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.

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.

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.

Teachers Must Also Be Learners

In the same way that George Couros asks us to imagine inquiry based learning for staff as well as students, I'm imagining substituting "schools" for "classrooms" in the center of Sylvia Duckworth's visual of 8 Things to Look for in Today's Classroom.

If today's schools were learner-focused and teachers were learners just as much as students, then we might see teacher voice and choice in terms of topics they are exploring and would like to share with colleagues for feedback. Also, we would see time for reflection and innovation built into faculty meetings and professional development days. We would see teachers being encouraged to ask questions, challenge ideas, and identify problems to be solved in school. Finally, we would see teachers welcomed as part of the evaluation process in assessing themselves based on goals they set. In addition, teachers would be connected to a professional learning network both in their local community and also globally.

This mindshift for teachers to see themselves as learners would require support, openness, and a risk-taking environment which can only be fostered and modeled by the school's leaders.

Building Relationships

As George Couros says in The Innovator's Mindset, "If we want meaningful change, we have to make a connection to the heart before we can make a connection to the mind."

Connecting to a person's heart requires a strong, positive relationship. Relationships are intentional, they take effort to build, but that doesn't mean they can be faked. A leader must genuinely care about the people he or she leads to have the most success in building relationships. There is no shortcut here. All day every day leaders need to show they care by listening, asking about people's lives both in and out of school, remembering details that are important to people, celebrating success, offering support, and making time for people.

Just as important, leaders need to model the relationship-building actions they'd like their staff to use. Leaders need to be all in for whatever the school needs, willing to do any job because all jobs are important, and interacting with all students because they are ALL our students. Leaders need to hold expectations high for staff and even higher for themselves, share their goals and passions, take risks, admit mistakes, model growth, be human, and also be their best selves.

When staff can connect to their leader on a human level and they know their leader genuinely cares about them as people, they will be ready to learn from and with that leader in the name of what's best for kids.

School vs. Learning

School is about knowing a finite amount of core knowledge in an organized way that makes it easy to replicate in multiple settings with a variety of populations.

Learning is about practicing an ever-growing set of skills and dispositions that allow a person to lead his or her own learning about topics of interest and personal use. This process is difficult to replicate across settings but guides students to look at their world critically, find problems to be solved, and know where to start to find those solutions.

Although school might be easier to control and measure, it becomes obsolete as an organization when the students that enter are already savvy, self-directed learners who have had access to information since they were old enough to hold a device. These students know that the teacher is not the only source of information as they already have experience in pursuing their own passions, finding out what they need to know when they need to know it. They are connected to people around the world who share options for life paths and missions to pursue.

School needs to catch up to a changed world and acknowledge an unknown future to be sure we are preparing students who learn to succeed.

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.

"Learning is creation, not consumption." #IMMOOC Blog Post 2

In Part I of The Innovator's Mindset, one idea that really gave me pause for reflection was the quote from The Center for Accelerated Learning on pg. 55, "Learning is creation, not consumption." It made me think of a sixth question to add to the list of Critical Questions for the Innovative Educator:

What evidence of learning do we see in this student's creation?

For several years I have believed in the power of looking at student work in shifting a teacher's focus from what they are doing to what their students are doing. This shift is important because I have known many teachers who think only about what and how they are teaching, how their day is going, how hard they are working, how busy and stressed they are, how frustrating or amazing their students  can be. I have argued that looking at student work is what is needed to deepen PLC conversations and refocus teacher energy on the student experience. After all, it's the student learning that is the purpose of our work.

Now I feel the need to revise my mantra from "looking at student work" to "looking at student creations." In a creation, a teacher would see not just facts or algorithms regurgitated onto a page, instead she would see synthesis, prioritization, and communication about a topic or concept. This tells us so much more about a student's strengths and weaknesses, his "soft skills," his depth of understanding, and his ability to share it with others.

The painting shown above was created by my daughter for her high school art class. I am not an artist myself, but I can appreciate the skill, focus, persistence, planning, and time management that went into this creation, and I bet her teacher can see it too.

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.