Learning Can't Wait

The more I think about new initiatives and changing education, the more I believe that Dan Weiden got it right.

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...

"Just Do It"

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?

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.

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.

But there is one other clear and immutable fact, and it comes from Saul Kaplan (@skap5), 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:

A decade is a terrible thing to waste.

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 just do it".

A couple of years ago, I was having lunch with colleague and friend Chris Kennedy (@chrkennedy), 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.".

#simple

But let's quickly dispense with the false dichotomies that inevitably will follow.  So does that mean that we should do everything?  No.

Say 'yes' to everything?  Nope.

Chase after every initiative?  No, that would be inefficient, irresponsible, unsustainable, and make us INSANELY busy.

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.  These are obstacles that we can't push to the side--we must embrace them! (Sounds a lot like 'Frugal Innovation')

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.

What will students say, do  and write?

1. Co-create a vision for your learner (this could be a student, teacher, support staff member, administrator, or even a parent in the community)
2. 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.)
3. Determine your learner's current reality through observations by a team of educators that provide specific, descriptive, and non-judgmental feedback relative to your vision using a network-based approach like Instructional Rounds (and come to the Rounds Institute in Kamloops in April with dozens of other fantastic educators!)
4. Co-design potential solutions 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.
5. 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 just do it".

Because learning can't wait, our students can't wait, and neither can we.

Would I Want to Do This?

"Would I want to do this?"

What if we approached lesson development for our classes with this simple question?  When I ask groups that I work with to come up with the conditions that make up their "learn best whens" for students, typically the participants come up with something that looks like this (this one is taken from a session in Texas earlier this year):

'Engaged' is a term that pops out of the page, as does 'interested', 'challenged', and 'supported'.  If we agree that students need to be engaged, it is not a stretch for us to believe that part of engaging students is creating activities that they actually WANT to do.

Many might scoff at this idea.  "There are always things in life that we have to do, whether we like them or not!" some would say, and I couldn't agree more--there will be lots of things in life that are less than pleasant for us to do.  But it's not a dichotomy, is it?

Wouldn't it be better if school had as many engaging things for students to do as we could possibly come up with?  Yes, it is unrealistic for us to believe that our students are going to want to do absolutely everything in school (some of the Grade 9 Science activities I assigned to students come to mind).  But so what? I believe that if we can turn more of those 'have to do's' into 'want to do's' in our classrooms, in our faculty meetings, and in our professional development days, schools are going to be better places to learn.

But how do we do it?

One of the things that I have had to come to grips with is the fact that I am not cool.  And as much as I hate to break it to you, to today's teenager, neither are you.  In fact, anyone beyond the age of 21 is considered 'old' (just ask them)!  So when we think something is "cool", sorry, we are usually wrong, and if you are still using the term "cool", you have clearly defined yourself as old.  But kids know what is cool to kids, so why not have them be a part of the conversation in lesson design?

I still think that the High Tech High tuning protocol is a useful tool that can be used/adapted to determining whether a project (lesson, staff meeting, Pro D session) is going to be compelling for a target audience.  But a key component of this protocol is to have representation from the target audience!  Having our students involved in determining what would be engaging with respect to their learning empowers them.  Having staff members and team leaders involved in faculty meeting design and PD days empowers teachers as learners.  Isn't that what we want?

I do, and I have to make sure that when I am designing a lesson or a meeting, I ask that simple question:

Would I want to do this?

If the answer is "probably not", why the heck would anyone else?

The Guilt From Blogging Less

This week, I read a post by colleague and friend George Couros that really struck a chord with me.  In his blog, George wrote:

"Sometimes I wish that I had more great ideas. I wonder when an awesome idea will pop into my head or I will be inspired and I can share it with our staff and get them really excited about some new learning that can happen in their classrooms. Lately though, it just doesn’t seem the wheel are turning and I am starting to wonder why. I know that I have helped to push some great learning initiatives within our school division, but it doesn’t seem that there have been any new ones coming from my office lately."

For me, this hit the nail on the head.  I do my best to stay current with what is going on in the educational world:  I read articles each day, comment on blogs, try to collaborate with colleagues as often as I can, and put on PD sessions and attend conferences every few months.  But lately, much like George has alluded to, I feel like I have 'run out' of things to share.

Several months ago, I wrote a post called "Do What Should Done THEN tell" in which I wrote about my need to provide more practical applications in my blog:

"Each day, I read countless newspaper articles, impassioned posts, and convincing studies that shout out "we are failing children", "change the system", or "do something different".  These excellent resources are written by talented, skilled educators who work in the system today and clearly care deeply about students and student learning.  And to this end, I agree with all of them (or at least almost all of them) that I have read.  But then I think about Mom's comment in the Detroit Public Schools investigative report--"I know you care, now what are you doing to show it?".

This year, I am going to focus less on TELLING people how much I care about students, education and the need for educational reform to better meet the needs of student and teacher learners.  Instead, I am going to focus more on DOING things to make our school and current system of education better and then share with others."

