Category: Change in Education

Why we are failing and What Can We Do About it? #TeachSDGs

Why we are failing and What Can We Do About it? #TeachSDGs

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As I look out my window, my heart sinks as I can see that it’s an extraordinarily polluted day here in Laos. This landlocked country, sandwiched between the biggest manufacturing countries in Asia-China and Vietnam- doesn’t stand much of a chance of having “fresh air” during its dry season, especially when it does its own agricultural burning, adding to the mix of the smog. I was reminded the other day that other countries like America and England were in the same boat, not that long ago, except its citizens didn’t know any better. Now, politicians want to summon all those factories back on their lands, not realizing that when we shut down all those manufacturing plants, we outsourced our pollution as well.

As I consider this, I think this is evidence of our failure in education. How come we keep doing the same things and keep expecting different results? Isn’t this the definition of insanity?

Although there are pockets of societies in isolation, it’s hard to believe that the majority of us deny the responsibility in polluting the very environment we share with others. I remember thinking that students should learn the way I taught- they should adjust to me. I could not have been more wrong. A great teacher adjust to the learner, not the other way around (5)Why don’t we care more? Why can’t we change? Why is money more important than well-being and health? Can’t we evolve our political systems to match the global needs of society vs. the interests of business?

Recently someone connected with me on Twitter and then apologized for reaching out because we have different interests. He: Politics and Leadership. Me: Education. However, in my mind, politics IS an education problem and vice-versa–whether you teach little ones or adults. Politicians are always “getting their message out”, trying to shape and form the opinion of their constituents, and our news channels, who purport to be “fair and balanced” are anything BUT THAT, summarizing information into headlines and sound bites, emotionalizing information so we stayed glued to their channel. So, when I think about the future, I think about how education has to change in order to see its ripple effects, with better-informed citizens, who can not only recognize when they are being bamboozled in order to buy soda and “think like the (political) party” but to flip this behavior so that they recognize they are being manipulated and instead the “party” starts to think like them.

I recently watched this TED talk and I found its promise both intriguing and worrying.

 

What if we took corruption and influence out of our politics? Would AI prove to be an infallible system?

However, this would have to assume that we, as citizens, not only were informed but CARED about the issues that were being voted on. In my mind, a lot of people don’t care about issues like climate change, gun violence or equal-pay for equal-work, because if they did, it would place the onus on them to change. And we all know that change is hard.

It’s for this reason why I think, and I can’t stop promoting, the need for schools to add the UN Sustainability Goals to their curriculum. In this way, we can cultivate awareness of issues that face humanity, not just the self-interest of corporations, and start changing the paradigms that ensnare us today. Care for our world will deplete some of this passivity that cultivates the narcissism and corruption that is chronic in our countries today.  Over time, I believe, will transform these systems and archaic beliefs which keep us handcuffed to the past behaviors that create the problems we face.

I know that in many IB schools, we start to reflect on our units of inquiry. I hope many schools will reflect on how they can embed these goals into their curriculum so that we may start creating a future world that works for everyone, with hearts and minds who are truly educated instead of blindly following the “masses”. We need some open-minds to dream and create possibilities not yet imagined, “clearing the air”, sort of speaking, on issues that impact, not only our corner of the globe but our world.

 

#TeachSDGs: Hope, Peace, and Love in the Near Future

#TeachSDGs: Hope, Peace, and Love in the Near Future

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Perhaps it was a mistake to pick Refugee, by Alan Gratz for our family “listen-aloud”. It is tearing a hole in my heart, as the tales of 3 children are mingled together through time and space, as they escape atrocities in their homeland. The book said it was appropriate for 9-year olds, but I feel that I may have chosen an audiobook that is too harrowing and intense for my daughter to take in. Even though this is a work of historical fiction, goodness knows its desperately painful and cruel moments were truthful for many people who underwent the moral crises of the Holocaust, the Cuban exodus of 1994 and the more recent Syrian refugee crisis. Luckily, in some aspects, my daughter is unaware of history, and she just finds the story gripping; however, my feeble heart is retching with sadness and compassion, especially when I think about the immigrants in the American detainment centers, with children in cages separated from their families and this talk of wall-building to keep out “caravans of criminals” that are marching toward the American border. I have to wonder if we have no soul left in our politicians and if our societies will move toward extremism, trying to “eradicate” these despairing individuals from within their borders.

Voltaire once said:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

 

And as I consider the research and work of Steven Pinker in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, there is a reason to be optimistic. Education, with increasing literacy rates, has played an important role in subduing violence in society, and the trend, despite what the newsfeed may tell us, is that the world is becoming a more peaceful place as access to books is giving us a chance to inhabit each other’s minds and gain insights into new perspectives and cultural realities.  Our hearts are growing alongside our brains and evolving to become more empathetic. Clearly, as I read the book Refugee, I am embodying this experience and can definitely testify the impact of this book on my mind and spirit, so I can only guess that, despite my daughter’s ignorance of the specifics of these situations, she is opening her mind to the point of views of others and the resilience of the human spirit.

agreessionMoreover, my daughter, like so many of children her age, are now encountering the Flynn Effect, in which our kids are literally getting smarter with each passing decade with increased IQ scores and an improved ability to reason. This is great news because smarter people do less cruel things and engage in more humane actions. Furthermore, our perspective is shifting on a global scale from this “eye for an eye” mentality, in which violence now is becoming a problem to be solved, rather than looking at each other’s interests as a contest to be won. It is only a matter of time, in which sustainability is no longer a fringe ideal but a Science and Design norm, in which elements of our societies come into a shared understanding of the importance of developing our economies to move into alignment with these values.  What I find especially heartening is that even in developing nations, the IQ gap is closing between those countries and developed countries. This is a global epidemic and, in my opinion, an exciting time to be alive and be in education, as we move into new educational paradigms.

