On My Mind Archives - Will Richardson

Five Themes for Educators in 2023

January 4, 2023 By Will Richardson Leave a Comment

(1/4 Newsletter Repost)

First, Happy New Year! May 2023 bring us all good health, deeper relationships, and as much joy as we can handle!

With those aspirations in mind, we want to tee up some of the themes that will be most on our minds here at BQI over the coming year. We see the year ahead as a complex mixture of reckoning and opportunity, of deceptively fast change, and of increasingly urgent, fundamental questions and conversations about the future of education.

In other words, just another boring 12 months ahead!

Kidding aside, while there are too many topics to mention in one post about what we might focus on in this new year, we want to share five themes that will comprise much of our attention as we continue to try to make sense of this complex moment we find ourselves in.

Artificial Intelligence – The second half of 2022 was literally breathtaking in terms of how quickly advances in generative writing, art, and other AI tools have taken hold. It’s not hyperbole to suggest that nothing will have more of an impact on how we think about the practice and outcomes of education moving forward.

Regenerative Design – It’s a hard reality to acknowledge, but it’s now clear that our environmental challenges are becoming more and more difficult to overcome, and that our students will be living as adults in a period of great disruption and hardship. There is now a compelling argument that schools must redesign their most fundamental systems, practices, and pedagogies to focus on the regeneration of all life on the planet.

2043 – Given the uncertainty of what’s ahead, it’s more important than ever to develop cultures and systems that have “one foot in the future.” School communities must engage in building the collective capacity to develop a futures lens through which to make every decision about the experience of school they create for students.

“Epistemic Humility” – With the increasing scale and complexity of the information we are being subjected to every day, individual educators and school communities must now learn and employ new strategies for separating fact from fiction, determining truth, and creating and contributing knowledge in ethical and effective ways. The very nature of literacy is in question.

Urgency – The last few years have taught us that we no longer have any time to waste when it comes to a focus on relevance, wellness, justice, and sustainability in schools. 2023 may very well be an inflection point where we either commit to interrogating our current missions and visions and move to articulate new ones, or we risk being overwhelmed by the existential challenges that now face teaching and learning and education writ large.

We know this is a pretty heady list. But we also know that these are the realities of our times. There are challenges, for sure, but there are also opportunities to do great and meaningful work this year. We hope to engage in these and other topics in ways that continue to make you think, and, importantly, act.

Thanks for being with us on this journey.

(Visit the Big Questions Institute to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter!)

Schools in a Time of Chaos

May 31, 2020 By Will Richardson Leave a Comment

(Note: I originally wrote this in July, 2016. I wish I could say that we’d evolved since then into a much more sane, loving, enlightened, literate, just society. But as you’ll see, almost all of it could have been written this week. What will we do to make sure this post won’t be relevant four years from now?)

To try to capture the last week in the U.S. would be folly. Police shooting and killing civilians. Civilians killing police. Live-streamed death. FBI probes, Congressional hearings, riots in the streets, political sniping, racial invectives. It’s sad, scary, and fatiguing all at once.

And, it’s disorienting. As George Saunders wrote in an amazing essay in the New Yorker:

I’ve never before imagined America as fragile, as an experiment that could, within my lifetime, fail. But I imagine it that way now.

(And that was written before last week’s shootings had occurred.)

I’m nowhere near eloquent or smart enough to offer some sweeping analysis that puts this moment into some sensible context. It feels as if the symptoms of our illness are pointing to a difficult diagnosis for which there is no known cure. Yet giving up on a fix is not an option because the alternative is, well…

And there are layers to this that transcend sense-making, rooted so deeply in our histories, our dreams, and our disappointments that they are beyond any clear articulation. It’s not just that the illness has no obvious cure; it hasn’t a name either. It would be easier if this was just about race, or just about class, or just about political illiteracy, or just about technology. Instead, it’s about all of those and more, a thousand-piece puzzle that comes without the picture on the top of the box to provide a sense of what “whole” looks like now.

The scariest part is that it feels like we are ill-equipped as a society to deal with what’s being unearthed. We are, to quote Alvin Toffler*, “grotesquely unprepared to cope with” the overwhelming shifts that we’re experiencing. We are not talking at length or with reason about our differences, be they red and blue, black and white and brown, or rich and poor. Perhaps we are unable to now at a time when social media pulls us to our own little information bubbles with increasing ease, where anonymity provokes the worst in our natures. The digital literacy divides that surround us make it exceedingly difficult to hear the “other side” much less understand it. At a moment when we most need to listen and engage in respectful dialogue, we’re content to just be stunned as to why everyone doesn’t see the world as we do.

It’s a moment captured brilliantly by Katharine Viner in the Guardian, who writes:

Now, we are caught in a series of confusing battles between opposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and cruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the alienated; between the open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gated enclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between an informed public and a misguided mob.

What is common to these struggles – and what makes their resolution an urgent matter – is that they all involve the diminishing status of truth. This does not mean that there are no truths. It simply means, as this year has made very clear, that we cannot agree on what those truths are, and when there is no consensus about the truth and no way to achieve it, chaos soon follows.

The chaos, across the world, has begun.

I’ve been wondering a lot about education’s role in creating this moment, but even more, its role in fixing it. Ever since Donald Trump blurted out the line “We love the undereducated” in a victory speech a few months ago, I’ve been thinking about the extent to which the current education experience has tilled the soil for what we are currently reaping. We’ve been hell bent on sending kids out into the world that are “college and career ready.” But are they “community ready?” “Country ready?” Are they aware of the pressures and challenges of our democracy? Do they have the tools to express themselves clearly and respectfully about difficult issues, and an empathic disposition that allows them to listen with focus and understanding? Have we allowed them to grapple with these big issues in our presence, with our guidance and modeling to the point where they are able to be thoughtfully engaged?

And can our children truly be “college and career ready” if they are not first “community ready” to their core?

Further, we in education have done rather abysmally when it comes to understanding the profound effects of technology on the basic functions and literacies of our lives. We continue to run from all of those unknowns, those powerful affordances that recenter individual learning and creating and communicating in the world today, instead of embracing them and seeing them as, now, the fundamental focus of our work. As I’ve said before, we would never revisit a physician who disdains a fluency in the latest technologies to treat his or her patients. It doesn’t really matter if that person is afraid or doesn’t have time or feels beset by change. Professionals seek innovation. Professionals understand that the best way to serve their clients is a mix of old and new. Professionals adapt. By any measure, we have not conducted ourselves professionally on those terms.

Is there any question that we have sacrificed many of the life literacies that we all could certainly use right now in our worship for standardization, ranking, data, and those things that are easy to measure? The ability to feel empathy for others, to discuss difficult topics with those who disagree with us in ways that don’t end up in a viral video, to “cope with” change and, importantly, to adapt to new realities of every shape and scale. We’d rather teach the safe stuff, the state bird, multiplication tables, the Battle of Antietam, and Shakespeare, in the safe way, where none of it gets co-mingled and messy and iterative. The black and white version of schooling that predominates now leads our students to an “education,” yet leaves them “undereducated,” illiterate in modern contexts, and deeply resistant to complexity.

And so the question remains, only with even more urgency as chaos reigns: Will we change? Can we?

Which brings me to an essay by Larry Paros, an 82-year old former high school math and social studies teacher who reflected in HuffPo this week on schools in chaos at another time in our history, back in 1968. Faced with racial strife, political unrest, a protracted war, civil disobedience and more, Paros and his colleagues at Yale decided to forge a different path in terms of schooling.

These students were as confused as we were as to the meaning of the events unfolding before them and how best to respond. The external turmoil reflected all too accurately the inner contradictions of our staff and students, bringing sharply into focus the conduct of individual lives as well as that of the nation.

For us it could not be business as usual. One could not simply seek refuge from these forces at our schools and universities. Schooling was part of and not apart from society. Rather than simply sit by idly, reflecting on these events, our schools were morally compelled to step forward—to generate new thinking, alternate visions and active approaches to the events of the outside world consistent with the needs and demands of its students. This was the stuff of a real education, intellectually challenging and spiritually and politically transformative.

