2011 Lesson #7 - Educators can learn from entrepreneurs

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A valuable part of our professional journeys as educators is to look beyond our own experience and learn from others. One strategy that has worked very well for our circumstance has been to bend budgets so that we can recurrently send teams of teachers to learn from others. This strategy commenced a decade ago when we took advantage of cheap domestic airline fares and visited any school that in some way had been described as ‘innovative’. We learnt much from people such as Helen Paphitis, then Principal of Salisbury Enterprise High School (Adelaide) and Di Fleming, then Principal Kilvington Girls Grammar (Melbourne).

I loved an anecdote from Kilvington, one that I have subsequently referred to as the ‘sledge hammer’ approach – when frustrated by the slow pace of change, Di Fleming initiated a late afternoon walk around campus for any staff member who was interested in discussing change in education. Those interested finished up with an off-the-scale opportunity when compared to what they may have initially thought. The invited colleagues were asked to literally smash through walls in order to create the connected spaces that were deemed pivotal to growing a stronger learning community. (I suspect there was a deal of necessary orchestration behind this, lest walls fall in!) Sometimes I know we need this approach in the classroom. What would happen if we gave the kids the chance to apply the ‘sledge hammer’ technique to classes that were unbearably boring?

Opportunity Plus

In 2005 I was the recipient of a Macquarie University travelling fellowship and took the opportunity with two colleagues to visit 22 schools from 6 northern hemisphere countries – a strategy that eventually sparked thinking that lead to both the creation of the SCIL: the Sydney Centre for Innovation in Learning (www.scil.com.au), as well as our online distance learning program (www.hsconline.nsw.edu.au). Since then, we have used opportunities as they have arisen to visit other people and places, many through further awards. While the awards have been humbling, it is the associated ‘prize’ money, that has been the real asset. That money has always been earmarked for further visitations.

Fast forward to 2011

Two different strategies have helped accelerate the mission and vision of SCIL. The first is a simple strategy - actively learn from other schools and outstanding educators in a scheduled recurrent program with a clear focus for targeted improvement and involve as many as possible in the process. Recognising that SCIL can learn a great deal from institutions other than schools, in the last two years the focus for such tours has broadened to include innovative libraries, outstanding museums and influential change agents. With a collaborative mindset at its core, we have now taken that one step further and SCIL now hosts an annual innovation and inspiration tour for external schools or systems. The tours are organised using a dynamic group process, allowing participants to progressively debrief, contextualise and add new layers of possibilities to their thinking. It is a simple process – but highly worthwhile. (There is a tour planned for October 2012 – most likely Finland, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and the UK – feel free to contact aknock@scil.nsw.edu.au for more information.)

The second method to stretch thinking is related to the first – but recognises the tremendous impact entrepreneurial thinkers can have on education. In 2011 I have been privileged to spend time with some highly entrepreneurial thinkers. I met Matt Spathas (ibrary.com), a businessman and entrepreneur from San Diego – with a passion for contributing to educational change. It was sensing Matt’s perspective and passion for learning that helped shape my interest in the contribution that entrepreneurial experience may provide to accelerating change in education paradigms. In one of his presentations, Matt asked the question as to whether the secondary school learning experience was akin to going on a long distance flight: (paraphrased) ‘You have to keep quiet, sit in rows, face the front, watch the movie selection pushed on to you and hope that the final destination in some way compensates for the boring, uncomfortable ride’. A great analogy!

Interestingly, when I project forward to growing my professional network in 2012, I know that I will include as many opportunities to meet people such as Matt as I know it will grow my thinking more rapidly than anything else.

