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!

Rigor by Any Other Name

With the onset of the Common Core, there is an upsurge in the usage of the word RIGOR.  Since the day I first heard this applied to classroom learning, I scratched my head. As a bit of a word nerd I had to delve into this word deeper. The majority of references for this word are so far away from what education and the Common Core should be about. Google it to see what I mean.

Watching students in typical factory schools, there is a lot of sitting, silence, and stiffness. We want children questioning, thinking, and teachers adapting to learners. Students are ready for an ALIVE education! I get the use of the word RIGOR is supposed to mean intellectually challenging work that requires thinking and understanding. So why not spell it out like that? Everyone can say "RIGOR" and now we have a label on a box and nobody has to look inside because the proper buzz-word has been used. Publishers use the word RIGOR to describe their textbooks! This should be the first sign the is the wrong word!

Secret Teacher from the Midlands in England

Secret Teacher: we need to practice what we teach

We teach pupils to be self-sufficient go-getters, but we're forced to toe the party line like over-qualified sheep, says Secret Teacher

Read the rest of the story here...

Changing education from the ground up

Sometimes I find it helpful to review things from the past because my current circumstances may give me a different lens in which to gain insight. I have watched and listened to Sir Ken Robinson many times and this morning I was preparing an activity for a community meeting and decided to watch him again. And there it was! That new insight connected to my present reality. So I will leave you with this image I created to capture the point and then two questions. Then watch his video again to see what else you hear in a new way. As Sir Ken says, "It's time to bring on the learning revolution!"

Take time to make education unpredictable

In our race to cram knowledge into the heads of children over the last decade of our standards/testing culture, we have robbed our children of the one thing that causes children to learn the most, uncertainty. Our risk-averse culture in American education has systematically removed risk at every turn. In my own experience, the word risk itself was too risky for the system. It was actually removed from a previous school's founding document by the district office! Bureaucratic systems don't like risk because it requires a giving up of control. Of course control is ultimately an illusion, but that doesn't stop our system of education from crushing it out at every turn. Creativity, innovation, learning...all messy and risky!

Science teachers often think they are on the cutting edge of teaching risk-taking and critical thinking. And while some of them are, most of them have decided that inquiry is best handled in a controlled way. Teaching children the scientific method by filling out lab sheets is a classic example. Children are expected to memorize the scientific method, follow the steps of a lab, fill out the form, and are graded on the quality of their write-up and ability to complete the form correctly. We are essentially telling children that scientists are managers completing paperwork! Where is the wonder? Where is the thinking? Where is the excitement? I think of Roz from Monsters Inc. asking in her gravelly voice, "Where's your paperwork?"

Tina  Grotzer from Project Zero at Harvard  says it this way, "When science class only consists of facts and figure that we know to be "true," it communicates to students that we know all the answers, instead of letting them know that our ignorance far outweighs our knowledge. It keeps them from finding out that there are lots of mysteries that we can't begin to answer. Letting students in on the mysteries of the world ignites their curiosity and opens the door to a lifetime of finding out."

So shred those blasted lab sheets and ask kids to explore ideas. Talk about it, write about it, blog about it, video it, sing about it, whatever it takes to engage kids in the thinking and engage them! Leave the lab sheet for the day they want someone else to try out their experiment. Then they will have a reason to write it!

Do we really believe people like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking were inspired to think their big ideas and get excited about science because they memorized the scientific method and could complete a paper form? Time to bring the wonder and risk back into science!

Adjust to Learners

Education has survived the high stakes testing drive for over a decade now and the damage to the system is immeasurable. Increased isolation of content and factory fixes for perceived problems has only embedded deeper, the misguided thinking that relies on specialization and canned curriculum. 

The education establishment likes nothing more than to label and sort children and adults into manageable groups and remove anything messy that might get in the way of performing on high stake tests. As Will Richardson points out, the folly of this thinking is the tests were designed for a time that has passed. We can't get to the future by using processes that weren't intended to evolve.


There are two realities people have to embrace if we are going to move into a space that really meets learners where they are and helps them to grow. The world is diverse and change is the only constant. 

By diverse I am not talking just about ethnicity or culture. That is a part of the idea of course. The individuality of humanity means we are all different and not a single person can be understood through generalizations. Because we serve the needs of such diverse learners, we have to be aware of ways that we can adapt what we do to help children learn. We can't keep picking a one-size-fits-all approach to learning since there is no one-size-fits-all child. Just because we can label something doesn't mean we understand it!