As with all of the links in this post, I sincerely urge you to read the whole thing. Instead of running from chaos, Paros and his peers embraced it. Instead of resting on “success,” school became a laboratory, a place to try to answer the unanswerable. A place to, perhaps, work on a cure. It’s an inspirational vision of what school ought to be. And without overstating it, it may be a vision that ultimately saves us. Only, however, if we recognize the urgency for change right now.

Lest we forget, schools, like democracy, are an experiment that carries no guarantee of success. But much like democracy in this moment, there are entrenched stories that we tell about what schools are that make it difficult to negotiate what schools ought to be. We are disoriented as much as the next institution, yet instead of embracing it, instead of taking on the heavy lift of figuring it out because we teach kids (#guilttrip), we’re doubling down, spending billions on gadgets that put a modern sheen on the status quo, hewing to the test, waiting for everyone else, parents, universities, policy makers and vendors to reset the bar for us.

If we continue to do that, we are not just setting ourselves up for institutional failure in the long term. We are failing our kids, and the society we deliver them to, right now.

(* As quoted in this essay by Farhad Manjoo)

(Image credit: Justin S. Campbell)

On Power and Climate Change

February 21, 2020 By Will Richardson 1 Comment

At some point in the last couple of months, someone recommended that I read Seth Kreisberg’s 1992 book Transforming Power: Domination, Empowerment, and Education.

To whomever that person is, sincere thanks. It’s an amazing read. And it’s connecting really deeply with my recent thinking about the tension between schools as a public and private good and the greatest aspirations we have for students as they experience school.

Real fast here, I just want to riff a bit off one paragraph in particular from the last chapter which was written by editors after Kreisberg died suddenly at the age of 33 before finishing the final manuscript of the book.

A Challenging Future

It’s difficult not to be concerned with how our kids in school today are going to cope with and thrive in their futures with the effects of climate change bearing down on them. It’s equally difficult to look at the future with a sense of hope, not just for the world but for the ability of schools to actually make that the focus of our work.

Kreisberg’s book tells many stories of teachers and students who were involved in a group called Educators for Social Responsibility which was founded in 1982 to address the concerns of both students and teachers about the possibility of nuclear war. It grew to be a “national grassroots organization of teachers and other educators who believed that schools can help students develop the values, insight, skills and commitment to address contemporary problems and to shape a more peaceful and just world” (92). In other words, it was a group dedicated to pursuing the “public good” potential of schools (as opposed to the “private good” that I wrote about in my last post.)

So, here’s a snip from the book that talks about the work of those educators under the threat of nuclear war. But I’ve taken the liberty to replace “nuclear war” with “climate change” because the sentiment holds. And it’s pretty powerful.

“The omnipresence of climate change is sufficient to make anyone feel helpless, overwhelmed, and speechless. The problem seems huge, above and beyond us. Young people in our society have lived their whole lives under the threat of climate change, and many of them believe that the effects of climate change will only worsen. The problem makes them and us feel small, nearly invisible. In addressing the threat of climate change, these educators found themselves addressing the issues of power in our society, in their daily lives, and in education. They saw that there was a relationship between addressing the problem and how they acted toward one another. Further, they saw that education could play a role in addressing the threat of climate change and changing relationships; but for students and teachers to do so, they both had to become empowered and emerge from the invisibility and silence into which they were relegated. The struggle against the threat of climate change was not separated from the struggle against the social conditions that disempower people. In struggling against the threat of climate change, they transformed themselves, others, and the pedagogies they brought to their classrooms” (214). [Emphasis mine.]

While daunting, I read that last line as hopeful. The idea that we can “transform” ourselves and our practice around the urgency of a collective and existential challenge is a hopeful frame. But only, only if we choose that path.

Climate, Democracy, and Power

I worry, however, that we are failing to understand the significance of this moment. I worry that we will wait to begin to address both the intellectual and emotional aspects of climate change until some curriculum writer or policy wonk decides it’s appropriate. And I worry that when we do begin to embrace this challenge in schools that we will do so with a disregard to the larger context of how power relationships in our society really hold the key to whether or not we’re going to solve it.

As Kreisberg’s editors write, schools don’t take democracy seriously, and that has much to do with power. Democratic communities are places where “people enter into critical inquiry characterized by mutual support, cooperative decision making, and synergistic learning”. Yet schools are places “characterized by human isolation, competition for scarce resources, and relationships of dominance and submission” (215). Harsh words, but true nonetheless.

Fact is, unless you are a technological determinist who believes that some app will save the day, we will only solve this crisis if we dive into it headlong in schools and choose to make it the primary context for our work. Not just the context of climate, but equally the contexts of democracy and power as well.

Thoughts?

School as Fiction

February 19, 2020 By Will Richardson 5 Comments

I’ve been expending a lot of bandwidth lately reading and thinking about the meta story of school, not just the history of the system and of pedagogy, but, more specifically, the motivations behind the story we’re currently living and how they effect the potential for deep and powerful learning that we all say we want for kids. That means diving into some new (to me) edu-historians and thinkers and trying to connect what I’m learning to others who have been tweaking my thinking for a long time. Frankly, it’s a lot to make sense of, but I think it may be time to try. Feedback welcomed.

Let me start with Yuval Noah Harari, who has been stuck in my craw for the last few years after I read his 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The other day, a lengthy, fascinating piece about Harari popped up in the New Yorker, and one idea in particular jumped out at me. The author of the article is talking here about Harari’s most famous book, Sapiens:

In the schema of “Sapiens,” money is a “fiction,” as are corporations and nations. Harari uses “fiction” where another might say “social construct.” Harari further proposes that fictions require believers, and exert power only as long as a “communal belief” in them persists.

If you recognize schools as “social constructs” which, of course, they are, that’s a provocative idea, no? Schools don’t exist in nature. We’ve constructed them to meet some type of societal need, primarily to collectively educate our young. We see them as a public good, aimed at perpetuating democracy (at least in the US) and creating a more just and livable world. (More on the purpose of schools later.)

The idea of schools as “fictions” is bracing at first. But if you flip the idea over a few times, less so. The narrative of schooling runs deep, but it is simply that: a narrative. A story. One that depends on our “communal belief” in it to wield the power it does. (And no one doubts the power of the school narrative, right?)

In-Between Stories

Importantly, Harari’s work highlights another idea that is relevant here, and that is that in this moment, almost everything is in-between stories. Think about media, business, politics and even the ways we meet and fall in love. Less and less seems to be abiding by old rules and norms. In 21 Lessons, he writes that we are particularly stressed because of this:

“We are still in the nihilist moment of disillusionment and anger, after people have lost faith in the old stories but before they have embraced a new one.”

I think it’s fair to say that many are losing faith in the traditional story of school, primarily because it doesn’t serve all kids equitably and it’s increasingly out of step with how the modern world operates. But while there are some indications as to what the new story might look like, (more child/learner centered, focused more on skills and dispositions than content, etc.,) we’re nowhere near any “communal belief” in it. It’s not clear enough, yet, that there is a new story to fully “embrace.”

Still, the new story that is emerging feels much more in tune with the natural, biological rhythms of learning, which, by the way, are not a “fiction.” This is the point that Carol Black has so eloquently made in her amazing essay A Thousand Rivers (which I’ve glossed many times.) If you want the punch in the gut quote from that, here it is:

“Collecting data on human learning based on children’s behavior in school is like collecting data on killer whales based on their behavior at Sea World.”

Our current fiction about schools attempts to take the very natural process of learning that is a part of all of us and make it happen in the very unnatural setting of the classroom where few of the conditions that all of us know are needed for learning to occur actually exist. It’s our greatest unpleasant truth that schools are not really built for learning. And if you read the rest of Black’s essay, you’ll get the gist of just how harmful that current fiction can be to the well-being of kids.

The Function of Schools

I think this whole idea of “fiction” resonates with me more deeply today due to my recent introduction to the work of David Labaree, a recently retired professor from the Stanford Graduate School of Education. I can’t remember how I found it, but a few months ago I came across his essay from the Journal of Curriculum Studies published in 2012 titled “School syndrome: Understanding the USA’s magical belief that schooling can somehow improve society, promote access, and preserve advantage.” Let’s just say that it’s been rocking my thinking about schools ever since.