 In 2011, I also met and enjoyed extended time with Berlin-based business entrepreneurs – Bea Beste (www.playducation.org) and Oliver Beste (www.founderslink.com). As with Matt, I have enjoyed every moment of conversation and reflection. It was the explorer heart of Bea that first found us via Twitter and then proceeded to visit SCIL during an international journey (having recently let go of the Phorms schools that she started in Germany, with the new goal of determining the next project on which to devote her energies). Bea’s gift to me has been reflective listening and observation on our practice and journey and then analysing our activity through a sequence of blogs and videos – a powerful present! (www.playducation.org/blog…/the-special-agents-of-change.html; www.playducation.org/blog-reader/items/the-oyster-of-good-learning.html)

Through Bea I met Oliver whose own background is not school related – but business entrepreneurship. Through them I have also met the wider team at playDUcation and separately other German entrepreneurs. Through Basti Hirsch (@cervus), one of the playDUcation founding team members, I am about to spend some time with the global Sandbox Network at their first global Summit in Lisbon (www.sandbox-network.org). The Sandbox Network is an inspirational organisation that seeks to harness and shape the collective energies of young entrepreneurs (18 – 30 age group). I am really looking forward to this, as while I might be able to provide some wisdom and mentoring, I suspect I am about to gain a fresh injection of innovative and entrepreneurial perspectives.

Do you have any up and coming learners (senior students or teachers) who could fit the description of potential Sandboxers? Perhaps they should join the Sandbox Network. We need to constantly seek to bridge the gap between education and business.

How has this impacted my thinking?

It has been extremely useful having people closely observe our work from a perspective removed from education. It has also been fun. Oliver and Bea decided to visit SCIL for a week during a recent holiday at the end of November 2011. It provided Bea the chance to test run some of playDUcation’s developing quests and afforded Oliver the chance to become more familiar with our work in promoting change and innovation through SCIL. I found the de-briefing conversations highly stimulating and they have challenged me to think about ways to better develop the practice of the school, as well as consider ways to become more entrepreneurial in our practice as a professional business. In a world where funding models will inevitably be affected by global financial trends, I suspect more entrepreneurial thinking – especially in directions not immediately in our sights, will become an imperative, whether we work in government or non-government schools.

If your experience is anything like mine, I never had training or experience in business management or business thinking and although I know many would regard me as being highly innovative and entrepreneurial in my thinking, I know I have a lot to learn still. I have been blessed to work with a visionary school Board over the last decade, led for the majority of that time by Peter King AO, himself an entrepreneurial businessperson, community advocate and an expert on governance. This has provided outstanding mentoring for me. I need to do the same for others. 

The point I am seeking to make is that school leaders should be actively looking beyond the normal school community to find people with insights that will challenge your thinking, accelerate change processes and help embed a culture of deep learning.

Advice time

A few years ago I spent a week in Queen Charlotte Sound on the northern tip of the South Island of New Zealand. It is spectacularly beautiful, but it can rain heavily. In the remote out-of-range, non-connected region in which we were staying, during those seasonal downpours, I had to read a book! The one of the shelf of the lodge was one written in the early 1990s on ‘outrageous service’. I have forgotten the exact title, but not the content. It was providing examples of businesses that had thrived as a result of ‘outrageous service’ – especially small, local businesses that ran the gauntlet of being wiped out by larger organisations. But they weren’t. The reason - focus on providing ‘outrageous service’. I learnt a lot from the book. I connected with many of the anecdotes mentioned – times when someone within an organisation has been outstanding in their service. Word-of-mouth growth then inevitably follows.

The point – apply the thinking

So, how might we provide ‘outrageous service’ to parents? To other educators? How might we provide ‘outrageous service’ to the difficult and hard-to-engage student? How might I provide ‘outrageous service’ to a parent who clearly has an issue with some person or aspect of the school’s operation? How might I provide ‘outrageous service’ for my staff? It did start to change my thinking. Thinking back now, I have embedded this thinking into my practice, ‘outrageous’ faith in all individuals to excel – students and teachers. Everyone has a skill that can be discovered and shaped.

Business has a lot to teach educators, but unfortunately the business world and education world have not always mixed well. That’s perhaps because we tend to stick within the confines of the education universe and have often limited our contact with outside world to just product suppliers or the occasional attendance at a local business forum.

We need to be the ones to make the move to link our schools with the business world. Find local entrepreneurs. Invite them to come and closely observe your school. Get their left-of-field perspective on the school. Find business mentors, invite them on to your school boards and councils. Get your staff thinking about the ‘client service’ they provide.

