We’ve all seen the above graphic on design thinking. It illustrates that often there is messy thinking and setbacks to overcome before the clarity of the design is formulated. I had this image in mind recently when I was asked to share my current school improvement goals. I referred to the tangled web of thinking to describe where I was in the process. I decided to develop a visual to describe the school improvement process:

We begin with ideas-thoughts of what we might want to improve based on our current goals and progress. Then we incorporate new learning. That’s when it can get messy. Often new learning leads to a reflecting mode where thoughts are jumbled and we need to ruminate to make connections to our current work. Using the new learning to generate improvements is when begin to innovate and iterate.

The school improvement process is fraught with messy thinking. Our efforts can vacillate from clear to messy thinking as a result of new learning that forces us to question our current values. This is good – we should always question our purpose in order to fully comprehend its value.

I’ve learned we need to embrace the tangle as an opportunity towards heightened school improvement. I’ve also learned that we need to surrender to the fact that our work is rarely linear or finite but more often a continuous cycle of refining and rethinking based on new learning.

For the last few years we have been working towards a more student-centered learning model at our elementary school. We began by focusing on fostering more student independence and student-driven learning efforts. These efforts included:

• Using student interests to drive our instructional decision-making,
• Encouraging students to work through learning struggles and,
• Be more comfortable with risk-taking
• Providing students (and teachers) with more opportunities to be innovative @gcouros
• Encourage more student input and ownership of their learning goals

While we have made considerable gains in some aspects of this improvement goal, it feels like we are stuck in surface interpretations and isolated events of true student-centered learning. This past summer I referenced Allison Zmuda’s @allison_zmuda, Learning Personalized the evolution of the contemporary classroom, pg 77-78 along with research from George Couros, Daniel Pink, and Tony Wagner to establish a criteria to help us measure these efforts during our district Instructional Rounds. The checklist tool combines Allison’s criteria for Personalized learning with conceptual understanding of the power of intrinsic motivation @DanielPink: autonomy, mastery, purpose, and Tony Wagner’s @DrTonyWagner identified process towards innovation efforts: play (exploration), passion, purpose.

Next week our administrative team will test-drive this checklist tool. checklist I will review the thinking behind the tool prior to our rounds and report on the effectiveness of this measure in a follow-up blog post.  The goal is to establish a healthy balance between teacher-centered and student-centered learning.

Last school year during a faculty meeting, our staff grappled with the question: can we teach creativity? The collective response was, “No, not through direct instruction, but we can provide students with opportunities to be creative.”

Our educational focus moving forward should be how to improve our school environments to allow for students to have more opportunities to be creative and innovative. Attempting to “teach” students to understand aspects of the innovator’s mindset (@gcouros) through direct instruction of these skills is troubling to me. It just doesn’t work. Defining skills like perseverance, resilience, risk-taking, etc. for students is best done by providing them with opportunities that allow them to experience the characteristic through a learning endeavor.

Years ago I was in the Army going through a challenging Basic Training obstacle course. One of the activities called for the trainees to scale and climb over a wall. I don’t know exactly how high the wall was but it was certainly taller than me. I made several attempts of running towards the wall and trying to achieve the momentum to reach the top and continue on to the next event. But as often as I ran to and hit the wall, I fell to the ground and failed. What is the quote in Duckworth’s (@angeladuckw Grit) book -“7 falls eight rises?” Eventually, a very angry Drill Sergeant  (is there any other kind?) approached me from the sidelines, where I have no doubt he was enjoying the sight of my failed attempts. I looked at him hoping for mercy and mumbled, “I can’t.” He couldn’t have been less merciful in his response, “Get your ass up that wall.” Motivational speaking at its best. On my final attempt I was successful. I honestly don’t know how or what I did differently to make this effort successful, but somehow I made it over that wall. Greeting me on the other side of that wall was the aforementioned Drill Sergeant, “Don’t ever let me hear you say you can’t again Soldier!”

I learned a few valuable lessons that day. I learned that sometimes if you don’t give up you can be successful. But mostly I learned that I should never give up without checking my attitude. Remembering that if I think I can’t I likely won’t. And that in order to experience success I may need to experience a series of failed attempts in the process. This was a day that I experienced what perseverance feels like and to this day this memory informs my attitude towards a challenging physical task. I continue to attempt “crow” each time my Yoga teacher instructs us to take the position. Even though I have yet to experience the balance, I am confident that one day I will execute the move with success.

Creating environments that allow students to experience the characteristics of the innovator’s mindset will provide them with the attributes for future successes. Fall seven times rise eight.

Did you ever notice how many of our most respected and acclaimed researchers/authors have thousands of followers and yet choose to follow very few? Here’s what I find puzzling: if they are not following their listeners how are they continuing to learn?