In a nutshell, Labaree’s thesis is this: we may say that we want great schools because they are a public good, because (as I said above) they serve the purpose of preparing children to live in a democracy and to hopefully improve society. But what we truly value in schools in the private good they offer in terms of promoting privilege and the current meritocracy, and in the assumed role of providing access to “a better life.” Here are his words from the top of the essay:

The US is suffering from a school syndrome, which arises from Americans’ insistence on having things both ways through the magical medium of education. Society wants schools to express the highest ideals as a society and the greatest aspirations as individuals, but only as long as they remain ineffective in actually realizing them, since one does not really want to acknowledge the way these two aims are at odds with each other. Schools are asked to promote equality while preserving privilege, so perpetuating a system that is too busy balancing opposites to promote student learning. The focus is on making the system inclusive at one level and exclusive at the next, in order to make sure that it meets demands for both access and advantage. As a result the system continues to lure one to pursue the dream of fixing society by reforming schools, while continually frustrating one’s ability to meet these goals. Also, a simple cure cannot be found for this syndrome because no remedy will be accepted that would mean giving up one of the aims for education in favour of another. [Emhasis mine.]

Yes. That.

Seriously, the whole piece is important because it paints with an historical eye to explain school reform movements and why almost all of them have failed. It makes a compelling case that the true reform of the original system was the one that was driven by the consumers of education, not the creators and purveyors of it. While we say that schools and education are the most effective way to attain our highest aspirations and ideals as a society, schools are also the primary way that we accomplish our greatest individual ambitions and “stave off our worst fears.” And that last part, in fact, has become the primary motivation behind the story in schools that we’re currently living.

In short, we choose to build our narrative of schooling around the “private good” of schools and education in order to maintain access to social standing and individual opportunity, rather than as a “public good” which emphasizes citizenship and civic mindedness at its core. And that is a challenging, “unpleasant truth” as well.

The Consequences of our Fiction

That narrative has many deleterious effects, as I was reminded last week in Johannesburg when I reconnected with David Gleason, the author of At What Cost? Defending Adolescent Development in Fiercely Competitive Schools. A school psychologist, David is researching why it is that our students are now reporting record levels of stress, anxiety, and depression and what schools can do to alleviate it. Educators at “prestigious” schools that David has interviewed are very forthcoming about how their schools contribute to those issues. They freely cite things like putting too much emphasis on college, assigning too much homework, rewarding “achievement” over all else, and not honoring the normal mental and physical development of adolescents, among other things. (In other words, they’re acting in service of the “private good” over the “public good.”) But when he asks those same educators what would happen if they stopped doing those things that they know contribute to the problem, they respond by saying they would then be seen as lacking rigor and excellence, that they would lose their reputations as elite schools and their enrollments along with it, and more.

This “bind” that David discusses so powerfully in his book is the same “bind” that Labaree sees as well, this idea that we are trying to balance two things that are in opposition to one another, and that right now, we are deferring to the consumer’s need for credentialing over students’ well being or society’s noblest aspirations. It’s the same tension that Black feels between the natural needs of children and the unnatural needs of schooling.

Which all ties into a recent David Brooks column in the New York Times titled This Is How Scandinavia Got Great: The power of educating the whole person. Brooks argues that the reason Scandinavia got it right is because they dedicated themselves in the late 19th Century to educating the whole child, that it was more about lifelong learning. That it was more about connection to community and home. It wasn’t about status. Money quote:

“If you have a thin educational system that does not help students see the webs of significance between people, does not even help students see how they see, you’re going to wind up with a society in which people can’t see through each other’s lenses.”

When we choose (or allow ourselves) to be motivated by pragmatism and individualism over idealism and collectivism, we run the risk of ignoring what’s best for our kids and for our society and world.

What We’ve Lost

I’d argue we’ve lost a great deal because of the system as it’s currently constructed and the motives that drive it. And this idea that schools are meant to serve the individual over the collective is at the root of many of our ills. This is what we get when we focus on grades. On being right. On knowledge and not learning. On delivery instead of discovery. We get kids who see others as competitors, not collaborators or cooperators. We don’t want to work with them as much as work to overcome them.

The fiction of schools says we can teach kids things that they don’t internally care about. That we can measure long term learning with numbers and letters. That following the rules is the way to success, at least at the game we call school. The fiction also says that we know what you need to know. It says that you as a child should just acquiesce to our choices. That acceptance of this fiction is the path to an education and, ultimately, personal success.

And yet, we all know this just isn’t true. The vast majority of what we measure in schools, those things that count, literally, are most often quickly forgotten, never again used, and a barrier to the conditions that great learning requires. Our emphasis on “outcomes” and grades creates real emotional stress that is absent when we are learning the things that matter to us. I mean, what kind of emotional stress and anxiety do you feel when you are learning something that you find deeply and powerfully important and useful?

Our greatest challenge as educators is to write a new story of “school” that more effectively serves our students and our society given the moment in which we live and whatever future we can glean. Acknowledging that that too will be a “fiction” may actually make the work easier. But more than anything, understanding and acknowledging the motives of the current story will make that work more urgent, more relevant, and hopefully, more powerful.

A New Phase

February 3, 2020 By Will Richardson 1 Comment

When Bruce Dixon and I started Modern Learners six years ago, we had two aspirations. First, to help people, teachers, parents, and policy makers, better understand the ways in which the modern world provided different lenses through which to see education and learning, and to help them use those lenses to make better decisions for kids. And second, to create a business around it that would allow both of us to get off the road, spend less time on planes, and provide a model for other similar communities down the road.

While I think we did a pretty good job with the first part, the second part has been a tougher path. As we knew it would be. And in all honesty, over the past year or so I’ve grown more frustrated and impatient with the whole conversation around educational change. While more people seem willing to engage in these ideas and take steps to make change happen, the reality is that only very few are willing to truly interrogate the “grammars of school” to an extent that moves them to a real reimagination of the work. And even then it’s a huge struggle to shift the narrative.

“Damaging Effects”

The forces against change are powerful and deeply rooted in the way we think about schools and education. The tech companies, testing companies, tutoring companies, universities, PACs…all of them have billions of dollars invested in making sure that any change we make in schools is cosmetic. And honestly, most authors and speakers and consultants aren’t going there either. I get it. It’s hard. My favorite Alfie Kohn quote these days is “I’m still wrestling with how to discuss the damaging effects of traditional educational practices without making it sound as if I’m blaming people who rely on them.” But that is the work right now, I think. To bring the damage to light. You can’t do that by dangling the next adjective for learning as the cure for what ails education. Nor can you do it by just trying to make things “better” via pushing practices that create more “voice and choice” or “personalization.” Those are more efforts in box checking than gut checking.

That’s why most of the “success” stories I’ve seen have come about outside of the traditional public and private systems. Really visionary leaders building new schools for the type of modern learning that’s possible right now. Small independent or international schools that eschew the status quo. Some boutique, one-off schools that are built for small student populations in more progressive areas of the world. They are out there, and their numbers are growing, no doubt.

But in the public and traditional independent sectors where most kids go to get “an education,” these changes aren’t scaling. Reforms don’t cut to the core of the “unpleasant truths” that I always talk and write about, those things we do in education that simply defy common sense when it comes to holding our kids’ best interests at heart. Those things we do which are increasingly irrelevant for the world we live in today. Everyone nods in agreement when I point them out. Few actually have the commitment to find a path to change them. And sincerely, I’m not throwing anyone under the bus when it comes to those who actually make an effort. Like I’ve often said to the people who have chosen to explore this space with me, this is the hardest work they will ever do. It’s excruciating.

Transition Time

With all that said, I find myself in a period of transition. Not that I’m going to quit trying to make the case for real change to happen in schools. But I am going to think about other ways to do that. I want to keep working. I want to get off planes because until they become more healthy for the planet, we should all get off planes. (Zoom anyone?) I want to do more writing, maybe run some masterminds for leaders and another Change School and Big Questions Institute or two, maybe do more work on and with parents (who may be the real drivers of change), maybe more with coaching basketball, maybe something else. Whatever that may end up being, the news is that both Bruce and I have transitioned out of Modern Learners. It’s time. I’m proud of the work I did there. I think the 10 Principles for Schools of Modern Learning and the audit got people to think really hard about their work. And I’m thankful and have nothing but admiration for all of those educators who over the years in spaces like Change School and our community have been willing to push themselves into the necessary discomfort that comes with this work and take steps toward real change. Working with them, coaching them, in fact, has been the best work that I’ve done in my professional career. It’s been a privilege.

