That Crazy School Down the Street...

Last week a 38 year veteran teacher at our neighboring local high school decided to share her feelings about our school with her class. She referred to us as, "That crazy school down the street." Of course her intention was for us to hear this comment and question our work, but the result of that comment had a very different effect than what she thought. We felt relieved.

If we are to change education and empower students to learn, create, and think, we have to make fundamental changes to public education and the factory mindset that underpins the establishment. And how do you know you are making those changes? Just listen to who is unhappy and who is thrilled. Thanks for the unintended encouragement!

Hills and Valleys

Occasionally we have a friend of who drops in to have a chat with us at Design39Campus named Jordan. Chats with Jordan are more like being lead through a jungle of ideas on a high speed journey through the worlds of mathematics, physics, biology, and sociology. Serious integrated thought and you just have to hold on for the ride. This week, Jordan talked us through some of his latest thinking on hills and valley crossings. And this relates to education...give me a minute.

This is an oversimplification, but here it is. Human societies became hierarchical through evolution. The power of the group and the alphas to lead, kept us safe. When cities first appeared, the hierarchy continued. In fact, the powerful tended to cluster around what was perceived to be the most powerful place and often it had an hill either real or artificial. The rules around who had rights and access to power were clear. If you didn't want to participate, you faced a "valley crossing" to get to somewhere else. In this valley you faced the wilderness and beasts of all types. If others were with you, they would be small in number, and the risk to your life was great. The reward...you may find a new hill to climb. One in which the old rules could be rewritten. Of course the society created on the new hill will soon be like older one. New rules perhaps, but the new game would be played with a predictableness found in the old hill.

But the hills Jordan was really interested in were the mental ones that came along with this evolutionary adaptation. Businesses, institutions, schools...all have hills. From the tops of those hills you can see a certain distance. You have an ordered system with clear rules and the general feeling of safety. Things just work a certain way. Newcomers to the hill may look at it and decide early on it isn't worth the climb for whatever reason. The leaders who started the hill climb may see it isn't the right hill after all and leave it. On the way down the other climbers may think they are crazy. 

In the worst case, the old hill is collapsing. The thing that allowed for the rise of this hill is imploding and while some people are fleeing others are using sheer force to keep that hill together. An illusion of course, but some people refuse to see the writing on the wall. 

By now I am sure you see why this is an intriguing idea to me when we think about the future of education. We have built a hill out of top-down, command and control, teacher as sage type of thinking. All of the traditional structures around this reinforce compliance and have no interest in leaving this hill. This hill is crumbling before our eyes. Students sitting in rows, getting informated by experts, memorizing stuff a committee thought important 20 years ago...falling apart. The information revolution is eroding this hill faster each day.

Being a teacher for over two decades, I have seen the rise and fall of small hills too. Right now we are seeing a collapse of the high-stakes testing regime and state content standards. At least the check-off lists variety. Common Core is the new hill and time will tell if it really turns out that way. Certainly we have entire groups loudly protesting as they leave it already.

If you want to know who is in the valley, searching for the next hill in education, follow the conversations on Twitter. Chance are you are one of them if you are reading this blog. The people on the old hill don't know how to use Twitter, usually. Look for teachers who are shifting the power structure in their classrooms. People who challenge everything about school.

I would argue the next hill in education is going to be one where the leadership is more flat, personalization of learning the norm, inquiry the process, and the pace of learning will vary depending on the student. At the center of this are teachers who care about the whole child and aren't enthralled by teacher's guides or textbooks. And these teachers have to be smarter than ever. Not encyclopedic, but able to adapt and learn just as fast as students.

Valley crossing requires people to be far more entrepreneurial than most hill people are used to. It is very tempting to just join the old hill community and fit in. It is in our genes to do so. That's why the crossing is so difficult. It isn't necessarily the dangers we face in the valley, but the internal battle we have to go against our biology and take that leap.

