Category: innovation

What To Do When We Don’t Know What to Do

What To Do When We Don’t Know What to Do

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What do we do when we don’t know what to do? This question summarizes the chronic condition that we are facing these days: VUCA, an acronym used to describe the state we are living in: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.

If I am being honest, my head has been flooded with all the recent events happening in our world. There is no doubt in my mind that our world is not only globally experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic but also our hearts are being awakened to the paradigms of power and its embedded systems that are beginning to crumble.

For me, these last 14 months have been intense and have made me have to confront myself, questioning my personal beliefs and values.
What do I believe about health and medicine? 
What do I believe about media and truth?
What do I believe about race and equity?
What do I believe about the environment and the consciousness of living things?
What do I believe about structures and systems in education?
What do I believe about personal choice and freedom?
What do I believe about gender?
What do I believe about money and financial well-being?
What do I believe about friendship and connection?
What do I believe about the purpose and life meaning?

I am still very much in the throes of self-reflection as I recognize the complexity of the issues that are rising to the surface. I feel very much like a chrysalis in a cocoon. Unfinished but preparing to emerge. I believe that many of us are in this state of ambiguity and transformation. I am reminded of a Native American Indian Teaching:

Message from the HOPI Elders

“There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift
that there are those who will be afraid.
They will hold on to the shore;
they will feel they are being torn apart
and will suffer greatly.

Know that the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore,
push off into the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open and our heads above the water.

And I say, see who is there with you and celebrate.

At this time in history,
we are to take nothing personally,
least of all ourselves,
for the moment we do,
our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.

The way of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves.
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner
and in celebration.

WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR.”

For me, this captures this moment in time in which a great shift is upon us and provides a lot of useful advice. Because we are in the midst of change, a new timeline of possibility is being created. We cannot see the road ahead because we are building the road into this new future with every thought and action we take now. Despite the precariousness of the situation, nevertheless, I feel optimistic and enthralled with the changes that are yet to come. I resonate with the opportunity for celebration.

So as I think of the school years ahead, I consider the message of the Hopi Elders. What wisdom, keys and insights are contained in this message as to how to approach uncertainty:

Know that the river has its destination.
The discomfort we feel right now is temporary. We should embrace the challenges and trust that they will lead us to a new place, personally and professionally.

We must let go of the shore
We must accept the change. We must update and upgrade our ways of teaching and learning. Using technology to teach is no longer an option–it is a new normal in how we approach pedagogy.

Keep our eyes open and our heads above the water.
There are systems that are antiquated and can even be oppressive in our schools and we must not only draw awareness to them but have the courage to challenge them.

The way of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves.
Silos within our schools and communities can no longer exist. We must improve our ability to collaborate and strengthen our relationships. We NEED each other.

Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.

Our trajectory is determined by our mindset. We can no longer view change as a problem, we have to reframe this crisis as an opportunity to innovate and accelerate new possibilities for humanity. Growth is a good thing. 

These are some phrases that stand out to me. What ideas stand out to you? I think many cultures and civilizations have had to contemplate handling serious threats to their way of life. So, reflecting on their wisdom can help us to navigate change.

I would like to suggest that the only reason we view this moment as a “crisis” is because we feel surprised and unprepared. But what if we perhaps viewed this moment as an amazing turning point in which we started to expect the unexpected and developed strategies and solutions that make us more creative and resilient. What if we became comfortable with being uncomfortable? And what if we became more curious about challenging our fears?

Although I feel so much disequilibrium and confusion, I am choosing to embrace VACU. In my mind, that’s the only thing we can do when we don’t know what to do.

Why is the Whole World Upside Down? Education After COVID-19 and #RemoteLearning

Why is the Whole World Upside Down? Education After COVID-19 and #RemoteLearning

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Lately, I’ve been reading and reflecting a lot about Darwin’s theory of Evolution. Somehow when I feel stressed, I turn to science as my security blanket. I feel comfort in the tested theories and proofs as if all of life’s unsolved mysteries can be explained with science. Surely, during these uncertain times, trying to figure out how we got here and where we go next is on everyone’s mind. Mine too.

