The Physics of Change

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I have never taken physics and my interest in it is limited because of my lack of knowledge about it. However, I enjoy reading this physics blog:

Quantum Progress by John Burk

John is a 9th grade physics teacher at Westminster Schools in Atlanta.  He joins others at his school in sharing openly his thinking about teaching and learning in a dynamic and ever changing world. They take up subjects of everyday life at school, the journey as teachers, as learners, as parents, as colleagues in a big school. They write about their subject areas.

One of the most interesting things that John has blogged about is developing the Global Physics Department and having departmental meetings.  This to me was a brilliant use of social media and the blog space to connect with colleagues everywhere. The Global Physics Department is a brilliant example of our ability to break down walls and reach through silos, if we have the momentum to do so.

I also enjoyed, as a closeted Angry Birds player, the physics discussions of that game.  Reading about the trajectories etc. actually helped my game a lot.

I have to admit that when the blog gets really deep into the details of physics, I read really fast, but I do read them through. And, I LOVE the post of February 12, one that I could easily have skipped because it was pretty detailed in the physics area:  Heat and the work done by Friction.  What I realized, however, was that in cultivating change in an organization, whether it is from within a group or from the boundaries of a group, change occurs only with new energy. Turning up the heat, and there are many political and strategic alternatives and choices, is the way to influence change in the culture. Friction is also an important and necessary ingredient.

Even though we tend to think of friction as negative, the type of friction chosen does not always have to be negative.  It can be neutral and it can be positive. Thinking about that, it might be that friction is neutral; it is our reaction to it that is either positive or negative, and our reactions are our choices. I will have to think more about that.

Friction might be the use of deadlines when work was never demanded at a certain time before. Friction might be more open and transparent debate in a meeting. Friction might be pushing in not so subtle ways at the status quo like extending the hours of the time that we are asked to be on campus. Friction may be assigning a project to someone other than the person who did it last time. Friction is certainly introducing professional evaluations and assessments when there were none before.  Heat, energy, friction are all important tools in creating a new form and a new culture.

I was struck as I struggled to read about the formulas of energy and friction how what I do when I tour a school for the very first time is that I am getting a read on the energy and the momentum. Is it high or low? Is it purposeful or scattered? Is it shared? As I read about the physics of friction, I was thinking about the types of conversations I put myself in a position to hear and participate in when I am getting to know a new school. Do I hear debate? Do I hear inquiry? Do I hear and feel a sense of momentum, energy towards purpose? Do I feel energy being expended in defensive and guarding ways?

I loved making this connection re: the physics of change.  Without a influencer or change in energy, there is not change in a system.  I hear lots of leaders talk about their belief that change will just occur naturally, organically.  I just don't think that belief squares with the physics of organizational change.

Am I saying turning up the heat?  I think I probably am. The challenge, however, is to learn to think of the heat in positive, purposeful, professional and mission-driven ways and not as always a negative.  Heat, energy, movement. Action, reaction. Change. The problem is helping frame people's reactions and perceptions of heat and friction.  Lots to continue thinking about.

Encounter of the 6th Grade Kind: Ban Boring

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Remember this great scene from Ferris Buehler's Day Off?  Ben Stein droning on, "anyone? anyone?" about "Voodoo Economics. Voodoo Economics."  I think it was such a funny scene because who has not been there! Bored to death and under the gun to capture and remember all the boring stuff spewing from the teacher blah, blah, blah, blah. 


That was school. A thing to be endured. A necessary evil for success in this world. A large pursuit of mass memorizing and regurgitating.

I just don't understand why learning, of all things, has to be so boring. Learning should be an opening, a pursuit and journey that lead to more and more. Learning should be stimulating and exciting.

I had the great pleasure of visiting a 6th grade class this week to observe a chemical reaction experiment. The thing was, however, that I got detained and was late for all of the action.

