School visit schedule is coming together

Following up on last week's post, I would like to thank Steven Brzozowski for reaching out and inviting me to visit River Valley Charter School in Newburyport - thanks Steven! - I look forward to visiting and learning more about River Valley's curriculum and pedagogy. Thanks also to Grant Lichtman for spending time with me via Skype sharing his experience of visiting 60 schools across the country - and his lessons learned regarding process.  If you haven't watched Grant's TEDx talk What 60 Schools Can Tell Us About Teaching 21st Century Skills, I encourage you to do so.  Also, be sure to check out Grant's blog the Learning Pond - I am always inspired by the passion and thoughtfulness which come through in his writing.

While the schedule takes shape, I have been working on a draft set of questions to help provide a framework/lens for my learning.  Here are the questions - let me know if you have any feedback or suggested amendments in the comments section below.

More later :) 

Hitting the road

Happy Spring!  Although the temperatures would say otherwise, Spring has sprung in New England and I’m looking forward to the season’s transition to warmer temperatures :)

The past six months has been a great period of discovery, visiting such notable schools as High Tech High, Nueva, Workshop School, Blue School and Da Vinci Schools to name a few.  After this initial broad sweep of visiting schools I am now beginning to focus on learning models with which I am familiar, such as Montessori and Waldorf, but which I have not experienced first hand.  I am taking the opportunity to spend a full day in six or seven schools over the next six weeks and will inventory what I learn under six broad headings:

• Knowledge/Competencies/Habits of Mind - What are the skills, knowledge and habits of mind which students are learning in this school?
• Pedagogy - How are these skills, knowledge and habits of mind being learned? What is the teacher’s/parent’s community’s role in designing and facilitating the learning? 
• Assessment - How are these competencies, habits of mind and acquiring of knowledge being assessed? Formatively and summatively?
• Space - How is the physical learning environment structured to support the learning?
• Talent - How does the school find, develop and retain its teachers?
• Scale - What are the plans to scale (if any)?

The goal of this research is to inventory existing leading practice to help answer the question, “How might we build a learning environment where students, who do not thrive in the standardized learning environment, will thrive and grow?”  I will report back findings on this blog and synthesize overall themes.  The themes will inform the initial design of the IFL ‘Whole Child’ Lab. Stay tuned!

How Montessori Promotes Disruptive Innovation

One of my favorite sessions at the recent SXSWEdu conference was a panel session entitled, “How Montessori Promotes Disruptive Innovation”.  

“As traditional education fails students, educators are questioning the purpose/delivery method of education. Professionals have developed learning styles to address this problem resulting in “flipped” classrooms, peer instruction and hands-on learning. However, outcomes these methods aim to produce—critical thinking, problem solving, entrepreneurship and creativity—are already available with Montessori.”

Panel participants are highlighted below:

James Moudry, Post Oak School

Kathy Minardi, Aidan Montessori School

Laura Shaw, Oak Knoll Kinderhaus

Maura Joyce, Montessori Redlands

- and here is an excerpt of my twitter stream from the discussion:

• Montessori #SXSWedu kicking off with "what is school for?" Typically content delivery, not developing children pic.twitter.com/5KCLAf9HzL
• Children developing their own authentic voice through Montessori - not 'time on task', but 'authenticity on task'
• Montessori #sxswedu human beings crave reality - classroom not enough for older children pic.twitter.com/9xFeF9sCuX
• What is Montessori? The complete developmental package:  http://buildingthepinktower.org  #DisruptEdu #SXSWedu "What will you bring to the world?"
• #SXSWedu Montessori interdisciplinary curriculum, could this be the disruption of industrial framework of schooling? pic.twitter.com/K8u5qmohzv
• Montessori mafia :) #DisruptEdu #SXSWedu the Disruptive innovators are already out there pic.twitter.com/Xi2QbXEIBS
• Our world is demanding entrepreneurs and our factory model of education has not been producing them for over 100 yrs Montessori #SXSWedu
• Montessori developed a comprehensive developmental model producing socially minded entrepreneurs - 100 years ago #SXSWedu #DisruptEdu
• We are facing adaptive challenges, not technical problems as a citizenry - Montessori builds the adaptive muscle #SXSWedu #DisruptEdu
• Provide as much scaffolding as is needed in the moment and no more -then take it down as quickly as possible Montessori #SXSWedu

The panel discussion kicked off by asking “What is school for”? The answer in response was "teaching kids to learn how to learn through a highly integrated, interdisciplinary curriculum" and that at a Montessori school "You learn to do hard things".

Prior to the session, I had only read about Maria Montessori’s work. It was wonderful to see four passionate Heads of School bring the Montessori method to life and relating it to the broader context of how Montessori can take us into the future.  The panelists noted how we have become very individualistic as a society - yes, our individual rights are important - as are the rights of others.  Children in Montessori classrooms experience this from the get go as there aren’t two (or more) of everything in the classroom. Children understand if they break something it will impact everyone else.

I was reminded of Ron Heifitz’ work on Leadership Without Easy Answers.  It’s the framework I return to again and again as I wrestle with how large systems change and the capacity within that system for the individual to have impact. Imagine if we began graduating a generation of young people who had facility with complex adaptive changes, understood their impact (for good or for ill) on the collective, and were equipped to “do hard things”.