Darwin’s theory is one that is easily misunderstood. Most people don’t know the backstory of how his theory came about and whether he actually agreed with his conjectures but we accept his ideas as a fact, by and large, and teach it in our textbooks. But his ideas are why the whole world is upside down.

The problem, whether we are aware of it or not, is that his ideas of “selection of the fittest” have paved the way for our economic principles and so much of the discrimination and atrocities in our human world–from civil wars and genocides, to acceptance of violence as a norm–justifying it as our primal urge to compete for scare resources and force “natural selection”. We’ve accepted his ideas because it was the first attempt of describing the complex behaviors that we observe in nature, but collaborationdarwinI think this COVID crisis is helping us to examine these ideas and ask ourselves if this is how we want to continue living as a species. Because the truth is, if we really make a study of nature, there’s a helluva lot more evidence for cooperation rather than competitition in the endurance of living things. Darwin actually wrote about this but it often goes unnoted.

But whether you are taking about plants (The Hidden Life of Trees  )  or microscopic , single-celled organisms (I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life), there is a complicated web of life that is the operating system that runs in the background of all things, from the most mundane elements of Earth (How to Read Water) to the deepest understanding of intelligence (Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness). And the fact that our economies are coming to a grinding halt during this pandemic exposes this fault in our thinking of our origins and purpose in life. Economists may have taken Darwin’s principles too far.

However, to not seize this moment in Education would be a terrible blunder. Especially since we now have the world’s attention of how dang important educators are in our societies. We really can’t go back to “business as usual” when our doors reopen. We need to be looking deeply into ourselves and asking if this world paradigmn that we live in is the world we want to continue into our future.

We’ve been granted a second chance.

Will we take it?

Needless to say, this is bigger than technology. It’s not about the level of preparedness that educators had when walking into remote learning. We could focus on that but I think we should be looking at the glaring equity issues we have–survival of the fittest–if you had access to technology and wifi, you got to continue your education online. If you didn’t, schools either were temporarily canceled or teachers made packets of uninspiring worksheets that put your brain to sleep–and ultimately got burned in a trash heap since districts were too afraid to have teachers actually grade them for the fear of spreading the virus. All that “school work” went up in flames. Ironic and metaphorical at the same time.

There’s this part of Darwin’s theory of Evolution that we should focus on. Adaptation: a change in a behavior or physical feature that improves a living thing’s ability to survive.  If we superimpose this concept onto culture, we call it innovation.

Innovation is often considered to be a value. But I don’t think so. It’s a necessity in my mind, a conscious decision. Natural selection is only one form of evolution but change can be also be a choice. That is where innovation comes in.

In the course, New Learning: Principles and Patterns of Pedagogy , Dr. William Cope reminds us that “

I share these thoughts of Dr. Cope to demonstrate how important this time is to reflect and consider WHAT’S NEXT in our human paradigm and our role to consciously decide as educators how we can support this transition to new ways of thinking and living in our world. I believe that as we move through this pandemic, we will also have a crisis of the heart and mind as we grapple with how we might use this opportunity to innovate in Education and embrace new ways of doing “school”. We can use the power of formal education to steer humanity in a new direction.

An Einstein Approach

Just as we are awakening to the ridiculousness of “standardizing” our students with testing, let’s not make the shallow mistake to make this about apps and tech. It’s much more primal and significant than that.

Albert Einstein once said:

einstein problems.jpeg

So, if our thinking has gotten us into our mess, then we have to revise it.  Education plays a crucial role in this.

The truth is that living things are exposed to disease all the time. That’s not new.

But we deem this a crisis because it has changed our way of living. And that may not be a bad thing in the long game if we get to eradicate the wrongful premise that the only way to survive is at the expense of others.