But in my mind, we can set an intention to escalate this transition to greater equanimity and more intelligent thought. As our process of educating young children improves, placing greater emphasis on creativity and critical thought, a direct and compounding effect will occur in the children’s brain, which in turn creates new ways of thinking and problem-solving. However, it can’t only be the methods and tools that improve, the content that we teach to children must improve as well. I don’t think all knowledge is created equal–I think there are certain concepts that deserve more attention than others. With that in mind, teaching the UN’s Sustainable Goals (SGDs) need to be a part of our Programme of Inquiry. If we, as educators, have a true desire to promote greater well-being and peace in our world, then we have a responsibility to advocate for focusing our academic attention towards these 13 goals, and even if we can’t “cover” all of them, making an effort, no matter how small, is a first start in evolving our school’s mission.

There is no more powerful transformative force than education—to promote human rights and dignity, to eradicate poverty and deepen sustainability, to build a better future for all, founded on equal rights and social justice, respect for cultural diversity, and international solidarity and shared responsibility, all of which are fundamental aspects of our common humanity.
—Irina Bokova, former Director-General of UNESCO

I know for many schools, PYP coordinators are beginning to prepare a “POI Review” around this time. Instead of just thumbing through IB documents and asking if your POI is transdisciplinary enough, be asking if what the students will be learning is actually going to make a difference in the world–does it connects to any of these goals? And if not, why not?–and How might we change that? There is no reason why we can’t be harbingers of peace through our academics. And, I’d like to add, that making these goals front and center, I believe, will naturally steer our programmes into more transdisciplarity.

It is my desire for us to go deeper in our learning, not just in our pedagogical practices but in the very context of what we are learning. If we can do that, there is no doubt that there will be hope, peace and greater understanding in our near future because we made it so.

 

What’s the Best that Could Happen? Using a Trans-Articulation Approach to Designing a Mission-Driven Programme of Inquiry (#PYP)

What’s the Best that Could Happen? Using a Trans-Articulation Approach to Designing a Mission-Driven Programme of Inquiry (#PYP)

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Where do good ideas come from? From a lot of bad ones, I think. We have to experiment and be willing to get “messy” in order to challenge ourselves. We have to be vulnerable. And, so I am sharing a very rough draft of some new thinking that I am exploring when it comes to our Programme of Inquiry. 

Last week, I meant to work on my Google Training series, but instead, I got the notion about how to rethink our Program of Inquiry with Future Thinking.  Inspired, I started sketching out possible approaches. Eventually, I created a Google Doc and started thinking about how I might map out the Programme of Inquiry (POI) based on the big WHY of a school’s mission. That became my starting line.

Excuse Me While I Make a Point

Pardon my digression.

Have you noticed that a lot of schools are really vague and general about their Mission?  I think the standard practice of trying to distill our mission into marketing taglines makes it harder to define our success as a school. For example: Inspire. Challenge. Empower. 

Inspired to do what? Challenging doing what? Empowering to do what? In my mind, these taglines create a state of “vanilla”, in which your school is, at best, average, instead of being a unique community of learning. I think this vagueness provides an incomplete map of why our school is so vital to the overall landscape of education.  Not just in our city, but in the world. We need to think bigger than our school bubble.

Back to the “Start”

Since I was present at our school’s recent Visioning session, I am aware of all the lovely conversations with staff, parents and students about “What’s the Best that Could Happen?” for our 5-year plan. Sustainability was a major theme that came out of those discussions and is a part of our strategic plans. Thus, I feel that our curriculum’s goal should be driven by what a school wants to become–the future they hope to build in 5 years.

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The 5-year plan now becomes a living document, as our curriculum can actualize the potential within our community. Sustainability, as a collective desire of the stakeholders, is going to be the “Rome” to which all roads lead to. In fact, it’s not a road, it’s a 4-lane highway, in which the Sustainability Compass comprises the lanes in which our curriculum will drive: Nature, Economy, Society and Well-being. What’s cool about this is that it’s been mapped against the UN’s Sustainability Goals which helps to promote them.

Sign Post #1: Guiding Conceptual Themes

Before looking at the POI, I want you to notice in the POI that I have included a grade level “Guiding Concept” that came from out of the Enhanced PYP discussions. Although I think of this as the tool for coherency and alignment, I love how Lisa Verkerk refers to it as the “red thread” that weaves units together. That’s a beautiful metaphor that describes how grade-level units have an overall conceptual theme that navigates the direction of each transdisciplinary theme’s inquiry. In this way, it makes it easier to map out the sequencing of units, because you consider which unit needs to come first in its understanding and then decide which one is the hardest, to help you to designate the order by conceptual understanding.

Sign Post #2: Layout

Sarah Osborne introduced me to another way of setting up the POI which has helped me to observe patterns of articulation of the descriptors within a transdisciplinary theme. When you just tilt this document on its side, sort of speaking, you get a whole new perspective on your Programme of Inquiry. Gaps begin to glare.

