Innovate Inside the Box

In the initial chapters of their new book, Innovate Inside the Box, authors George Couros and Katie Novak tackle the common barriers to progress in education. They argue that despite the many, many constraints educators face, there is room for innovation, improvement, and meeting the needs of ALL students if we maintain an Innovator's Mindset and adopt a Universal Design for Learning.

It's easy to feel defeated by constraints. There are so many that it can feel overwhelming. For example, time is the most obvious one. Not only do teachers feel there is not enough time to teach what they need and want their students to learn, they also feel there is never enough time to work with their colleagues to improve their instruction. The challenge is to remain open to new ways of thinking through these challenges and working with what you have. People have to be willing to try something new and give it a chance before re-evaluating and revising the plan.

Another constraint educators often encounter are the expectations of others. Often based on tradition and not on best practice, people hold on to the way it's always been and resist attempts to change in the name of improvement. Helping resistant people, whether they are fellow educators or parents or even students themselves, understand that school as we know it isn't working as well as it used to is crucial. Today's students have been impacted by multiple traumas in many cases and have different social-emotional needs. In addition, they have different learning styles having come from different developmental experiences and family structures. Finally, the world needs people with different skills. The problems we face require innovative problem-seekers not compliance-trained box checkers.

An additional constraint exists within the standards that are handed down to educators as well the mandatory assessments that are designed to measure student success in meeting those standards. Teachers feel forced into a delivery model of instruction in order to ensure that they've covered their required material with students. Teachers need the time and support to learn a new model of instruction in which students can discover and develop the skills they need for their success both now and in the future. There is room for this within the standards, but so many educators don't take the time to examine the possibilities more closely by asking some of the tough questions: For whom is school working? For whom is it not working? Why? What kind of learning environment, process, and model is best for our students? What do we need to do differently to get there?

As I work with the educators in my school in the never-ending quest to improve our instruction for the benefit of our students, I need to maintain an Innovator's Mindset while navigating constraints. I can continually look for opportunities and possibilities when obstacles arise, create new solutions and ideas for growth, and use other people's success to create our own success.

All You Need is Love

Well, not quite, but almost. Love is a requirement, a foundation, the place from which we start when we form a community, especially a learning community.

As a leader I would start by letting each and every staff member and student know that they are loved, automatically, without having to earn it first. This is because in order for me to do the job I need to do, need to start with love for the people with whom and for whom I work.

Love is a scary word for many people. It's too intimate, too mushy, too touchy-feely, too insincere. But I don't think anything short of love will do the job. If a community accepts me, asks me to join, and most importantly asks me to lead, I'm going to love each and every member of that community.

That love will help me find the energy, the compassion, the perseverance I will need to help every person grow. Wherever they are, each teacher, each staff member, each student can grow and learn and improve, and they will do that best when they are loved.

This does not mean I will have less love for my family and friends. This does not mean I will have no other life outside of my job. On the contrary, if I also love myself, I must make time for me. Self-love includes taking time for yourself, doing the things you love, and staying connected to the very people who make your life worth living. But it does mean I will work hard, I will spend extra time, I will keep learning and growing myself.

At the center of it all is our students. Every adult needs to feel the same love I do for our students. For us to work as hard as we need to work, to recover from setbacks, to get past the overwhelmed feeling we all have sometimes, to care most about the kids who are hardest to care about, there must be love. Once the foundation is there, the community that is built can support each member on his or her learning journey.

Innovation Ecosystem Design

Just as no two students are exactly the same, no two teachers and no two schools are the same either. Because of varying experiences, people, and communities, leaders need to adjust their strategies for developing an innovation ecosystem to match the needs of the staff, schools, or districts in which they work.

As a new leader in a new district, my first order of business is developing relationships and learning all I could about my setting. What do people value? Where are people coming from? What are our shared goals? Who are our students? What are our challenges? Luckily, our district has a newly created vision statement which outlines the dispositions our stakeholders value most: self-direction, critical thinking, empathy, and perseverance.

As we work to clarify these dispositions so that we have a common understanding of what the dispositions look like at different grade levels and in different subject areas, teachers must feel empowered to develop these traits in our students and themselves - we cannot wait for consensus. These dispositions represent what students need right now. This development will require risk-taking and reflection which can only be encouraged in an environment of trust.

The use of professional learning communities will grow out of a need for collaboration. Our teachers can help each other examine student work and ask the hard questions about what students actually learned despite what we think we taught. This type of analysis will take us to the next level of self-efficacy, the number one teacher trait required to increase student achievement according to Hattie. In addition to PLCs within our school, teachers can develop their own professional learning networks to support their growth within their specific grade levels or subject areas or needs. Having a trusted, online or in-person community to which you can ask challenging questions and with whom you can share and self-reflect is critical for growth as a professional.

As we work on revising our curriculum, we can focus on building opportunities for students to create rather than consume. And I'm not talking about creating a project or an essay that students hand in to the teacher or present to the class at the end of a unit of study. I'm talking about creating every day. To do so will require us to design authentic tasks for authentic audiences. Blogs, blueprints, videos, art, poetry, and models are just a few ways students can create as they learn.

We will need to design professional development opportunities for teachers that is differentiated, personalized, and strength-based. This learning should address the needs of our students and teachers while also staying clearly focused on moving us closer to our vision. Self-reflection and feedback loops must be a critical part of our ecosystem, providing opportunities for growth for individuals as well as our entire system.

Measuring Innovation

It seems impossible, measuring innovation. And yet we must find a way to show its impact. Proof is powerful when you are trying to convince a community to trust in the unknown, something new that has never been tried at your school or maybe ever. The question becomes: What does that proof look like?

