Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

Setting Norms

By

Chris Lehmann and I spent most of today visiting a number of schools in Philadelphia, among them his newly opened second high school, SLA-Bieber. (No, not that Bieber.) It was great to see Chris’s vision spreading into a second high school; only three weeks old, I could already feel that SLA vibe i.e. kids who actually wanted to be in school. That visit was sandwiched in-between a quick visit to Microsoft’s School of the Future, which I’d never actually seen, and a brand new startup called The Workshop School  It’s the latter that I want to dive into here a bit, because I found a part of their process that happened to be playing out today to be both interesting and inspiring.

imageThe Workshop School has a project based vision for learning, and the schedule allows time for kids to go deep into their work: two 100-minute project blocks in the morning and a series of three shorter periods in the afternoon for more traditional class time. Simon Haugher, who has taken on the “principal” role, says the goal is to have students create projects that live in the real world, that the value in project based learning comes in the authenticity of it. The 70 or so inaugural freshmen started the year doing what they called the “Who Am I?” project, and they’re in the process of beginning to develop a culture of learning and operating. And, interestingly, they have a “Maker” teacher who will be working with kids in a Fab lab type space they’re slowing putting together.

Today, each of  five advisory groups were sharing out the results of a norms building exercise that was pretty cool. Each group of about 15 students had spent a good chunk of time over the first few weeks trying to select four words that they would use to represent their group to the school. Surprisingly, there was some pretty wide variety…one group had even briefly considered the word “chivalrous,” though most others had landed on words like “intelligent” and “hard-working” and “creative.” Students in the advisories were selected to present the word to the rest of the classes as they moved around the building, and they all asked questions of one another: Why did a particular class select that word? How were they defining the words? What words didn’t they choose and why? It was fun to watch.

image

Simon said that the idea was to create some personal language around expectations for the students as they do their work. Using the group in the picture as an example, it would be fair to ask a student at any time “How is what you’re doing right now showing ambition? Art? Intelligence? Hard work?” It reminded me of how they frame expectations at SLA: the only “rules” are that you are respecting yourself, respecting the community, and respecting the school as a place of learning. That’s it. Everything flows from there.


All of which is decidedly different from most schools, where the “norms” are created by administration and documented in a handbook along with the consequences for infractions. I’m sure many probably read stories of schools doing it the way Chris and Simon do it and think they must be operating in some parallel universe, that their students could never be trusted to create their own expectations and culture around learning, or that they would abuse it if they did. It’s not perfect, I’m sure, but when you walk into places like The Workshop School and SLA and now SLA-Bieber (and I’m sure others scattered about) there’s just a different feel. There’s an investment, and rootedness that is missing from the vast majority of schools I’ve been to where kids are playing by the rules, not writing them.

I’ll be interested to see the trajectory of Simon’s kids and their projects as for many if not most, this is a whole new definition to school. My gut says they’ll figure it out, because the vision is really clear: learning is about experience and doing and creating real, meaningful stuff together as a community. That’s a great place to start. 

Downingtown STEM is Bold on the Test (And More)

By

(From the “In Search of Bold Schools Dept.”)

One of the points I’ve been trying to make to school leaders and others (with mixed success, I think) is that moving toward more student-centered, inquiry-based, connected classrooms and “passing the test” are not mutually exclusive. That if we’re focused on developing learners instead of making kids “learned,” the test scores will take care of themselves. (Note: I can make this case anecdotally, but if anyone has any research that will convince the hard core skeptics, please share.) No question, given the current realities of testing and performance evaluation and everything else, public schools can’t simply ignore the test. But, unfortunately, schools that are willing to forego the test prep and keep the focus on learning as I’ve defined here are hard to find.

That is the approach at Downingtown (Pa) STEM Academy, however, under the guidance of principal George Fiore (@georgefiore) who was nice enough to show me around for a few hours yesterday. Now there are lots of caveats here: it’s a 1-1, IB,  magnet school in its first year with 400 sophomores and freshman who are still a year away from taking “the test,” which makes it a tough school to use as a model for change in existing, traditional schools. But it’s a great model for what can be, and there are mindsets at play here that any school can learn from.