Although this is not a complete POI, once completed, it is a thing of beauty to see how coherent and infused it is deep conceptual understanding.

Sign Post #3: Central Ideas

I have a lot of strong opinions about central ideas which you may already be aware of if you read the blog post: Central Ideas: The Good, The Bad and The Messy. How the Primary Years Program Can Rethink and Define Them. However, I have to thank 25-year Reggio veteran Marianne Valentine  for helping me to consider how very broad central ideas are important for play-based learning as it opens up for more personalized inquiry and evolving your role as a teacher into a researcher. So, with that in mind, I have some central ideas that are succinct for a reason. Although I cringe when I read central ideas that sound more like slogans (ex: Ideas revel possibilities), they can be powerful tools in allowing certain units to go into a variety of directions and have their place in a POI.

Sign Post #4: Solution-Focused

I am really inspired by the work of Glenn Hayres, Jen Friske and Lynn Cuccaro with their diligence in writing units of inquiry that are solution-focused in directing a POI to create problem-solvers as students. I love this intention and I think it amplifies agency when we not only bring the world’s problems to the children’s attention but empower them into action. No doom and gloom. We can cope with hope. (Cheesy, I know, but couldn’t resist.)

However, this is a skillful endeavor, and I am still working on developing this skill. But I like a challenge and enjoy giving it a try.

Before you peek at the document, I have another POI that is following this approach. Very much a draft! And the one below that is another POI I created as a warm-up for the Enhancements. It’s an “old” way of thinking about a POI, but I go back to it to steal ideas and reference it to see if this purpose-driven POI is really any different from past ones I have created.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mQRFkpM8Z8V2KwRqvnFX294sm5dWY8g7dIkenP0oeck/edit?usp=sharing

 

This is a work in progress, clearly. I still have some “Future Building” to work on. But I am sharing this raw POI skeleton so you can start thinking about how your school can use these features in creating a POI template that is motivated with bigger ambitions than covering content in order to prepare students for MYP. One thing I have yet to do is to collaborate–something that is really necessary with designing a POI. You need lots of perspectives and ideas to tap into the genius and experience of others. Not necessarily with the whole staff, but definitely with the right people, can be exciting and fun.

Looking Back at the Map

Because I believe that our written curriculum is a major contributing factor to the ethos and culture within a school, I feel that a well-articulated POI is foundational for dynamic learning and teaching within a school. When this is fully fleshed out, I will have to filter this POI through that the school’s bigger “Why” and whether it will support our school’s goals. We always have to be challenging our POI. Furthermore, on paper this POI is in theory. When these units are taught, that is the really telling sign and the one that matters–What learning came out of this? What was its impact? We’d have to reflect and modify when necessary.

 

My hope is that your heart is leaping out of your chest with the possibility of how awesome your school can become when you have a written curriculum that is mission-driven and coherent. I wish for all of our schools to ask themselves What’s the Best that Can Happen?

In my mind, silence is accepting the status quo. Please challenge and extend my thinking in the comments below.

 

Future Thinking: Evolving as a Part of Enhancing A #PYP Programme of Inquiry

Future Thinking: Evolving as a Part of Enhancing A #PYP Programme of Inquiry

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Not everyone wakes up on a Sunday morning and sketches out ideas for a Programme of Inquiry (POI), but I’ve been reflecting for a while on my experience from last spring when I went to the IB’s headquarters in the Hague to help design sample POIs for the Enhanced PYP initiative (see the Teacher Support Materials that can be accessed in the MyIB section of the main page for those samples in PYP resources). During that time, our teams sat down and began to create POIs that were structurally synergistic, organized so that there was more conceptual coherence and personalized to the uniqueness of that school reality and age group. In the blog post, #PYP: What is a Successful Programme of Inquiry?, I articulated the intention that was foundational in creating those sample POIs, but I’m starting to consider this definition of “success” as my “first thinking” when I consider what it might mean to “enhance” something.

Probably all you English scholars know that the word “enhance” is a transitive verb, meaning that this verb is relational and influential. enhanced pypI find it an interesting word choice by the IB in its re-branding effort. So their call to “enhance” our Primary Years Programme has got me lingering on what it is that we want to elevate in the learning experience.  Visually, “Agency” has now become the symbolic heart of the PYP’s graphic. I think many educators are painting a picture of what that can look like in our classrooms; the blog called IB Educator Voices contains a multitude of examples of teachers pivoting towards an agentic pedagogical approach. Currently, I am enamored with Rick Hanson’s definition of agency from his book, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness , which I’d like to share with you:

Agency is the ability to look for ways to cause an effect. It’s a sense of internal freedom when you make something happen.

Hmm…..when I consider that interpretation, my eyes begin to widen its focus upon the outer ring’s message of this enhanced PYP graphic: “Building For the Future”.  Should we not, as PYP educators, be contemplating what sort of future we wish to build? We often undermine our influence of the big picture of how society and culture are developed over time through our educational paradigms. Educators have played a big role in creating the Millennial-generation, and we are helping to create the next generation of global citizens. We shouldn’t take these things lightly, and in fact, I think we should be much more intentional with our power and ability to transform our human experience and life on Earth. We should look for ways to cause an effect….because we have the freedom to make something happen. For example, it seems obvious to me that the intelligent and thoughtful people at the United Nation’s know this, which is why they have created a call to action with the #TeachSDGs movement. Our schools should be seriously considering how we might achieve those 17 goals by 2030, because this is certainly one way to shape our schools’ POIs which is in alignment with the PYP curricular framework and values of the IB.

