Cultivating Curiosity

Over the past few months, I’ve been on a journey to explore the role that curiosity plays in deeper learning experiences for students.  Michael Fullan’s work on deep learning as well as the emphasis on academic rigor with Webb’s Depth of Knowledge Levels made me curious to explore this question: “How might we cultivate an environment where educators sit in the passenger seat and are expert guides to empower students to drive their own learning?”

It seems to me that curiosity is the starting point to drive student engagement and learning. We’ll never get our students to the higher levels of DOK and Bloom’s Taxonomy on a regular basis without the 5th C of curiosity. And I believe that the best way to cultivate this skill in students is to practice being curious.

In October, the Teacher’s Guild hosted a collaboration sprint with the Nueva Innovative Learning Conference to ask the question, How might we spark student curiosity? I was fortunate to attend the conference and also work on the design sprint. The conference sessions, led by amazing experts from many academic fields, pushed my thinking and sparked my curiosity about a wide range of topics. At the close of the conference, I was energized to go back to work and implement some new ideas that developed from my experience. Visit the Teacher’s Guild to see the ideas generated at the conference and participate in their new collaboration on professional learning.

Below are some additional tips to help you cultivate your natural curiosity and incorporate curiosity into your work with educators and students:

Observe what’s happening around you and jot down notes to explore themes that you’re seeing in your classroom, at your school, or in your role as an administrator. Form a team to begin designing innovative solutions.

Surround yourself with others inside and outside of the education field who are also curious. Don Tomlin, an investor in my hometown of Columbia (SC), talked at Startup Grind about developing your relational database. By developing relationships with a wide range of people, you’ll expose yourself to new ideas which you can bring into your own work. My thinking was recently stretched when I spent several days with Intel visionaries from around the world. We met as strangers but ended as friends and colleagues. You will become more curious when you stretch beyond your comfort zone.

Learn to listen and ask open-ended questions. In his book A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life,”Brian Glazer shares his years of experience as a producer for movies including Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. He learned early in his career that asking questions and listening to the answers would give him new ideas for movies.  He made a point of seeking out meetings with people who he was curious to know.

Develop a culture with your co-workers of using  techniques which spark conversation and curiosity. When someone mentions a current challenge that they are facing, use the 5 Whys method to get to the root cause. By asking “why” at least five times, you’ll come much closer to developing an action plan to correct the problem. The critical friends protocol includes starting with “I like” and then asking “I wonder…” Use this questioning protocol when you’re discussing a project with your colleagues. Finish the conversation with next steps based on feedback from the questions.

We’re all born curious. As young children, we asked questions about everything. As we grew older, we were told to listen and stop questioning authority.  To keep student curiosity alive, implement learning models that include project-based learning and passion-based learning. Let students develop generative topics that will allow them to follow their interests.

Do something outside of your comfort zone. Explore a topic that you want to learn more about and have students guide you in that learning. I recently helped with organizing a Google Devfest event. I’m just a tinkerer when it comes to coding, but I didn’t let that stop me from participating in and leading sessions. My favorite learning came from elementary and high school students who taught me how to get started with using an Arduino board. I’ve got the board now and am looking forward to connecting with them to learn more.

Our future depends on cultivating curiosity in our students. Start today with a question that you want to explore and ask your students and co-workers to join you in curious pursuits.

Failing Forward

Entrepreneurs have a secret ingredient. They know how to fail forward. They learn from prototypes and iterate to make their products better. Even large companies like Apple will tell you that they can’t predict the outcomes of their controlled experiments. If a product fails in the prototyping stage, they go back to the design process and build a better product. The idea of learning from failure is a core principle of the most successful companies in the world.

If we could adopt the attitude of failing forward in education, we could change the lives of many students. In education circles, I hear a lot about teaching students grit and perseverance by allowing them to learn from their mistakes. This sounds good on the surface but in a system that has traditionally categorized every student based on letter grades, this idea falls short of expectations. Time constraints often prevent students from having the opportunity to use formative assessment results to improve their assignments and resubmit. I was recently reminded of Ron Berger’s Critique and Feedback video. The video clip shows how work can improve when students are given feedback and the opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

From the day that they’re born, students are placed into categories – pretty, petite, fat, funny, smart, hyperactive. Students who are placed in one of the categories that society praises may be reluctant to move outside of the safety zone. That feeling of safety, however, can be detrimental to a student’s growth. To take a risk is to accept that you may experience failure. A college professor that I talked with recently mentioned that the students who have played it safe can be fragile. When they have a failure in college, they take it hard and don’t always have the resiliency to move forward.