So, when I arrived, the teacher asked a student to take me aside and "re-do the lesson. Walk Ms. Baker through the learning objectives and the thinking routine."  Huh?  This 6th student was going to be able to tell me the objectives of the learning and knew the thinking routine?  Well, the student didn't miss a beat and did exactly as his teacher asked.  He knew the purpose of the experiment. The larger ideas that it was illustrating. He knew the thinking routine by name: I saw, I think, I wonder.  He was able to show me all of the thoughts of the students in the class as they were all posted on a shared virtual bulletin board. He had looked at everyone else's work and was able to point out to me the patterns of belief and the points at which students have "diverging" thoughts.

In asking my host about learning this way, I was shocked at the depth of his understanding about the purpose of the thinking routines that his teacher used in order "to help us develop a conceptual understanding that is bigger than just this experiment."  He told me in no short order that being asked to record what he saw, thought, and wondered helped him remember and to think in a more deep way about the activity. And, he wanted me to know and felt no qualms in telling me, that being asked to think and reason makes learning so much more exciting and interesting.  "Before," he explained, "class was just so boring. I mean, the teacher is nice but it was just lecture, lecture, lecture, and my mind would just go other places." He went on to say that now he is able to connect to the learning better and because he is asked to think about and share his ideas about the material the teacher is presenting that "his mind doesn't wander so much."

Why does learning have to be so boring when there are a plethora of design options for presenting, engaging, and assessing the material?  What operating belief or assumption are we working on such that learning ends up boring?  What new operating belief or philosophical underpinning would lead us to learning that is stimulating and invigorating?

If class is boring, whose responsibility is that?  the students to endure or the adults to cure?

I think these questions are so fundamental and so important to the future of learning that every division and department of every school should engage them seriously, systematically, and deeply.  I am tired of hearing teachers say there is no way around being bored and boring in class because "that is just part of it."  I don't really believe in any subject at any time it has to be boring.  It just doesn't.

Innovation Saves

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"It won't happen to us."

"We do what we do well; we're fine."

"Yeah, we looked into that and it was going to take a lot of time and difficulty."

"We are the best. We have been doing what we do for a long time. We're top of the heap."

Kodak thought all of these things too. Now, they have squandered all of their innovative opportunities of the last 10 or so years and they've filed for bankruptcy.  They noticed all the disruptors all around them, and they kept on keeping on.

"But, we are a school. We're not like Kodak!" I know it makes you feel better to think that but schools are not immune.  Churches are not immune. Hospitals are not immune. Not-for-profits are not immune.  Just because your organization serves a noble purpose, a mission, does not mean that sustainability and relevance are not essential. They are essential because your customer has a choice.

Innovation is what would have saved Kodak. A disciplined, bold approach. Kodak needed to ask new question and reach beyond its current competence and comfort zone.

Are you asking new questions? Are you stretching beyond what is what you always do?  Is your division? Is your whole school?

Danger is everywhere. It's called disruption and if you don't get ahead of it, it will get the better of you and you will become a relic of the past, comfortable and ancillary, like Kodak.

Revisiting the 21 Things That Will Be Obsolete in Education by 2020

I love when the new year is on us in full force and we made vows to clean up and clear out.  At my house we start spring cleaning as soon as the holidays are over and the last child returns to college.  On of the areas that I have to declutter and rethink is the bulletin board right in front of my desk.  I collect things I like, things that make me smile, things that make me think and post them there on the bulletin board as a reminder.  Really, my bulletin board is an inspiration board.

One thing that has lived on my inspiration board since the start of 2010, is Shelly Blake-Plock's post about 21 Things That Will be Obsolete in Education in 2020.  If you haven't read this post, or even if you have not read it recently, I recommend reading it, printing it out, and holding it near.

Here are the basic 21 thing that Shelly talks about in his post:

1.   Desks
2.   Language Labs
3.   Computers
4.   Homework
5.   The Role of Standardized Tests in College Admissions
6.   Differentiated Instruction as the Sign of a Distinguished Teacher
7.   Fear of Wikipedia
8.   Paperbacks
9.   Attendance Offices
10. Lockers
11. IT Departments
12. Centralized Institutions
13. Organization of Educational Services by Grade
14. Education School Classes that Fail to Integrate Social Technology
15. Paid/Outsourced Professional Development
16. Current Curricular Norms
17. Parent-Teacher Conference Night
18. Typical Cafeteria Food
19. Outsourced Graphics Design and Webmastering
20. High School Algebra 1
21. Paper

I think this is a great list to revisit and to realize how much progress and conversation is still surrounding each of these items. I also think this is a great list to use in conversations in a a school environment and planning conversations.  Here are the questions I would use to frame the discussion around this list:

What does our school believe about this item (like #1 desks) and why?

