-15T08:26:48.598-07:00Educational Intoxication<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3_hsR4cYyAYhkCUhrbbd3f0HUG9FAjLUggHqUdUYmDJ-AFEfgnMML4USMJ5J-Cc3J-5jUVrCZijW4RoE9DBWZjrMFuaCs0C7cTrbT0pocePl7crk_2b-xu1LX-u1awlEhek7zZ2WqYbo/s1600/20150313_085706.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3_hsR4cYyAYhkCUhrbbd3f0HUG9FAjLUggHqUdUYmDJ-AFEfgnMML4USMJ5J-Cc3J-5jUVrCZijW4RoE9DBWZjrMFuaCs0C7cTrbT0pocePl7crk_2b-xu1LX-u1awlEhek7zZ2WqYbo/s1600/20150313_085706.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">This week, a team of six teachers from our school and I were fortunate enough to attend High Tech High in San Diego. Several years ago I had heard Larry Rosenstock, the founder of High Tech High, speak at a conference that I attended. I was captivated by his ideas around the equity in education, and the importance for schools to engage the heads, hearts and hands of children and teachers through project-based learning. In order for our school to begin the process of articulating a guiding vision, I brought HTH teachers Chris Wakefield and Anthony Conwright to Sa-Hali last May to introduce the concepts of PBL to our school, and to open up a dialogue about the possibilities that a PBL approach could have for our students and staff. And this February, after our Instructional Rounds observation team helped us discover that we need to develop tasks that enable our students to demonstrate our attributes of creativity, collaboration, and resilience, I knew it was high time for us to get to High Tech High. And as I sit here on the plane ride home looking back on the last three days, I realize that I will fail miserably at doing justice to describing the feelings I had during the experience, however, in the innovative spirit of “don’t worry, be crappy” from Guy Kawasaki--here goes my set of random thoughts. (I will blog more about more 'structural' things and 'what nexts', but this one will be more about the ‘feel’ of the place).</span></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-a8cb714f-18b0-0b3d-43ac-26f0b66dbeed" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The moment that our stepped on to the campus (or campuses, as there are five schools on the property), we immediately felt welcome. That might sound a tad cliche, so let me qualify ‘welcome’: people were not just happy to see us, they were </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">eager</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to see us. High Tech High gets hundreds of visitors each year, yet students, staff, directors, support staff and, well, pretty much anyone around the campus wanted to talk to us. And then, like a wave, this palpable and tangible culture washed over us.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Some random thoughts and memories...</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Students sitting in classes would invite us (and even pull us!) into their classrooms and immediately start talking about what they were doing and why they were doing it. They would grab a couple of friends or classmates and say things like “look at Alicia’s comic strip, it’s REALLY cool”, and then Alicia would tell you about the why they were doing the project and about feedback and iterations she went through to make her project better. There were dozens and dozens of kids in hallways and open spaces that would say hello and would take the time to answer questions, or give directions, or ask about you and where you were from. Classrooms were open to anyone. </span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Teachers I met (and I met dozens) in a hallway or meeting would say things like “Don’t forget, my name is Rob, and I teach in the end classroom of the far hallway. Make sure you see what we’re doing today.”. Or they would ask you what you were interested in, and then say “You know who you need to talk to? Tom. He is doing something that’s right up your alley with his kids today. He’d really want you to see it.”. And when you went to see Tom, he would say to you “Cool, I saw Jeff at lunch today and he said you would be stopping in, come sit with a couple of students!” </span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If you made a request, maybe something something like “Would it be possible to chat with a Director (we call them Principals) for a few minutes?”, our host Angela would set up meeting with two Directors from different schools so that you could get a few different perspectives. Everyone made time for you, and no one was flustered or exasperated to do so. Quite the opposite in fact, they wanted to share! When I asked a senior Humanities teacher about this, he said “I do a lot of work to prepare my day so that I can spend time talking to people like you so I can learn more. The kids are working and learning, and I am working and learning. It just seems to make sense.” </span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When teachers were chatting with you, the students were WORKING--peer critiquing, walking into another classroom to get something, sprawling across desks, and helping eachother. But they were also RELAXING. In fact, one of the Grade 6 teachers said that he didn’t want his students to “go too easy or too hard”. When I asked him why, he said because learning is supposed to be enjoyable, NOT work.”