Change is the only constant. Listening to learners to tailor learning to their needs is the best way to adapt our system. And this requires teachers to step out, get uncomfortable, and allow something new to happen. It means you CAN'T plan what you are going to teach a year in advance in detail. Parents have to stop asking for what their children are going to miss three weeks from now when the family pulls the kid out of school for a trip. If we know exactly what we are covering three weeks from now, SOMETHING IS WRONG! Education has to embrace the concept of just in time delivery. Of course we need to plan the journey and have timetables, but within that journey we are going to make stops when needed to explore, think, and create. If the journey takes longer or finishes quicker, who cares? Learning is organic. Finding ways to connect students with what they know and what they need to know and want to know is an art we must practice.

But doesn't that make it hard to teach? Yes and that is the point! You have to be slightly off balance to be your best as a teacher. When you get into a "groove" and you simply pull out the canned lesson you have done many times before, you are not being responsive. The corpse of last year's lesson isn't what your children need. 

The reality is our students change. Not just individuals over time, but each new cohort that arrives at our doors is different than the year before. If we don’t adapt, we quickly use tools designed for a different model and the mismatch can be devastating to learning.

Get Off the Monkey Bars

"When you move into the unknown, you create room for an infinity of possibilities to enter. But the monkey bar to monkey bar style of life...never creates space for something else." --Jillian Michaels

In the last few weeks our team has been meeting to move planning for the new school forward. The walls of our new home are covered with dry erase panels, white paper, and stickie notes of ideas and timelines. And in the midst of all of this great thinking we have a challenge. How to create room for something new and not be tempted to jump on the monkey bar mentality that is so much a part of mechanistic thinking.

Recently we were in a planning meeting with other stakeholders and the acronyms were flying. While I feel relatively literate in educationese, I finally had to raise my hand and ask for some clarifications. The way we change our language into acronyms, soundbites, cliches, etc. is just another way to systematize our brains and miss the opportunities to change. There were many assumptions made in this meeting and there wasn't a single moment where the pace of conversation paused to ask, "Do we really need all these things we keep spending money on?"

So back to our planning room we went and then the volume of work was everywhere on the walls. I saw monkey bars everywhere. And our team has a way of looking at all of this and asking great questions. What is it we want for kids? Kids don't care about the majority of what we educators labor over. They want to know if their teachers care about them. They want to have fun and learn. So this all comes back to our reason for existing. Why School? To steal the book title from Will Richardson...

And in the moments after we ask that question, we need to pause, be silent, and think about possibilities. How has the world changed? What implications do those changes have for us? To stay off the monkey bars we have to stay focused on what really matters. And the goals we set better create space for something new. Otherwise we will be back in the factory mindset very fast.

If we want our children to think, dream, and change the world for the better, we have to do that same work daily. We have to stay off the monkey bars!

Inquiry-Based Curriculum

Great summary of why we need a shift from content-driven, standards education to an inquiry-based model.


http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/inquiry-learning-vs-standardized-content-can-they-coexist/

Planning and Opening a New School

Great blog post from the Next Generation Blog titled:

7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT PLANNING AND OPENING A NEXT GEN SCHOOL

Favorite piece of advice:

"Focus your team and their high-touch value on real world, context-rich opportunities for inquiry and application where there is no “right answer.”

Read the rest at 

http://nextgenlearning.org/blog/7-things-you-should-know-about-planning-and-opening-next-gen-school

Mathematics: A New Hope

Today's blog entry is entirely quoted from a MOOC I am taking through Stanford University taught by Jo Boaler. Bold and underline are mine. Enjoy this voice that is adding to the chorus for change! And take this MOOC. It is for parents, teachers, or anyone who cares about the future.

"...there are many things going wrong in mathematics education.

For me, one of the best short descriptions of what's going on was written by a mathematician called Paul Lockhart. He is a mathematician who's also taught maths in K12 schools, and he was so exasperated by what he saw in schools, he wrote something really beautifully written called A Mathematician's Lament

...I'm sounding very critical of mathematics education but I'm not at all critical of teachers because teachers have had to work in ways that are educationally damaging for some time. So I don't blame teachers for the bad state we're in. They've been living and working for decades in a culture driven by ridiculously long list of content standards. And those standards made them feel they have no time to stop and create engaging activities for kids. And nonstop testing of very narrow content and multiple choice tests.

There's hope now in the United States with the onset of the common call that that's changing. On top of that, they've really felt like their professionalism has stripped away. Even when they do take an extra step and do something great, I've heard stories of administrators coming in and shutting them down, and that's why it's so important that everybody, administrators, parents, teachers, learned about good mathematics instruction.

Of course there are great administrators and teachers who've been able to ignore the pressure and done what they know to be right with the kids. But that's hard to do with all of the directives and it happens very rarely.