I realize this may come across as Twitter shaming and I am OK with that. I also realize that the people I’m shaming won’t see this post so we can be assured that their feelings will not be hurt. 

One of the most powerful aspects of Twitter is that it allows us to share our own thinking and learning, but perhaps more importantly, it connects us to other’s thoughts and questions. If some of our “big name thinkers” are only using it as a forum to share their thinking, aren’t they perhaps sending a message that they don’t need to engage with their learners/followers to continue to enlighten their thinking?

I used to begin my school year by telling my  students that they would learn more from each other than they would from me. They looked at me like I was crazy. The point being that sure the teacher/administrator/lead researcher has valuable knowledge and information to share and they will help guide the student/follower to other helpful sources of knowledge. But the true learning occurs when students take that new knowledge and kick it around. They test it. They ask follow up questions, compare it to their prior beliefs, and they check in with their peers to gain further insight(s).  And sometimes, when things get really fun, the teacher learns too.

There’s a great exchange in the movie Julia and Julia when Julia Child’s husband asks her what she is really good at in an effort to help her plan her next career move. She immediately responds, “I’m really good at eating” and they both have a good laugh. This is how I feel about thinking – I’m really good at it.

I recently had a conversation with a principal friend of mine who shared that this whole lead learner thing left her feeling a bit anxious.  I agreed and began thinking about why. In the midst of my thinking I noticed how often I see lists of lead learner characteristics and the irritation I feel when I read these lists. The criteria often come off sounding a bit pompous. The lists imply that the lead learner is the all-knowing Oz who doles out their wisdom to the less fortunate (the non-leading learners) as they see fit. It insinuates that the lead learner needs to first assess the knowledge to determine if the learning is worth pursuing.

Lead learner suggests that I am learning at greater speeds or deeper levels than my staff/colleagues and I don’t think that’s necessarily true. (BTW I clearly need to revise my Twitter descriptor) It also implies that I need to somehow steer the learning for our faculty en masse and I don’t know that I want that responsibility. The educators I work with have varying needs and interests and while I do need to focus elements of their learning towards our combined school improvement goals, I don’t want to lead too much of their learning because, after all, it should be individualized.

I prefer the term lead thinker. It may seem like a nuanced change in terminology but I believe it suits my work more appropriately.

Lead thinker better describes what I do and how I feel about my leadership.  A lead thinker implies that I spend a tremendous amount of my time thinking. Thinking and reflecting, fine-tuning ideas, and ultimately joining my evolved understandings with our global school improvement efforts. Learning often has a path of predetermined outcome with a more finite goal. I take in new information; put it to good use (perhaps) and move on to a new topic. Thinking is constant. It’s a layering and deepening of understanding in ways that are unique to the individual thinker. Sharing my thinking, rather than my learning allows others to personalize their understandings. That’s a good thing. It becomes a more personalized improvement journey for all.

I recently listened to this TedTalk by  Adam Grant:

http://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_the_surprising_habits_of_original_thinkers

This research aligns beautifully with the notion of lead thinker. I am a leader who is quick to begin new ideas but slow to finish because I’ve learned about the power of rumination and fine-tuning. Mulling over new thoughts and connecting them to other thoughts is how I work to innovate and iterate. The patient process of reflection is perhaps the most important element to strong leadership. Interestingly it is, at times, overlooked in the endless supply of top 5, 10, 20 traits of lead learners, but I believe it may be the most critical aspect of our work towards meaningful change.

George Couros @georgecouros notes the importance of reflection as a critical component of the innovator’s mindset. If we agree that innovation is ultimately about making things better, and that is arguably the most important aspect of our roles as educational leaders – particularly in these times when so many of our learning environments are in need of change – then  this lead thinker notion just feels like a more comfortable descriptor of our work.

Why is it important to model the change we wish to see in others? I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. Mostly because I am constantly thinking about improvements: in my lifestyle, my profession efforts, and personal exchanges – so the thought of limiting resolutions to one day a year seems forced, perhaps that’s why some people struggle to achieve lasting success with New Year’s resolutions. One change I’ve been reflecting on lately is embracing (through modeling) the change we wish to see in others. Thanks @gcouros for encouraging me to  model the change more visibly!

Blogging is a new forum for me. Before I can recommend it to our staff, I needed to experience the benefits. This is my 3rd blog post and I am beginning to understand the value already. Here’s what I’ve noticed:

Blogging helps me to:

• Quiet my restless mind. Often when I read professional articles related to our improvement efforts I spend time reflecting how I can take the new knowledge and use it to help our collective efforts?
• Synthesize my thoughts. At times my thoughts are fragmented and I need to understand how they connect to the “big ideas” in my mind.
• Share my thinking with clarity. After completing a post, I feel better prepared to share my thoughts with others. The reflection that occurs prior to the writing is prep for articulating new thinking.