What are we doing to investigate the possibilities around different approaches available with each item?

Do we know what our competitors ideas are around this item? How can we differentiate ourselves in this area and best support our mission?

Are their cost savings around innovating in this area?

Are teaching and learning enhanced and improved by innovating in this area?

Based on the many times I have lead conversations using this list, I assure you that the conversation and ideas generated from this list, and the "tells" you will get about your schools culture are great and valuable.

Leading Better in 2012

One of the blogs that I look forward to reading 4 or 5 times each week is the Leading Blog which is written by Michael McKinney.  Michael is an excellent curator of  ideas and tips that inform and improve leadership. He is exceptional at reading many books each month about leadership from the standpoint of leading self, leading others, and leading in context.  I would really be lost without his good work.

You can follow Michael McKinney on Twitter:  @LeadershipNow

You can also join Michael's community of leaders here.

Here is today's post on Michael's Leading Blog.  I like his posts because they challenge me to turn each idea inward and reflect on my own potential and my own leadership journey.  This list is a definition of leadership broken down into component mindsets and competencies. Leadership is not one of these, but all of these.  How to keep all of these areas fluid and growing is an example of the type of understanding and learning challenge Michael lays out and supports with his posts.

For 2012, I recommend subscribing to, interacting with, and enjoying Leadership Now.


12 Reasons You Will be A Better Leaders This Year
from Michael McKinney's Leading Blog


1. Because you are generous with information. You know it enables and values others. 

2. Because you eschew the trappings of power. You respect your position too much to let yourself  become self-absorbed and disconnected from those you serve. 

3. Because you know leadership isn’t about how well you are appreciated, but it’s about endlessly showing your appreciation of others. Leadership isn’t about how you feel, but how you make others feel. 

4. Because you are honored to lead, you genuinely respect and care for the people you serve. 

5. Because you avoid the trivial and stay focused on your core values and the vision they enable. You will always pay attention to what matters most and you communicate it tirelessly and with clarity. 

6. Because you are driven to produce and are accountable for it and expect the same from others. 

7. Because you take time to reflect to keep yourself aligned and to continually evaluate your impact. 

8. Because you exercise. You know that regular exercise not only makes you feel better physically and it has a profound impact on your cognitive abilities and mental health. 

9. Because you are curious, you are committed to being a lifelong learner and building a learning culture within your team and organization. You won’t rely on what worked for you in the past. 

10. Because you are humble enough to know that you don’t have all the answers and it doesn’t have to be your way and it is in fact, unhealthy for you to insist on it. 

11. Because you are committed to building others greater than yourself. You are validated not by your own knowledge and accomplishments but by those you help succeed. You are passionate about and energized by the people you serve. 

12. Because you know that you are setting an example for others to follow. Everything you do matters. You know it’s not about you. 

A New Chapter for Me

I have been so busy the last two months that I have truly, as one colleague put it, "neglected my blog." I agree that I have have neglected my blog. The lack of blogging is not the issue, but the symptom of too little time to read and think. My bedside table and my Kindle's Table of Contents are both overflowing. I use my blog to ruminate and to work out my thoughts about what I am in the process of learning or considering. Little input results in little output.

My main distraction has centered around many hours of thinking, talking, and designing that has resulted in an exciting and innovative new position for me.  In mid-November, I met teacher John Hunter and filmmaker Chris Farina and saw the film "World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements" among 150+ educators and colleagues in a community showing in Memphis. At our screening, which was sponsored for the Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence, there was about a five minute standing ovation, and tears.  I have since been to five or six additional screenings. Each time, exuberance, tears, and many AHA! moments for those ready to see it.