SXSWedu - Designing a Next Gen High School from Scratch

I had a blast at the #SXSWedu conference last week in Austin.  A major highlight was meeting friends and colleagues - many of whom I hadn't seen in some time, or who I had met virtually Twitter or Skype in the past year or so - sending a big shout out to the leading work (and great company) of @BoAdams1 @ChristineOrtiz and @LucienVattel :)

I will write a couple of blog posts on the SWSWedu experience and am kicking off with a summary of Alpha public schools session on 'Designing a Next Gen High School from Scratch'. This blog posting is dedicated to the bold and visionary Zach Eikenberry, coordinator for NEXT High School in Greenville, South Carolina.  

Onto the session - it was co-facilitated by Will Eden, Entrepreneur in Residence and Alison Elliott, Board Member.  The session was a two hour hands-on experience of design thinking in action.  Participants divided into teams to work on a specific challenge/opportunity related to building a new High School, framed under the heading of "How Might We...?".  My team and I worked on the question of "How might we engage students who are not interested in High School?" The process we followed is summarized in the below model:

- with specifics of the design thinking process outlined in the slide deck here

Throughout the session and during the debrief, Alison and Will wove their lessons learned and takeaways from facilitating a similar process in their own community in San Jose.  Alpha public schools is planning on opening the doors of its first High School in 2015.

My key takeaways from participating in the process and with my team are as follows:

• When forming team, ensure diversity of background and expertise - our team was a mixture of educators, technology experts and non-profit and for-profit organizations. It would have been great to have a few students in our group, but they were in short supply.  Note to SXSWedu organizers - it would be great to see many more students participating at next year's conference :)
• Users are central to the design thinking experience - when designing a new school or program, it's critical to get the students involved as early as possible and throughout the process.  Don't design solutions until you fully understand needs from the users' and stakeholders' perspective.
• On a related note, it's important to reach **all** your users - it's easy to talk with the the people who show up.  Go out and speak with the users who don't show up to your event and seek their input.
• Seek stories in user interviews, they bring the data to life and yield a depth of understanding not often discussed in a typical strategic planning event.
• Balance primary and secondary research.  Too often, my tendency is to go to "what does the research say?" first.  When designing a high school from scratch, reach out to your users, engage a broad cross section of the new school's community and involve a diverse group in this process of discovery, synthesis and ideation and **then** go to the secondary research. This will help to isolate the senses, dig deep in the user interviews and design a school to meet the specifics of your own community's unique needs.  Of course, secondary research has much to add as we seek not to reinvent the wheel, but balance and timing of the use of secondary research are key.
• Finally, it's an incredibly engaging (and fun!) way to quickly engage diverse users and stakeholders and go deep on the curricular, pedagogical, space and structure for a new school design.

Towards the end of the session, Will and Alison very kindly mentioned they would send out a more detailed guide on their process to the group.  I will upload it here with their permission, once received.  In the meantime, you can download a 'Design Thinking for Educators' toolkit here - and be sure to check out the great work which Susie Wise is leading at the K12 Lab at Stanford.

The Next Step in Disrupting Class - Heather Staker

I had the good fortune to attend the LearnLaunch conference this past weekend in Cambridge - the theme of the conference was "Expanding the Education Innovation System".  The sessions were thought provoking and pushed me on the IFL vision as we seek to help transform the factory model of education.

A significant highlight for me was Heather Staker's presentation, "The Next Step in Disrupting Class". Heather is a Senior Research Fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation and while I had read Clayton's book 'Disrupting Class' a while back, Heather's presentation really helped to bring the concepts to life for me as well as providing insight into a number of K-16 specific developments since the writing of the book - quoting Heather, "disruption has reached the education market".

One of my biggest IFL-related takeaways from the presentation is to 'serve a pocket of non-consumption'; K-12 examples include credit recovery, drop outs, AP/advanced courses and home-schooling, while Higher Ed examples include on-the-job training, micro-certification, incarcerated adults and stay-at-home moms and dads.

The key questions and areas of focus for the IFL which I take away from Heather's talk are:

• Define the problem the IFL is trying to solve - make this as granular and specific as possible.
• Get the market right, as opposed to the technology, i.e. who can we best serve? Who is not being served well, not thriving within the current system? Serve pockets of consumption whose alternative is nothing at all.
• Document and publish our findings as we go. Avoid blanket statements such as "this will serve all kids", but rather, our research tells us this strategy works well for 'X' student demographic, it does not serve 'Y' student demographic - capture and document evidence
• Think of opportunities not threats - how are we taking some pain away?  What pain do we want to take away? What's the IFL core competency?

Thanks Heather for an illuminating talk!

P.S. A number of great white papers on K-16 disruptive innovation are available for free download on the Clayton Christensen website. 

P.P.S. On a more personal level, if you haven't read Clayton's book, 'How Will You Measure Your Life', I encourage you to do so. If I had a magic wand, I would make the answering of that question a graduation requirement :)

What's worth learning?

"What's worth learning" was the question which kicked off one of my most thought provoking classes with David Perkins.  The class was entitled 'Educating for the Unknown' and unbeknownst to be me at the time, the class proved to be the genesis of the Institute for the Future of Learning.

So, what do I think is worth learning? Here's my current thinking in graphic format below.  I'm about to embark on a six week tour of the educational 'whole child' models which I view most promising, proven and aligned with my own thinking regarding healthy learning environments for both students and educators.

I will put my theories to the test and report back weekly on this blog - stay tuned!

The Little Engine That Could

Kicking off this blog with the spirit of my favorite book :)

- Julie W