A Second Thought

As I reflect back to that Hague experience, I feel that this initial approach to considering what it means to “enhance” the design of the POI is still ongoing. If you look carefully at those Sample POIs, you would notice that they don’t really deviate much from each other. Because at the end of the day, whether we were using national curricular standards or the IB’s Scope and Sequence, the challenges with using either the standards-based vs. concept-based curriculum results in more similarities than exceptions when creating the units of inquiries. I think this a testimony to the strength of the PYP framework and transdisciplinary learning with how translatable it is to a variety of educational settings.  However, when I read books like Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly and  How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed by Ray Kurzweil, I begin to wonder if our current POIs are teaching towards the past or preparing for the imminent reality of our students. Are we, as schools, engaged in future-building, with meaningful and forward-thinking POIs, or clinging onto industrial-age ideas.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with those books, so I’d like to share a quote that persistently plagues me from Homo Deus:

As human fictions are translated into genetic and electronic codes, the intersubject reality will swallow up the objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the 21st century, fiction might thereby become the most potent force on Earth…hence, if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that make meaning in our world……Fiction isn’t bad. It’s vital. Without commonly accepted stories about money, states or coorporations, no complex human society can function. We can’t play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can’t enjoy the benefits of the markets and courts without simliar make-believe stories. But the stories are just tools. They should not become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality.

Yuval Noah Harari, from Home Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

I’ve been marinating in those words for over a year. Curious about what could be the “story” we are telling ourselves now about our future and how we can use it as a “tool”. I know that some feel that the book Future Shock is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But what if we could choose another direction, one in which we meet the disruption that advancing technology will bring with creativity, grace, and intention. I believe wholeheartedly in that possibility, which is why I’ve been working on developing online courses for well-being in the digital age. I feel strongly that we should not resist technology but instead embrace it and use it to promote greater health and improve our relationships. That is the empowering “story” I wish to tell.

And today, I woke up, feeling alive, wanting to create a POI that was bathed in an over-reaching goal of developing well-being because I think that is the “fiction” I’d like to cultivate in the intersubjective (socially agreed upon) future reality of students. Here are the main 6 concepts that I feel need to be unpacked and gone into depth over the course of a student’s PYP experience within our 6 transdisciplinary themes.

  1. Sustainability (Production and Consumption):  because we need to shift from scarcity to ingenuity.
  2. Entrepreneurship: because we need to shift from profit-orientated goals to positive contributions in society.
  3. Computational Thinking: because we have to understand the algorithms of life and how we can co-evolve with exponential machine learning.
  4. Digital Citizenship: because online relationships and media are influencing us and our society. We need to navigate this reality skillfully.
  5. Social Emotional Learning: because attention and emotional awareness is vital to our health and is the new currency in our economy.
  6. Imagination (and Poetry): because creativity is the by-product of imagination, and we need to find more beautiful ways to express it.

I’ve started to create potential POIs that take these main concepts and build them out so that the overall force of the programme is one that develops well-bing: resilience, awareness, positive outlook and generosity. It’s really hard to translate these ideas into words without a fully fleshed out sample POI to show as a model but hopefully, the spirit of this quest has been communicated and I will have something completed soon that I can show as an example.

An Invitation

Now, whether you agree with me or not about what concepts need to be on a future-orientated whole-school POI isn’t the point but I do hope to open up a debate. I know in schools that are moving towards personalized learning culture, very broad and general central ideas are highly valued so that there is a lot of flexibility in the direction of a student’s inquiry. In my own experience, I am grappling with casting such a wide net with central ideas in the curriculum, uncertain if the overall outcome behooves the students and is manageable for teachers. But the purpose of this post is not to incite discussion around central ideas, but instead to provoke a re-examination of “the big picture” of your current school’s POI and reflect upon the future that you want to create through the curriculum.  Especially in schools that have authorized programmes, we need to be really challenging ourselves, moving beyond horizontal and vertical articulation. Perhaps this is my new working definition of the Enhanced PYP. I’m calling it “trans-articulation”. It’s less about ticking boxes and more about growing the future today, evolving consciously and actively within our curriculum approach.

As always, I hope you share your reflections, wonderings and concerns in the comments below.

 

What Can Pedagogical Leaders Do to Grease the Wheels of Innovation in Their Schools?

What Can Pedagogical Leaders Do to Grease the Wheels of Innovation in Their Schools?

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When you hear the innovative what does that mean to you as an educator?

I think for a long time we thought if we superimposed the business model upon schools, analyzing and improving our school’s mission, operations, outcomes, and personnel, we’d produce high-performance metrics and fiscal efficiency. Gains in test scores and budget expectations would be innovation in itself, but as we examine the high-stress that the high-stakes initiatives have created, it’s hard to call this improvement in education. In fact, I think this approach has been demonized rather than lauded, and countries like New Zealand are backing off standards-based approaches and beginning to embrace a competency-based model of student achievement, as personalized learning is beginning to become more of a focus. I know there a quite a few schools that question “What is school?” and are moving away from classrooms into “studios” while other schools would be better off calling themselves “resorts” in which the whole school timetable is collapsed, and children are at complete choice. Yet there are other schools such as these in America, that look at this same question, “What is school?” and has defined it differently, expanding it beyond the school campus, and look at how they can connect more to nature and their local community for an authentic experience of learning. I think several of these schools ask a more interesting question, instead of “What is school?”, “What is worth learning?” 