Because what the scientific evidence is now demonstrating is that it’s our relationships that helps us to solve-problems (code word: adaptation). And doing this TOGETHER will be the only way through this situation. We can not simply survive but we can thrive if we stop doing the same things and thinking in the same ways that got us here.

And, if we don’t want to be “same-same, but different” (same content but with a splash more of technology in there for good measure), then we need to look critically at our curricular content and school structures, while asking if it is truly serving a higher purpose for living beings, big and small. We have the power to choose this.

So, it is in the spirit of Nature’s truth that begs us to rethink schools and rebuild our world.

So what if we got Darwin all wrong?

Here is some of my first thinking what should be the basis of new standards in Education.

  1. Empathy should become a part of our content because it helps us to understand the relationship we have to our world.  We don’t read and write to pass a test, we do it to connect with the world.
  2. As a skill, explicit teaching of cooperation and collaboration should become the new “norm” in our school.
  3. Grades are an artifact of “selection of the fittest” thinking in which we rank and value our students based upon their academic knowledge. It’s an artificial and inhumane way to evaluate students. We need to stop this practice.
  4. No more, dog eat dog: content should include a new paradigmn in which we highlight peace and inter-relationships. How to solve conflict is an essential skill.
  5. Moreover, social emotional learning isn’t fluff. It’s a vital for developing human competence.
  6. Sharing is not just caring, it is an essential component to life. All life. So, the circular economy and sharing economy shouldn’t be a fringe idea, it should be a guiding principle.
  7. Awareness and appreciation of intelligence is not just a human thing. It’s in ALL things and when we recognize it, we can transform our life experience.

So, I want to restate what I said earlier:

We really can’t go back to “business as usual” when our doors reopen. We need to be looking deeply into ourselves and asking if this world paradigmn that we live in is the world we want to continue into our future.

We’ve been granted a second chance.

Will we take it?

Let’s set the world rightside up. We have the power to do that in Education.

 

 

 

 

 

The #EnhancedPYP Planner: Who Gets to Plan the Learning?

The #EnhancedPYP Planner: Who Gets to Plan the Learning?

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They say that life begins at the end of your comfort zone. This couldn’t be truer when we consider the full impact of bringing the Primary Years Programme (PYP) enhancements on board. Making AGENCY front and center of what we do is a major paradigm shift, and if you don’t think so, then your school is either on the cutting edge or so far from the edge that the thought of empowering intelligent children with the capacity to self-direct their learning is downright heresy. Most of our schools fall somewhere in between–in our hearts, we want this, but in our heads, we aren’t sure how to make it happen.

Recently we got together in Sao Paulo to discuss how the Primary Years Programme Enhancements were rolling out in our schools. So much to talk about…so little time. But planning was a topic that we kept coming back to. There are quite a few schools that are developing their own planners, and their teams had a lot of discussion about, not only what elements need to be on the planner, but also where they wanted to begin their focus on the planner.  Here are some of the ideas that were shared that were Must-Haves and potential starting points of “The Planner”:

Reflection: Where are we now and where do we want to go?

Learning Goals: The purpose and conceptual focus of learning.

Language: Using the language of the PYP and developing academic language in meaningful ways.

Students: Their passions, interests, and resources that they can bring to the unit.

Assessment: Co-constructing success criteria and developing a continuum using solo taxonomy.

Tools and resources: The people, places, and tech that can be used to invigorate and engage learners.

Approaches to Learning: Ways in which student-initiated learning and agency can be nurtured.

Through these conversations, my mind wandered back to a blog post that I saw a few years ago: “We’re Going On An Expedition” and I keep wondering how we might make learning more like a journey for all students–not just during the PYP Exhibition–but for all grade levels. Moreover, asking the students who they want to become (Learner Profile Alert) as a result of their experiences this year and how teachers could be their guide through this journey. What if THAT was our starting point for planning?

comfort zoneAlso, if I think about “The Planner” like the map of this journey, then I am wondering how we might open up the planning of a unit to the students themselves. Instead of “The Planner” being a teacher-directed document, what if we had our official “Planner” for student-created which became the basis of the inquiry?  We flip the responsibility of this document so that students got to direct the learning. Hmmm….How might we structure the document in order for students to authentically co-plan with us teachers? I think THIS is the type of PYP planner that I want to create with my team. But what teacher team is so courageous to do this?