And “mindset” is the operative word. As George went through the process of creating the school in 2010-11 and then opening it in September, he was guided by the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck. At this school, learning is about effort and habits of mind, about having a “growth mindset” that propels not just students but teachers, parents and community members to a higher plane in their thinking and their practice. And, frames a different lens when thinking about “the test.”

“The PSSA is a minimum competency test,” George says. “What we need is the courage to say ‘if this is a minimum competency test, why aren’t we aiming higher and jumping over it?’ Right now, most schools are in it not to lose. That’s not a healthy learning attitude.”

Like Lisa Brady, George has invested a lot of time with parent groups educating them and giving them a voice in what happens at the school. (Parents were partners in the design of the academy.) He stresses that grades are not important, that 15 is a better time for their kids to struggle than 25, and that effort = intelligence. “High IQ scores do not correlate to success,” George says. “But a willingness to work hard and to develop the right habits of mind do. That’s our focus.” Those habits are effort, respect, engagement, responsibility and compassionate participation.

Learning is based around inquiry and a lot of writing. Students work in collaborative teams to solve real problems guided by teachers who push them to think deeply and ask developing questions. Almost all assignments and assessments involve writing. But while it may be a STEM school, art and music and fitness are all valued as well. (I listened to one student record an original song while another student played the music and three others worked the sound board. Here’s a pic.)

Technology was everywhere, but most of it came from over a quarter million dollars in donations that George was able to solicit from local businesses in the last year. 

“A lot of my time is spent doing outreach and involving local industry and business in the conversation,” he says. “It’s amazing the extent to which they are willing to help us with equipment and facilities purchases.” (He’s also working with the business communtiy to put together 200 internships for all of his juniors next year.) That makes for a rich, constructivist learning environment where students are creating and prototyping and performing on many different levels using a host of different technologies. The independent engagement on the part of students was palpable, and it was built on high level of trust and respect between the adults and the kids. 

There’s much more here, obviously. But the big news is that George is leaving the school next week after just one year to take a principalship and a high school nearer to his home which is an hour away from Downingtown. He intends to take much of what he’s learned in creating a school to the job of now changing a traditional school, a challenge that will bear watching. He’s immediate goals are to: 1) Move his administrative team to being instructional leaders instead of disciplinarians, 2) Change the library into a “Learning Commons” which will serve as a digital hub for the school (no paper books) as well as the place where community members and students and teachers gather for weekly “lunch and learns” every Friday, and 3) create parent and community advisory boards to generate conversations about learning and change. In three years he hopes to have moved the school to an inquiry based environment in at least science and math where students can bring their own devices. And he hopes to have made deep inroads into the changing the culture of learning. 

“We need to innovate, and the key factor in my current position and my new position is the support at high levels for innovation,” George says. “We have to cultivate those types of leaders in schools right now.”

My takeaways? 

1. New school or old, the learning cultures we construct in schools do not have to be predicated on the narrow definitions of “achievement” that the current testing regime relies on. Cultures built on inquiry and creation and student directed personal learning will serve our students more effectively in the long run.

2. We need to educate parents as to the value of this type of learning, and we need to engage in conversations with them about what expectations are meaningful and relevant and what expectations may be worth retiring.

3. There are avenues for any school to use to fund initiatives around learning with technology.

Thoughts? Questions?

Getting Bold With Parents

By

As promised, I’m going to start trying to highlight some “Bold School” practices that I hope might serve as models for others to follow. (Note: I’m still looking for examples of those practices, so let me know if you’re being “bold” at your school…would love to connect.)

To that end, I want to offer up some of the work that Lisa Brady is doing as superintendent in Dobbs Ferry, NY around being “provocative,” specifically provoking conversations around real change in her local community. Some backstory just for context: Lisa was principal at Hunterdon Central during the last few years of my tenure there, and she returned as superintendent after I left in 2006. There, she led initiatives to move to a technology rich, connected, inquiry-based curriculum that are still evolving. She’s finishing up her first year in Dobbs Ferry, but she’s already made significant progress in changing the conversation around learning there as well. Her school district has about 1,650 kids K-12, is primarily blue collar, and has a fairly typical history of scoring well on the test and sending kids to college. It’s also a high school that features an IB program, and one that hasn’t made too many inroads into technology at all over the years. 

One of Lisa’s mantras is that schools have little choice when it comes to thinking differently about education. And she also believes that parents are the key to making that different thinking happen.