deweyLet me explain a bit: recently I sat down with a Grade 11 student to explain how gene therapy works for her Personal Project on cancer treatments (Previous to teaching, I aspired to get my Ph.D. in Genetics and conducted gene therapy research). But as I was chatting with her, discussing the biological mechanism of the treatment strategies, I really wanted to pull out some literature on epigenetics, an emerging field that demonstrates that we have more control over our genetics than we think–a paradigm that I know has yet to get written into the textbooks. So when I encountered this quote below, it made me think about all of the things we teach as “facts” that have contradictory evidence which would shift perspectives and approaches to solving problems in our future:

A school’s mission is to prepare children for the future by teaching them skills, knowledge, and values, which it can only do by drawing on the past—that is, by teaching them what we know now. Much of the curriculum is fixed or slow-changing (fractions, the meanings of Hamlet, the causes of the American Revolution), and many schools emphasize their commitment to enduring truths and established traditions. Education is a conservator’s work. Good teaching is always creative, but not perpetually innovative, and while it benefits from regular refreshers and occasional overhauls, it doesn’t demand the kind of continuous updating that, say, law or medicine or high technology do. Continuity is a core value in school life.

–Robert Evans, Why A School Doesn’t Run—or Change—Like A Business

With this in mind, I think as schools begin to grapple with defining innovation for their unique context, they need to look at both of these questions: What is school?, perhaps looking at this as the operational side of it, and What is worth learning?, the outcomes that we’d want to be achieved. I’d also say that we need to consider “How do we learn?” as an important question to add to our conversations, as we consider the role of technology and connecting to communities as a component of our school’s mission.

innovationThese questions aren’t answered in a 2-hour meeting, they are inquired into over time, in an institutional self-study, and requires getting teachers voice, choice, and ownership in initiatives. So often lofty goals subtract the perspective of teachers, who are the ones held accountable to many of the suggested changes. Pedagogical leaders choose efficiency over effectiveness, and often side-step the very educators who are laying the foundation of change in their learning institutions. Including teachers in all of these conversations, from the initial inquiry into “What is school?” is not only what is best practice when it comes to leadership, but it is critical to buy-in and sustainable transformation. I can’t help but reiterate this, simply because innovation doesn’t happen in closed-door meetings, it’s a community-driven mission, and it requires all stakeholders. I’ll stop my preaching here, but schools need a collaborative approach to cultivating lasting change that has a true impact on our students.

Needless to say, this is a process of probing a school’s values and traditions and asking if they are truly serving to benefit their students and preparing them for their future. All the research I’ve read suggests that when those foundational questions are asked, then a clear and compelling mission and vision can be the springboard to transforming schools. Once that comes into laser focus, the next layer to innovation, involves reflecting on the following set of questions:

  1. How can we create the conditions for a shared vision and a shared instructional language?
  2. How can we provide resources for research and development for teachers and the time to go along with deepening their understanding?
  3. How can we create conditions for team learning? How can you adopt looking at student work protocols?
  4. How can we create conditions for institutional learning?

Common ground and understanding are what creates a culture of community and self-efficacy that is organic and supportive of school goals. These 4 questions develop the glue that keeps the motivation for innovation intact. If I had to pin a job description on pedagogical leadership, it would be to do just that: to keep moving people forward, together, for the better.

I hope these questions give you a pause for reflection and make you start observing your school’s context in a new light, surveying the current values and traditions within your walls of learning. Moreover, I hope it motivates you to start these conversations and start unpacking WHO YOU ARE as a school and start designing WHO YOU CAN BECOME. In my opinion, if more schools had conversations like these, we’d move away from looking at the 1-dimensional performance metrics and expand our awareness and creativity into new territories for education.

The Only Thing You Need To Do To Develop Student Agency

The Only Thing You Need To Do To Develop Student Agency

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Every school is trying to define and articulate how they are developing “Agency” in their curriculum, but I’m going to tell you the only thing you need to know. I’ve come to realize that it’s not that complicated. First of all, if the term confuses you, change it to “Independence”, because that is what it really means. Don’t overthink this jargon. Now, simplifying this term should help you to realize that you don’t need to create huge innovative initiatives at your school. In fact, I believe it doesn’t begin with our heads, it starts in our hearts. So what is the ONLY thing you need to develop student agency (i.e. independence)?–It’s TRUST. So ask yourself right now, Do I trust my students?

That’s a really important question so sit with it for a minute because our level of trust gets communicated with our words and actions (or inaction) toward our students every day in our classrooms. Have a think about this quote from Peter Johnson, author of Choice Words.

When you figure something out for yourself, there is a certain thrill in the figuring. After a few successful experiences, you might start to think that figuring things out is something that you actually can do. Maybe you are even a figuring out kind of person, encouraging an agentic dimension to identity. When you are told what to do, particularly without asking, it feels different. Being told explicitly what to do and how to do it–over and over again–provides the foundation for a different set of feelings about what you can do and can’t do, and who you are. The interpretation might be that you are the kind of person who cannot figure things out for yourself.

