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.

Because I am a connected educator, I am a better educator. I am active on Twitter for professional use, I listen to educator-produced podcasts, I read professional books or listen to them on Audible, and I read education blogs. These experiences not only enrich my professional practice, they also give me total control over my professional development. I can learn about the topics that are relevant to me, from educators I respect, and at a time that fits my busy life. Often these experiences have an indirect impact on my work in that I might be introduced to a new idea that I continue to research or I may read a post that reinforces the work that I am already doing, helping to build my confidence in the decisions I am making. Other times the impact is immediate.

Recently I was listening to AJ Juliani’s podcast, Scratch Your Itch, on my way to work where I was facilitating a professional development session for teachers. Juliani’s topic for that podcast was the power of storytelling. He said: Our brains pay special attention to stories, engaging more areas of the mind then when we hear or see facts. And when we learn a good story, our brains synthesize the neurochemical oxytocin. This helps us feel others’ emotions and empathize with them.

As I listened to Juliani talk, I was nodding my head as I drove. I have always had emotional responses to stories. They help me visualize, connect, imagine, empathize, and more. Incorporating more storytelling in my interactions with students, staff, and families seemed like a move toward being a more effective communicator. I realized that an opportunity to try this new idea presented itself that very morning at a professional development workshop for my staff.

I opened the session by announcing to the teachers in attendance that I had a story to tell. I described how one day that week I was in the computer lab helping a second grade class get started on their mid-year benchmark tests. I told the group that, as I walked around, making sure that all students were successfully working, I noticed that some students had single sentence with a fill-in- the-blank questions while others had longer, multi-paragraph questions. When I mentioned this to the teacher, she told me she had let the students know to expect tougher questions the more they answered correctly. She told them to just keep trying their best.

The teacher and I happened to be standing behind a young student who often struggled with reading. He receives special education services and has IEP goals for reading. As we stood there, watching his computer screen, a new question popped up...it was a multi-paragraph question. This young student whipped his head around to grin at his teacher. The pride on his face was apparent and contagious. He was truly seeing this testing session as an opportunity to show what he knew and greeted the challenge of a tough question eagerly.

I thanked the teachers in the workshop for their work to make mid-year benchmark testing as positive an experience as possible for their students, for framing testing as an opportunity for students to show how their hard work this year has paid off so far, and to help students set goals for improvement. The focus on my words was intense. More than ever before, I knew I had gotten the teachers’ attention with my story. They were able to catch a glimmer of the message I had been sharing for months about creating a positive testing environment for students and helping them set goals around their performance as a step toward improving results. They were connecting to my message.

I am so grateful that I clicked AJ Juliani’s podcast that morning. His words, like those of so many other amazing and forward thinking educators that I have the opportunity to learn from, are most definitely a large part of the success that I have experienced in my career. As a lifelong learner, I will continue to benefit from being a connected educator.

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.

I'm a Believer!

In chapter one of Katie Martin's new book, Learner Centered Innovation, the author presents a graphic depicting "The Evolving Role of the Educator." Of course this role is multi-faceted and represents a Co-Designer of Powerful Learning, Partner in Learning, Community Developer, and Connector & Activator. To this list of descriptors, I might add: Believer.

Today's educator must be fueled by the belief that we can do better for our students. This belief will motivate us to persevere past the challenges and constraints to innovation that the structure of school often presents. There are some important ways educators can hold on to this belief that have worked for me as I have evolved.

Take Opportunities
When an opportunity for learning presents itself, take hold. For me, an opportunity came up several years into teaching 5th grade in a small elementary school in northwest Connecticut. The Head Teacher retired, and we needed someone to step up. Even though I was worried about the work and responsibility I was taking on in addition to the large job of being the only 5th grade teacher in a K-5 setting, I knew I had something to offer my school community. I took it on with a colleague in a different grade, and we learned a lot and gained valuable experience in our leadership roles. This change led to more opportunities as a Tech Champion, a Lead Teacher in a new district, and now to Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Innovation in an even different district.

Develop a Personal Learning Network
Reach out to your colleagues close by and also your colleagues far away. Social media has given us access to the expertise and experience that abounds among educators. For me, when I became a Tech Champion for my school, one of the first professional development opportunities that was offered was a trip to FETC. I cannot describe the world that opened up for me as I moved from session to session, listening to and learning from THE experts in the field of technology in education. My students were about to go one-to-one with Chromebooks, and I came back from Orlando ready to start. While at FETC, I joined Twitter at the recommendation of one of the presenters. I quickly found educators to follow and Twitter chats to join. When you find your people, the learning and motivation never end.

Be A Leader
Trust your ideas. Share them with your colleagues near and far. For me, as I stepped into leadership roles, I had the chance to impact the structure of school in new and exciting ways. I could plan professional development, suggest changes to the schedule, introduce new courses for students, examine homework practices, survey staff, students, and parents on school climate and then do something about the results. All of this took courage. I trusted myself to do what was right for students, ALWAYS. I made decisions and recommendations based on that value. More importantly, I believed we could do better for our students in school.

The opportunities that opened up for me, the PLN that I created, and the risks I took as a leader were all fueled by that belief.

The Innovator's Mindset...It's Only the Beginning

This is the final blog post inspired by my participation in IMMOOC 2, a Massive Open Online Course inspired by the The Innovator's Mindset and facilitated by the author of that book, George Couros. A colleague of mine encouraged me to read the book when I let her know I was applying for a new job: Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Innovation. I think it was no coincidence that the day I ordered the book, I came across a tweet announcing the beginning of IMMOOC 2. Being a passionate learner and educator, and wanting to prepare for a possible job interview, I joined the group.

Participating in IMMOOC 2 has been an innovative experience for me in and of itself. I had never done an online course. When I saw that part of the MOOC would be weekly blogging, I knew it was the push I needed to make this practice more consistent. Putting myself out there in the weekly Twitter chat was another opportunity to share. As expected, it has been an amazing experience! I have learned so much more than I would have if I had just read the book on my own. Reflecting, listening to others' thoughts, writing about my own ideas are all practices that have deepened my learning about developing an innovator's mindset.

In the last few weeks of the IMMOOC, my participation slowed, and then came to a stop. This is not because I lost interest or didn't see the point. It's because I got an interview for the new job. And then I got another interview and another and another. I had lots of preparation to do for each of these. After this last interview, I was unanimously appointed to the position of Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Innovation. What a cool title to have, right? I'm not saying that the book and IMMOOC got me the job, but I'm sure that the ideas about which I was reading, reflecting, and writing combined with my previous experience and passion as an educator helped me form responses to questions that led me to the job of my dreams.

Thanks to you, George Couros, and to all of my fellow IMMOOCers for an enlightening experience that has literally set me on a new path in a position where I am a leader of innovation, something I know our students will love and already need.

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.