Labeling students as failures is an everyday occurrence in our schools. We rank students with grades and find additional ways to predict their success or failure. When my daughter was in 6th grade, I was surprised when she came home one day with a red alphabet letter attached to her ID badge. My first reaction was that she has been tagged with a “scarlet letter.” After more questioning, I found out that all students had been tagged after taking the career interest and skills survey. She told me several stories of students who were now tagged with future careers ranging from attorneys to sanitation workers based on their current abilities. I sent her back to school with a note to have the label removed from her name badge. Good intentions to categorize and label students can be limiting.

Failure can become fate. I know too many stories of students who have not been able to overcome the F label. They drop out of high school or college. They become involved with drugs. They commit suicide. This is the real effect of labels. For those of us who survive the system and make it into successful careers, we fear failure. When something goes wrong, it’s easy to find someone else to blame. The person who accepts failure may lose status with colleagues.

So I have to ask, how can we teach students to fail forward if we’re unable to do that ourselves? Until we take a hard look at how we label students and come up with a better system, we will not be providing them with the skills for successful lives and careers. I encourage you to walk down the hallways where you work and make a list of the labels that you see. Take that list, start a conversation with colleagues and find a way to remove the barriers that we keep in place with our adherence to categorizing students based on perceived abilities. Design a prototype and fail forward to make meaningful change for our students.

Scaling Innovation: Out of the Sandbox

In my professional experiences, I spend a lot of time with teams who are sandboxing their ideas through prototyping and iterations. The initial phase of gaining insights about an issue through research, observation and interviews allows innovation teams to brainstorm ideas and decide on ideas to prototype. Throughout the prototyping of a solution, teams gain feedback from users and transfer that knowledge into new questions that should be addressed with future prototypes. The process involves a series of events when teams are using divergent thinking and then converging back around some central ideas. This process of diverging and converging allows the team to develop innovations with scalable solutions. By looking through the lenses of desirability, feasibility, and viability, teams continue to improve on the process. Feedback from a variety of stakeholders in the organization is vital to a team’s success.

I always tell innovation teams that they will work harder than they ever imagined. In fact, the first part of an innovation initiative which includes defining the problem, developing ideas and prototyping is the easy part. In The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge, the authors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble describe what happens after you get to a point where an innovation begins to impact the existing organization. They describe the initial phases as similar to an ascent on Mount Rainier. Much time and energy is put into reaching the top and teams are often drained as they begin the descent. This is the difficult part where the terrain is rough and teams need to find a reserve of energy for the final push to complete the journey. The peak is a halfway point. Innovation cannot scale until the team has completed the journey.

The existing system may not be prepared for the speed at which an innovation may grow. There are still many unknowns around the innovation while makes it unlikely that the organization will be able to easily absorb the project into the existing structure. Diverse teams and groups of stakeholders must come together and deal with the ways in which the innovation may impact the organization. The innovation may require a lot of resources to move forward. Shared staff who work with both the innovation and the day to day operations will need to understand the implications of the innovation and  provide support. Support from outside of the organization may also be needed so that innovation teams can learn from the experiences of others.

The other side of innovation is a difficult journey which involves second order change. First order change builds on improving existing systems while second order change involves developing new knowledge and skills. Most organizations are constantly moving to be more efficient at what they do. To become more effective, however, may involve looking at something through a new lens and creating innovations that do not easily fit into the existing system. Change management is the key to seeing an innovation through from ideas to action to full implementation. Leaders and innovators must join hands for the final descent to successfully scale an innovation. Enjoy the amazing view from the top, but be prepared for the journey that lies ahead.

The Role of Voice in Personalization

As I was working through the pile of papers on my desk and my digital files a few weeks ago, I discovered several items that reminded me of the importance of student voice in personalizing learning. These visual reminders of the school year found a permanent place in my office because of how they showcase the strategies that encourage student voice.