My hunch?

My hunch is that the closer the ties we forge as school leaders with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinking, the faster the speed of transformational change in our schools.

What have I learned?

Innovation is only really game changing if it can be easily scaled up, replicated and put into practice. I have taken on that challenge. I am passionate about learning, passionate about providing opportunities for the learning environment at NBCS/SCIL (www.nbcs.nsw.edu.au; www.scil.com.au) to lead to the shaping of lifelong, deep engaged learning habits for every learner in the school community (myself included). But I need to network, I need to share our successes and failures. I need to hear your successes and failures. We need to grow together. We need to create the global tribe of educators who know schooling is changing rapidly and will continue to do so. Governments aren’t doing a good job setting vision. We need to. We need to share practice and scale our work into new directions. We need to learn from entrepreneurs how to do that.

There is a moral imperative to bring the developing world with us

We should not leave the developing world out of this process. I am about to visit Rwanda again because I decided that I could not devote all my energy to improving educational opportunities for students in an already well-resourced world. There is a whole world of under-resourced schools in regional, rural settings or perhaps the ‘slums’ of global developing-world megacities that need to be included in the conversations. There are many passionate educators in those places craving professional development and encouragement.

Innovate Rwanda

You may be interested in our project – starting with a ‘collision of ideas’ conference in northern Rwanda (scil.com.au/Rwanda) in late May. The intention is to come up with suggestions and strategies that could be applied to improving the educational experience anywhere in the developing world – in order to help kick start the process of enabling a shift away from the imposed colonial model of schooling, to something that will at least provide job creation skills. Beyond this project, there are still 70 million children in the world with no access to education. Plenty of scope for entrepreneurial thinking there!

2011 Lesson #6 - invent new creative structures to enable deep and passionate learning

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I am constantly challenged to consider what we need to throw out from our assumed daily practices as teachers. If we come to the topic through the lens of making choices that maximize deep and passionate learning for students, then I have come to the conclusion that there is very little that will survive from the industrial model.

I’ll provide an anecdote to highlight this point. A couple of years ago I observed a lesson in progress on photosynthesis. I learnt a great deal and I have thought about this on mnay an occasion since. The context was in a school in a very deprived area of a large east African country. The school operated very much on a ‘hand-me-down’ colonial model where the assumption was that the teacher was the fount of knowledge, students were there to soak up what they could and spend the rest of the time either copying notes from the blackboard or a textbook. There were about 60 students in the one class, they were seated in rows facing a blackboard and the teacher had minimal training (possibly none). It was a Year 5 class. They had been rote learning the (mis)spelling of photosynthesis for about 20 minutes. They were moving on to a definition to be copied into the exercise books. When I looked out through the door, the classroom was adjacent to a school yard that had not one blade of green grass or any plants – despite the wide region being quite fertile. What was abundantly clear was that there was zilch context for understanding the concept.

What might have been the outcome if the energies and passion of the restless crew of 60 was unleashed via authentic learning: tilling the soil, planting the yard out and then observing photosynthesis in action over the coming weeks.

‘Just do it’

At NBCS/SCIL (www.nbcs.nsw.edu.au; www.scil.com.au) we have been progressively ‘throwing out’ the old. Three years ago we decided that we would get rid of the bell from the start of the new school year. On that particular idea, I was the driver and happy to lead the way. We did it ‘cold turkey’ – no warning, no strategy, just resolve. It has worked well. It wasn’t without its teething problems and for many weeks staff complained that they were not getting to class on time because of the lack of bells. The answer was easy – take individual ownership, create your own strategy and simply plan to turn up on time. I suspect there would be incessant complaints if we were to reintroduce this vestige of industrial factory practice. (We do play music for the youngest students in our K – 12 school, so that there is no anxiety for school beginners to know when they should be looking to go to class.)

In a second ‘overnight’ move in 2011, I removed the use of the very menstrual word ‘period’ from being the describer of different components of the day – and moved to the term ‘learning session’. Students now engage in four learning sessions each day.