Now as someone who has co-constructed units of inquiry with students, I can attest that this made me uncomfortable. These kids don’t know about THE STANDARDS, so it’s not what guides them when we co-construct units. They think about what THEY want to learn, not what some educational body has mandated for them and outlined in THE STANDARDS. So I wonder how we can have true AGENCY if we are the ones telling them what they should know and when they should know it?

In my mind, Who gets to plan the learning? seems like the foundational question to ask when we develop new planning documents. Because if we, as teachers (bless us), get to plan the learning then I think we are the ones who “own” the unit. And if we define Agency as Voice, Choice, and Ownership, then clearly it will be a challenge for students to really take authentic action.

I’m am thinking about how we can use our Exhibition documents as the basis of creating an Enhanced PYP Planner, but I’m afraid that I have more questions than answers in how to approach this. However, the pursuit of these answers is something that I want to explore in earnest.  The process of this Enhanced PYP Planner will be a journey unto itself, but I am willing to engage in going deeper into how we create genuine student plans for THEIR learning rather than documenting OUR teacher plans.

I’m curious if anyone else has embarked in this direction or would be keen to go what has-been into what-could-be? What approach would you take?

 

 
Are We Asking “Beautiful Questions”?

Are We Asking “Beautiful Questions”?

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We are hard-wired to be curious. Have you ever been around a little baby before?  When a newborn begins to realize that they have a body and becomes fascinated with their hands, they study them intensely. They put them in their mouths, they linger on different textures, wanting to squeeze them to feel them oozing through their fingers.

We are born curious, our brains pattern-making machines, trying to make sense of our environment, both outer and inner. Our schools shouldn’t be a place where student questions go to die.  Schools should be a place where curiosity is nurtured and sustained.

visual questionsIn  The Book of Beautiful Questions: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead,  Warren Berger pronounces “I am a questionologist.” I love that! When you look at the graphic that summarizes Berger’s book, you get a sense of possibility that deepening our inquiries can create through broad questioning techniques. The questions are not complicated, but the path they lead you on can branch into new avenues and creative opportunities. As educators, we should not only be modeling these broad-reaching questions but encouraging tangents of thought through open-ended questions.

A poem comes to mind which reminds me of the wonder and inspiration within the power of a question. Its words penetrate my soul and awaken the child within me, the one with a million “whys”.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

When I consider the excitement of beginning a new unit of inquiry, despite its familiarity, a fresh set of questions always come to mind. Just like the students, I am there with them, embarking upon the inquiry, seeking new understandings. I want to “live the questions” that Rilke speaks of, knowing that curiosity is a way of being in the world, experiencing awe and elegance in the search for answers. It is more than a pedagogical approach, it is a way of being. 

the searchSo to develop our “questionology” is not only important for our classroom culture but it when you think of it, it generates well-being. To question is to shake hands with possibility, and possibility opens our focus, inviting new information into our awareness.  So this drive to wonder is what makes us  “inforvores”, and is a psychological need. In fact, science is beginning to show that if we are not organizing our classrooms in such a way that spark interest, we are literally deadening the brains of our students. I’d also like to add that our own teaching practice becomes joyless when life is all answers and no questions.

So let’s take a page from Berger’s playbook and start generating opportunities for curiosity by asking more “beautiful questions”. It’s a habit worth cultivating.