My reaction to seeing the film "World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements" was also very strong. In this film, I saw the physical and emotional representation of everything that I think is the optimal learning conditions and learning outcomes for children. That is, for children that we are really interested in preparing for the dynamic, interconnected, global, unpredictable world they will live and lead in. John Hunter has developed over the last 25+ years, the World Peace Game which gives his students a chance to engage in real world problem solving. He intentionally overwhelms them with complex, interconnecting, "wicked" issues that don't have binary, easy "yes or no" answers. Solving these types of issues, which the world is full of, demands well honed critical thinking and problem solving skills, the ability to learn on one's own quickly and deeply, the ability to team and collaborate, and empathy.  John Hunter's World Peace Game gives students guided and facilitated rehearsal in all of these skills. It gives them knowledge and information about issues that are already part of the world they live in and issues that will be their responsibility to solve. I was moved by the spontaneous compassion and responsibility we see John Hunter's students think and act from in the film. One sees a global awareness, global perspective, and global sense of stewardship being cultivated in John Hunter's students by the learning he has structured.

After seeing and ruminating on the film "World Peace," my thought, that has resulted in a whole new direction for my work, was that if more people could see this film and spend time thinking about it, the experience and new learning would be transformative.  Once one is moved and has learned something new, he or she cannot unknow it.  In fact, it is, then, his or her responsibility to act on the new that is known. New knowing is a responsibility to act, shift, change, grow.  I think it is essential to think this way because we are in a terrible gap, a gap where the world has changed dramatically and our schools and system of education has not changed to meet the new needs of a changed world. There is no fault involved here. Instead, lots of responsibility, challenge, and opportunity.

The talking, thinking, and designing has resulting in a new commitment and new opportunity for me. My new position, as of the first of 2012, is Director of Strategic Partnerships for the Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence.  The Martin Institute is a relatively young foundation in Memphis established by a generous gift from former Saks, Inc. CEO Brad Martin. The foundation is the expression of public purpose of Presbyterian Day School, a PK - 6th boys school serving 630 boys in Memphis.  The Martin Institute is dedicated to bringing world class professional development to teachers at public and private schools. In June the Martin Institute will be hosting its second summer conference. John Hunter will be their keynote speaker.

The first strategic partnership that I will be leading is with filmmaker Chris Farina and teacher John Hunter. Our hope is to bring the film "World Peace," the World Peace Game, and learning resources including Master Classes with John Hunter to as many communities as will have us around the world. Our hope is that the captivating story of possibility that the film shows and the deep conversations and sharing that can result from a shared understanding of the film and its many tangents will strongly influence others to create stimulating, engaging, bold, challenging learning environments where students encounter almost unsolvable issues and are intrinsically motivated to research, dig, talk, compare, share, team, try, fail, and try again to solve them.

If you have not seen John Hunter's TEDtalk, you can get a really good sense of his teaching philosophy and snippets of the film "World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements."

Growing Every Day

Insulate yourself...
from anonymous angry people
Expose yourself to art you don't yet understand
Precisely measure the results that are important to you
Stay blind to the metrics that don't matter
Fail often
Ship
Lead, don't manage so much
Seek out uncomfortable situations
Make an impact on the people who matter to you
Be better at your baseline skills than anyone else
Copyedit less, invent more
Give more speeches
Ignore unsolicited advice

-- Seth Godin, in his post December 13, 2011

I actually look forward to my email each morning, until some people who think email is a contemporary evil. Most days there is some challenging observation or new insight waiting for me, like the tidbit above that came this morning from Seth Godin. As we get ready to turn over yet another yet, I love the resolved tone of this post. And, I love that there are some things on Seth's list that I believe are vitally important, too. Like letting most people's reactions elude you. There is no good reason to care about what most people think. Like exposing yourself to art that you don't yet understand. I have the distinct advantage of having a daughter who lives almost every waking hour at the Art Institute of Chicago where she is in school. There is so much art that I don't yet understand, like Outsider Art and Street Art, that it is exciting to be exposed and challenged by it through her. She gets to be the teacher of new ideas and new traditions. Fail often and seeking discomfort have been on my personal list of development and growth as well as part of my work for a long time.  It is through both failing and stretching beyond our comfort level, physically, emotionally, and intellectually, that we grow and develop into our fullest potential.