</span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If you had an idea for a project, the school get a chunk of time to do a tuning protocol seemingly out of thin air. Suddenly, there would be a group of HTH teachers who were on lunch break or prep gathered around you in a room, and the protocol would begin, and 20 minutes later, ideas were amplified, modified, critiqued, and made better. Much better.</span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If you had a question, staff members would ask more questions of you, give you ideas, give you a book reference or an online resource, and then physically take you immediately to someone else who might be able to help.</span></span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">All Meetings were wide open to visitors. I went to a planning meeting, and even a faculty meeting. At the faculty meeting, every single person made me feel welcome there, asked me questions about our school, and wanted me to participate in the activities. “Why wouldn’t you? We always need more good ideas!” people would say. The tone was relaxed, fun, friendly, and the work got done. One of the staff members led a fun primer activity about Pi Day to get people talking to others that they hadn’t seen all week. Then, in the carousel activity we did, the leader didn’t assign people to groups or tell them to start in different spots, but instead said “I know you all of you will want to make sure you visit each of the stations to see if the ideas people are sharing spark new ones for you”. And who’d believe it, people moved about the room to the different stations, dialoguing with whomever was there, bouncing ideas off each other, and jotting thoughts down. At one point, one teacher commented on the attendance to the student sign-up X block that HTH has in their timetable. Another said, “I guess we should be doing something worth doing then!”, and the other person agreed, and they moved along.</span></span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I could honestly go on. And on. And on. And in future posts I will. But in our closing meeting with our host Angela, she asked for each of our ‘takeaways’ for the week. And as we were sitting there, a thought hit me.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Many people may think of High Tech High as a sort of unattainable educational utopia. They erroneously may feel that it is some sort of elite, private, wealthy school with limitless resources and ‘gifted’ students (whatever that means…). They might be blinded by pictures of projects and palm trees, robots and resources, and some bit of technology in every child’s hands. And because of this, educators in other, more ‘traditional’ schools might easily become discouraged with what ‘they don’t have’ compared to the perception of the resources they see at High Tech High. </span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But High Tech High is not private, it is publicly funded according to daily student attendance. Their students come from every zip code in the San Diego area, regardless of socioeconomic status. The school has funding constraints just like my school does. They do not have endless piles of money or resources--they have to make cuts and tough choices just like the rest of us. Their students are just kids like any other kids; they talk, text, laugh, get bored, and have attention spans identical in length to every student that I have met.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But there IS one thing that would make me think of High Tech High as ‘elite’. There IS something that our group wholeheartedly agreed that was truly limitless in supply, and that has changed my thinking as an educator and as a person.</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">High Tech High is elite in its limitless commitment to the idea of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">service to others</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. From students and teachers alike, we felt this culture in each of the schools from the moment we got there. People were helping people. They were celebrating risk-taking and amplifying ideas for the greater good. </span><span style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.0799999237061px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And for a brief couple of days, we seven were invited to be a part of it. It was educationally intoxicating, and t</span><span style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">o a person in our group, this culture of service was why none of us really wanted to leave. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I look forward to the conversations and questions that will arise from our visit to High Tech High going forward at Sa-Hali. To try to replicate what High Tech High does would be impossible, and not something I would wish to do. Before I came to HTH, I had my own driving question that I was hoping to have our school community take on as a project, which was </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22.0799999237061px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"How can we enable our people to do their best work?". </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, HTH has inspired me to change my driving question to "How can we enable our people to do their best work in service to others?" and co-create our own feeling of 'educational intoxication' for our students, staff and community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> I want to thank our team that attended HTH - Jordan Backman, Susanne Blohm, Tanya Cail, Jen Cacaci, Cecile McVittie, and Kirk Smith. The professionalism that you showed, the questions you asked, and your willingness to learn would make any Sa-Hali student, staff member or parent proud.