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#1. FOCUS ON BUILDING GREAT RELATIONSHIPS

Spend constructive time both working and having fun together

#2. BE EXPERT LEARNERS

Build common experiences as we look at education innovations

#3. EMPOWER COLLEAGUES
Share ideas and implementation experiences with colleagues

#4. TAKE CLASSROOMs FROM SPACES TO PLACES TO HOMES

Rethink and redo classroom spaces

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Building a New Model Together

Let's stop fighting change. Instead, let's build on the best practices we've developed over centuries as learners, and embrace next practices that reflect our world.

Let's stop fighting the tests. Instead, let's build new measures that show student achievement at a much higher level that any test could demonstrate.

Let's stop fighting each other on what platform, device, or company is best. Instead, let's build resources and tools that work across any and all platforms, in order to give all teachers and leaders a chance to work with another inspiring educator.

Let's stop talking about what we can do to shape the future of education. Instead, let's build it and inspire a generation of innovators.
Here are 10 ways we can create a culture of innovation in our classrooms and schools, and spark creativity and innovation in our students.
#1. Be Expert Learners

I put this first on the list because we have to be master learners. We have to understand the science behind learning and the four stages to learning anything: attention, encoding, storage, and retrieval. This first principle building block of learning allows us to help students to be prepared for anything. In Liz Wiseman's award-winning book, Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work, she writes:

In a rapidly changing world, experience can be a curse. Careers stall, innovation stops, and strategies grow stale. Being new, naïve, and even clueless can be an asset. For today's knowledge workers, constant learning is more valuable than mastery.

We have to be expert learners, so our students can be expert learners. If we fail to grasp this shift, then we rely on being content experts when the content is already constantly changing.

#2. Stay Informed or Get Left Behind

What are you feeding your brain? What are you reading? What videos are you watching? What YouTube channels do you subscribe to? What podcasts are you listening to?

How are you staying informed as a learner and leader? How are you staying updated as a parent and educator?

If you are not informed then you can only make decisions and plans for you and your students with outdated information. Here are some quick things you can do to stay informed:

Get on Twitter. Follow these educators. Browse the hashtags and choose three that are relevant to what you do (or want to do) and follow the hashtags and join the chats if you can.

Read the work of Peter Diamandis and subscribe to his newsletter. You'll be informed on how things are changing in the world.

Download the Flipboard App. Choose everything you are interested in to follow as a subject/topic. Check it every day or every week to learn about those topics and read newly curated articles.

When you find an article from Twitter or Flipboard that really speaks to you, sign-up to follow that writer. Chance is they'll have more great stuff you'll like in the future.

#3. Go Beyond Connection to Collaboration

Let's make things at conferences. Let's build products at Edcamps. Let's innovate when we connect instead of talking about what we could do.

The conversations are moving from Twitter and Facebook to Voxer and Google Hangouts. Teachers and leaders around the world are now creating projects together, starting movements together, researching together, and building products together.

Connection is great (don't get me wrong), but in order to inspire a generation of innovators, our students have to see us as creators and collaborators as well.

Find a problem (we all have many!). Find others that share that problem by connecting. Talk. Plan. Then build a solution together!

#4. Forget About Labeling Learning

Differentiated. Blended. Personalized. Individualized. Flipped. Passion-based. Inquiry-based. Problem-based. Project-based.

On and on go the terms for learning. When really, it's (as Bo Adams says) all about the learning. We can label learning, but it seems to be a futile exercise that excites only those that want to pretend like they are doing something new.

Do students have attention? Are they encoding the information in various ways? Are they storing it in their short-term, working, or long-term memory? Are they being given opportunities to recall that information and apply it?

That's learning.

A recent article points out that the concept of different learning styles is one of the greatest neuroscience myths:
"Perhaps the most popular and influential myth is that a student learns most effectively when they are taught in their preferred learning style," writes Howard-Jones. "Learning Styles do not work, yet the current research literature is full of papers which advocate their use. This undermines education as a research field and likely has a negative impact on students," he wrote in his paper for Frontiers in Psychology.
The aforementioned evidence against learning styles is compelling. In 2004, Frank Coffield, professor of education at the University of London, led research into the 13 most popular models of learning styles and found there wasn't sufficient evidence to cater teaching techniques to various learning styles. And a 2008 study by Harold Pashler, psychology professor at UC San Diego, was scathing. Despite the preponderance of the learning styles concept "from kindergarten to graduate school," and a "thriving industry" devoted to such guidebooks for teachers, Pashler found there wasn't rigorous evidence for the concept.