 

 

 

It’s Time to Drop your Oars and Give Up Your “Bad Faith”

It’s Time to Drop your Oars and Give Up Your “Bad Faith”

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The Nobel-laureate philosopher Jean-Paul Satre reminded us that things don’t have to be the way things are. We live in possibilities, and we have the opportunity to ordain anything with purpose and meaning. We don’t have to live in “bad faith”, constraining ourselves to norms, living a certain way, closing ourselves off to opportunities, shackled to our capitalistic societies, pursuing money instead of passion. If we could liberate ourselves from these ideals, we could be truly free, meeting our full potential. He urged institutions to create new concepts and habits, rather than continuing to be ensnared by dogma and tradition. satre.jpegAlthough his battle cry of existential was influential and thought-provoking-it has yet to truly realize its potential for disrupting the status quo, but it seems that technology indeed has the capacity to transform many long-held beliefs and practices. Like it or not, we MUST change. The pick-ax has been replaced by the smartphone, in which our hands are no longer as useful as our minds. Nowadays our “Knowledge Economy” is transforming access to information, and so be it, we live in the “age of ideas”, in which creative thought and expression is our currency.

I think the time has come in education when we start to apply some of these notions to our schools, carefully examining our beliefs and practices and asking if what we are doing is even relevant and pertinent to the future world that our students will inhabit in 20 years.

As I ponder what Satre would say about our current school systems, I think he would lament that we have yet to “enhance” our schools in order to nurture truly alive individuals, who feel free to create and invent.

I think there are 3 things that need to shift radically if we really want to transform our schools into more agentic centers of learning.

Time

Recently I sat next to some design teachers at the United Nations International School who were sharing their ideas for re-designing their MYP design program so that it was less about paperwork and more about agency. Their team had some really brilliant ideas about personalizing the learning and making it less about grade levels and more about mastery and FUN. One of their inspirations was the teacher, Mark Barnett, who teaches design to K-12 in Hong Kong. When he added up how much time he got to see classes, it was the equivalent of 2 weeks for the WHOLE school year. So, instead of doing a two 40 minutes blocks a week, he took a grade level for 1 whole week a semester and engaged them in project-based learning experiences. For one whole week, they were absolutely engaged in their unit of inquiry. There wasn’t “Math from 8:30 to 9:10” and then from “9:15-9:55 Languages”.  It was one solid week of students engaged in learning and the single subjects were in service of the project.

When I heard that, it made me think of the book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. After I read that, I was profoundly affected, thinking about my use of time and productivity. In his book, he makes a case for extended periods of time for developing our “craft”, in which we apply continuous blocks of time to focus and concentrate our efforts in researching and creating. We’ve dabbled with that in doing “block periods”, but I think it would be worthwhile to have schools start experimenting with how we can have different time table structures that are flexible so that we can engage in meaningful projects.

Content

I think most of us can agree that the “what” we teach hasn’t changed much since technology has taken hold of our schools. We plan backward from our standards, developing a scope and sequence so that everything gets “covered”. Most of us have teacher-directed lessons, in which everyone sits down and we dispense the standards in whole-group fashion–what I have come to realize that this is still a One Size Fits All approach to learning. Flipped learning has been in our vernacular for a while now, yet only certain grade levels even dabble in it, and rarely have I seen it done in the primary grades.

Personally, I have been wondering if I have to give my Reader’s workshop “mini-lesson” to the whole class, at the same time. To get all of my 1st graders transitioned and on the carpet is a waste of time. I could just easily record my lesson and have them work at their own pace, with a partner, to get through the learning objective in less time that it would take me to go through the whole-group lesson. Meanwhile, it would free me up to conference more and pull groups. Although I have yet to try it, I think it would be a much more productive use of time, but I’ve been thinking about what types of learning management systems (LMS) I could use that would work with little ones. Plus, if I put the content into a LMS like Schology, then I could find better ways to differentiate and meet the individual needs of a student. Hmm….