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I also want to thank Chris Wakefield for inviting us HTH, Angela Guerrero for her passion in being the most accommodating host, and the entire HTH community for opening your doors and your arms to us!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-67232146644703245272015-02-25T13:35:00.000-08:002015-02-25T14:07:36.195-08:00Instructional Rounds -- What are they?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTbhmZ9QZy4TX3B-IUgl4Z2DkMPzhE5PkK2RetisT-mefoKL9QF" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTbhmZ9QZy4TX3B-IUgl4Z2DkMPzhE5PkK2RetisT-mefoKL9QF" height="161" width="200" /></a></div>
<i>*Note - this is not the standard '1000 words or less' blog post--Rounds are much too difficult to describe in 1000 words :)</i><br />
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Last week, our school hosted 24 teachers, administrators, and district staff to do Instructional Rounds at our school. Over the past two years, I have been fortunate enough to have be trained to do Rounds at Harvard and facilitate the Rounds process in schools in Canada and the US. However, last Thursday was different: for the first time, I was on the 'other side' of Rounds as the host Principal. Over the course of the weekend, I had a chance to reflect on Rounds at our school. As well, I received some questions about Rounds from the great group of administrators that I worked with in Langley on Saturday. As a result, I thought I might try to give a picture of what Rounds looks like and feels like from the perspective of an 'insider'.<br />
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<b><u>Before Getting Started: Don't DO Rounds.</u></b><br />
The process of Instructional Rounds is not something schools or districts should "do". When people ask "How can we get Rounds into our school/district?", I usually answer with another question like "Why would you bother with Rounds?". The answers usually involve phrases such as "it would be good for our staff", or "we are looking for some way to see what is going on in our classes", or, "we need something to bring meaning to collaborative conversations". And while ideas like these these may constitute some of the positive side-effects of a school going through the rounds process, they are not reasons to "do" Rounds. Schools and districts need to "use" Rounds because the end goal of Rounds is not to "do Rounds": the end goal of Rounds is to help a school or a district adopt a learning stance to solve an instructional issue they have been unable to solve. In Rounds, this is called the Problem of Practice (POP).<br />
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<u><b>Developing the Problem of Practice</b></u><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lZtgtEdiYKM/VJNYj_9mUEI/AAAAAAAAM1Y/1skHJfojnHY/s1600/Together%2B-%2BAttributes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lZtgtEdiYKM/VJNYj_9mUEI/AAAAAAAAM1Y/1skHJfojnHY/s1600/Together%2B-%2BAttributes.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our Attributes Assembly - Kicking off CCR!</td></tr>
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Our school began this process more than 15 months ago. We began by using 'the shortest question possible', which for us was "Are we preparing our students for life beyond Sa-Hali Secondary?". From that discussion (and dozens more), our staff found that we needed to determine, define, and develop our Attributes of a Graduate, which culminated in our co-created Sa-Hali Attributes Assembly and resultant Attributes Survey of our students and staff. From these <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1NiR9wp7P5Vk3Wh5kLZPK8uAMVP-7mVhB6dbIv3VO2wo/viewform?usp=send_form" target="_blank">surveys</a>, our students and staff told us that the of the three attributes of creativity, collaboration, and resilience we needed 'to work on right now' was resilience. And so, the driver came for our Problem of Practice, which looked like this:<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Anecdotal data from staff indicates that resilience, particularly academic resilience, is the area where our students struggle: when faced with tasks that involve multiple-steps or skills, students frequently look to the teacher for help rather than overcoming challenges to solve the problem themselves. Survey data showed that nearly 70% of our staff were neutral or felt less confident that they were intentionally teaching resilience, or whether the tasks they were assigning to students required them to demonstrate resilience. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At Sa-Hali, we have defined ‘academic resilience’ as persevering, advocating, taking risks, and utilizing resources to overcome adversity, stress, challenge and/or pressure to successfully meet outcomes in an academic setting."</span></i><br />