It's Not About US

WHY TEACH LITERATURE?

Literature, like art, reflects the values of a culture and there is the potential for deep personal reflection when reading literature. The problem is literature is often taught by bibliophiles who can't imagine what it is like being in the head of someone who hates reading fiction. The best lit teachers are the ones who help students see the reading of literature as a thinking task and learn the secrets to the ways in which literature is constructed. Then students can connect with the themes and ideas and have thoughts of their own.

Nothing is worse to young readers than a teacher who imposes an interpretation onto a novel as the right one and then becomes self-righteously angered over students who aren't fascinated by the ideas that fascinate them. There is a narcissism in education that invalidates all efforts to teach. It's not about the teacher or their beliefs! It should be about helping students understand themselves within the context of culture. 

Shakespeare can resonate today because of the universality of the stories. But why must the first exposer be a teacher-centric slogging through pages of old english with a teacher who is so enthralled by everything Shakespeare she has a Philodendron named Hamlet? Students should experience Shakespeare as plays as intended by the author. This gives the students the opportunity to overcome the language barrier by seeing the story in context as THEY make meaning. Then the teacher can help them dive deeper as they ask questions. 

Focus on the learners and have some empathy for their perspective. If not, teaching literature becomes mere ego broadcasting of the teacher and her values. Students may as well not be there for that because at the end of the course they have just navigated another authoritarian points game and haven't been challenged to think beyond themselves. Just thank God the class is over and, "I never want to take that class again" becomes the only take-away.

Beyond that, If your goal is not helping students be fascinated by literature, or math, or whatever is being taught, then you are wasting time and dooming what you value to irrelevant mutterings. The world is changing fast and authoritarian structures are falling apart everywhere. If literature instruction is to survive, teachers have to shift the focus and help answer the WHY on a daily basis with students and help them become fascinated with the world of ideas. Our culture needs our stories to transmit values. It is about who we are as a society and not simply being a mirror for the teacher to see themselves.

AdaptED versus AdaptIVE

Adaptive Schools

This week our Design39Campus leadership team participated in the first part of Adaptive Schools Foundation Seminar training in Los Angeles. Our facilitators were Jon and Carrie, pictured with our team above, from UCLA Center X. Highly recommend this seminar to anyone interested in collaboration and supporting inquiry.

There are many ideas to explore and practice and I was struck by two big "Aha!" moments that became blog-worthy to me. One is a stream of thoughts connected to my my last blog entry on Scarcity vs. Abundance. Related to that is the idea of ADAPTED vs. ADAPTIVE. Adapted refers to ways that living things have changed in order to survive in a specific environment or niche...specialization. The idea explored was how this specialized state prevents an organism from rapidly changing when environmental conditions alter. When organizations are adaptED, they are endangered species. AdaptIVE organizations find ways to change and grow within the changing environment.

Traditional schools are stuck in an adaptED world. They are operating as if nothing ever changes. The insanity of this thinking is the fact that schools are HUMAN organizations and humans are non-linear and ever changing. The fact that we have spent more than a century running schools in a linear, mechanistic manner is beyond unfortunate. Linear thinking and linear schools are fundamentally at odds with human needs. It's not that things have now changed, this system has never been a true fit for humans, it's just the pace of change was so much slower in the past it wasn't as obvious. 

Now the out of balance tire is spinning so quickly that the banging sound is becoming obvious to more and more people. There is a convergence of ideas and thoughts around the need to be adaptive from many different arenas. The chart below lists a few that I keep running across.