SAmr.jpegOf course, if we were looking at this through the lens of S.A.M.R., I haven’t really gone deep into the “pool”, which isn’t bad, but I have to ask myself if I could do better than just “flipping” the content onto a screen. I think I have to ask myself, what can my students actually DO with this knowledge? How might they apply this through a project or idea, which doesn’t necessarily mean a summative task, but a context that is authentic to them–what do people do in the REAL world with this knowledge? I need more time to sit with this question, AND, I need to survey my students to ask them what they think so that we can co-create ways to demonstrate understanding. But I’ve come to a place where the “what” of the content isn’t as important as the “why ” and the “how” of what we do with that knowledge. I think we need to place more emphasis on this in our classrooms, and then find the tech to support this.

Assessment

I was recently listening to a webinar by Modern Learners about re-imagining assessment. One of the things that they brought up is how demotivating our assessment practices can be when we assign numbers to a student’s identity. I don’t think any of us want to be objectified like that and yet that is what our school systems do every day.  In this presentation, we are reminded that the root word of assessment (assidere) actually means “to sit beside”, so our focus needs to shift, in which we see assessment AS learning, recognizing that they are where they are. It’s not bad, it’s not good. It is a moment in time that we have put our attention on and can glean insight into how we can move them forward in their understanding. Consider this notion put forth by Modern Learner:

We need to develop partnerships between students and teachers, built around relationship, as co-learners, seeking to understand, guide and nuture new ideas, capabilities, and deeper understandings.

Does it remind you that your role as a teacher in the classroom needs to shift? We have to be the “researcher” and not the “knower”, being deeply curious about our learners and coaching them into deeper learning and appreciation for their unique perspective and gifts that they can offer the world. So assessment needs to stop being “evaluative” and quantifiable but instead reflect a more holistic approach, in which we are fostering life-long learning through authentic interactions and experiences that develop self-confidence and autonomy.

I think re-defining assessment in our schools would create a shift in power structures, which may be really challenging for some educators, and I think would definitely be difficult for our parents who grew up in these traditional paradigms. I’m not suggesting it is easy, but I do believe it is necessary.

It’s Time to Rock the Boat

Isatre boat.jpeg think these are the foundational pieces (Time, Content and Assessment) that create “bad faith” in our schools. Although I have ruminated a bit on these topics in this post, I have hardly dug deep into how we can transform them. I believe that is the business of EVERYONE to do in their unique educational settings. Maybe, as teachers, we start with Content, thinking about how we might “rock the boat”. And as leaders, we need to examine the other elements of Time and Assessment and start to challenge our dogmatic approaches.

One thing is certain, we cannot go into the future with one foot in the past. We must question and collaborate, working together in order to free our students to become the very best of who they can be. This is the only mission worthwhile, as I see it, as an educator.

 

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.

 

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.

 

#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.

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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.

 

#IMMOOC: Why the Status Quo Makes Us Slow and Stupid

#IMMOOC: Why the Status Quo Makes Us Slow and Stupid

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My student stood agog: “Wow, you type so fast! How do you do that?” I looked down at my keyboard and then back at my student. Do I even bother to explain the QWERTY keyboard set up and how I learned to type to my 1st grader? I mean, will the keyboard even exist in the future? Will touch-typing even be a relevant skill?

It’s odd to think that the QWERTY keyboard is an excellent example of why we need to look at common things with uncommon sight. Why innovation is so vital in our educational systems. Have you ever heard of the Fable of the Keys? Do you know why we have that layout of letters of the home keys? Perhaps you think it was created to improve our speed and efficiency when typing? NO–quite the opposite. It was to slow us down so that those old fashion typewriter keys didn’t get jammed up. Its crazy to think that in an era of such technological impact, that such a simple feature of our computers cannot be revamped to improve our productivity. It’s a bit foolish really that we haven’t adopted another style of the keyboard when you think of it. And it makes me wonder what else we are doing in our world that is relies on 200-year-old technology.