We have had ‘Grade Learning Managers’ and ‘Learning Area Managers’ for a few years – but I know we should get rid of the word ‘manager’. It is a reductionist term and doesn’t imply creative scope in leadership. Stay tuned on that one, because we’ll find a new term.  

The next big challenge is to gradually reshape the daily landscape away from ‘timetables’. The optimum would be for students to engage in deep learning, focused around areas of passion. I know this will take some time to achieve and while we still have to keep the mandatory endpoint state assessment systems in mind, we do not need to lock ourselves into factory mode thinking as the only approach to achieve the required outcomes.

An example

In 2011 we trialed an elective class in Year 9 & 10 where the students (teacher or self nominated) had to create their own curriculum. (Read more via the blog of SCIL learning activist, @steve_collis http://www.happysteve.com/blog/gat-project-google-20-rule-in-school.html).

Students needed to frame a challenge – a passion project, create a timeframe for achieving it and determine who might best support them on the journey. We allocated one teacher for the group which met three learning sessions a fortnight and beyond that the students were responsible for their progress. Again, the experience was remarkably successful:

·       Students choose topics and production formats that far exceeded normal expectations

·       Students collaborated very well with the mentor teacher

·       Students created natural sub groups and in some cases worked jointly on a task

·       Students gained a lot of insight from professional mentors, practitioners from related fields

·       Students suddenly became film producers, novelists, scriptwriters, robot creators – a myriad of outstanding creators

 

We have generated further challenges – how do we allow for this depth of engagement to not be squashed in the more routine classes of Years 11 & 12? How might we transition an entire grade to have the capacity to do this in order that we might start collapsing the timetable on certain days and create ‘deep days’ on a more basis. How do we tie this in with the existing curriculum expectations?

An outstanding example from the UK

In October 2011, I visited the Simon Langton Grammar School in Canterbury, Kent, UK. We were specifically visiting Dr Becky Parker and her work with the Langton Star Centre. (@langtonstar; http://www.thelangtonstarcentre.org/ - and via this YouTube link, Dr Becky Parker invites you to join the SpaceLab project: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bup2kCsTYc).

I do not want to move into a ‘grammar school or no grammar school’ debate – rather simply draw from their decision as a school to create new structures to allow what is very obvious deep and passionate engagement. The following is my take on the visit. The school was a school that was touted as a ‘failing’ school a decade ago – but rather than going down the track of focusing heavily on assessment and outcomes, they seemed to have taken a ‘what if’ approach - and with outstanding and inspirational outcomes. They adopted the 20/80 approach – allow teachers to devote a minimum 20% of their time teaching to their own areas of passion, not necessarily curriculum related. The supposition was that the lost time would be more than compensated by an increase in student engagement via passion. And they got it right. I have never seen a school with more passionate students.

The Langton Star Centre (Physics unit) had students differentiating cosmic rays and were busy anticipating the implications for data analysis once their cosmic ray detector has been launched as an attachment to a NASA satellite. As a non-physicist, I learnt more in a few minutes about the different cosmic rays that co-exist in the same spaces as me! Two 16 year old students had written a journal article on the topic and submitted it to a peer reviewed academic publication. It was published as a leading article – without the university even knowing initially that it was written by two school-aged students. The power of passionate engagement!

We were invited to visit the new observatory located in the school grounds – but we weren’t taken there by teachers, rather two students who had been responsible for constructing the telescope, parts of which had been shipped from Australia. One of the students was contacting the solar panel company in Australia to get greater clarity on the positioning of the panels. The power of passionate engagement!

We were invited to learn more about the school’s human genome project where under the direction of a teacher who was also a researcher-in-residence, over 100 students were conducting experiments on the human genome to help decode the essence of multiple sclerosis and contribute actively to advancing understanding and possible future treatments. The power of passionate engagement!

We listened to students who had formed their own society to advance their higher order thinking capacities – ready to take on the best at university level. One of the group was aware that the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer lived close by and after persistent requests got him to come and talk to their small lunchtime group about possible strategies to steer the global economies through the current GFC. The power of passionate engagement!