For me, mathematics is a living act. It's a performance, a way of interpreting

the world. And we urgently need both to address stereotypes and myths and to bring mathematics back to the real mathematics. The mathematicians used and that's out there in the world.

Teachers, administrators, and parents, all of us can do this, especially if we

work together. Everyone has a role to play."

class.stanford.edu

After the Factory

Over the past few weeks I have been working with a group of thoughtful intrapreneurs who are planning to open the last new school in our school district. We have K-5, Middle, and High Schools and this new school is going to be a K-8. Our superintendant has given us the charge to "Change the way we do school."

So from the start we knew that we wanted to dismantle the factory model. What this means, of course, is we have to find a new model to base schooling on rather than the linear assembly line. In the words of Sir Ken Robinson it has to be more "agrarian." Paul Kim at Stanford calls it an "ecosystem."

So the first question we asked was, "What structure can we put in place that will prevent the new school from backsliding into the factory model?" This is a very challenging question. Teachers, parents, and students have all been indoctrinated into the factory system and to see outside of it is hard. Much like Plato's cave allegory, most people are strapped down staring at the cave wall and can't conceive of a different world.

This journey has a lot of questions and few answers. We keep looking for solutions that don't feel good because that is a sure sign you are pushing out of the box. At the same time, we are looking at models all over the world, scouring YouTube, the internet, gurus in education, people in the business world, etc. for perspective.

Our first take on one system is to develop an Adaptive Learning Platform (ALP). A computerized system that allows us to group and regroup kids based on need and challenge independent of grade. Student preferences, interests, passions, etc. will be included in the ALP as well has hard testing data.

This will also shuffle teachers around into learning spaces as needed for the lessons. Building in impermanence. It isn't an overt goal to make teachers uncomfortable, but it isn't an afterthought either. When teachers become comfortable they begin to ritualize learning. "My classroom" has a meaning. Almost like a workstation on an assembly line. "My kids" has another meaning. Lack of caring for other children because only this finite group matters to me.

While relationship is vital to learning, the idea of one teacher one classroom is a fossil of the factory. The school day needs to be more fluid. We don't want a teacher to open a file cabinet and pull out the same canned lesson as last year or last semester. Like real meals prepared from scratch, there are always variations depending on the ingredients and tastes of the guests. So that is what one goal of the ALP is shooting for regularly...variety.

As we explore this more we are looking for partnerships with technology companies and several have shown an interest. They all tell us the full version of our ALP is not out there yet. Pieces here and there, but nothing like we are describing. The next few months will be fascinating!

Dead pedagogy

As I have mentioned previously, teacher education programs are woefully inadequate at preparing teachers for the reality of the classroom. Writing is an area that is just left up to chance too often. And yet teachers are charged with teaching writing so they figure it out the best they can. Teachers are amazing at surviving. And this survival instinct is what helps us achieve and it can also be the root of poor practices.

Enter Jane Schaffer. Her method of teaching writing can best be described as formulaic. Taking the art and craft of writing and turning it into a mathematical construct. No thinking needed. No craft. No analysis of great writer's as models. Just learn her special vocabulary, insert banal information and tell us why, and presto change-o, you're a writer.

Schaffer's method can best be described as a life raft approach. When all else fails, follow the formula and you will pass the test. So from a practical standpoint, that is a nice tool to have. A parachute if you will. But preparing learners to communicate in the real world should not rest on emergency planning.

Often times teachers extol the virtues of the Schaffer method as a good scaffold for future adventures in writing. And those future adventures are where? They don't materialize because every teacher on the next step up assumes the children can't write so they reteach the Schaffer method again and again.  Students have learned to be compliant in our factory schools so they just go along with whatever they need to do to get an "A."

The writing curriculum doesn't improve in high school either. My sophomore still comes home talking about "concrete details" and "commentary" years after Schaffer should have been abandoned. A group of writing teachers from Cal State San Marcos came to our district over a decade ago and point blank told our high school teachers the Schaffer method should NOT be used in high school except for struggling writers. They scoffed and continued the drone of CD's and CM's.

The Schaffer method is mechanistic, factory thinking and it needs to be relegated to the survival strategy methodology it was designed for years ago. Sophistication can't be nurtured in writing that is prevented from being daring and experimental. When children are more concerned with counting the number of comments they make about "concrete details" we have really entered a world of cogs and levers. Stop the factory thinking! And quit reserving any quality writing for the elite children in honors and AP English. All students deserve the best!