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From that point, we needed to <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ztIcktmSdUObzyA9OEs-iNbPaAeKsjiVFtILpwa6JnA/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">define resiliency in each of our content areas in terms of what students and staff would be doing, saying and writing, as well as to describe the types of tasks that required students to be resilient</a><u>.</u> And as a result, we co-created a POP with definitions and examples that would tell an external Rounds team where we were at and what we wanted them to focus on when we invited them to our school.<br />
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<u><b>The week before Rounds:</b></u><br />
The Principal of the school does not typically facilitate the Rounds day of their own school--the host school works with an external facilitator (in this case, another Kamloops Principal, Jake Schmidt, who had been trained in Rounds). During the week prior to hosting the visit, I chatted with Jake a great deal about the make up of our groups, classrooms, length of observation times, and any other details for which I might have needed a sounding board or some different thoughts. In developing a schedule for observations at our school, I had asked for volunteers who would be willing to have their classes observed by a group of educators from other schools. I was amazed at the positive response--we had more than enough volunteers who were wanting to have our external Rounds team come in to a diverse cross-section of classes. Junior classes. Senior classes. Core academics. Electives. And seeing that we had 24 educators coming to do 80 minutes of observations at our school, we knew we would get a great snapshot.<br />
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It was important to ensure that our group of 24 observers was trained in classroom observation, so I gave a 90 minute session in the week leading up to our visit on things such as <a href="http://teach.oetc.org/files/archives/ch._4-83-86.pdf" target="_blank">'learning to see, unlearning to judge' and the 'ladder of inference' (from Rounds training)</a>. We also did some video observations to hone our ability to look for observation data specific to our Problem of Practice.<br />
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In order to do a final check on Problem of Practices created by schools using Rounds, our district created a '<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BiV0nsihpwJq9oFJ3hdM1mwxwh5XkMym5WMJjVRQScQ/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Problem of Practice Tuning Protocol</a>' (inspired by and loosely-based on the <a href="http://www.hightechhigh.org/projects/projectFiles/62b71eda34c5facd43a5dbe4cfed90a2/PROJECT_TUNING.pdf" target="_blank">High Tech High Tuning Protocol</a>) so that schools could bring their POP to a large group to 'tune' it. This process was designed not to change the POP for the school, but rather to modify or deflect it so the POP gives the host school the best data possible. This was powerful for me--we got specific feedback and helpful questions from the tuning group that concentrated our POP in to a much tighter lens to help our external team examine resiliency for us.<br />
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I also felt it was important to send a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WtgZmPpCynoZajAjAhvI3AqNkHimErnZ0N2nZlHsCrU/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">welcome out to the team who was coming to help us</a>: we wanted to give them information about our POP and our context, as well as logistical things such as parking, start times, where they would be working for the day, lunch, and answers to whatever other questions they might have. But most importantly, we wanted to let them know how excited we were to have them come to Sa-Hali!<br />
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<b><u>The night before Rounds:</u></b><br />
Wednesday night involved a lot of running around--I was gathering post it notes, markers, chart paper, tables, chairs, projector, laptop, school maps, groups, and whatever else the team might need to observe, make patterns, predictions, and provide us with direction about the next level of work. Having learned from the outstanding organization of logistics at Richland Middle School in Fort Worth, I have seen the importance of making sure this 'little stuff' is taken care of prior to the day--it just makes the process run much more smoothly.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKGEgu2OLdCBCjcQDTiAkZM3qr263xATwcLJxqXs8b_okpEsLoMrjioiMk9qRwYr80G_375FaKLd0NgOckYg8P9rizIjZ50aZ-xW60zOjynGpOjFkV9j-BrMDh_sjUR8EHnou8-i7hNZk/s1600/20140318_091643.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKGEgu2OLdCBCjcQDTiAkZM3qr263xATwcLJxqXs8b_okpEsLoMrjioiMk9qRwYr80G_375FaKLd0NgOckYg8P9rizIjZ50aZ-xW60zOjynGpOjFkV9j-BrMDh_sjUR8EHnou8-i7hNZk/s1600/20140318_091643.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Rounds "table toolkit" from RMS - a good exemplar! </td></tr>
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<b><u>The day of Rounds:</u></b><br />