I think we need to be innovative here (pun intended). Before we can decide on which proof we need, we should decide on what we want students to know and be able to do. This is not easy in the complex, connected world in which we now live and for which we need to prepare our students. I like the 4 Cs of 21st Century Learning from P21: collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity. These skills all require innovative thinking in order to be practiced, and they will require educators to be innovative in measuring them. The work is worth it as the 4 Cs are essential to success in an ever-changing economy and society.

For sure, the old A, B, C method will not work. What do these letters mean? What do they tell us about where students are in their development of these critical skills? Standards-based report cards that include various sections such as literacy, mathematics, social skills, and work habits come a little closer as they break larger subject areas down into smaller skills. However, teachers still give students a rating compared to others their age and in their grade level. This only tells parents how close their child is to being like all the others and not how much their child has grown in the given time period since the last report.

What is needed is a new method of capturing growth that includes a student reflection. Given the technology that is available to us now, this new method could take on many shapes and forms. In The Innovator's Mindset, George Couros offers digital portfolios and blogs as a possibility. He makes a strong argument that videos, text, pictures, audio files, Podcasts, slideshows, graphics, and more, all chosen by and reflected upon by the learner gives a true view of learning that is taking place. He also argues that sharing such a portfolio or blog with a larger audience beyond a classroom teacher or even a school provides a learner with authentic feedback. Finally, he suggests that since teachers are also learners, they should be compiling such a portfolio or blog themselves to model the process and gain a better understanding of what they are asking their students to do.

This has inspired me to imagine such a portfolio for myself. Now that I am blogging more, the reflection is happening. How to add work samples to my blog is the next idea to consider for me. Just like looking at student work/creation is key to understanding their learning, looking at my own work will help me connect my ideas with my actions. This is a crucial part of my leadership journey.

Strengths-Based Leadership

Can you imagine asking your staff at the end of the school year, "If you could describe your dream position next year, what would it be?" What would response would you get? What could you learn? How would people feel about being asked? What would you do with the information you learn?

I have a few ideas...

• You would go a long way to build relationships with your staff just be showing interest in what they think and how they feel;
• You would be able to personalize PD for your staff by searching out resources that could help them grow in their areas of interest;
• You would help staff reflect on their practice and lead them to a focus area for the year;
• You could provide support that would help and encourage them to pursue a goal;
• You might make staff adjustments to help people do what they want to do;
• You might develop new courses of study, clubs, or PLCs based on interests.

One thing about which I am sure is this: if you ask staff to share their passions and goals and you work to help them engage in those passions and reach those goals, you will have a staff that is invested in their school and willing to go above and beyond the call of duty.

What If We Were ALL Learners?

In The Innovator's Mindset, George Couros proposed several "What if" questions to help us reflect on a new vision for schools. One of the questions that resonated with me in a particularly strong way was, "What if schools operated as if we should all be 'learners,' as opposed to students being the only learners?"

I see why teachers would be uncomfortable being categorized as learners. After all, teachers did not go through years of school, earning multiple degrees, to be put back in the place of learners. They see themselves as professionals. How disconcerting to think their expertise is being called into question. So if we are going to reframe teachers as learners, we need to be clear about what they are supposed to know as well as what they are supposed to learn.

Teachers need to know the standards they are to teach and how to translate them into student-friendly language; who their students are as people and learners both in and out of the classroom including their strengths and weaknesses, their hobbies and experiences; which resources are available to them and their students for learning, creating, and sharing; how to teach students to ask questions and find problems to solve...the list goes on.

What teachers need to be open to learn is how people learn! With a constantly changing population of students who bring new interests and experiences with them to school, new technology and other resources being developed every day, access to information and communication at a scale and rate that grows exponentially each week, and scientists studying and revealing new information about the human brain and how it learns...the learning must continue for teachers. It can continue as long as teachers have an innovator's mindset and remain ready to learn and connected to the sources of information available to them.

The Innovator's Mindset, The Imperative

"...in schools, where we focus on students as the future, growth can no longer be simply an option."

I'm not sure why many teachers resist change so much. Some of them will say they're too busy or they've seen ideas come and go. However if you truly look, step back and observe students in so many of our classrooms today, you will see a problem. That problem is disengagement. Whether teachers believe that students should be better disciplined or respectful because adults tell them to or not, our customers are not buying what we are selling, and if they weren't forced to be in their classrooms by law, many of them would be headed out the door. They don't see the relevance of what we teach, they don't enjoy the process through which we teach them, and they are not inspired by the audience from whom they receive feedback on their work.

When teachers see this disengagement day after day, how can they deny the problem? When more and more students are being placed in intervention groups for reading, math, and social/emotional/behavioral "issues," how can we continue with the status quo? When many students' main goal is to play the game of school so they can get out start their "real" lives, how can teachers refuse to reflect? The change in thinking about school proposed in The Innovator's Mindset and Launch are most definitely NOT change for change's sake. Instead it is change for our future's sake. 

"The question that must be asked every day is, 'What is best for this learner?'"

If teachers would shift their focus from what they are doing to what their students are doing, a new world would open up for them. Looking at student work needs to be an essential and consistent component of all conversations about school-PLC's, professional development, faculty meetings, RTI meetings, PPT's. A focus on what students are doing as evidenced by their work be it writing, art, a math test, blog, e-portfolio, etc., would allow teachers to discover what is best for each student. Then teachers could turn their attention to the best practice that would lead to each student's growth. 

This need for change in schools motivates me to do what I do as a leader in encouraging and supporting teachers' growth. Joining the #IMMOOC is an opportunity for me to take a risk, grow, learn, and change just as I am asking my teachers to do.