Well, why can’t it? Why can’t we tweak lessons to engage students in more inquiry based learning each and every day?

At Gallup Hill Elementary School we have an annual event called Science Day. During this day we collaborate with local businesses and parents who visit our school and provide instruction in various aspects of science. We have examples of engineering, recycling, energy efficiency, Marine Science, etc. This year we even provided students with lessons about a new field of science called Bio-mimicry, which looks to phenomena in nature to mimic characteristics and use this knowledge to create innovative designs. The day is a hands-on exploration style of learning and students delight in anticipation of this special day.

The presenters share information about their chosen field, but most importantly they let students explore. The learning students  process through during this day involves tweaking, and because of their varied adjustments they receive immediate feedback. Why don’t we provide students with more opportunities to explore theories, make potential errors, and adjust based on their knowledge, their intuition, and their guesses more often? Why is the bulk of our teaching about transfer of knowledge rather than mindful exploration?

In the Dan Meyer video: Math Class Needs a Makeover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWUFjb8w9Ps he shares that often we give students too much information when asking them to problem solve. We present the problem and then give them all the information they need, along with the sequential steps, to find the solution. And, if that is not enough, we then refer them to a problem just like the one we’re asking them to solve, and if that is still not enough we refer them to the answer (and where it’s located) in the back of the book. Why not begin more lessons with interesting problems and let students work through to solve them without our immediate assistance? It is rare in life that the problems we need to solve come with step-by-step directions or that we have all the information we need before we begin. Often, we begin real-world problem-solving by figuring out what information we need to know to begin to work towards a solution. And, more often than not, we jump in and try a few theories towards a solution that ultimately work to provide us with the necessary conceptual understanding of the new knowledge.

This kind of “thinking through” to solutions that I saw so frequently during our recent Science Day, was what made the learning so fun and engaging for our students. They tweaked the rockets they had designed or the boats they made of clay before the actual theoretical learning occurred. What made them decide to change a structural element of a design to increase buoyancy, or trim a fin in an effort to increase flight distance? What core knowledge or guess work led them to that decision?

On this day I also witnessed a lot of collaboration – a different sort than our usual manufactured or facilitated collaboration. Students needed to check in with their peers, to replicate, and to ask clarifying questions in order to gain the essential learning to succeed with the design.

So, how do we do this more often? We first need to recognize the benefits of this type of constructivism – Piaget’s preferred method of learning. Then we need to infuse more opportunities for exploratory learning when lesson planning. Often we teach scientific principles and mathematical properties through direct instruction and ask students to memorize these fundamental properties without ever actually testing them out and experiencing them. When we do “allow” for opportunities for students to test, often the outcomes are pre-established and the experiments are not experimental in nature they are like the step-by-step math problems referenced above.

These quasi experiments often lack the trial and error that problem solving requires, in fact they lack a problem; they are exercises to work through and complete to determine the answer. Students often forget these concepts after assessments because they’ve never had a chance to make sense through problem solving and purposeful practice. The relevance of the concept is left a mystery and therefore its importance (to them) is never actualized.

I first learned about the term “warm demanders” a few months ago. Essentially, it means teachers who are kind and caring but also hold students accountable to appropriately rigorous standards. They’re the educators that don’t overly praise, don’t smile falsely; they have a true sense of what it means to nurture. The term warm demanders really helped me to put a name to what I admire so much about certain teachers I observe. They appear to innately know when to support and when to let go – all while keeping a watchful eye on the students they have grown to know and care so much about.

Ironically, they are not always the most popular teachers. They are often not the teachers parents request, they are not very vocal during meetings, and often go about the work they do without asking for assistance. They tend to work quietly without complaint. They do their jobs without looking for praise. It’s not in their nature. They are sleeping giants who can easily rise to become teacher leaders.

These giants are skilled listeners. When they speak I listen carefully because I know their words are carefully chosen and their observations have undergone reflection. Warm demanders navigate teaching with care and precision. Their egos are healthy but not obtrusive. They plan carefully and when asked about their students they easily share specific knowledge about their unique abilities and struggles.

I liken it to parents that know that ultimately we need to prepare our beloved children to be independent thinkers and doers. In fact, that may be the most important aspect of good parenting. Providing safe, secure and loving environments is critical for sure, but if they end up living in our basements after graduation have we really done our job well?

Our warm demanders are the teachers that are best preparing our students for their future and I greatly admire their work.