A few weeks ago we had a parent meeting, and there was a lovely debate about what was “better” about teaching through inquiry vs. traditional methods. Parents questioned why education was moving in this direction that felt “slow” to them. “What has changed since we grew up?” was the essence of that sentiment. Perhaps you could say that technology has taught us teachers that we are not the beacons of knowledge anymore–but I replied “brain research”. In my opinion that is really the heart of why we are shifting because inquiry-based approaches have been around since the time of Socrates–maybe even longer. This approach isn’t new either, it’s really an ancient technology that is making a comeback, if you will, in education. However, now we have evidence that our brains get wired differently when we have passive vs. active learning experiences. Since these ideas are still under research, not many schools develop metacognition through the use of using neurological terms like synaptogenesis and neural plasticity, but I do think that the term Growth Mindset has become more commonplace which reflects this phenomenon. Having a Growth Mindset is the key to cultivating the confidence that encourages this “agentic dimension to identity”, as Peter Johnson calls it.

So what does trust look like? We’ve filtered it down to 3 things: giving students more choice, voice, and ownership in their learning. And because we are educators, we feel the need to unpack this, create criteria and continuum that demonstrate the growth of these things in our classrooms.  If you are not sure what I am talking about, here’s an example:continuum-voice-web

It’s a great reflection tool for us when we examine the culture of learning in our classrooms and schools, but this is not in and of itself the means by which agency is developed–we are not trying to force kids into action (not that these teachers are suggesting this with this infographic but I know there are some school leaders who may take it that way) just so we can say that we are ticking the box when it comes to “Voice” with student agency. Truthfully, our kids come with lots of “voice” when they first arrive at school–we can just “shush it” out of them. I know, I am an Early Years educator, and there are lots of gentle and not so gentle ways of doing this; it’s a burden to consider how much our classroom culture shapes their identity and confidence level in these formative years.  But their voice is the expression of their thoughts, and when we suppress that, we limit their motivation to think and contribute to problem-solving situations. Furthermore, if we never offer them choices, then there is no practice in making good decisions, which means “ownership” is void. How can you “own” something you never have the privilege of thinking carefully about and solve problems around? I’m sure you can relate to this through your own experience.Future (5).png

In my mind, this quote from Ron Ritchart really summarizes the work we do to not only create “cultures of thinking” but foster agency. When we promote students making connections and the mindset of “I can do this”, it is no longer a question of IF they will take action, it’s just a matter of WHEN. And we have to TRUST that too–that time is on their side.

Recently we had a student-led Performing Arts assembly that was outstanding. It was extraordinary because every element of that assembly was created by students. Our performing arts teacher, Graham Baines (aka PYP Chef), provided the props and structure, but otherwise, it was purely the students. They’ve been working on a personal “dream goal” for months, spending break time, lunchtime and after-school time to practice and perfect the performance that they designed independently or in collaborative groups. Here is one of the fun student performances–an audience favorite:

It was such a stark contrast from previous assemblies which felt awkward, tense (at moments) and contrived, from the teacher written MC scripts to the songs performed to the order of the acts. This one was energizing, fun and inspiring. There is no doubt that other students will be eager to put in the effort and time to improve their “dream goal” and perform for a large crowd just like this. Also, imagine how those students feel with having such wonderful success, which they get to completely own. However, Graham had to completely trust the students and relinquish control of “the show”, even if it meant that his reputation might be diminished as a teacher in our parent and teacher community.  I have high regard and appreciation for that level of vulnerability and visible courage, as he broke the mold when it came to providing this opportunity to students.

So, with that in mind, how can we not only let go of trying to control everything and trusting students but how can we get more of their thinking expressed in general? Because when we give them space, I truly believe that they will exceed our expectations and their own.

Evolving Relationships with Parents: Open Forums to Open Minds

Evolving Relationships with Parents: Open Forums to Open Minds

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I’m a parent. So I am biased.

In my experience, parents are children’s 1st and longest lasting teacher. And not all the lessons they teach kids are “great ones”. We know that. But we also know that they are doing their best with the knowledge and strategies they have. More importantly, by and large, parents are invested in their child’s future and care about their role in helping their child grow up to be successful. That term “successful” looks and feels different based on the cultural and socioeconomic background, but it is a part of our job, as educators, to find common ground and understanding so that we may become united in our purpose with making our school year the best one on record. I’ve written before about how our school approaches every school year with a “prequel” to great learning by connecting with families: Hopes and Concerns-The Power of Conversations with Parents and Caregivers. However, that can’t be the only time, outside of conferences, that we invite their ideas and develop partnerships.

At our school, like many PYP schools, we have parent meetings to explain how our curriculum is taught and assessed. Often our transdisciplinary approach has to be translated to families since most of them come from traditional schooling backgrounds. Recently we had a parent coffee morning in which we went over our approach and philosophy around literacy learning. It turned out to be an hour-long discussion and debate about why we approach reading through a Love of Reading vs. Leveled Reading lens. Whether they were from Brazil or Bulgaria, Australia or Malaysia, parents were asking “yeah, but what makes this better?” I personally love it when parents challenge us. I know that when they ask questions, they are open to understanding. They want to know. They care. They are co-constructing knowledge, trying to make sense of the why, what and how schools are changing. As an educator, I love leaning into this sort of challenge.

At the end of our conversations, they got it. They felt empowered. We had given them tools and strategies to walk away with, and they asked for more meetings like this. Our team felt wonderful to know that we had drawn them in, not only as partners but as advocates.