So, on to…whatever. Sincere thanks to all of you who have supported us over the years. I hope you continue to support Missy as she carries on the work at Modern Learners. And I look forward to continuing to create new conversations around education and schools in whatever ways make sense. In this world of huge transition and uncertainty, I can think of no more important work.

On Telling Truths

January 31, 2020 By Will Richardson 2 Comments

So, it’s been a while.

For someone who has had a blog for almost 20 years in one form or another, I’m wondering what happened last year. Started off with a bang. Posted fairly regularly elsewhere. But I think the white space here for the last year or so captures a larger struggle that I’ve been having with my place in the world and what I want to say and how to best say it.

Not to say the struggle is gone. But it feels like it’s abating a bit.

And I’m thinking it’s time to go back to the blog. For me. To air my brain out in public again on a more consistent basis. To write.

Today is the last day of January, and I’m happy to say I completed the “write every day for a month” challenge at 750words.com. But that’s the silly or private or even stupid stuff that comes with a Writing Down the Bones approach. Filter-less, which all of us could use, I think.

These days, however, I’m feeling the need to think out loud more than I have been, even though “out loud” is nowhere near the mostly happy, supportive, let’s learn together space it was two decades ago. Not that it ever got that bad in these parts.

But the thing is, I’m feeling like I’ve got more truths to tell about schools and education and the world. Seems like the more I read and think and reflect, the harder those truths seem to get. The harder those truths seem to hear.

Telling Truths

A piece in the Atlantic by George Packer is what tipped me into this post. A piece that while talking about writing in general, I think captures the state of affairs in the Trump era all too well. And it’s not good for writers, who find it easier to accede to the expectations of the tribe than to try to engage them in shifting those expectations when needed.

The education world is right there. I’m not sure we’re telling enough truths in the education space. We’re afraid, because some of those truths are really hard. We’re too concerned with gaining “followers” by telling them what they want to hear, in many cases by giving them what’s appealing to them emotionally instead of challenging their worldviews.

Writers learn to avoid expressing thoughts or associating with undesirables that might be controversial with the group and hurt their numbers. In the most successful cases, the cultivation of followers becomes an end in itself and takes the place of actual writing.

Can we even remember the days when we wrote not for likes and followers but for engagement and conversation? When implicit at the end of every post was the question “Here’s what I think; what do you think?” and the expectation that the answer would be thoughtful and seeking to deepen rather to end the conversation? When numbers didn’t drive the messaging?

Packer suggests that writers have become afraid.

It’s the fear of moral judgment, public shaming, social ridicule, and ostracism. It’s the fear of landing on the wrong side of whatever group matters to you. An orthodoxy enforced by social pressure can be more powerful than official ideology, because popular outrage has more weight than the party line.

And that is an existential problem for a writer.

A writer who’s afraid to tell people what they don’t want to hear has chosen the wrong trade.

I am many things: husband, parent, educator, author, speaker, consultant, podcaster, curator, lover of basketball, environmentalist. But I’m also a writer. I always have been. I always will be.

My choice now is what to do that.

I choose to tell truths.

More soon.

Announcing: The Schools of Modern Learning Audit

January 15, 2019 By Will Richardson Leave a Comment

So today, my team and I at Modern Learners are excited to release our “10 Principles for Schools of Modern Learning Audit.”

It’s a 5-7 minute survey tool that we’ve developed as a companion to our whitepaper of the same name. If you want to get a quick snapshot of how you compare to schools around the world that are changing the experiences and environments for learners to more effectively prepare them for the world as it is, I hope you check it out.

Depending on where you score, we’ll email you some great next steps to take to close some of the gaps that you may have.

And if you have any feedback or questions, please e-mail me directly at will@modernlearners.com.

Really hoping you’ll find this audit to be a valuable tool in your work to create relevant, sustainable change in your schools!

Healthy Discomfort?

January 12, 2019 By Will Richardson 1 Comment

I realized the other day that I live in an almost constant state of discomfort.

Not a physical or mental discomfort; my life humbles me.

It’s an intellectual discomfort that just won’t go away. It’s a discomfort driven by questions that I struggle to answer. It’s a state of constant not knowing that I can’t seem to shake.

Honestly, I don’t think I want to shake it. In fact, I kind of like it.

It’s that discomfort that drives me to read and write and think and reflect every day. It’s what keeps me curious.

It’s what keeps me learning.

This is a moment that probably should cause all of us some discomfort, some healthy sense of not knowing. So many questions seem almost unanswerable today. So many feel huge and existential.

And that’s true as well for schools and education.

The difference in schools is that our student’s discomfort comes from not knowing the known, from not knowing the “right” answer or the “right” process. It comes from the evaluation and the judgement that follows.

What if instead of making students focus on what’s known, we helped them thrive in the unknown? What if we supported them in finding their own healthy discomfort, their own questions that matter? Wouldn’t that keep them more curious? More engaged?

Wouldn’t that keep them learning?

“C” is for Coping

January 8, 2019 By Will Richardson Leave a Comment

Stat of the Day: 77% of 14 to 29 year olds said they or someone close to them had suffered from mental health issues.

77%.

And the #1 issue for that age group? School shootings.

I’m thinking of all the supposed “C” skills that we’re supposed to develop in our students, it’s arguable that “coping” may now be the most important. As much so as creativity, curiosity, collaboration, or any of the others. If are kids cannot cope with the realities of the day, none of those others will flourish.

It begs all sorts of questions for educators and schools.

How are we adding to their stress? What current practices might ease their burden? (Think ending early morning sleep deprivation, taking the “high stakes” off the test, or giving them more opportunities to move their bodies and quiet their minds.)

Are we explicit in teaching kids coping strategies? Do they learn them implicitly from the cultures that we create in our schools? Do the adults model them purposefully?

Are we building capacity in our communities to support and nurture and care for our kids? Are we honoring the fears of our children every day?

As with everything else in life, this is a choice. Right now, most schools choose rigor and competition and immobility.

We have healthier options.

Grades are a Choice

January 6, 2019 By Will Richardson 2 Comments

Grades matter for one reason only: Because we let them.

Lots of kids get high school diplomas without grades. Lots of kids learn lots of stuff without grades. (Adults, too.)

Believe it or not, students get into Princeton without grades. People become successful in life (in whatever way you choose to define that) without any grades to propel them.

I mean how many tombstones (or obits) have you read that highlight a GPA?

So, let’s not use the excuse that “other people” or life requires them. They don’t. It doesn’t.

Just own this: we choose to use grades in school. We don’t have to, but we do. It’s just easier that way.

We choose them despite what we know are the problems with handing them out. That they impact self-esteem. That kids start chasing them and gaming them. That they signal an end to something. That they are a snapshot.

So let’s just be honest, ok? Grades matter because we let them matter. Because we make them matter. Because that’s been the choice we’ve made in education for eons. Because we don’t have the stomach for changing it.

We could choose learning instead.

But I guess that’s just too hard.

Cut the Curriculum

January 5, 2019 By Will Richardson 1 Comment

Here’s an idea: A Minimal Viable Curriculum (MVC). That’s what Christian Talbot over at Basecamp is proposing, and I have to say, I love the idea.

He writes: “What if we were to design MVCs: Minimum Viable Curricula centered on just enough content to empower learners to examine questions or pursue challenges with rigor? Then, as learners go deeper into a question or challenge, they update their MVC…which is pretty much how learning happens in the real world.”

The key there to me is that THEY update their MVC. That resonates so deeply; it feels like that’s what I’m doing with my learning each day as I read about and work with school leaders who are thinking deeply about change.

And I’d bet that resonates with anyone who has come to terms with the reality that we learn more in informal, real world environments than we do in formal, school based settings. When we pursue questions that matter to us, rigor is baked in.

Teachers and schools have a role to play in developing students as learners, no doubt. One of those roles to replicate the conditions under which powerful learning takes place in our day to day lives. Moving from a “BFC” (Bloated Forgettable Curriculum) to an “MVC” is a great step in that direction.

Quick Update

April 25, 2018 By Will Richardson Leave a Comment

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and while I am aiming on getting back to this space, here are some of the other places I’m writing and publishing.