And as much as we have been "doing things to make our school" better, I find myself feeling guilty that my blog has been relatively silent lately.  That according to the metric that I quoted for my blog above, that I am not being creative and innovative enough at our school that I feel like there is something new and practical to share.  Rather than blogging excitedly twice per week about the new and exciting things that we are doing at our school, I find that I am blogging once every couple of weeks, and reaching to do even that.

After beating myself up about this for quite a while, I am coming to grips with the fact that it's OK just to try to make what it is that you are doing BETTER.  That everything that you do doesn't have to be new.  That reflecting on what you are doing is likely not as 'glamourous' and 'share-worthy' as when you begin implementing something new and innovative. But while not as 'glamourous', reflection on what you are doing and tweaking things to make them more functional and effective in improving student and educator achievement is likely just as (if not more) important.

This year we have changed our staff meeting format and are constantly looking for ways to make staff meetings more interactive for our staff by altering our collegial conversation topic voting format.  One of the topics that we will be discussing in the near future is the effective use of cell phones for learning in classrooms:  some of our staff members are expressing some concerns with how they are currently being used.  We sent a team to the Professional Learning Communities Summit in February to create more eyes to critically examine our collaboration and intervention strategies along with surveying our staff so that we can tweak them at our next staff meeting. We changed the format of our SMART goal template so it more accurately describes the progress that our departments are making towards their goals.  Our library looks like a construction zone because we are coming close to our its being transformed into a Learning Hub.  Our student wifi capacity has been increased and changed to a more 'hotel-like' feel so more students can use it. And I am hopeful that our District's application to Instructional Rounds at Harvard will be successful.

However, none of these things are particularly 'new'.  Yet we continuously tinker.

I still struggle with this odd feeling of guilt for blogging less, but I hope that it is because we are reflecting more.

Do others struggle with this feeling?

Wine and Education

Recently I had the opportunity to go to the British Columbia School Superintendent's Association Conference in Vancouver, BC.  At the conference, there were more than 450 District Superintendents, Principals, Vice Principals, Treasurers, and students in attendance to listen to presenters speak about personalizing learning for students in the 21st century in a British Columbia context.

Amongst the speakers was Charles Leadbeater, a renowned expert on innovation in various areas in the private and public sector.  He talked about a number of different things including the changing face of innovation with social media, the evolution of innovation from the contributions of few to the contributions of many, and the scaling up of innovation from small pockets here and there to large scale implementation of innovation throughout a particular sector.  He also described a series of thought provoking analogies;  while each was interesting, the one that piqued the attention of the large group on a Friday night after a long week was not difficult to pick out.

What education can learn from wine.

Dr. Leadbeater began to describe the French wine industry and the process of selecting a suitable bottle from a long list of French wines that one might experience were they to go to a posh and exclusive French restaurant.  He described the oft-intimidating process of the sommelier coming with a list that might have several dozen different varieties and brands to a person that might have little or no experience with wines.  Having gone through this experience on many occasions myself, I really identified with the strategy that he described:  "One doesn't pick the top three for fear that one might be seen as cheap just as one tends not to pick the bottom three because they are far too expensive.  Instead, the typical person blindly picks something somewhere in the middle, with little knowledge or proffered advice as to whether that bottle would go well with their particular meal."

I can identify with this.  I certainly have felt intimidated by what appears to be an expert who speaks in terms that I have little or know comprehension about.  Truth be known, I just hope that I get a nice wine that tastes palatable.

Leadbeater went on to describe what happens when the bottle shows up.   It is often non-descript, with a label in a different language and very little information about the contents.   I will admit (with a bit of a red face) that at times in the past, if the bottle was of a particularly dark color, that I have wondered whether I have actually ordered a red or a white wine right up to the point where I pour it in my glass!  He talked about how most people do not have the time to research and figure out whether a particular variety compliments their meal.  The French had the wine market cornered, the language of wine cornered, and did little to help their consumers because they didn't have to.  France and good wine were synonymous, and if you wanted to know what variety went with your lamb, you needed to go do your research and find out.

With many people nodding in the crowd, Mr. Leadbeater then talked about the Australian wine industry, and how they had stormed on to the wine scene with a very different approach.  If one were to look at their typical wine bottles, one would find a simple description of the wine AND some useful tips about which meals that particular wine might go well with.  Having Chicken Korma? Try me!  As a result, he contended, Joe Q. Public in a hurry on their way home from work would rather read a label and grab a bottle of the grape from Oz rather than wander aimlessly up and down the multitude of aisles filled with French wine trying to determine what was going to go well with the salmon they purchased from Costco.  This really struck a chord with me.