• The program from our second annual Richland Two Film Festival which reminded me of our screening and the standing room only crowd who came to support our students. The students who produced the films were so excited to see their work on the big screen and share with parents and other community members. Providing students with an opportunity to exhibit their work is key in encouraging them to create their best work.
• Postcards created by Rachel Mongin's students at Sandlapper Elementary for the Water for Shoes campaign. The students teamed up for the marketing campaign and had a successful project while also pursuing their individual passions and interests. The student social media team posted updates all year. Follow them on Twitter to learn more: @castleclassroom. Students who have an authentic and collaborative learning experience will be more passionate about sharing their learning with others.
• Photos and video of students presenting their TED-Ed Club talks at the SC Midlands Summit. I was amazed at the poise of the students who presented in front of a crowd of 500 teachers, parents and administrators. When students are challenged, they will rise to the challenge and produce exemplary work.
• A Hangout On Air of students from Bridge Creek Elementary participating in a Google Connected Classrooms TIME for Kids hangout with Lois Lowry. When we allow students to reach out to experts as part of the research process, their learning will be accelerated.
• High school students in Jeffrey McMicken's classes showcasing the work they pursued in their 20% time. One student created an original song and recorded a music video of her performance using a local recording studio to complete the production. Students become entrepreneurs when they must find a way to make their ideas a reality.

I spoke about these students at the ISTE Google for Education Teaching Theater and was honored to have a talented artist use sketchnoting to capture the stories. I brought home the sketch and have framed it to hang in my office as a reminder of the power of personalizing learning for students and helping them find their voice.

As you prepare for the new school year, take time to brainstorm with other team members about ways that you can encourage student voice during the 2015-16 school year. The challenge question is: How might we create and sustain a classroom environment where students have voice in their learning? Pick your best ideas and put them into action. I look forward to hearing how you've solved the challenge and seeing the amazing work that your students showcase.

Getting to Scale

The idea of innovation is popular in education right now. Moonshot thinking, often called 10X thinking, is making its way into education circles and everyone is jumping on board to come up with innovative ideas. Too often, the ideas never make it past a pilot phase because of the roadblocks that stem from systems that inhibit teachers and other staff members from scaling the idea across the organization. Over the years, I’ve watched ideas die as they’ve been taken into committee. The innovation journey is filled with pitfalls and requires hard work and dedication to get to results.

Another issue is that education as a whole hasn’t adopted a design thinking model that promotes the development of great ideas that can scale. Other industries that I’ve learned from have a process that they use to develop and nurture ideas as they scale across the organization. Eric Ries in The Lean Startup shares a process that entrepreneurs use to create successful businesses. Using a Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop, teams are able to rapidly build a minimally viable product, measure results and learn from the experience to continue to grow the product.

So how do we get beyond having pockets of innovation and excellence in our organizations? In Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less, Robert Sutton provides inside accounts and research from other industries that will help your organization nurture and scale innovations.

Below are a few tips that will help you achieve excellence:

1. Reach out to other industries in your area and talk with them about how the innovation cycle works. I recently met with someone from the computer industry who works with the agile model of innovation. The agile model is a lean startup model with specific roles for team members that enable them to move quickly with innovations. With a project structure of design, tweek, repeat, launch, and improve, teams get to results faster.
2. Focus on bringing together the right team members. Committees talk about what to do next. Teams get work done. Foster the idea of team work and allow teams to take ownership of their work. Too much oversight is the fastest way to kill an innovation. It’s also a good idea to mix teams and allow them to learn from each other.
3. Give the gift of time to teams. Ideas like Google’s 20% time have taken off in many industries with positive results. Teams need to have time to work together, develop prototypes, and discuss results.
4. Remove roadblocks for teams. In the agile model, this is the scrum master role. Excessive forms and procedures are often created because of a few people who did something wrong. Flip that model and give teams freedom to tackle work without having to ask for permission.
5. Make a list of things that you should strategically abandon in your organization. You’ll free up time and develop a focus on what’s important.

Summer is a great time to catch up on reading and explore topics that will give you insights into how to do the hard work of innovation and successfully scale initiatives. Additional books that I recommend for summer reading include:

Insight Out: Get Ideas Out of Your Head and Into the World by Tina Seelig
Work Rules: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock

Take time this summer to reflect on current initiatives and put a plan in place to take action and see your organization’s ideas scale.

Removing Roadblocks to Innovation

When I began an exercise routine of swimming a few years ago, I had to push past my many excuses for not going to the pool in the morning. Excuses like bad weather and feeling tired kept me at home on many occasions when I should have been doing something to improve my physical condition. I finally worked through the challenges by coming up with a plan to ease into the new routine. With my final goal in mind, I made incremental changes and adjusted as needed to begin to see results. Today, I look back and realize starting the journey was most of the battle. I had to find the courage to take the early morning dive into the water and then immerse myself in the exercise.

Teachers who are trying to innovate in the classroom face the same challenge. They have to find the courage to take the plunge when they have a big idea that could bring about great results for students. At my pool, there are many danger signs including one that says, “No lifeguard on duty. Swim at your own risk.” The danger of jumping in and trying something is scary when you’re not sure that you have the support. Without that support system, you may be unable to take on new challenges that can benefit students.