I think one thing I would add to Seth's list is to thank those people that matter and make a difference in your life more often. The other thing that I would add to make this list more my own is to ask. Ask more questions. Ask for advice from people whose ideas and perspective you value. Ask for help. Ask for partners. Ask for contributors. Ask for inclusion on a project. Not asking reinforces not risking, not stretching, not caring as a face saving measure, and not sharing what you would really like to happen, even if it is not possible right now.

So, thanks for the daily insights, perpectives, challenges, and bits, Seth. Thanks for a whole list of resolutions to focus on in growing every day to be involved, engaged, active, interested, focused, disciplined, helpful, productive, smarter, wiser, and in the game.

Teach for America: A Force for Change

This is a great talk by Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America. I am struck by the power of one idea implemented by people who care.  As a country, as a public who believes in the importance of education, do we lack ideas? Do we lack people who care? Do we lack people who can live through the hard times and things that come with learning by executing?  Why is there not more social entrepreneurship like this that reaches the main stream?

Teach for America is twenty years old and has 8000 teachers working in 39 communities. Their alumnae base is 20,000 strong. The rub is that few of their teachers stay with teaching so can we really expect for education to be changed in the ways we need it to be changed without a long term commitment but passionate, energized teachers willing to stick around.

Seems like some important questions need to asked like why don't they stick around? How are Teach for America teachers treated in the cultures they join?  What would it take to inspire and attract more really smart and really committed people to choose and commit to teaching? And, what about second career people who have a wealth of life experience in other fields, can't they be valuable in our classrooms? Could they not be important in teaching for America?

This talk is well-worth an hour's investment.

Storified The New End of Education

Building the Big Picture

So, how does a leader get his team and his whole organization to see, celebrate, and own the big picture?  How does a leader get everyone to feel excited and responsible for creating our shared future?

There is only one way:  through conversation. It takes many conversations that are at once teaching, questioning, arguing, doubting, and building. It takes cascading conversations that start at the top and are repeated at every level of the organization consistently and constantly. It takes developing the capacity and the habit of conversation in the culture. "Meaningful conversations about questions that count" is how Margaret Wheatley describes it. Generative conversation creates vision, strategy, resolve. Conversations build the frame in which details can reside.

So, what are the questions that count?  Even this small step of the process is contentious because those that can only see and tread in detail do not have and do not value those questions that help develop the big picture. You can hear this by comments like "this is a waste of time" or "when are we going to stop talking and get some real work done" or "so, I am sort of lost in all of this side conversation; what do you want me to do?"  Most people feel proficient, and therefore comfortable, in the logistics, the details, the minutia, "in the weeds," deciding the little tweak in how we have always done it, the task list, the list of all the reasons we can't do something.  Conversations that include what if...? why not...? how about...? make them feel so uncomfortable and so overwhelmed that they cannot engage. They tune out, shut down, drift off. Or, they use their discomfort to sabotage the conversation, redirecting the purpose back to their comfort level, their playing field.

Also, conversations in large part are a lost art. Because we are so time bankrupt, we have lost much of our ability to sit with issues, to pull them apart and to let all of the various aspects of them wash over us, entreating and retreating as we figure out our beliefs and our way through them.  We have lost our ability to hold two opposing ideas in the same space and to slowly building bridges, connections, and meaning between them. In losing conversations, we lose important venues of adult learning.

Conversations take the ability to maintain focus when we are uncomfortable and in the process of learning.  Conversations take an open mind. Conversations take time.  Often groups say, "there is no time" and of course, there is no time. No one has spare time. But, if you value the important work that conversations do, you make take and you take the seemingly unstructured nature of the development process that occurs in conversations on faith.  You have to trust. You have to believe in the power of collective reflection and the ability to develop collective wisdom.  If one does not question the future diligently and strategically in order to develop a direction, an institutional sense of the big picture, the result is a bunch of people doing a lot of things that are unfocused, disconnected, lacking in purpose. Silos. Autonomy. Status quo. All with a sense of a lot of work is getting done, but is there forward movement? progress? growth?