“Parents are the piece where we’re not doing enough legwork,” she says. “Marginalizing parents, not letting them be an important voice in the larger conversation is a huge mistake.”

Why? We all know the role parent’s play in budgets, election of school board members, and support for programs and teachers. But here’s the other thing: engaged and invested parents sustain the conversation over time. One of the biggest barriers to long-term change is that leaders rarely stay around long enough to see initiatives through. If parents are sufficiently invested in seeing those initiatives through over time, they will help to make sure that change continues despite a shift in leadership.

So, to that end, Lisa started early on with a program to a) set the context for the conversation with parents, b) be clear about what is most valuable in the learning interaction, and c) articulate that shared new vision to teachers and community in a variety of ways. The centerpiece was to invite all parents to read and discuss Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap, a book she chose because of the way it clearly articulated what schools need to value when it comes to an education.

“When you ask parents what they want their kids to be able to do, none of them ever says ‘pass the test’,” Lisa says. “They start with the types of skills that Wagner talks about, problem solving, agility, initiative. What parent is going to say ‘no’ to that? And that’s the frame that we have to keep coming back to when parents start talking about test scores. We have to keep asking them ‘is that really what’s important to you?’”

About 100 parents signed on to read and discuss the book, and over a month, Lisa held 10 discussions in parents’ homes, six during the day and four in the evening with a dozen parents each. While the meetings were supposed to last an hour, most went closer to three. (For some details of the themes that emerged check out this blog post.) What struck her most about the conversations were not the resistance to the idea of real change but, instead, parents’ concerns that teachers would change their practice. 

“We’re all saying the test is not the most important thing, but the state of NY is now saying the test is a big part of a teacher’s evaluation,” she said. “Parents wondered what effect that would have.”

That led to conversations with the teachers as well. “Teachers need to know that you or parents aren’t going to come after them with pick axes if scores go down. I made sure my staff were having conversations about change as well, and that they knew parents supported them, and that I would hold parents to that support once test time rolled around.”

The result has been a commitment on the part of the district to have ongoing conversations around the big picture value of an education in the Dobbs Ferry District, and a commitment to invest heavily in technology in the coming school year, an investment that has the support of the community. While there is still a lot of discussion about curriculum and instruction to come, the groundwork has been set in less than a year for significant changes in the way learning happens.

I plan on going into more detail on the process at Dobbs Ferry in other spaces, but here are some of the “bold” takeaways:

  • Parents are the most important constituency to engage in conversations around the shifts we are experiencing. We have to be willing to provoke and engage in those conversations on an ongoing basis. 
  • We have to trust that creating inquiry based, technology rich, connected spaces for learning will help students accomplish traditional outcomes (such as passing the test) as well. “It’s a bit of a leap of faith,” Lisa says, “but I just keep bringing the conversation back to what do we really want our kids to be able to do? If we believe that our kids should be self-directed learners, and critical thinkers and entrepreneurial learners, then we also have to believe that the test stuff will take care of itself.”
  • We have to admit that we don’t have all the answers, but that we need parents to be a part of the solution. “Parents can get comfortable with the idea that we’re figuring this out together.”
  • Teachers can feel very empowered when they know parents have their backs.
  • We can’t wait for policy or politics to change. We have to be the impetus for change.

So what resonates here? What would you add? What questions do you have? What stops you from thinking it’s possible? 

What Qualities do “Bold Schools” Share?

By

First, let me thank everyone who commented and Tweeted examples of “bold schools” over the last few days. Very much appreciated, and over the next few weeks I’m planning to dig into the list and make some connections and inquiries around the learning that’s going on in those places. Meantime, if you have any other ideas for schools that might be worth checking out, I’d invite you to add them to the doc. 

Over the past month or so, I’ve been trying to come up with some “qualities” that might help separate a “bold” school from an “old” school. Actually, much of this whole effort stems from a similar search a couple of months ago by Sam Chaltain to find “the world’s most transformative learning environments.” (His list is a great starting point as well.) Sam decided to use the QED Transformational Change Model to use as a benchmark, and while I like the general tenor of the qualities listed there, I’m hoping to focus it down to a more manageable list.