ADAPTED	ADAPTIVE
Linear Fixed mindset Specialized (Narrow focused) Programs matter Just-in-case teaching People must "buy-in" to the program Everything seen as cause/effect The sum of the parts add to the whole Like clockwork Clutching to tradition and often rigid Production orientated	Non-Linear Growth mindset Generalized (Big picture) Relationships matter Just-in-time learning Experimenting with options Cause/Effect not closely linked The sum of the parts add up differently and aren't always predictable New patterns create new possibilities Open to new ideas and flexible Process orientated

The second "Aha!" moment for me was around INQUIRY. So often education runs on the factory conveyer belt thinking model. This applies directly to INQUIRY and the Common Core. Teachers who are stressing out about Common Core are not getting the point of the shift. INQUIRY is not about producing a product or a piece of evidence every day to be cataloged in the factory checklist of grading. INQUIRY is about thinking, being curious, conferring, investigating, a questioning process, an invitation to transmit thoughts or feelings... it is all about PROCESS. 

How liberating to imagine a space where children just process and think for chunks of time! Teachers can just orchestrate the space for inquiry and monitor the process. In order to do that, teachers have to become skilled at collaboration and inquiry. This is why Adaptive Schools is so vital to the work of schools that want to shift from an adaptED world view to an adaptIVE one.

From eGosystem to eCosystem

From eGosystem to eCosystem

This last week our Design39Campus team had the great pleasure to speak with Greg Horowitt in person. Greg is the co-founder and Managing Director of T2 Venture Capital and co-author of the bestselling book, The Rainforest: the Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley. This book examines the dynamics and drivers of innovation ecosystems.

The great thing about meeting Greg is we didn’t know any of this or the long list of other impressive things he has done. We just had a chance to hear him talk about institutions and the shifts that are needed to truly innovate.

Greg started off by stating the obvious, schools run on the factory model. But what he said next brought clarity to our thinking. Factory systems, like educational institutions, operate on the scarcity model. They were developed for an age in which resources were rare and needed rigorous management to leverage the maximum potential. Schools are factories running on the premise that information and skills are rare commodities. And at one time they were! Therefore institutional systems became responsible for circulation of ideas and skills, not the creation of new ideas. Teachers we there to deliver the curriculum developed by someone else with a title or power position.

Now contrast that past thinking  with the present reality. Information is in abundance. Curriculum is in the palm of nearly everyone’s hand. Anyone can curate content and post it for others to see. No more rubber stamps form levels of “experts” needed. Students don’t need teachers who simply deliver content anymore. The old system wasn’t designed for this abundance. And innovation is the animal that thrives on abundance. So the ecosystem in which we live in 2013 and beyond, has fundamentally altered from a desert to a virtual rainforest. The organisms suited to life in the desert aren’t well-adapted to life in the rainforest. The systems we developed for scarcity will not help us thrive in abundance.

The following table represents the contrast between the two worlds.

Scarcity Model	Abundance Model
eGosystem Control Compliance Limits Permissions Titles Position power Dependence Rigid Stable Competition Product focus Replication Static Dictator Transfer Thrives on predictability	eCosystem Entrepreneurialism Experimentation Freedom Initiative Timing Contribution power Independence Agile Fluid Empathy Process focus Innovation Dynamic Facilitator Connecting Thrives on disruption

As I mentioned in the last blog post, I was a part of a small group of administrators and educators meeting about innovation last month. In my small group our topic was change. A school superintendent was part of this discussion and it became clear where his head was very soon as the conversation moved away from the group and became one between himself and the person he believed had the most titles and prestige. After seven minutes of the rest of us listening to this conversation, the superintendent began talk about rewriting the strategic plan for the district and how that was going to drive innovation… And there it was! The scarcity model trying to innovate! The people in his schools who could really innovate aren’t even a part of the conversation! How seductive this mind trap is still.

I interrupted him and declared, “And there is your problem.” Getting his eye contact, I explained that changing a piece of paper or district slogan, or strategic plan was a waste of time. If he really wants change he has to speak with and listen to the people at the point of contact which are teachers and students. Let them experiment and innovate and then tell you what needs to change in order to innovate further. Get on Twitter and let them hear you directly that they have the power and then they can speak directly to you too...as an equal.  Stop having power-based meetings where orders are disseminated through layers of bureaucrats with each level filtering and spinning the message until it has lost its potential. Empower the base of the organization to do something great! He then turned back to the expert and continued his previous strategic vision plan rewrite talk. Sigh.