The statistics on teacher retention are shocking. A study published by the Alliance for Excellent Education reports that between 40-50% of teachers quit within five years. Typical reasons cited for leaving include lack of administrative support and the feeling of isolation. Under these conditions, how can schools encourage innovation?

A recent discussion with colleagues unearthed some of the roadblocks that teachers face in a typical week including red tape and fear of failure. Below are some of the ideas that we discussed for removing those roadblocks.

1. Provide teachers with more time to work in teams to discuss existing problems and develop innovative solutions. A teacher in our district innovation incubator has created a successful passion-based learning program and cites the extended planning time as essential to her team’s success.
2. Establish of culture in which trying something new is celebrated and failure is viewed as a stepping stone to success. An innovation team in my district has been working to develop a mastery-based grading system. They tried several prototypes that didn't work well but kept on making changes until they had a successful model.
3. Take down boundaries by establishing a flat leadership model where all ideas and suggestions are valued. Allow teachers to “pitch” their ideas to leadership and then give them the autonomy to try new strategies. Encouraging cross-disciplinary teams is a powerful way to develop good ideas.
4. Create a work environment that inspires creativity and collaboration. Several schools in my district have created central collaboration areas where everyone in the school can come to share ideas. Give them space to develop “project nests” where their work can be transparent to everyone in the school.
5. School leaders need to be the safety net for teachers and protect them from adverse consequences. Most rules and regulations were created as a result of a few people doing something wrong. Cut through the red tape that often gets in the way of innovation and allocate seed funding, time and support for teams to put their ideas into action. You’ll be on the road to to transformation before you know it!

Getting the Word Out

In his book Digital Leadership, Eric Sheninger talks about the importance of communicating the good news about your school or district to key stakeholders. He emphasizes the need for leaders in an organization to be great storytellers who can share a positive message about the school through social media and presentations. Sharing the school’s brand with a “sticky message” will make you stand out above the crowd and provide everyone with a clear understanding of what you value.

As I’ve worked with administrators on digital leadership strategies this year, I’ve enjoyed watching them embrace social media tools like Twitter and blogging to share the good news. George Couros reminded our team last summer that you need to get positive information out in as many ways as possible. If negative comments arise on a Twitter feed, they’ll be quickly forgotten as more good news is shared.

The success of 1:1 and BYOD computing initiatives depends on the ability of leaders to gain stakeholder buy-in through messaging. Above all else, the leaders in an organization must be able to deliver an elevator speech that communicates a clear and consistent message. In addition to the elevator speech, a digital leader should be able to deliver presentations that will engage the community, school board, and other stakeholders.

Here are a few questions to think about as you prepare for new initiatives:

Do you have your elevator speech ready when someone on the school board asks you to describe the benefits of your program and why it should be funded?

How will you share the message about your new initiatives with parents and community members?

Do you have evidence of successes to share through social media and other presentations?

As you begin the hard work of preparing how to market your message to stakeholders, there are a variety of resources to help. Take advantage of the following resources to help you to develop more effective presentations and lay the groundwork for successful initiatives.

Weekend Language: Presenting with More Stories and Less PowerPoint by Andy Craig and Dave Yewman

The authors remind us that we’re a better version of ourselves when we’re telling a story instead of reading slides. You can bring your weekend language into work day presentations with five easy tips.

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds

Presentation Zen focuses on simplifying presentations so that they have more impact on your audience. If you use slide decks to present, this book will help you to improve the look and feel of your presentation with design techniques.

Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

The Heath brothers give many great examples of companies that have used effective messaging to make their brand stick with consumers.

TED Talks

TED Talks are a great way to see how others are communicating their message. Pick out a few talks on a topic of interest and take notes about the presenter’s presentation style.

Getting to Transformative Change

Created by Wanda McClure Hopkins

In my last blog post, I discussed the transformative change needed for a school or district to move to a personalized learning model. In a transformed system, deep learning occurs when the focus shifts from students mastering required content to students creating and using new knowledge in the world. Learning is also accelerated when students have access to technology tools and other resources for communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving and creativity.

Changing our learning environments to a personalized model is disruptive and our business-as-usual way of doing things will not move us forward. After spending a few days at Tech & Learning Live in Atlanta talking with leaders who have made big changes, I have new insight into how disruptive change can happen.