So, I’m going to offer out the following with hopes that you’ll chime in with reactions, feedback, push back, and ideas toward creating a clearer picture of how to describe schools that really are trying to move toward a technology-rich, student-centered, inquiry-based learning practice that effectively prepares kids for the required skills and dispositions and realities of the world today and yet also prepares them to pass the test and satisfy the current expectations of parents and policy makers. Places, importantly, where those two things are not mutually exclusive ideas. 

So, with a minimum of description, I’m thinking “bold” schools are:

1. Learning Centered – Everyone (adults, children) is a learner; learners have agency; emphasis on becoming a learner over becoming learned.

2. Questioning – Inquiry based; questions over answers

3. Authentic – School is real life; students and teachers do real work for real purposes.

4. Digital – Every learner (teacher and student) has a computer; technology is seamlessly integrated into the learning process; paperless

5. Connected – Learning is networked (as are learners) with the larger world; classrooms have “thin walls;” learning is anytime, anywhere, anyone.

6. Literate – Everyone meets the expectations of NCTE’s “21st Century Literacies”

7. Transparent – Learning and experiences around learning are shared with global audiences

8. Innovative – Teachers and students “poke the box;” Risk-taking is encouraged.

9. Provocative – Leaders educate and advocate for change in local, state and national venues.

I want to delve into each one of these in more detail, and my hope is that as I visit schools this year I’ll be able to connect these ideas to stories and practice that make them come to life. 

But for now, what do you think? What am I missing? How else might you describe a “bold school” as I’ve defined it above?

It’s 2012: Help Me Find Some “Bold Schools”

By

For lots of reasons, some of which I articulate here, 2012 feels like it’s shaping up to be a critical year in the conversation about schools. Politics and money are no doubt driving the mainstream conversation, but I sense an Occupy Wall Street-ish push back coming from a lot of parents and educators that seems to be finding some traction as well. In fact I’ve had some interesting conversations of late with some very “successful” public schools who have hit their testing boiling point and are starting to resist the status quo. As this year starts, I’m actually feeling a bit optimistic for the first time in a long time. Not optimistic that change will come any time soon. Not optimistic that we’ll adequately deal with the poverty problem that is a the root of so much about what is wrong with this country and its education system. But instead, optimistic that we might at least be on the verge of gaining a voice in the larger conversation around real equality in education, equality that in some part stands on regular, dependable access to technology and the Web.

Given that window, we need schools that are bold in their practice right now. And by “bold” I mean schools that make sure their kids pass the test and get “college ready” because, unfortunately, that’s about the only definition of “success” that people want to talk about right now, but also schools that prepare their kids for a world that the tests and the definitions of “readiness” or “achievement” haven’t caught up to yet. A world that I think is so wonderfully articulated by the National Council Teachers of English 21st Century literacies that I keep trotting out wherever I go. In other words, bold schools are the ones that do both, because to do anything less at the moment would not serve our students in the ways they need to be served. Equally important, bold schools are the ones that know that those two outcomes are not mutually exclusive. You look at SLA or High Tech High and you see that creating student-centered, inquiry-based, technology-rich learning opportunities in our classrooms can help kids navigate the world they live in AND pass the test. 

What a concept.

To that end, I’ve decided to dust off my journalism degree this year and do some “real” reporting and writing about those schools that are being “bold” in that context. As much as my travels will allow for side trips and site visits and interviews of teachers and students and leaders in those spaces, I want to really wrap my brain around what’s special and replicable about those schools and share them back out. Who knows, there may be a book in it as well.

Along the way, I’d like your help, if you’re so inclined. And my first request is to help me identify some schools that I might visit. But one caveat: I want these to be entire schools where that type of boldness is being displayed, not isolated classrooms or teachers. I’m looking for places where there has been a commitment as a school community to the best of what a progressive education can offer along with an immersion in technology and connectedness to the world. Schools whose teachers and whose graduates are literate by NCTE standards. And schools that are advocating in their communities for this different path. These schools can be public or private and anywhere in the world.

Any come to mind? If so, please note them in the comments.

At some point in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be asking you to help me flesh out in more detail the characteristics of bold schools. I’m hoping to have lots of these conversations at SLA during Educon in a few weeks. I’m sure I’ll be picking a lot of people’s brains while there. 

Regardless, my sincerest wish for you to set a powerful path for your work and learning this year. As someone who may or may not be Goethe once said:

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

Let’s be bold this year.