What was very clear at Simon Langton Grammar School was that when the focus was moved away from a relentless focus on state assessments and outcomes, then far deeper learning was possible. But the school leaders had to take the brave step of taking a risk, based on strong intuition and then creating new structures that could facilitate the approach. And wow – does it work!

Rewriting the script for Years 3 – 8 at NBCS/SCIL

Our major work in this area has been within our upper primary and middle years programs. Over the last few years we have created strong teacher teams who have created collaborative programs for Years 3 & 4, Years 5 & 6, Year 7 and Year 8 respectively. The programs look slightly different at each stage – but in essence allow for a deep focus on literacy and numeracy skills, personalized to each student’s stage of learning, while also freeing up a quarter to half of most days for work on integrated units. 

I love the fact that the teachers are demonstrating the capacity for far higher-order teaching competencies as the program progresses. No longer are the teachers simply classroom managers and curriculum deliverers, now they are mentors, guides, learning leaders and coaches. They are also moving into areas of their own professional passion as leading learners and practitioners. What I really love is when teachers become the creative directors of curriculum modules that involve layers of learning and experience: drawing curriculum frameworks from a range of sources such as Bloom’s higher order thinking skills, Gardner’s diverse intelligences, ‘habits of mind’ strategies and then placing an entire simulated game experience over the top of the unit. I am awaiting this year’s ideas from the different teams eagerly.

What is needed?

This all requires team effort, operating on intuition far more than we have, running with an idea, taking risks, finding new structures, removing blockers, thinking differently, different spaces, team training: in essence a new mode of transport, not a reworked version of an old model. Focus on passion, not the ‘spoon-fed’ curriculum delivery strategies where there will undoubtedly be some short-term successes, but also the high risk of self-learning flounder once the student leaves that environment and has to take responsibility for their own learning. Therein lies the challenge!

Other exemplar

Three other immediate examples that come to mind, which I have visited, include the Kunskapsskolan schools -scattered across Sweden and now in the UK and New York (www.kunskapsskolan.com/), the High Tech High schools in San Diego (www.hightechhigh.org) and the new Anastasis Academy in Denver (www.anastasisacademy.com/). All these schools have taken up the challenge of creating new structures for next paradigm learning – and in so doing, have created levels of engaged learning that certainly stand out.

I’d love to hear your stories of the power of deep engagement and the new structures that you have created or of which you are aware.

 

 

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The separated teacher - separate classroom model, when taken to the extreme of implementation, is disturbing. Unfortunately, developing countries have only known the hand-me-down style of industrial era education, a relic of their colonial pasts.The children are often seemingly happy - but most likely oblivious to the reality of 85% post school unemployment rate in many countries - largely because they have not been taught job creation skills.

2011 Lesson #5 Make teamwork, collaboration and relationship building a habit

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Earlier this year I looked at defining the ‘old paradigm’ classroom as compared with a new ‘learning community’ model. What was immediately apparent was the emphasis that is given to ‘separation’ in the one teacher, one classroom model. Separate and separated teachers work in separate classrooms, at separate desks, with separated class groups on separate programs with separate preparation – with students sitting in many instances in separate seats in separate rows. Get the picture? No wonder conflict so easily arises in a ‘separate’ model – tension rapidly escalating in confined spaces that can rapidly become a pressure cooker of emotions.  It is not difficult to delve back into the origins of this thinking from the industrial era – separate actions in a production line gradually contributing to the finished product.

A simple question to ask ourselves in this post-industrial era is why? Why has schooling persisted with this model when it clearly is so fraught with emotional stress, professional isolation and out of touch with employment needs in the 21st century?

I think I was most challenged to think this one through when visiting Rwanda – a wonderful country full of amazing people and a very tangible sense of hope. But one where the model of schooling has been based on a colonial hand-me-down of industrial era thinking. And what is the outcome of this traditional model of separated classrooms in countries like Rwanda? (and Malawi and other similar countries) – incredibly high post-education unemployment because the education system for the large part has taught neither relevant job skills nor collaboration skills. It is often when you see something taken to the extreme – that you can clearly understand its flaws.