LinkedIn
Modern Learners
Modern Learners Podcast
Change School

Thanks as always for your continued support of my work.

Will

On Learning and Common Sense

October 11, 2017 By Will Richardson 4 Comments

As I continue my trek through some of the “classics” regarding learning and schools, I’m finding it interesting the belief systems that many authors take pains to articulate when it comes to answering my current favorite question “What do you mean by learning?” And while there are some similar overtones, to be sure, each comes at it a bit differently.

Carl Rogers, best known as a psychotherapist who championed “client-centered therapy,” was also a vocal advocate for one of today’s most prevalent edu phrases, “student-centered learning.” And this was 50+ years ago.

Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become is Rogers’ most focused work on education. It highlights the stories of three different teachers at the outset and their work to create conditions in their classrooms where students had a great deal of agency over the what and how of the learning they were doing. The stories are not unlike those you read from a number of schools who are currently reimagining what their practice in classrooms looks like. Later, Rogers goes into the practical aspects of facilitating classes like these, and dives into the types of relationships that teachers and students must have in order to develop kids as learners.

To that end, Rogers’ principles for learning interest me and resonate to a great degree:

Human beings have a natural potentiality for learning. They are curious about their world, until and unless this curiosity is blunted by their experience in our educational system.
Significant learning takes place when the subject matter is perceived by the student as having relevance for his own purposes.
Learning which involves a change in self organization—in the perception of oneself—is threatening and tends to be resisted.
Those learnings which are threatening to the self are more easily perceived and assimilated when external threats are at a minimum.
When threat to the self is low, experience can be perceived in differentiated fashion and learning can proceed.
Much significant learning is acquired through doing. Placing the student in direct experiential confrontation with practical problems, social problems, ethical and philosophical problems, personal issues, and research problems, is one of the most effective modes of promoting learning
Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the learning process. When he chooses his own directions, helps to discover his own learning resources, formulates his own problems, decides his own course of action, lives with the consequences of these choices, then significant learning is maximized
Self-initiated learning which involves the whole person of the learner—feelings as wells as intellect—is the most lasting and pervasive.
Independence, creativity, and self-reliance are all facilitated when self-criticism and self-evaluation are basic and evaluation by others is of secondary importance. If a child is to grow up to be independent and self reliant he must be given opportunities at an early age not only to make his own judgments and his own mistakes but to evaluate the consequences of these judgments and choices
The most socially useful learning in the modern world is the learning of the process of learning, a continuing openness to experience and incorporation into oneself of the process of change. If our present culture survives it will be because we have been able to develop individuals for whom change is the central fact of life and who have been able to live comfortably with this central fact

Much to unpack in that, but as I said earlier, almost all of it resonates with my own thinking and that of others I’ve read. A couple of specific comments.

First, in my work with leadership, I see the resistance alluded to in #3 all the time. Robert Evans calls it the difference between “first-order changes” which deal try to improve the “efficiency or effectiveness of what we are already doing,” and “second-order changes,” which are “systemic in nature and aim to modify the very way an organization is put together, altering its assumptions, goals, structures, roles, and norms.” Substitute “individual” for “organization” in that last sentence as well. Very few leaders in my experience are willing to level up to take on with seriousness those second-order changes.

The whole “external threat” aspect of learning Rogers talks about in #4 and #5 is a huge barrier to learning, and change. Federal and state governments have placed explicit threats on schools and teachers, which in turn tempers their ability to learn. (And yes, we need schools that learn.) It also speaks to the way we currently assess our kids and the consequences of “failure” that we place on them. Deep learning can be uncomfortable, and absent a supportive, nurturing environment, it does not flourish.

In #7, I love how Rogers uses the word “responsibly” and the stark distinction between his use of the word and the way it’s most often applied in schools. There, being “responsible” means acceding to the demands and norms of the system, as in do your homework, be on time, don’t cause a ruckus, etc. To Rogers, however, it means using freedom and agency to pursue personal learning in depth. Shifting the way we think about the word in schools would be a “second-order change,” no?

Finally, the one that resonates the most is undoubtedly the last. But it’s not just the goal of we the adults developing “individuals for whom change is the central fact of life.” It’s that we adults, especially in education, have to become those individuals ourselves. As much as schools have changed over the past 100 years, and they have changed a lot, present day school cultures are still resistant to change. It only happens when it has to, as a reaction to external edicts or pressures. I see little evidence of school cultures that embrace change, and act proactively to learn through it.

As with most of these lists of principles or beliefs, there’s little here that belies common sense.

Photo Credit

Our Skewed System

September 4, 2017 By Will Richardson Leave a Comment

From Diane Ackerman’s One Hundred Names for Love:

What we airily label ‘creativity’ typically blends so many features: risk-taking, perseverance, problem-solving, openness to experience, the need to share one’s inner universe, empathy, detailed mastery of a craft, resourcefulness, disciplined spontaneity, a mind of large general knowledge and strength that can momentarily be drawn to a particular, ample joy when surprised, intense focus, the useful application of obsession, the innocent wonder of a child available to a learned adult, passion, a tenuous (or at least flexible) grasp on reality, mysticism (though not necessarily theology), a reaction against the status quo (and preference for unique creations), and usually the support of at least one person – among many ingredients.

In the throes of creativity, a lively brain tussles with a mass of memories and rich stores of knowledge, attacking them both sub rosa and with the mind wide open. Some it incubates offstage until a fully fledged insight wings into view. The rest it consciously rigs, rotates, kneads, and otherwise plays with until a novel solution emerges. Only by fumbling with countless bits of knowledge, and then ignoring most of it, does a creative mind craft something original. For that, far more than the language areas of the brain are involved. Hand-me-down ideas won’t do. So conventions must be flouted, risks taken, possibilities freely spigoted, ideas elaborated, problems redefined, daydreaming encouraged, curiosity followed down zig-zagging alleyways. Any sort of unconsidered trifle may be fair game. It’s child’s play. Literally. Not a gift given to an elect few, but a widespread, natural, human way of knowing the world. With the best intentions, our schools and society bash most of it out of us. Fortunately, it’s so strong in some of us that it endures. As neuroscientist Floyd Bloom observes:

“Schools place an overwhelming emphasis on teaching children to solve problems correctly, not creatively. This skewed system dominates our first twenty years of life: tests, grades, college admissions, degrees, and job placements demand and reward targeted logical thinking, factual competence, and language and math skills–all purveys of the left brain.” (245).

And remember, we do this not just to the kids, but to the adults in classrooms as well. How many schools have “creative cultures” for teachers? Or better yet “creative learning cultures,” not just teaching cultures?

We know this. Why do we do this?

The “Future of Learning” Isn’t

August 28, 2017 By Will Richardson 6 Comments

Just read a headline that said “The Future of Learning to Be Revealed!”

And all could think of was, “fake news.”

This is the same tripe as when educators say stuff like “student learning has changed so much in the past decade” or “kids learn differently today.”

No. They really don’t. Nor will they learn differently in the future.

Learners have always learned, and will always learn in the same way. They learn what they are interested in. They learn what they need to learn. They learn those things that they want to learn more about.

Sure, the technologies have changed. Now the information is digital. The social aspects of learning have exploded. Knowledge is everywhere. It’s amazing, and it’s complex.

But can we stop with this line that says we have to change because learning has changed? It hasn’t. It won’t.

What has changed is this: learners now have more agency, more choice, more control over the what, when, why, and with whom of learning than ever before.

And if you’re thinking about the future of schooling, think more of that. More agency, not more technology.

Thinking About “Learneracy”

July 23, 2017 By Will Richardson 12 Comments

From the “I’m An Ex-English Teacher and I Can Make Up New Words Department:”

We have a huge focus in schools on literacy, and deservedly so. Almost no one argues that kids don’t need to be able to read and write and do basic math. We measure ourselves by literacy rates. We create rubrics and tests and other assessments and label kids as “good readers” or “bad writers” or “competent at math.” We put literacy at the center of our work.

We don’t do that so much for other subjects or skills. Sure, we dole out grades in science and history and French. But those aren’t skills focused as much as that literacy stuff. I mean, my kids didn’t get a grade on their skills as a scientist or as an historian. It was more about the content, the knowledge.