The team arrived at 7:30, and after a quick meet and greet, we got started at 7:45. Our facilitator talked for a bit about the day, and then I reviewed our POP. I talked about the process our school used in developing our POP, our definition of resilience, and some 'look-for' focus questions for the group. I also described the structures that we have in place at our school to support student and educator learning for their reference. After a few quick bits of organization and some norms for observation, the groups were off!<br />
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Each of the six groups did four 20 minute observations in four different classes. So, just over 90 minutes later, the group came back, took a quick break, and started going through their observation data to find points that were clear, descriptive, non-judgmental, and relative to our Problem of Practice. Using post-it notes, they presented those data points to the other members of their group to vet them, and then they began to organize their observation post-its on chart paper in a way that would allow them to develop some patterns.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RQAfue0X4tU/VO4yJfmD7PI/AAAAAAAANsY/appO-4el_nY/s1600/20150219_130543.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RQAfue0X4tU/VO4yJfmD7PI/AAAAAAAANsY/appO-4el_nY/s1600/20150219_130543.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Making patterns from observation data</td></tr>
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At this point, at the suggestion of Sarah Bruhn (one of the authors of Instructional Rounds who was with us on Thursday), we did something a bit different. We brought an internal team of seven teachers from our school into the process: they came in to help the external team make some predictions based on the question "If students did everything that they were asked today in the classes that you observed, what would students have learned?". Our teachers were also there to help the external team to create the 'Next Level of Work'-- a set of plans that our school could design and implement going to help us with our Problem of Practice.<br />
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I have a hard time describing the dialogue that took place between our staff member and the external team. I was actually shaking my head in amazement at the extraordinary depth of the conversations, the talk about pedagogy, the analysis of tasks that were observed, and the level of professional curiosity that each of the educators in the room had about the practice in our school and their own practice back home. There were teachers, administrators and district staff working side by side, asking questions and respectfully challenging each other with things like (and these are a <u>very</u> thin slice of the examples)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X2Jox7nrDXA/VOa-SBdONtI/AAAAAAAANoU/0UGbJD5kXeY/s1600/20150219_113619.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X2Jox7nrDXA/VOa-SBdONtI/AAAAAAAANoU/0UGbJD5kXeY/s1600/20150219_113619.jpg" height="320" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grinding through the data--rich dialogue!</td></tr>
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<ul>
<li>"What did the student do that made you think that?", or </li>
<li>"Did that task require resilience? What was our evidence of that?", or</li>
<li>"I agree with you, but how is that related to the school's Problem of Practice?"</li>
<li>"If we asked the school to design and implement this, would they find it useful?", or</li>
<li>"Wow, I really want to go back to my class and look at what I'm doing in my classes."</li>
</ul>
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And in the end, our internal team saw the creation of thoughtful, evidence-based patterns and cross-pollinated ideas that we can work on with our staff to move us towards our goal of solving our Problem of Practice. All of this carefully and thoughtfully prepared by 24 professional volunteers through an accumulated 30-plus hours of observation.</div>
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Wow. </div>
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After a lot of thank yous, hand-shakes, laughter, and pats on the back that I find comes from a day collective hard work and struggle, our facilitator (Jake), Sarah and I debriefed on the day. We chatted about things that we could have changed, timing, groupings, and anything that we could think of. I also shared the feedback that I had already received from a couple of our staff members who were observed that day:</div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-a7442460-c2a9-802d-b4dc-ffaa2088cdbc"></span><br />
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-a7442460-c2a9-802d-b4dc-ffaa2088cdbc"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Nervous at first but then settled in. My students (Grade 12s) also said at first it felt a bit weird (like they were being judged) but then they hardly noticed. I liked that the observers talked with my students...kind of wished they talked to me a bit more :) "</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-a7442460-c2a9-802d-b4dc-ffaa2088cdbc"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'The students really weren't phased by having the observers in the class. I would say they were better behaved, though. :) As for myself, even though I wasn't being marked or judged, it still felt stressful. Maybe after a few more observations that will subside and I can teach more naturally, but it felt a little forced at times. The observers were excellent as well - very respectful."</span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-a7442460-c2a9-802d-b4dc-ffaa2088cdbc">