Teachers, learn how to embrace writing. Write yourselves. Make mistakes. Be daring! Writer's workshop is a far better pedagogy and it asks learners to ask, "What do real writer's do?" And the more we do that, the sooner we will stop telling lies to kids like:

• a paragraph is five to seven sentences
• you can't start sentences with AND
• you can't end a sentence with a preposition
• you must have two commentary sentences for every concrete detail

We need to embrace the nebulous and realize writing is far messier than a factory can streamline. Writing is an art and all writer's have a style. It is our job to help these young writer's find their voice and become engaging authors.

For a far more scholarly critique of the Jane Schaffer method, please visit:

http://www.csun.edu/~krowlands/Content/Academic_Resources/Composition/Form/wiley%20resisting%20formulaic%20writing.pdf

Human Connections

"We can’t outsource the human connections at the heart of the learning experience. Transforming the lives and learning of our children will take more than machines. It will take the best of our human resources." --  Wendy Kopp  CNN

Question All Assumptions

In the flurry of blog posts, videos, tweets, and conversations about 21st Century schools, there is a tendency to look forward and charge into the unknown. While I am usually one to do just that, I have found it vital to stop and look back at the foundations we are using for our new construction.

Much of the work today is based on the rejection of the mechanistic, factory model. And thank goodness! Yet as I meet with teachers, parents, and students, I detect a core of beliefs that have become entrenched in the education mind that are really just as misguided but are embraced as our hope for the future. I am speaking directly about Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence.

I need to clarify an important point before starting. Like many terms in common use today in daily conversation, "theory" has  taken on a meaning that is not accurate. In science, people come up with an idea about how something works based on observation. That is a hypothesis. After a good deal of evidence the idea is formalized so it can be tested. Once it is tested, repeatedly, and remains, we can say it is supported and it moves on to support a larger collection of related, supported hypothesis: a theory. A theory is not a random guess! It represents the current understanding based on tested ideas. And therein lies the problem with Multiple Intelligence.

People refer to Howard Gardner's idea as theory, but it isn't. At best it is an unsupported hypothesis. There are no double blind, placebo controlled studies on any of it! Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence! Howard Gardner's hypothesis has not been tested to show efficacy. It only has anecdotal evidence at best and has become a part of factory schooling which seeks to homogenize children and lower expectations for struggling learners. 

In fact, studies to test his hypothesis have shown no connection between "learning styles" and ability to learn. "These results challenge the hypothesis that individuals learn best with material presented in a particular sensory modality." Study Link

Often apologists for MI Theory say it doesn't hurt, kids like it, it changes classroom teaching for the better, etc. There are several big problems being overlooked:

1. This hypothesis reinforces the factory model educational philosophy of the 1900's with the wishful thinking of the self-esteem movement of the late 1900's. Factory schools produce compliant, obedient workers. Individuals who stand out because of extraordinary talent are a threat to the system which prides itself on homogenized product. And because some students look bad when others look good, MI nullifies those who are truly gifted by saying everyone is "gifted."
2. MI masks real learning issues and has appeared in printed legal forms for special education in which teachers are asked to list learning style preferences as if all teachers have a way to assess this. Without thought, the acceptance of this hypothesis has created a false reality for parents of children with learning disabilities. In some cases severe learning issues are just called "kinesthetic learners." This dangerous practice sets a student up for failure in the future by not addressing his/her learning disability.
3. Children with self-regulatory issues are not getting the help they need to change behavior and learn strategies to help them focus because they are told they are just "kinesthetic learners" and it is the teacher's fault they can't pay attention or complete a task. And what happens to these students when they enter the world of work? Whose fault is it when they can't hold down a job? We are putting students at risk with MI theory.

So what you ask? We have an education industry built on a false foundation! "Visual learners" or "kinesthetic learners" etc. are illusions created by a well-intentioned reformer...and they are the wrong way to help children.

Biologists will tell you to look at the anatomy of humans and you will see how we have adapted to survive on this planet. We are all visually dominant. We all need to touch things to understand them more. And neurologists have discovered that neural connections are reinforced with muscle activity. In other words, all kids need an enriching environment that stimulates all the senses. We have to resist the seductive lure of labeling which is all about factory thinking. To foster creativity and learning in all students we have to continually challenge our assumptions about students and ourselves and to stop making excuses for anyone because it isn't "their style."

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More links to studies debunking MI:

• Not Every Child Is Secretly a Genius
• Education: Learning Styles Debunked "Nearly all of the studies that purport to provide evidence for learning styles fail to satisfy key criteria for scientific validity."
• Student “Learning Styles” Theory Is Bunk "Some lessons click with one child and not with another, but not because of an enduring bias or predisposition in the way the child learns. The lesson clicks or doesn’t because of the knowledge the child brought to the lesson, his interests, or other factors."
• Learning Style, Concepts and Evidence from Psychological Science in the Public Interest