All that said, it’s debatable today that being able to read and write and do math in the most widely held sense gets us even close to being literate today. Reading is no longer linear or solely text based. Writing is no longer local or text based. Math is no longer computation based.

I’ve argued in the past that through a modern lens that encompasses all of the new genres of reading and writing and mathematics, most kids are illiterate when they graduate from school. Most adults who teach them are illiterate as well. Most people in general would be considered literate in the most modern sense of the word.

We seem not to like to talk about this, however.

Literacy, unlike most other things in school, is in flux. It’s evolving. Quickly. And that makes it hard to teach. If we think of literacy as something to “learn” and get a grade for, it signals that we think it’s static. That it’s a box to check and move on, when in reality, it’s a new box every day.

I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off focusing our efforts on helping kids become “learnerate.” As the word suggests, do they have the skills and dispositions to learn their way to whatever outcomes they desire? Are they curious? Are they persistent? Do they embrace nuance and not knowing? Are they reflective? Can they create and vet their own curriculum, find their own teachers, and assess their own progress? (Add your question below…)

None of those things happen because of explicit teaching. None of those things are easy to measure. They are dispositions that already exist in every child and skills that are nurtured and developed tacitly in the process of doing meaningful, important, beautiful work with others. You become learnerate by continually learning, not by being taught and measured by a test or a competency, but as manifested in the desire to learn more. (We’re not learning if we don’t want to learn more, btw.)

“Learneracy” is currently not our focus in schools. But it should be. Especially today when each of us has so much more agency over and access to the things we want to learn, whenever, wherever, and with whomever we want to learn it.

The Condition of “Open”

February 24, 2017 By Will Richardson 9 Comments

“The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.” ~Seymour Papert, (The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap, p45)

Right now, think about the typical classroom in whatever school that is a part of your life. Whether you’re a parent, a teacher, a superintendent, take an inventory right now of what “conditions” exist for kids in that room. Make a list. What systems or structures or roles or dispositions are in play when it comes to a student’s ability to learn?

Now look at the list. Does it support “invention?” Do those conditions create an environment where kids learn deeply, as in using that “learning” and wondering more about it long after the school day has ended? As in solving or “inventing” solutions to real problems that exist in the real world?

Or do they support “schooling” in the sense that we’ve traditionally known it?

Papert, who unfortunately passed away last year, argued for conditions that expanded kids’ agency to learn. And I’ve been really moved by that question of conditions for a number of years now. To me, it’s foundational. Those classroom conditions tell powerful stories about what the teachers in them and the schools around them believe about what learning is and how it happens.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of classrooms begin to change in terms of the conditions that are present. There is a move toward passion and relevance and making. It’s not a wave yet, but it is a ripple that’s growing. My sense is that current conditions in the world writ large will force that ripple to grow as more and more in education begin to understand the changes required by the profound shifts in technology, the environment, globalization, and more that we’re living through right now.

Few classrooms are “learning out loud,” however, a phrase that connotes the idea that openness and transparency are now essential conditions for learning in school. And there’s no one better than David Wiley to drive my thinking on that, and to make the compelling case for sharing our work online in the context of Papert’s “invention” idea:

As I’ve reflected more on the recent writing on open pedagogy, it’s led me to trace some of it’s intellectual heritage to constructionism. And while I realize that I’m significantly under-characterizing constructionism by saying so, and I apologize in advance for those of you who are more familiar with the work, if you’re not familiar with constructionism you might think of it as “learning by making.” When learners work to create artifacts that have real value in the real world, awesome things happen – and that awesomeness has nothing to do with open. But you can add the awesomeness of open to the awesomeness of learning by making to get a multiplier effect. Here’s specifically how I’m thinking about it (today):

Learning by making… Society gets to build on…

in the classroom. nothing.

in public (e.g., the artifact is posted on the web). the ideas expressed in the artifact.

in the open (e.g., the artifact is posted on the web under an open license). the ideas expressed in the artifact as well as the artifact itself.

Learning by making…	Society gets to build on…
in the classroom.	nothing.
in public (e.g., the artifact is posted on the web).	the ideas expressed in the artifact.
in the open (e.g., the artifact is posted on the web under an open license).	the ideas expressed in the artifact as well as the artifact itself.

I know that many in education are not comfortable with the “Society gets to build on…” part when it comes to student work, especially in K-12. But this now a modern condition for learning. We consume, we create, we share, and we learn as others read, think, add their context to our ideas and artifacts. And, importantly, we do the same for them. Today, given our connectedness, this condition of openness and sharing really isn’t an option. And when we allow our work to be remixed and repurposed openly, when we create it an then give it to the world to use without restriction, learning multiplies.

Just like in real life, there’s no requirement here to share everything we do in classrooms openly. For instance, we’re getting ready to offer an online experience for leadership that we’ll be asking participants to pay for. That’s part of our livelihood. But in school, “giving it away” is one way of nurturing even more invention. And as David says, it leads to new ways of thinking:

And that brings me back to the basic logic underlying my interest in and excitement about open pedagogy:
1. We learn by the things we do.
2. The permissions granted by open licenses make it practical and legal for us to do new things.
3. The ability to do new things will likely lead to new kinds of learning.

So, check your list. Is “open” one of the conditions you thought of? And if not, how might you add that amplifier of invention to the classrooms you care about?

Image credit: Alan Levine

10 Principles For Schools of Modern Learning

January 31, 2017 By Will Richardson 1 Comment

It’s time to raise the bar on our conversations around school change.

For too long, we’ve been paying lip service to “transformation,” unwilling or unable to reimagine our work in schools in ways that are fully relevant for the realities of the modern world. And as we pursue half-measures to become “better,” we neglect the needs of our students who need us to be decidedly “different.”

The gap between the increasing pace of change and our inability in schools to adequately respond to it is what keeps Bruce and Missy and I (and others) up at night.

We need to close the gap.

Introducing our newest white paper: 10 Principles for Schools of Modern Learning: The Urgent Case for Reimagining Today’s Schools.

It’s our first shot across the educhange bow that we hope will get you thinking and talking and acting to lead serious, sustainable change in your schools and classrooms.

This 20-page ebook highlights:

A framework for developing kids who are deep, powerful, curious, agile learners.
Action steps to inform a change process in your school.
Questions you can ask to start creating change in your school.
Links to resources you and your stakeholders can access today to get started.
Insights and ideas to help you make better decisions about your school’s future.
Methods that schools are already using to transform student learning.

We’ve got more coming: a new podcast series, resources for ChangeLeaders, and an 8-week course that we think will move schools into the modern world with relevance, sustainability, and scale.

We’re not naive as to the work that real change takes. In fact, if you don’t have a healthy dose of courage and commitment to creating a new narrative for schooling in this moment, you won’t want to tag along on this ride.

But if you do, welcome. Read and share the whitepaper, join us on Facebook, and start to build your own capacity for change with a community of global leaders invested in doing what’s right for our kids in these challenging yet exciting times.

Zen and the Art of School Change

January 27, 2017 By Will Richardson 8 Comments

About a week ago I grabbed Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig off my bookshelf and cracked it open for the first time since I first read it probably 30 years ago. I didn’t remember much of the story, but I did remember thinking it was an important read the first time around. And I’m finding that again. For the uninitiated, it’s the true story of the author, his son and two friends on a motorcycle trip through the high plains and Rockies, and the search for a deeper understanding of life and existence. It is, for me at least, a pretty deep and challenging text that I’m enjoying struggling through.

Anyway, last night I read this one passage that when I read it made me go “yeah…that’s what I’ve been trying to say but haven’t been able to.” Pirisg is writing about Phaedrus, who, it turns out, is actually a younger, darker version of himself. He writes:

“He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments, and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for control of individuals in the service of those functions.”

I love passages like this one that literally (and I mean literally) give me goosebumps of resonance, if you know what I mean.

So let me try to break that down a bit more in terms of my sense of the schools part of that quote.