However, we know that this isn’t the end, this is the beginning of discussions. We are wondering how else we can invite them in. We don’t want them on the outside, looking in; we want them to become an integral part of the learning community.  That’s an intention of ours! For example, one of my goals this year is to get parents involved in our unit planning retreats so that they might see past the 3Rs: Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic.  But this tweet also inspired some other directions that might support my intention surrounding this goal and has sparked a lot of thinking about how we might create active and involved parents.

But of course, there are more than 6 ideas to engage parents! This is really the tip of the iceberg. Parents are so much more than “parents”, they are resourceful and creative and curious learners, just like our students. And we have to find more ways to have us educators “mingle” with our families around the topic of learning in the 21st century so that we can expand our definitions of what a learning community can be in our schools.

How might we approach this?-I think our approaches will evolve as our thinking about our families as an integral part of our learning community evolve.

How might we know we are evolving?-I think when we see families go from a passive (or passive-aggressive) to a productive role in our schools, we will know that we are on the path.

For me, I find this an exciting time to be in education. How about you?

#Change in Education- Leadership through Design: How Schools can Rethink and Reimagine Themselves

#Change in Education- Leadership through Design: How Schools can Rethink and Reimagine Themselves

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Four years ago I made a study of Design Thinking, taking courses, reading books and trying to figure out how I could bring it to our youngest learners. (Psst…I think it’s the Secret Ingredient to Student Agency.) My passion for it has not stopped. Beyond projects and products, however, I think schools could use this thinking approach, not just in our classrooms, but in every area of our school. Why? I think often schools make hasty decisions before really taking the time to really brainstorm possibilities and thoughtfully enact change. With a design-led approach, you can improve and amplify collaboration and innovation in schools through human-centered research, starting with empathy, considering the needs of the user or the audience of your “product”. It’s not about YOU–it’s about THEM!! I love that! It’s really the whole point of education–serving the needs of others.

Here is an overview from the d.school in which you can see how design thinking is a major departure from how school leadership might undertake challenges.

design slide

Currently, our “MakerSpace Man”, Al Gooding is utilizing this approach with a redesign of our primary playground. He is collaborating with Grade 5 and Grade 9 students to create a more interactive and engaging playground with our students. Although this project is underway, you can see how the primary students are “testing” out the materials, which included bricks, bamboo, tires, and rope. For a week, they collected data of how others used the equipment and what challenges there were to this sort of play.

As you can see in the video, there’s been immense enjoyment and creativity. It’s gorgeous to see how play has been transformed through this project. Now those Grade 5 and Grade 9 students are going back to the “drawing board” to reflect and continue to research ideas before unveiling a reworked design of what our playground could be like.

So if Design Thinking can be applied to our learning spaces, what else can it be applied to?

Hmm…..

I’ve been thinking a lot about report cards lately. It’s a topic that is near and dear to my heart, especially if you read my blog post on #ChangeInEducation: Setting a Match to the Report Card? A Couple of Questions on #Assessment in the #PYP. Naturally, I feel it’s worthwhile to take the time to analyze this entrenched assessment and reporting structure. So how might we approach a redesign of this?

  1. Define: Who is the report card for? Is its primary user students? parents? other schools?
  2. Empathy: Survey members of the community, such as students and parents FIRST. If they are the intended audience of this important document that provides feedback and articulation of a child’s intellectual and emotional growth, then we need to know their thoughts on it. What do they like and dislike about our report card? What do they wish it had on there? What do they wish we could eliminate?
  3. Brainstorm: Have staff get together and examine some of the information gathered. This can be a group of volunteers or this can be whole staff endeavor. We need a diverse group of thinkers and perspectives in the room so we could start playing What If?  This stage takes time–it’s not a 15-minute exercise. Creativity and divergent thinking require research and a touch of silliness so we can break out of the box of convention. We also need to consider how we create “teams of thinkers” so we can have groups that come up with a variety of strategies. We may even want to have students involved in this brainstorm–it’s about them, right?–they might offer some really great insights and ideas so we should value their voice.
  4. Iteration: We create mock-ups of what a re-imagined “report card” looks like. (I know in my mind right now, I’d create a more visual report card with infographics or some other visual design that would communicate better than a bunch of educational gibberish that is often put into reports.)
  5. Design Sprint: Share our best prototypes with our parents and students. What response do they have to them? What questions do they have? What needs are still not being met? (Can we meet those needs?). Then we go back to the drawing board, armed with their ideas for our staff to reflect upon to create a prototype.
  6. Unveil the Prototype (Test): Staff uses the new “report card” to communicate the learning. Teachers meet with parents to discuss the report to ensure they understand the information about their child’s learning. Students need to express their opinions as well. Do they think the report card summarizes their growth and learning well? Why or why not?
  7. Feedback and Moving Forward: We analyze various factors within the reporting process, such as how much time it took to “manufacture” the report, how well did the parents understand the report and how meaningful was the feedback system? What other challenges do we need to address? Do we still need to iterations to this or shall we continue with our re-designed report card?

Did you notice?

When we think about the “Enhanced PYP”, a design-led approach naturally cultivates formal and informal leadership within a learning community. There are voice, choice, and ownership on every level–admin, staff, students, and parents (perhaps even others outside our community). I believe that as we move forward in our quest to put “principles into practice”, we prioritize creating new ways in which we deepen our relationships within our schools and create a culture of inclusion.

I hope through these two examples of our playground and the report card, you might begin to see how design thinking can be transformative in leading change and innovation in your school.