To build the big picture, make the time to develop the skills and habits of conversations.

Tethered to the Big Picture

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It is very hard to lead people who are not tethered to the big picture, and the overall strategic direction. Why? Because they don't feel any compulsion or responsibility to change what they believe and what they are doing to get somewhere they don't want or need to go. So, the idea of your leading them is your idea, not theirs.

If your team, your department, your board, your whole organization doesn't trust, share, and see their part in the whole, the big picture, the long term welfare of the team, the mission, the institution's future, then "the way I have always done it" is good enough for them; they aren't concerned with what is good enough for you because they don't feel tethered to you, your vision, your ideas.  So, you see, they are not followers.  Only followers follow. Only followers can be led. The rest? They are there, and chances are they were there before you came and will be there after you leave.

At Best Education is a Dialogue

Reading philosophy feeds the mind in a different way than reading other genre's.  I spent an hour reading A.C. Grayling this morning, Master of the New College of the Humanities, and a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford. He is the author of many books, most recently, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible. Small doses are all I can take of his depth because he makes my mind wonder and question my own motivations and my own choices.  Sitting to see what would come out after his inputs, here is what I put down, rather opaque, but has possibilities:

At best education is a dialogue, one that centers around the important questions in life such as why am I here?  What am I meant to do? How shall I do it? What gives my life meaning and why?  The more one knows, and the more aware one is of what he or she does not know, and the more robust becomes one's investigation and discovery of answers to life's big, most fundamental questions. If one believe that the meaning of life is to make life meaningful, then one's education and learning ability provides the source and fuel for the pursuit of meaning.

People before us in every generation have asked life's big questions. Their journeys of discovery, experimentation, failure, and triumph serve as the collective knowledge that we have to partake of in considering and creating answers of our own.

Learning, which is the focus of education, is a process; it is a social process, an active process.  As a result of learning, one becomes knowledgeable and educated, more prepared to ask and answer questions of import.

School should be an information and motivation rich environment that facilitates inquiry, discovery, synthesis of knowledge and ideas, and creation. School should focus on teaching the skills of learning, intrinsic motivation, and validation, as well as the means by which to create and share meaning beyond our immediate surroundings. Each part of the process of learning should be a focus of education:  the process of inquiry, discovery, research, synthesis, thesis, testing, refining. The goal of education should be to have students engage and participate to their fullest potential in this string of processes, to create awareness, to help frame, support, encourage, challenge, redirect, etc.

In an age where information is ubiquitously available and instantaneously accessible, what we learn -- what we use as our learning fodder -- is secondary to the process of discovery and inquiry. The idea of a canon is seriously in jeopardy and the reality of lifelong learning is seriously more important than ever.

At best education is a dialogue; it is participatory; it is the ongoing rich melding of environment, guidance, distance, resources, technology, knowledge, perspective, and questions. All of which are intended to derive at plateaus of understanding, which in time lead to new questions, and new plateaus. Answers are not the goal of education, unless you can see answers as always being subject to changing because of new questions.

Lastly, one's education should never end. One should never reach that point of surfeit, or saturation, that is, not unless he or she has died within and stopped looking around in the world in wonder.

Buzz Words We Need to Ax

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In honor of Halloween, Fast Company magazine headlined an article about the 7 buzz words in business that we need to stop using right away. They show a nice picture of a graveyard and call for the immediate burial of these overused buzz words:

"issue" - are we so fragile and delicate that we can't have and address "problems"?

"passion" - is it possible to be passionate about everything we do such that our passion loses its focus?

"unique" - is everything so unique that it is regular and expected to be unique so that unique is now mundane?

"iconic" - is everything so iconic that nothing is iconic?

"role" - are we like performers in a fiction of some sort? What's wrong with "jobs" or "duty"?

"transparency" - is transparency the new honesty?