He then related this to education.  He cautioned the group about the current system and methodologies around education might be considered to be analogous to French wine.  In BC, education might be considered by many to be a lexicon for quality, with a proven track record of success.  However, for many, it might be shrouded in a dark bottle without a description of what it might actually 'go with'.  It might be considered to be described in terms that people outside of education are not familiar with, and understood only by educational sommeliers--district administrators, principals, and teachers.  And he also highlighted the fact that our consumers (our students and parents) right now may be looking for something that is more easily understood, that is in clear and transparent packaging, and that is more applicable to what they need to succeed.

This resonated with me.  I realize that oftentimes, I speak in 'educationese', in terms that are puzzling (and sometimes outright offensive) to people in business, industry, the trades, or to the general public (including our students).  In order to create positive partnerships with our 'consumers', we need them to be very knowledgeable and informed about what we do at schools and the value of this education for our students as contributors to society.  We need to be able to clearly articulate the skills that kids are learning in our buildings and how these will be transferable not just to something such as post-secondary education, but to business, industry, the trades, or whatever our students may choose to do.  And perhaps most importantly, we need to articulate this for our students in our buildings TODAY.

The answers to the question "Why are we doing this?" can no longer be "because you need to know this", "because it is important", "because it's on the test", "because you need this to go to university", or "because I said so".  To use the wine analogy,  if we don't put our outcomes from our classes and our system into a transparent vessel with clear markings that everyone can understand, we run the risk of our students and parents looking to 'consume' their education from a 'bottle' (educational provider) that goes better with their chosen meal (career).  If we do personalize this 'consumption', we have a much greater chance of engaging our students in their learning at our schools.

A great presentation by Mr. Leadbeater, and if you have the chance to see him, I recommend you do.  He will stimulate your thinking about education, and perhaps about wine as well!

Cross-posted at Connected Principals

Minor Tweaks

Over the course of the summer, I have had a bit more time to catch up on my reading.  And while I did manage to toss in a John Grisham and a sequel to the Bourne Trilogy, I also had the opportunity to read a couple of great books that were more germane to education.  One of those books was The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

The basic premise Gladwell makes in the book is that "achievement is based less on talent than it is on opportunity".  He cites numerous examples of this with individuals he calls 'outliers', from Bill Gates and Paul Allen having been given free computer time at the University of Washington during their formative years to the Beatles becoming outstanding performers because of a set of marathon gigs they accepted in Hamburg.  In each of these instances, the individuals had talent, make no mistake.  However, they also had and took advantage of opportunities to hone that talent to the level that has made them recognized for it today.


Gladwell also talks about the advantages that are conferred on individuals that are born closer to arbitrary registration cutoffs and deadlines.  He highlights several examples that illustrate this point: rep hockey players tend to be born in the months of January through April (registration deadlined in January), soccer players on the English National squad are all born in September, October, or November (registration deadline in September).  Gladwell also indicates that students that are born earlier in the year (closer to the January registration deadline) can tend to be treated differently than their peer group that is born later in the year.  The reason, Gladwell cites, is that developmentally, a hockey player, a soccer player, a student that is born closer to that arbitrary cutoff date tends to be developmentally more advanced than their peers who are born months later, especially at an early age.  As a result, Gladwell contends, these more developed children can be seen as more talented and get more specialized training than the younger members of their cohort group.

Gladwell makes the point that we are neglecting the talent pool in the other 'half' of the year.  Imagine, he says, how talented our Canadian hockey teams would be if we had a hockey registration date and league for those children born in January AND another league for those born after June, complete with separate rep teams and specialized coaching for each of the different groups?  He goes on to wonder why we don't do something like this in schools.
While I don't agree with all of the points that Gladwell makes in his book, his observations about the registration deadline determining the grade cohort for children in schools made me think.  Why do we have one registration date for children?  Moreover, why do we organize schools according to age?  I know this is being general, and there are many exceptions, but are we able to accomodate the developmental differences between a kindergarten student born on January 2nd and another born on December 20th?  Could we re-organize schools to enable us to meet the needs of children more effectively, by perhaps having asynchronous starting points for our young students to meet them where they are at developmentally?  Are there other changes to schedules, reporting methods, or other small, subtle, technical parts of education that we are overlooking that could have notable effects on student learning?

I believe that meeting the diverse needs of our learners is foundational to the movement towards personalized, 21st Century learning.  I also believe that discovering a student's talents and then providing them with opportunities to hone and showcase those talents is another cornerstone of personalized learning.  But without oversimplifying the issue, I often wonder if there are not some simpler steps that we can take (such as those that Gladwell suggests) that might help us cultivate the talents of each of the students in our school.  To provide them with those exceptional opportunities afforded those like the Beatles, Paul Allen, and Bill Gates.  Are there easier ways that we can make all of our students "outliers"?

I enjoy thinking about big picture ideas for education, and trying to implement major, multifaceted initiatives that will positively impact each of our partner groups.  Yet sometimes I wonder if we overlook some of the minor tweaks we could make to day-to-day operational items that could have a major and positive impact on our students.

I think it is worth a peek.