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"It was a great experience. Some students felt intimidated at first, but gradually warmed up to the process. They said it was cool and would do it again."</span></span></div>
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We chatted for a bit longer, I made a pile of notes, and the day was done. And everyone was exhausted (or at least I was)! </div>
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Looking forward to our upcoming faculty meeting this Monday, we are going to try a different method of working through the data with our staff, and we are confident that a number of the suggestions we got from our Rounds volunteers will help to shape where we want to go relative to our vision. I will post about that next week, so stay tuned.</div>
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<b><u>In summary:</u></b></div>
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Rounds continues to be the most powerful learning experience that I engage in as a Principal, and I only wish I would have been able to do it when I was teaching. As a participant, as a facilitator, and now as a host administrator, I have seen the learning that has taken place by the observation team, the internal team, and the host school. I find the process of Rounds to be unique and transformational in its ability to focus people on a specific problem. If you have an instructional challenge in your school that you would like a new set of eyes to look at, Rounds might just be a mechanism that works for you!</div>
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<i>Cross-posted at the Sa-Hali Educational Sandbox</i></div>
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<br />birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179740565267828546.post-90726754996953979382015-01-30T15:38:00.000-08:002015-02-01T08:22:54.065-08:00Authentic Accountability<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTT8mHzkDf4lqtOEDpyhRcF8APmGn0pCmuYbruwf6D2BrxosEXP" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTT8mHzkDf4lqtOEDpyhRcF8APmGn0pCmuYbruwf6D2BrxosEXP" /></a></div>
New Year's Resolutions are always interesting to me. Typically, I would make a whole host of lofty proclamations on December 31st to a few vaguely interested peers who themselves would be unlikely to repeat a single one my goals more than three minutes later. For a few days or perhaps even weeks after I might pull the kids' snowsuits off of the treadmill, eat quinoa every meal, and drink sixteen cups of water a day in an attempt to squeeze into clothes that I purchased at a time when I believed the scale in the bathroom was much more accurate than at present. However, after a few weeks, much like the resolutions that I had made to a couple of buddies, my efforts would fade, and I would be right back where I was prior to the start of the year. Pass the cured meats, please.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNm63fA2fj5hYoyIPRPm1xL5DLJ1Upzw6NK4nkJoogrNwqj2ryQSAkLIf8UXc7fy9ootcD8NPBt1UTLaGUcMQMzS_QYVCa4sSEyZsKfHeyk4QN8l_HDZApczBf1dybcZeSyIfkl_rhOF4/s1600/CCRLogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNm63fA2fj5hYoyIPRPm1xL5DLJ1Upzw6NK4nkJoogrNwqj2ryQSAkLIf8UXc7fy9ootcD8NPBt1UTLaGUcMQMzS_QYVCa4sSEyZsKfHeyk4QN8l_HDZApczBf1dybcZeSyIfkl_rhOF4/s1600/CCRLogo.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
Just prior to the Christmas Break, our school made a type of 'resolution'. After months of our faculty working hard to <a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2013/09/a-fun-method-to-create-vision-for.html" target="_blank">co-develop our "Attributes of a Graduate"</a> , we developed our driving question to help us move our attributes of collaboration, creativity, and resilience (CCR) at our school from theory to reality. Our question was "How do we get these attributes into the heads, hearts, and hands of our students?".<br />
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After our staff did a ton of <a href="http://thelearningnation.blogspot.ca/2014/12/dont-worry-be-crappy.html" target="_blank">initial planning at the December ProD</a>, we also had to confront a couple of realities for anyone in education: firstly, anyone over the age of 30 is considered to be "old" to our students, and secondly, "old people" like us are basically incapable of understanding what kids would actually find to be "cool" in terms of a presentation such as this. (That I have even used the term "cool" as opposed to "sick" or some similar term demonstrates my own nerdiness). So, we created our own "<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eT6rj12I1LxlKSUNxT9gz40mLsq7G0IiszS3slIrtYk/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Sa-Hali Project Tuning Protocol</a>" modified from the High Tech High Tuning Protocol, and assembled six of our students to work with our presentation project lead team. We wanted to go "soft on the people, hard on the content" to determine whether our presentation would in fact get in to the heads, hearts and hands of our students.<br />
