Recently I’ve been grappling with understanding what innovation looks like for our teachers and our students. So I invited George Couros, the author of the Innovator’s Mindset, to spend a day with us to: observe, provide feedback, and brainstorm how we can improve our current efforts to infuse more innovative practice in our daily planning and provide students with more opportunities to be innovative.

As learning often is, the day with George was challenging and somewhat uncomfortable.  In part, the discomfort was because this topic is a bit all over the place. Yes, we know it’s important, and yes, we know the simplest definition of the concept is pretty straight-forward, but what are we really striving to improve? And how do we actualize it with all our many other daily demands?

To me, the urgency becomes clear when you connect the concept of innovation with school improvement efforts.

Innovation is an original idea or a transformation, as in an iteration, that results in an improvement. Innovation doesn’t need to be an invention, or save the world, but meaningful innovation needs to improve on or make something better for the greater good. To be effective educators, in fact to be good citizens, we need to be in a constant state of learning and improving. If we are not trying to improve based on new learning or find problems that need solutions, what are we doing?

So how can we use this understanding to further our school improvement goals? How do we encourage teachers to be more innovative and how do we provide opportunities for students to experience the process of innovation. I see these as two different goals that will eventually work together to form an innovative school culture here at GHS.

Action step to increase our understanding of innovation: George reminded me that in order for us to teach, we first need to experience the deep understanding we’re trying to convey. If we want teachers to provide opportunities for students to innovate, they need to experience the exercise of meaningful innovation. Together with Dr. Byars, we planned a time for teachers to process through innovation by defining a problem, or area of need, and then processing through to find a solution/improved practice. We agreed that this professional learning could either be a collaborative or independent effort. In order to ensure that the “20% time” is connected to the greater mission of the school, we decided that the topic would need to be vetted.

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The student component of the goal is a bit more complicated. Our faculty agreed that our current interpretation of Innovation Day is a bit murky, disconnected, and, at times,  lacks purpose to our new shared understanding of “purposeful” innovation. During George’s visit we observed many engaging learning activities, but often the activities lacked a connection to an innovation. In part, this is a result of multiple interpretations of what it means to be innovative. We began to solidify what it’s not just….

It’s not just:

Letting students research topics of interest

Using technology

A craft activity

Hands-on learning

Although all of these may be aspects of the process of innovative learning, they are not innovative experiences for our students. Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators, shares that the process of innovation often requires students to experience play (exploration) in order to develop, or gain understanding, of their unique passions to ultimately connect their passions to a greater purpose (innovation). As a staff, we began with Wagner’s definition of the process of innovation, but I think we are stuck in the play stage of this continuum, and as a result of this lack of movement, we need an Innovation Day make-over.

Action step to increase student opportunities for innovation: Our ultimate goal is to increase opportunities for students to innovate and for this to become a common aspect of our teaching and learning practice. Not a one and done monthly event. In that effort, we decided that we need to extend innovation to more than a once a month activity. We need to provide opportunity for students to process through innovation over time. Take the 6 hour day and divide the innovative processing time. This  may be an 1.5 hours a week or three 2 hour sessions over the course of a month. This will allow students time to reflect, revisit, and revise their efforts over time. We also determined that in order for us to incorporate a meaningful school reflection, it would help to align our innovation goals by narrowing an area of focus. For example selecting, empathy, networking, or problem-finding (all aspects of innovation) in order to put a more heightened awareness to each cycle of innovation. This aligned focus will also serve as a way for the staff to gain a deeper communal understanding of each of these components of the  innovator’s mindset. 

Perhaps most importantly, George and I discussed and reflected on the process of this learning journey for our staff. Fullan describes a lead learner as someone who is not afraid to operate with a  ready, fire, aim risk-reward mentality. The GHS staff has embraced this risk-reward philosophy while implementing this important 21st century school improvement goal. We first learned enough to know that innovation was an important endeavor (ready), this gave us the courage to begin (fire), and through our current iteration we are now adjusting our aim.