"empowerment" - are all transactions meant to be empowering or are some just necessary?

The writer Tim Phillips, author of Talk Normal:  Stop the Business Speak, Jargon, and Waffle got me to thinking about the terms we use in education and how important it is to check our language. I know of a few expressions that I would like to ax in education:

"21st century skills" - we have to stop using this term to describe a skill-based v. content-focused approach to education because it is already 2012.  I sure hope we find a new term to focus on so that it will not be 2058 and we are still talking about 21st century skills.

"tenure" - I hope we stop using this word because I don't think it has a place in education.

"family" - we talk about our school relationships as being "one big family" and I think this metaphor severely hurts our sense of professionalism and our potential for performance. I think the idea of "family" places us in denial and mutes our ability to talk about our dysfunctions. We are colleagues. We are experts, professional educators. We are not a family. We do have performance expectations and high standards so there cannot be unconditional love. While we might be a "family-friendly" school, promoting too much familial identity among the faculty, admin, and staff is antithetical to professionalism and performance. That we should have supportive and caring workplaces is great, but we are not a family where everyone is "in" regardless of ideas, behavior, attitudes, and performance -- we can't be.


"differentiated instruction" - I hope we stop using this word because it feels like something else, an add-on, that we have to do. I think teaching so that everyone in the class learns is not different-iated instruction, it is just effective teaching. Imagine if we used the phrase "effective teaching" in every instance instead of "differentiated instruction" -- I think we would engendered more interest and better practice.

"taught"  - It's not about the teaching; it's about the learning. If we talked less about being taught, teaching, teachers, and focused on the learning, I think our results would follow our language. My son loves to learn but hates to be taught. I have talked with too many teachers who expect their students learned something just because they taught that on Wednesday of last week.  A teacher has not taught until a student has learned, and covering the material is not teaching.

"can't" - If we just axed this little word and changed it to "could", imagine what would be possible. We have bound ourselves with mental restraints that are not really there in many instances.  I hear too often "I can't" alluding to not having explicit permission. I think really the culture in education is so rule-oriented and right-answer driven that "I can't" is shorthand for "I can't because I might break a rule or because I might fail."


"innovation" - I hesitate to but this word on my list because I like this word and I believe in innovation. But, after thinking honestly to myself, I concluded that we use the word "innovation" as a soft sell for what we are really talking about:  change.  We should not be afraid or meek about saying directly and forthrightly that we must change, our learning environments must change, our attitudes about children and what they can do/can't do must change, the outcome of education must change, our schools and most everything about them must change. We have to stop fearing change and start believing in our ability to design what is best for student learning in this digital, collaborative, creative age.  We should move from change to design, giving purpose and meaning to the active thinking and doing stance that is necessary.

That's my list. What would be on yours?


Just saw this interesting post by Dean Shareski and the word that he sees as having no place in education is "rigor". Great post and I agree that inflexibility and rigidity have no place in education or learning.

A Different Look at Costs

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So, an interesting viewpoint:

"...What you say about a dedicated position for Director of Adult Learning is interesting. But, the problem is, I can't really afford the cost right now!"

"Yeah, well, think about it this way, how can you NOT afford to invest in the continuous development of your most important asset and resource -- your people. Who makes things happen -- all things happen -- in your school?  Your people do. What is the cost -- to the learning environment, the morale, the unity, the parents and Word of Mouth, each other, and most especially, the students -- if you don't make ongoing, focused learning and renewal a real top priority?

We always look at costs to us. What about the costs in doing or not doing to others?

We always think of costs as outlay.  What changes when we think of costs as affecting outcome. To put it another way, we know how deferred maintenance of our facilities really costs us so much more in the long run.  What will deferred maintenance of our faculty, staff, leadership cost us today, next week, in five years?  What happens when we defer continuous and rigorous strategic learning but the school down the street makes the investment? What might happen if we make an investment now? What might an ongoing and continuous investment yield?  Costs don't result in a return; investments pay us back and yield growth of capital.

It is all in how you choose to look at it.