Which brings me back to Greg Horowitt’s advice to people who work in these types of scarcity deserts. In order for innovation and change to happen in these obsolete institutions, the people in the position to make the greatest change are those without the traditional titles and powers. It is up to them to become “Innovation smugglers.” Softly break the rules. Disrupt, experiment, focus on the process and continue to do the right work which moves institutions forward to an abundance model to match our abundance reality. And occasionally set off a bomb in the basement. Not a real one of course, rather a highly visible manifestation of change that catches attention and shakes the long-held beliefs of the scarcity model. Don’t be afraid to do something great and showcase it. Timing is everything in the abundance model. Everyone has a part to play and when the time comes for your role to take to the stage, step into that spotlight. At that moment your part is the most important and the entire movement of the play depends on you. Just because your role may be small in the eyes of tradition, it isn’t in the world of abundance. It’s timing, not title that matters.

Stop waiting for permission! That’s scarcity thinking. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Leaders Must Tweet!

Last week our Design39Campus team met with an exciting team of people from the Los Altos School District during our Bay Area travels. We had many discussions around topics of innovation and the group I was in was discussing change. 

A superintendent from a neighboring school district was discussing how he was going to be rewriting the district goals and that was going to facilitate change in the classrooms in the district. I stopped him in mid-sentence and challenged him on this. I basically told him that any energy he puts into district office level goal setting is a waste of time if he thinks that is going to transform the entire system. Top down initiates rarely do anything. 

So I challenged him to TWEET! Instead of talking through three or more layers of bureaucrats, speak directly to the teachers in the district. Share your vision in real time. Share articles, videos, TedTalks, quotes, your dreams, whatever! The power of social media is the ability to speak directly with a huge audience. And be ready to listen back as they share with you. 

Education must become more flat. The hierarchy of power of the past is not going to transform education for the 21st Century. Distributed leadership and teacherpreneurs are the future. And using social media tools, like Twitter, are going to be the communication devices needed in the fast-paced information age.

So school leaders, get on Twitter and encourage everyone in the organization to do so as well. And use the communication tool yourself. Don't delegate it to someone under you. YOUR voice is the secret sauce needed in this media. You have to be personally plugged in to your organization to nurture the change process.

With one tweet you can speak directly to everyone in your organization...regularly!

Stanford d.School Visit

On October 15, 2013 our Design39Campus team had the great fortune to tour the Stanford d.School and take a peak inside the design thinking spaces of the school. Having spent the morning at IDEO, we were ready to explore the halls of this famed school. 

From the outside the d.School is hard to spot as it looks like most of the buildings at Stanford. Inside, however, you know you are in a different kind of learning environment. Multicolored stickies, whiteboard panels on wheels and hanging from the ceiling, foam sugar cube seats, and roll-up garage doors for walls are all standard fixtures of this learning space. 

Upstairs you will find the lab spaces where students work through the design process in collaboration with a variety of people. 

Of interest to our team was the K-12 work group who is finding ways to bring design thinking into the classroom. Reading their walls excited us to see how the mission/vision of Design39Campus fits with the work the d.School is doing. We left business cards and tweeted to them about our visit in hopes we can make a deeper connection with this very busy group of thinkers.

The Makery rooms proved to be a treasure trove of ideas for our own Makeries back home. Our take-aways from this visit are:

1) learning spaces must be flexible

2) furniture must moveable and multi-use

3) designing is about making and sometimes it just has to be messy

4) we need "stuff" readily available to facilitate learning 

5) space, tools, and materials must be applied to real problems/projects to make learning real

6) traditional one teacher, one classroom organization is a barrier to innovation

7) teacher teams need to be composed of a variety of experts who help all members learn new skills in the application of the teaching practice.

Thank you d.School!