Do schools “direct thought for ends other than the truth?” This is what I’ve been trying to suss out in my never ending homilies around beliefs and common sense in schools. I think, too, this is what Frank Smith argues so well in The Book of Learning and Forgetting. There are just truths about learning and schooling that we deny. Truths like we don’t remember what we don’t want to learn or what doesn’t have relevance in our life. That we don’t learn when we are oppressed. That standardizing an education pushes against the inherent uniqueness of children. That learning in schools doesn’t reflect learning in real life, and so on. This is the Russell Ackoff quote, again, where we do things right at the expense of doing the right thing. It’s why so many people go “aw, crap” when I show that side by side slide of conditions that we know kids (and we) need for deep and powerful learning and the conditions we actually create.

And the idea that schools (meaning the people in them) do this for “the perpetuation of their own functions” is absolutely true. If we truly were to move agency over learning to the learner and hew to the truths about learning, our functions would radically, fundamentally change. Teacher wouldn’t be teacher. The architectures of schooling would be seen as barriers to learning, not as paths to efficiency. The narrative would have to be completely rewritten. But the reality is we’d rather be “better” than “different” because the former doesn’t require huge change.

Finally, do we avoid the truth and instead focus on the “control of individuals in the service of those functions” that are already well established? No question. This is what Seymour Sarason writes so passionately about in terms of the power relationships that have existed and currently exist in schools. I’ve written before the literally hundreds (if not thousands) of times where I’ve talked to teachers who have told me they are “powerless” to change. They are, in other words, controlled by the system, by the standards, by the narrative. And no one doubts that kids are controlled; they have little voice in what happens to them, and classroom management is still high on the list of things that teaches are evaluated on.

So, yeah, we ignore what we know is true because if we didn’t, we would have to seriously change what we do. It’s just easier to work within the well established norms of learning and teaching, the efficiency model, and to impose power over those who may want to challenge those norms in a quest for truth and effectiveness in learning. In other words, as much as we as individuals may want to change, the institution we’re stuck with is built not to. It works to “perpetuate its own functions,” which is why real, high-bar change in schools is so hard to effect.

Thoughts?

(Image credit: Alan Levine)

Playing at “Agency”

January 23, 2017 By Will Richardson 6 Comments

From the “Sometimes Your Read Something That Makes You Want to Scream ‘THIS!’ Department” I give you Sean Michael Morris:

“This is the right of agency. It does not give us power over another, but it gives us mastery over ourselves. And an education that does not encourage or facilitate this agency is not an education.”

Read and repeat. Without “Mastery over ourselves…” it’s “…not an education.”

“Agency” is one of those growing buzzwords now in education, which means that its true meaning is soon to be neutered in practice. Especially because “agency” is at the heart of everything related to serious, re-imagin-y school change. It is, I’ve come to believe, the only real measure of whether a school is truly about learning…or not.

Because it is so foundational to the work, you can already see “agency” being watered down. Students are being given “agency” over how to learn what’s in the curriculum (a la “competency-based education.) Or students given the choice the technologies they use to master (as in pass the test) the content in a course (a la “blended” or “flipped” learning). More often than not, “Genius Hour” is our feel good attempt to check the agency box. (If we really meant it, we’d have “Curriculum Hour” instead.) And don’t get me started on “personalized.” (Seriously…don’t.)

And make note of that word “given” which to me is what makes all the difference. In most conversations, we are to “give” kids agency over their learning. No, we don’t. We do not “give” agency to students. Similarly, we do not “empower” students to have choice as power is not ours to give. Instead, we create conditions under which “agency” can flourish, under which our students can create their own power and become powerful in their own right. Conditions under which students have “mastery” over themselves and their learning, not just the content. Conditions built on what we believe about how kids learn.

For all the talk of “transformation” in schools, none of it matters if we don’t start here. Forget buying technology if you plan to distribute it to students without allowing them to fully own it in a learning sense. Forget curriculum if we don’t see it as something as navigated by the learner on their own terms. (Remember that there is a huge difference between “having to learn” and “wanting to learn,” and that only one of those really leads to learning.) And forget, as well, assessments that aren’t driven by the learner in a quest to learn more deeply. Otherwise, it’s just a meaningless, contrived metric that says nothing about real learning beyond memorization.

As Morris says, however, “agency” doesn’t mean that adults in classrooms don’t have a role to play.

“In other words, agency doesn’t so much exert itself upon others as it does float within the intersection of freedom and authority. Enacting one’s agency is always a balancing act between doing what is within your understanding of your own power and working with the boundaries of others’ understandings of theirs. It is a cooperative, chemical interaction. Freedom delimited by others’ freedoms delimited by yours. In a classroom, this means that authority remains present. Sometimes, the authority of the teacher; but in the best situation, the shared authority of the group of learners (and the teacher).”

I love that phrase “the intersection of freedom and authority.” But he’s not talking about “authority” in the typical school sense. The traditional power relationships in schools suggest that the adults are the authority, both when it comes to curriculum and to behavior. Traditionally, students are bereft of agency in any real sense, because the efficiency model of education can’t deal with it. (The idea of kids with real agency over their learning makes our heads hurt.) But a teacher’s will should be limited by the freedoms of learners. It’s not our job to impose an education on kids. It’s our job to allow them to create their own with our guidance.

But here’s the thing, as Morris suggests. We’re in deep trouble as a society if we continue to either deny or play at the edges of creating classrooms where students are the agents of their own learning. Kids who are trained to wait to be told what to learn, when to learn it, how to learn it, and how to be assessed on that learning will grow into adults who are of the same cloth, waiting for someone to tell them what to believe and how to act and what to think and know without the critical lens that only freedom can nourish. In large measure in the U.S., we’re already there.

So, don’t say “agency” unless you really mean it, unless you truly intend to create classrooms where kids “have mastery over themselves” and the freedom to employ that mastery with other learners.

Image credit: Annie Spratt

The Future (and Present) of Expertise

January 19, 2017 By Will Richardson 2 Comments

Yesterday, I ran across this quote from Degreed, an online credentialing site:

“The future doesn’t care how you become an expert.”

Now, is that a marketing pitch or a reality? Obviously, for some professions, the future is still going to care a lot about how people gain their expertise. As I’ve said many times, I don’t want my surgeon trained on YouTube. (And don’t laugh; that stuff is already starting to happen.) There will always be certain kinds of expertise that we will want to accredit through rigorous training and practice.

But there’s going to be a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t going to require a traditional certificate or diploma given by a traditional school. For lots of “professions” now, people will (and are) able to begin to cobble together their own credentials. And portfolios. And websites that display their expertise. And networks that connect them to other professionals or learners or whatever.

In other words, the potentials to roll your own career are exploding, assuming you have certain skills, literacies, and importantly, dispositions to do that.

In schools, we talk about the skills…a lot. To be honest, I don’t know how well we actually develop the skills since “learning” them is so hard to quantify. We love our data, and we hew to the quantifiable in the end. Testing for real world, in the moment critical thinking is hard and messy and time consuming.

And we cover the “literacies,” although again, I think you could argue that we don’t do a great job of it. Recent Stanford research suggests that at least. I think it’s arguable that by modern standards, most students and teachers are illiterate, and that our practice around teaching literacy is in dire need of rethinking.

That all said, how do we do on the dispositions part? I know that a good chunk of how kids approach the world is hard wired or baked in by the environments they grow up in. But if the opportunity (expectation?) is that expertise is now something that you develop on your own, then how are we tackling in schools the development of mindsets to do that? How do we create conditions where kids will learn perseverance in non-oppressive ways? How do we help them remain optimistic in the face of some serious global changes and tensions? How do we nurture patience and healthy confidence with a significant chunk of extroversion?

The answer isn’t hard. It’s about culture and about a mission and vision that focuses as much if not more on the “immeasurables” as on the easy to measure stuff. What’s hard is actually changing culture and mission and vision to accommodate that need.

The next time you look at the students in your schools, ask yourself this: Will they be able to become experts on their own when they leave you? Will they be able to learn to the depth necessary, connect widely enough, and have the confidence to make their expertise known to a global audience?

They’re not all going to do that, I get it.

But they all should be able to.

Image credit: Steven Wei

On “Learnability”

January 17, 2017 By Will Richardson 2 Comments

I find words fascinating, especially new ones. When I was teaching high school English, one of my favorite classes was an elective titled “Language Development” where we looked at etymologies, made connections between words and cultural shifts, and created all sorts of new words on our own among other things. We even ended up creating our own “suburban” dictionary of slang at our school that ended up being a really hefty research project that my students actually loved.