Again, I wonder if the layout of the keyboard of our laptops and devices should be reconfigured to produce faster typing speeds? That’s the most sensible approach, right? ABSOLUTELY NOT! I think about this provocative quote about innovation:Anytime teachers think differently about (3)

And it makes sense, right? Why would we spend all that time and effort when we could be reimagining how we might capture thoughts and ideas? Most of us submit that talk to text will be the way of the future. But I wonder how often in education we just repackage these same sorts of “old” ideas which have gotten standardized into our systems. When you look at the quote by Seymour Papert, a man who brought technology to education, can you think of anything that you are using or doing in your classroom that just recapitulates antiquated practices?

The phrase “technology and education” usually means inventing new gadgets to teach the same old stuff in a thinly disguised version of the same old way. Moreover, if the gadgets are computers, the same old teaching becomes incredibly more expensive and biased towards its dullest parts, namely the kind of rote learning in which measurable results can be obtained by treating the children like pigeons in a Skinner box.   –Seymour Papert, father of Constructionism

During Season 4, Episode 3 of IMMOOC, John Spencer described his journey with technology and how his thinking has evolved around its use. As I listened to him speaking about using Scotch tape to mend microfiche, my head just kept unconsciously nodding. Oh, how I could relate! And I wholeheartedly agree with his lesson from this experience.

What is transferable, what is powerful and what stayed forever has been getting to think critically, getting to be creative, getting to problem solve-all of that. To me, when people get focused on the technology, they are going to end up inevitably doing is getting obsessed with the novelty.

I think this is an important lesson for all of us educators to consider. How can we focus on transferable skills vs. technology skills? Is knowing how to touch-type going to be a game changer for my 1st grader’s future OR is understanding how we organize and create systems to improve our capacity to do more and communicate more of our best selves and solve problems the answer?

Obviously, my question is rhetorical. And maybe you are wondering what “QUERTYs” you have in your school culture and classrooms–what old fashion practices and tools are you perpetuating, with or without the use of technology? Let’s start to make genuine progress by challenging and “breaking” them. Because by accepting the “status quo” in education, like un-imagining “the keyboard”, just makes us look slow and stupid.

#IMMOOC: Innovation in Education Starts with Climbing a Pyramid

#IMMOOC: Innovation in Education Starts with Climbing a Pyramid

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It’s hard not to think about the recent school shooting in America and think about how innovation could benefit schools. These acts of violence are the most extreme case of why we need to change “school as usual” and start creating a paradigm shift in how we think about our school culture and climate.

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Innovation can happen when schools look beyond scores and see the child in front of them. 

It’s hard for me to imagine that a student who felt connected and supported at school would have ever fathomed to pick up a weapon and kill. There is no way that he would want to destroy what brought meaning and value to his life. Think about it.

 

I believe that if a child knew that it was a leaf or a branch on a tree, it wouldn’t hack away at its bark, it would turn toward the light and would be eager to nourish its supporting system.

We know the future will present great challenges ahead that we will need to develop more creativity, empathy, and resilience in order to tackle them. We need students prepared for that. But maybe instead of test scores, we need to think about student achievement through a different lens. Personally, I have been thinking a lot about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how our schools play a role in an individual’s life.maslow-hierarchy-of-needsRemember this pyramid of needs?-the core message was if you want to have a happy and fulfilling life, you need to reach the highest level of this. School provides a major basis for this, 7 hours a day, 180 days a year.

Perhaps our whole definition of student success should be reframed to include emotional intelligence and other indicators of SEL (social-emotional learning) because cultivating the mind without the heart is a great malfeasance of our educational system. Even as an IB school, which has character development as a central part of our framework, we never consider to assess SEL as meaningful data points. The IB’s stance (at least its workshop leaders) say that it’s too subjective to assess our Learner Profile, but I’d like to challenge this. We can’t say that we are creating internationally-minded citizens which work to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect (IB Mission Statement) without some data that proves that we are in fact developing these values in our school communities.

So it is becoming quite evident to me that we cannot speak about innovation without considering how it broadens our definition of learning. And we’ve got to think about how we all–students, school leaders, and teachers included– can climb this pyramid together.

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