Learning Begets New

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What makes new ideas and new behaviors?  This is the question that I am most interested in. Except, I need to add one word to be more thorough:

What makes new ideas and new behaviors last?

This question is what keeps me up at night and gets me up ready to work in the morning.  After the years that I have ruminated and worked in this question, I now have a one word, solid as steel answer:  learning.  For new ideas and new behaviors to enter a system, get rooted and spread, influencing how we do things and how we see things anew regularly, learning is the essential ingredient.

In changing and adapting to the world where collaborative, creative, bold thinking is rewarded, where we must prepare our students differently, many would like it to be as simple as "tell me what to do". But, that will never work because you can't staple on new operating beliefs and assumptions which are the underpinnings of shifting how we do things.  In changing cultures, discovering, learning, challenging, and making our own the new approaches and necessary changes is what is needed to make new ideas and new behavior last and lead to even more new in our schools.

Learning.  So, why don't schools take learning for the adults on campus more seriously?  This I have wondered for a long, long time.  We want something that we don't have ourselves set up to have. For some schools, a good annual fund year leads to a few more people going to a conference or bringing a speaker in. First, bringing the speaker in is more about fulfilling obligation -- "check! we do professional development!" -- and efficiency (everyone can hear it at once) instead of learning. Sit and get is completely ineffective yet still popular.  Then, going to conferences could be useful, but we don't build in feedback expectations and loops such that any new learning obtained is shared with all the people back home. I have talked to many conference-goers who were mildly interested in the topics and greatly interested in just being away.

What to do?  Focus on the linchpin of learning. Apply resources -- time, money, title, space, voice, expectations, visibility, priority, supporting systems -- to professional learning for the adults on our campus. As educators, we should be rigorous and continuous learners who experiment and share about the application of our learning.  Here's an idea:

Wanted:  Director of Adult Learning

The Director of Adult Learning is responsible for the development and implementation of the school's strategic learning plan to build the necessary understandings and capabilities of those responsible for creating the student learning environment and fulfilling the school's mission as outlined in our strategic plan. Learning objectives will include but not be limited to leadership development, public speaking and presentation skill development, project management, entrepreneurialism, negotiation and motivation understanding, storytelling in multiple media, topics central to emotional intelligence and child development, understanding school finance, types of thinking skills, creativity, mindset, and stress management. This individual reports directly to the Head of School and works in close association with leaders of all school areas to design learning that enhances their success.

Our school schedules would change so that there is built in learning and creative time for faculty and staff at least twice weekly in stretches of 2 hours each.

Our facilities would include spaces for adult learning and interaction that are not wedged between the copier, the mailboxes and the vending machine. These spaces would be flexible such that many small groups could be working together or one large group could be working.  The room would be outfitted with AV equipment and various large screen TVs so groups could project their ideas as the work.

Each faculty, staff, and admin would be contributing to the school's learning wiki and developing his or her own learning portfolio in which he or she documents playing with the ideas that are trying to find their way into the school's ethos.  There would be demonstrations of personal challenge and growth. There would be strands of work in progress, not perfectly polished A material that reinforces our competency. We would be working to become accepting of the vulnerability that goes along with learning, and we would proudly share our failures.

As a school, learning is what we are expert in and what we do, teachers and students alike.

If our school were resource-challenged and could not afford our own Director of Learning, we would sacrifice until it hurt to develop an arrangement so that we cooperated with another school or two to share someone who could help us learn strategically because we believe learning is that important to our future. We would not be all-or-nothing and binary in our thinking. We would be committed to finding a way to shake it up, to influence and apply pressure to how the responsible adults in school learn. We would recognize the importance of learning as the root of all things new.

I believe if we did this in a few short years we would have whole new schools because we would have provided the new learning and more importantly, the learning capability, that leads to new beliefs, new operating assumptions, and new thinking that allows and drives new behaviors that unlocks the huge amount of knowledge, expertise, curiosity, and talent that lays fallow in our schools, afraid to rock the system because it is the way we do things around here.

Dedicated, continuous adult learning is the best way to protect the expertise, outcomes, reputation, and future of our school.