Anyway, I came across the word “learnability” this morning, and while I’m sure I’d seen that word before, in this instance it had an interesting twist. Look up the word in the dictionary and it most definitions run along the lines of “the ease with which something can be learned.” So, for instance, the “learnability” of Spanish, let’s say, would be greater than that of Chinese. Software creators wonder about the “learnability” of their products. And so on.

But in this article on the coming “skills revolution,” “learnability” takes on a different definition. Here it’s “the desire and ability to learn new skills to stay relevant and remain employable.” In essence, it’s a human characteristic, not a measure of difficulty.

And I find that interesting. And relevant.

Do the kids in your schools leave you with “the desire and ability to learn new skills to stay relevant and remain employable?” Is that part of your mission as an educator, to nurture and develop that characteristic in your students?

And even more, what does learnability mean in the context of being an educator. Obviously, aside from some really bold schools where contracts are renewed every year, “remaining employable” in education doesn’t require too much effort. But what should we expect from teachers and leaders in terms of exhibiting “the desire and ability to learn new skills to stay relevant?”

I would suggest we should expect a lot.

You can judge for yourself whether the authors’ emphasis on “learnability” is as crucial as they claim, but I don’t doubt that learning new skills perpetually is going to be a reality for most students.

We getting them ready for that?

Image credit: José Martín

Learning. All. The. Time.

December 19, 2016 By Will Richardson Leave a Comment

So, the “2017 Predictions” posts are starting to flow, and while I’m certainly interested in the education prognostications, I’m more interested in what people are saying outside of our field. (I’m somewhat pessimistic that anything will significantly shift in edu next year, especially in terms of our penchant for trying to do “the wrong thing right.”) To that end, I came across an interesting Deloitte paper that makes a number of interesting forecasts. I’m just going to pull a few out, but the whole report is pretty interesting reading if you have the time. Remember, these are for business, but they’re for us as well.

Prediction #1: “Organizational Design Will be Challenged Everywhere”

Key quote: “Today, the key to organizational success is not “scalable efficiency,” but “scalable learning.” You, as an organization, must be able to experiment, put prototype products in front of customers, rapidly learn from your competitors, and stay ahead of your marketplace, industry, and technology trends. This means your whole organization has to focus on customercentric learning, experimentation, and time to market.”

Thought: That sound like schools and classrooms to you? Innovation in schools does not tend to be driven by “scalable learning” but by usually isolated, courageous edge runners who aren’t waiting for the system to catch up. And imagine if the entire system really focused on the way students really learn best, “studentcentric” learning if you will. That would be doing the “right thing.” I doubt many school organizations will be “challenged” any time soon.

Prediction #2: “Culture and Engagement Will Remain Top Priorities”

Key Quote: “Culture creates innovation. When a company has a clearly defined culture (whatever that may be), it offers employees a sense of security and freedom— they know what to expect…In other words, today’s organizations cannot succeed in silos—so people who “fit the culture” and feel comfortable communicating throughout the company also tend to be most effective as individuals. Such a transparent and open environment can only happen when people feel authentic, included, and respected. All of these qualities come from a strong, reinforced, and well-documented culture.”

Thought: I’m becoming more and more fascinated by the ways in which culture is absolutely integral to relevant, sustainable change in schools. A lot of my work in 2017 will be around this question, but if you’re in a school environment that isn’t “transparent and open” and where people don’t feel “authentic, included, and respected,” well, good luck with changing anything for the long term.

Prediction #10: “The Learning and Design Function Will Continue to Struggle

Key Quote: “But what has really changed for 2017 is the fact that today L&D should embrace “self-directed learning” and truly build a “learning experience” that helps individuals at all levels to learn all of the time… ‘Digital organizations’ are learning all the time. This means people are trying things, discussing mistakes, and learning on the job.”

Thought: Please let me know if that sounds like what students in your school are being prepared for. Please.

Prediction #11: “The Future of Work is Here”

Key Quote: “The essential issue we face in 2017 is the rapid commoditization of AI technology (speech recognition, natural language processing, sensors, and robotics) and the impact that could have on almost every job… New tools are becoming commonplace; they are entering the workforce at a time when jobs themselves are becoming more dynamic, more than 40 percent of workers are contingent and the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” has increased. So we, as HR leaders, are in the hot seat to figure out what all of this means.”

Thought: Actually, we in K-12 education are on the hot seat as well. And if you haven’t already figured it out, no amount of flipped classrooms, maker spaces, “personalized” learning, Chromebooks, or “college and career”/”future” readiness is going to make any difference if we don’t step back and do a fundamental rethink of our work.

The workplace is transforming, and I don’t use that word lightly. But in education, we’re still happy to just adopt and trumpet “innovations” that at the end of the day change little because we haven’t been brave enough to do what we all know is best for powerful and deep learning (not schooling) to take place in classrooms, and because we’re loathe to keep up with and embrace the difficult new contexts of life and work that our kids are facing.

So here’s a prediction for 2017: Only those who truly feel the discomfort and challenge of these times will lead meaningful change in their schools and classrooms. Unfortunately, my sense is that too few will have the courage, the capacity, and the conviction to do that work.

(Image credit: Brian Gaid)

Making “The Olin Effect” Your Own

December 10, 2016 By Will Richardson 8 Comments

We talk a lot about “student agency” in these parts. But to be honest, most of what we label with those words are tepid substitutes for the real thing. As I Tweeted the other day, if these are the stories we’re writing in major education publications, the bar is set really low.

So, Thursday I sat in on a panel presentation that featured two students from Olin College of Engineering and two more from Hampshire College. The title was “Program Improvement Through Student Engagement,” which didn’t sound all that captivating. But since I’d heard about Olin a number of times, and since I had a younger family member who had just finished at Hampshire, and since my own presentation was scheduled for the next session in the room next door, I settled in to listen.

Really glad that I did.

For those not familiar with these two schools, they are outliers in the university narrative. Both give students almost total choice over the subjects they study and the ways the study them, to the point where kids create their own majors and most of their coursework. The kids at Hampshire then document their work in a digital portfolio, one of which you can see here. Dig around…it’s pretty interesting, and it will make you think about the possibilities. (This blog post is indicative of the work being done in the program.)

The Olin students shared their work to redesign their school library, and they both talked about how immersed they were in the work. But it was when they started talking about “The Olin Effect” that I got really interested:

The Olin Effect:
“The heightened state of engagement, creativity, and productivity that comes from taking control of your own education.”

Love. That.

I quickly snapped a picture of their slide and started creating a slide of my own to drop into my keynote (which, at that point, started in about 20 minutes.)

I found it interesting that one of the students from Olin said that what both amazed him and what he appreciated the most was the level of trust that he received from his teachers and his fellow students. He said it was without question the foundation for the good work that he and his team did.

At the end, I asked the panel whether or not they had had the experience of “taking control of your own education” before they got to their respective colleges. The two from Hampshire both came from very traditional settings in high school, but the two Olin kids said that they came from smaller schools that were somewhat innovative in their approach. Still, they hadn’t been granted the amount of freedom and agency that they found when they went to college. I followed up with “Would you have like to have had that in high school?” and they both said something to the effect of “Um…absolutely!”

When I got to the Olin part of my own presentation, since much of my talk was about student agency, I asked my audience how many of them had ever experienced “The Olin Effect,” that flow and good work that comes out of doing something you really care about. Something that you CHOOSE to work on. Almost every hand went up. And then I made the point that everyone of us also encounters The Olin Effect when we’re like five and six years old and we’re in charge of our own explorations of the world. That time when the adults look at us and marvel at how intense and creative and persistent we are with our own learning. There’s not one among us who hasn’t lived it. And, importantly, there’s not a kid in our schools who hasn’t lived it at some point and who can’t live it again, given the freedom to do so.

But that’s the problem, right? “The Olin Effect” is the exception that happens when the conditions for powerful learning truly exist: freedom, choice, relevance, audience, passion, etc. In schools, unfortunately, it’s not the rule.

So here’s an idea. Make your own poster like the one above, but instead of “Olin,” put the name of your school in its place. And then figure out what you need to do to make your own students feel “The heightened state of engagement, creativity, and productivity that comes from taking control of your own education.”

I mean, seriously. Why wouldn’t we do that?