Start with visionary leadership
Nishant Mehta, Head of School at The Children’s School in Atlanta, asks everyone in his school to approach each day as if it were the first day of school. The excitement and expectation of the first day continues throughout the school year as teachers prepare students for their futures – not our past.  Students pursue their passions and share their learning with authentic audiences.

Remove silos
Wanda McClure Hopkins, Elementary Director at Amana Academy Charter School, believes in a flat leadership structure. This team approach has made it possible for her to remove silos that exist in traditional school settings. Teachers and other school leaders work together to develop solutions for engaging students in expeditionary learning. Allowing everyone to lead from where they are is vital to getting buy in for disruptive change.

Deconstruct and remix
Systems cannot successfully change with a “this is the way we’ve always done things” attitude. There may be great worth to the work that we’re doing, but we need to be able to deconstruct programs and think critically about each component. Some aspects of the school day like fixed schedules may need to be thrown out in order to move forward with personalized learning. Existing programs may also need to be remixed with new ideas in order to bring about meaningful change.

Get out of your comfort zone
When implementing change, it’s important to go into environments that may be out of your comfort zone. Making site visits to other schools that are implementing personalized learning with a variety of models will give your team a better picture of how personalized learning fits. Site visits will stretch team members and lead to rich conversation that will steer your next steps.

Focus on each learner
Each and every student that enters our schools is unique and deserves a unique learning experience that will develop their talents and skills. Dr. Yong Zaho suggests that we need to make sure that our students are “out of the basement” ready instead of test ready. We tend to measure success thorough standardized tests instead of focusing on skills that will allow students to get jobs when they leave us.

Just do it
Planning is important but don’t spend a year meeting with committees and just talking. Small implementations of your ideas will provide data and feedback that is important to how you move forward. Find the champions of change in your school and involve them in implementing potential solutions. Kate Matthews,  ‎Lead District Instructional Technology Specialist in Fayette County Public Schools andEduVue co-host, goes into schools and works with teachers to implement change with a “yes and” attitude.

Getting to transformative change will be the hardest but most meaningful work that you will ever do. Bring together the right team and you’ll have amazing results which will accelerate learning for all students.

Accelerating Learning

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to attend the Future Ready Summit in Raleigh, NC hosted by the Alliance for Excellent Education, the US Dept. of Education Office of Technology, and the Friday Institute team. To prepare for the Summit, our team completed the district assessment to determine our readiness level in eight areas of digital learning including personalized and deeper learning. The assessment gave me pause to consider what we are doing well and where we need to focus our efforts. We were asked to create an elevator speech about our digital learning vision. I left the Summit hoping to continue to develop my speech in a way that truly articulates how I feel about the role of technology in making our students future ready.

That same day, I came across this quote from @BluntEducator: “Some teachers taught the curriculum today. Other teachers taught students today. And there’s a big difference.” The quote points out the big difference between teacher-centered instruction and student-centered learning. How often do school and district administrators sit down with teachers and talk about changes that need to happen to prepare students for the future? Can we prepare our students if we don’t change the traditional curriculum delivery model? The quote was a call to action and I began reading about deeper learning.

The thinking behind the deeper learning movement is that we need a new pedagogy to engage our students in learning and prepare them with 21st century skills. Rosalin Picard of MIT’s Media Lab shares some compelling evidence that we need to do things differently to get the attention of digital age learners. The brain activity of students listening to a lecture was lower that their brain activity when they were asleep. We can’t expect social, “plugged in” students to sit passively in the classroom and absorb content. More importantly, will that content delivery method prepare them to be successful in life? Can the addition of technology make a difference if other classroom practices aren’t changed?

Research continues to show that technology alone will not greatly impact student achievement. Adding on technology without changing the way we do things means that technology will be used at the substitution level and not bring about any long term change. In A Rich Seam: How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning, Michael Fullan, sees pedagogy as the foundation and technology as the enabler and tool in the service of deeper learning.  The report states, “The new pedagogies require students to create new knowledge and connect it to the world by using the power of digital tools.” The underlying theme is that new pedagogies cannot be implemented without  the technology and that the technology acts as an accelerator for learning.

Fullan’s model is disruptive. It flips our traditional way of doing things upside down and requires us to redesign lessons, the environment, and our instructional strategies for a student-centered, personalized learning environment. Making a change to student-centered environments with a focus on deeper learning will require schools and districts to engage in serious conversation. Stakeholders must agree on a common vision that includes technology as an essential ingredient for students to create and use new knowledge in the world. When technology is no longer seen as an add on, we will be ready to prepare our students for the future.