 
Digital Lunch: Using Google Search Operators to Research How to End Hunger (#TeachSDGs)

Digital Lunch: Using Google Search Operators to Research How to End Hunger (#TeachSDGs)

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What does the word “ hunger” even mean? Many of our students, particularly in our international schools,  have very little experience with this concept. They may say that they are “starving” when they are 10 minutes late to lunch, but have no authentic connection to this idea of “Zero Hunger”, which is the subject of the second Sustainable Development Goal put forth by the United Nations. corecompetanciesAlso, they fail to appreciate the components that all have to work together to ensure that their lunch even makes it to the cafeteria. You can understand why one of the first of UNESCO‘s “key competencies” is to develop an understanding of the processes and mechanisms that create or diminish hunger using a systems thinking approach. 

Systems thinking, in a nutshell, can be described as a way of thinking about, and a language for describing and understanding, the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. This discipline helps us to see how to change systems more effectively, and to act more in tune with the natural processes of the natural and economic world.

Peter Senge , quoted originally from The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

You can see why UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) believes that it is critical to use this approach in order to advance sustainable development goals. When connecting the dots,  students need to research the underpinnings of the problem in order to introduce new tools and methods that could develop more sustainable pathways for those people and communities that are facing an experience of true hunger.

zero hunger objectives

Thus it seems vital that, as we explore Google Apps for Education, we explore the importance of Google search operators that eliminate frivolous information and refine research efforts so that students can cut through the nonsense and find relevant and helpful information as it relates to this SDG. 

However, perhaps before launching into a tirade of internet research, you can share an inspiring story of a person or organization that is attempting to do their part to tackle Zero Hunger. There is a great story about the former President of Trader’s Joe Grocery chain, Doug Rauch, who went into retirement but then traded in his golf clubs because he wanted to address the hunger-related problem called “food deserts” by creating a food market; the Daily Table helps those impoverished community members in the Boston area. He is a great example of someone who examined the systems around food deserts when developing this grocery store, and his story can provide a lot of “food for thought” (sorry I couldn’t resist the pun) as a provocation. 

Now going back to Google Search……

Rember that in a typical Google Search, there are thousands if not millions of results of sites that are indexed for the content you could be looking for. It’s overwhelming and most of the time, students go down a rabbit hole, returning with very little data related to their topic. However, Google has a list of “operators” which are symbols and special characters that extend one’s web search capabilities within the Google Search Bar. They have created over 40 different search operators that help filter and refine web search results, making it easier to find appropriate and relevant content. Using one or more of them improves your web results. For example, when a student puts in the word “hunger” look what comes up:

hunger webpage

Now at this point, there are 3 predictable things that students are going to do:

  • click on Hunger by Wikipedia, feeling pretty confident that they got all the information they need,
  • or they going to start watching one of those videos (wholly off the topic, but can’t resist the urge to be entertained)
  • or they will recognize that their search term wasn’t specific enough to warrant quality result and put in new search terms.

We want to develop this last behavior as a research skill. We want to them to be thinking critically, solving problems and developing resiliency, and believe it or not, simply exploring search operators will give them a huge leg up on cultivating these behaviors.  Because, as you can see, none of these web results would be particularly helpful in finding information related to our Sustainable Development Goal of “Zero Hunger”, and if you put in “Zero Hunger”, still 35,000,000 results come up. So let’s take a look at some search operators that can help students conduct research. In the charts below, you will notice the search operator in the left column, while the right-hand side explains how it works and some considerations that we need to be mindful of.

googlesearch1

googlesearch2

I created a video tutorial to show how the search operators make a significant difference in generating more relevant and useful research on the internet:

It is my hope that you can see the impact of these operators in action. However,  I’d like also like to share with you another amazing way to do research online which works great if you teach older students (think High School) or you are personally working a degree program: Google Scholar, it takes internet research to another level.

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

All the results you get are from academic journals, so it is a wonderful way to sieve through the articles. Here is another video tutorial on how to use it:
Between using Google Search operators and Google Scholar, students should have no problem researching the local and global issues that are related to the systematic challenges to ending hunger. It is my hope that through deepening our understanding of this sustainable development goal (SDG), we can truly attain this ambitious target. I believe all of us in education should do our part to contribute to this worthy endeavor.

*This is the 2nd of our Digital Lunch series, in which using Google Apps for Education training was used to support teaching the Sustainable Development Goals put forth by the United Nations. In this lunch hour training sessions, participates were exposed to SDG #2: No Hunger and the operator terms used for Google Search. This blog post gives an overview of the training.

#ChangeInEducation: A Letter to Policy Makers

#ChangeInEducation: A Letter to Policy Makers

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Dear Policy Makers,

We are not robots and we are not robot designers.

We are difference makers who are highly creative, intelligent and resourceful.

Treat us that way.

We work in schools. Not in factories.

We don’t care about those “test results” that are your widgets.

We care about self-confident and kind humans in our world.

It’s time to value this.

We don’t want to create the workforce of the future.

We want to create a love for life, generosity with each other, and peace in ourselves, now and for tomorrow. We want this for each and every student. No matter the color, the creed or the language they speak.

Stop making us inhumane with this “human capital” approach.

It’s time for a change in education.

Yours Truly,

*Teachers

 

* I presume you, dear fellow teacher, are with me in this endeavor. Please forgive my misunderstanding if you are not.

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