Where does the problem start for schools and teachers? I’d have to point the finger at the universities and colleges and question why they have not included training new teachers into collaborative work practices and team skills. I find there is a whole layer of un-learning and re-learning required for all teachers (beginning or experienced) when they come to work at NBCS/SCIL,  because training teachers as a workforce for collaborative workplace models just doesn’t happen. Interestingly, once teachers make the shift and understand the intricacies of working within a team, they do not want to revert to the ‘separation’ model.

Our experience has been that an effective team approach will lead to some very desirsable outcomes:

·       student behaviour issues drop away

·       engagement into learning increases significantly

·       teachers remodel themselves as teacher learners

·       there is a marked increase in creative approaches to curriculum delivery

 

Why teamwork?

Every leadership book I have read, or business exemplar that I have seen, that has a focus on the efficiencies of teamwork demonstrates the same thing: improved efficiency comes from strong teamwork. There would be countless examples in sport and in the natural world. Somehow scientists have worked out that geese flying in team formation are 71% more efficient than a solo goose. Industry leaders in innovative solutions such as IDEO provide outstanding examples of the power of collaborative creative thinking. I have been increasingly drawn to workplace environments which manage to strike a great balance for the employees between engaging ‘ideas’ spaces, comfortable team areas, group tables and solo spaces. In Australia a number of large commercial offices have been designed around these scenarios – in order to readily facilitate collaborative thinking. Examples include:

Macquarie Bank (http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/article/detail/1701/macquarie-investment-bank—sydney) Stocklands, Blackmores in Sydney and Westpac in Melbourne (http://www.v-arc.com.au/projects/corporate/westpac-bank). Internationally the offices for Google, Facebook, Pixar (http://www.home-designing.com/2011/06/pixars-office-interiors-2), IDEO (www.ideo.com) all have similar design thinking. The evidence for productivity and inspired, creative and innovative thinking is obvious. School leaders could usefully look at these spaces for inspiration as they think about spaces for learning for students, as well as spaces for collaborative thinking for staff.

Great resource

The website http://www.p21.org has a lot of free material for education that highlights the relevance of teamwork and collaborative problem solving as core skills necessary for the 21st century.

So why have schools been so slow to re-think educational programs around collaborative models?

I think the answer is simple – teachers and adminstrators have never been taught to think this way. We therefore all have an inbuilt ‘default’ button based on our own experiences of the industrial model and in the midst of busy schedules,  we simply revert to the known. The solution? We need to reset our default button around different thinking. We need to focus on what it means to teach collaboratively – and my experience is that is far bigger than just team teaching with a colleague. Teams need to inherently understand the rules of collaboration, of team of united goals. That takes time and constant focus.

We held a very interesting seminar session in 2011 where the members of different team approaches (about 30 teachers, a third of our workforce) used the open space group process to define the optimum skills for successful participation in collaborative approaches and then set about to describe the requisite personal and professional skills to make such environnments work well. The resultant statements were fantastic – and a very useful tool for future team members.     

The future?

In the last quarter of 2011, we created a new Learning Communities Framework (LCF).  It is constructed around four pillars (CARE): culture, authenticity, relationship and engagement. This framework will be shaped into an easy-to-digest format this month. The LCF does not attempt to be prescriptive in terms of approach, rather provide the framework for team thinking as they consider curriculum delivery models. Of note is the critical importance of relational skills - learning is a relational experience and a teacher’s role is to create the conditions for learning to occur: a creative director of curriculum. That would appear to be a far more motivating role for teachers on a day-to-day basis. As human beings, our DNA is ‘hard wired’ to be relational. The implication of this is that for authentic, deep learning to occur, it needs to take place in environments where relationships are functional and inspirational. Students need to be set up for success. One critical function of a learning community is to establish positive, collaborative environments with high expectations of student success in learning. Such a learning culture should be actively described, owned and shaped.  

 Teachers are the backbone and strength of the learning community. All should be on the spectrum of ‘good to great’ as professionals. Every teacher has capacity to develop and improve – and a continual process of professional development will ensure this. Staff have much to offer and time for creative contributions to the learning community should be maximised and expected.