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I cannot underscore this point more: the power of project tuning with students is something that truly has to be experienced to be understood. The comments and suggestions from students were thoughtful and honest, and at the end of the process, each of the students said they were glad to be a part of co-creating something for the rest of the student body. The people in the room developed a bond that day and without question, the presentation was immediately better than it would have been. It was better not just because the participants had a student's perspective, but because they were people that had really good ideas and cared deeply about their school. Awesome.<br />
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So, back to my bit about resolutions. Once we began the project tune, we had crossed a threshold--suddenly, our staff had "outed" itself. Figuratively, it was December 31st, and we were telling these six students that we were going to do something different. And to put even more pressure on ourselves, we were getting them to help us find a way to make the other 775 students and all of their parents remember the fact that we were going to be doing something different. That creativity, collaboration, and resilience were going to be our focus from this point going forward. Uh oh. Not so fast on the cured meats.<br />
<br />
The hard work of our staff and students culminated in our first ever "<a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xMnr6DxlQoFf64wv1BSZRO7Op5qjTtNrSRdVM3H1JbE/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">CCR Attributes Assembly</a>". I won't lie, I was tremendously nervous. Usually, assemblies were something to do with spirit, pep rallies, holiday celebrations, or messages from the community. But this assembly concept was totally different, unique, and untested. As well, while I was doing the introductory segment of the assembly, the rest of the staff had self-organized into three attribute groups that all had equal (and equally as vital) pieces in the show. While I had helped with providing a framework for the other parts and our kids had 'tuned' them, I had not actually seen what the groups were going to do. Not to mention, each of them had a physical task for kids and staff to do that would reinforce the importance of our attributes. Inasmuch as I had referenced innovator <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mtjatz9r-Vc" target="_blank">Guy Kawasaki and his "don't worry, be crappy" mantra</a>, and had told our staff we needed to get on with it, this was getting a bit crazy. It was all on the line in front of 775 kids! We couldn't walk away from this New Year's resolution--aka. #thisishappening<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Together - Attributes.jpg" height="160" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/bqpYJG0O2U2dhQHUCm98iIio7E6KKMqUpOatrw7ZxkEWFuQ_alltwRtQau4FZCTXJnQRT1zoPcNf87Ne6bJ5g8qRkRL0_vxKO2MdqvhwCyyhbgmrxNkdV-m6YoJIMfgS3F1Y" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our culminating symbol for resilience--WE will do this TOGETHER.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...and it all came together. The whole school came together because we all did it together, for each other and in front of each other. And it was awesome. <br />
<br />
This process has made me question what authentic accountability really means. As a staff, a lead team, and a project-tuning team, we were accountable to each other. We were accountable to a highly visible product and a large and interested group. But there were no grades. No percentages. No rubric. There was no one giving us a thumbs up or a thumbs down. There was just our own sense of pride in doing our best work for each other and for an audience because they were there, and they would be watching us.<br />
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We will continue to make ourselves accountable to each other, to our students and to our parents. As much as we co-created this assembly to promote our attributes, to get <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sqCrLT-62O1LwDc8YBnAwh1s33k7T9dS-8S7OEfV4Ck/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">feedback about these attributes</a>, and to <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1SyAfL7dgah_6LZqlDwXz4kWDqWG5N0O6QpSAfOLWduI/viewform?usp=send_form" target="_blank">find out where our students</a> and <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Wjdb2KjsLVvCWyx-gEzLWtMZsoACrFELiDKsj0vUQA0/viewform?usp=send_form" target="_blank">staff</a> wanted to get started with these attributes, we also are creating our <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ws0kATWNcQoqiTPK5GrT_duGC-Hk1gym5SqlfPDJrWE/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">plan to develop these attributes</a> that we will project tune with another group of students and parents so we can make our vision of a graduate become a reality for every one of our students. And by creating our <u>own</u> authentic accountability checkpoints to eachother and to our community, we can avoid CCR becoming little more than a New Year's Resolution and keep ourselves on track to achieve our goal of producing graduates that are creative, collaborative, and resilient.birklearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07368990673349142540noreply@blogger.com0