Let's focus our attention on the actual learning, and not labeling what type of learning our students are doing.

#5. Focus on Building Great Relationships

In previous posts we discussed how we learn and why we learn. And beneath all the changes that we've seen, there is still something very human about learning. It is social and relationships matter. I think George Couros sums it up perfectly:
"We can no longer take the most human profession in the world and reduce it to letters and numbers."
It doesn't work. We've tried it. Students need to be inspired by their teachers, challenged by their teachers and develop relationships with their teachers. Sir Ken Robinson puts it this way:

#6. Don't Just Adopt Technology, Embrace It

If you think technology has reached the tipping point in how it's impacting learning, you are wrong. It's only just beginning. With the pace of change (especially in technology-related fields) ramping up, it's important to have a mindset that goes past adoption. Embracing technology means being a learner first, then figuring out how to use it with purpose.

When students see teachers using technology with a purpose, they want to use it with purpose. I see the work of students in Don Wettrick's Innovation Class and it's all about passion and purpose. Students are developing patents, creating sellable products, and launching movements all with technology. Be that inspiration that your students need, by being a learner first and embracing the changes in technology.

#7. Fight Weak Data with Better Measures

We all know that standardized test scores are not the best way to measure student success. But guess what, they are the easiest way. We also all know that what we measure matters. And the "measuring of achievement" is not going away anytime soon.

Let's find better measures. If your standardized test scores are low but every student is graduating, going to college, a trade school, or getting a job once they leave-what does that say about your school? If students are getting rave reviews from internships, helping the community with programs, and impacting the global community with projects-what does that say about your school? If students are filing for new patents, inventing innovative procedures, and leading online movements-what does that say about your school?

Our kids cannot be reduced to numbers in a spreadsheet, or we'll inevitably be replaced by those that can "data dig" better than we can (hint: computers). But worse, when we use weak data to support and showcase what our schools are all about, we completely miss the most important piece of learning. Joe Bower said it the best:
Some things in life, however, are not made to be measured. While my height can be accurately described as 6'1" without debate, my personality, character, intelligence, athleticism and learning can not be meaningfully reduced to a symbol. When we reduce something as magnificently messy as learning to a number, we always conceal far more than we ever reveal. The most important things that children learn in school are not easily measured. The most meaningful things in life may, in fact, be immeasurable. The good news, however, is that the most important and meaningful things that we want children to learn and do in school can always be observed and described. This is precisely why it is so important to remember that the root word for assessment is assidere which literally means 'to sit beside.' Assessment is not a spreadsheet - it's a conversation.
#8. Empower Your Colleagues with Solutions

I was going to title this section: Replace Complaints (and Blaming) with Solutions. But it is more about empowering each other to find solutions than it is to stop complaining and blaming.

Here's the deal: We are all human. We are going to complain.

It is very natural for us to blame other when things don't go the way we want them to go. Yet, none of that complaining and blaming matters. It doesn't help. It hurts.

I love how one of our elementary school principals this year made the focus for the year on "finding solutions." That's it. That's the mission. If there is an issue, or a problem, or a situation let's be mindful enough to find a solution.

If we are going to inspire a generation of innovators, we are going to have to be problem-solvers ourselves.

We are going to have to empower our colleagues to take action and have the right attitude. It's not going to magically happen. The greatest gift I ever received from a colleague is when I was complaining about my students' attitude towards my class. I had a "woe is me" attitude and couldn't believe they weren't engaged. When my friend (and peer) called me out, I had to think about solutions. That simple message led to the 20% Project in my class. It would never have happened if I didn't have empowering colleagues.

#9. Take Your Classroom from a Space, to a Place, to a Home

I'll never forget the conversation I listened to as a new teacher. It was in a faculty meeting and one of our Art teachers stood up to talk about the culture at our building. There was a lot of complaining about student behavior, and a number of newly imposed rules for the hallways and classrooms. Yet, his words hushed the crowd and made us all think. He said:

"If we want students to respect us and respect the school. We need to take this from a space, to a place, to a home for our students."

If your school and classrooms feel more like a space or a place for students, then what's the purpose of them learning in the classroom instead of in a cubicle in front of a computer? When our classrooms look like cemeteries, our students tend to follow suit. Lined rows of desks. Teacher up front. Students bored out of their minds.

And the best part is that 92% of teachers say they know the learning environment impacts student behavior and achievement, yet most feel like they are not in control of what it looks like and feels like. Let's change that this year, and make our places more like homes.

#10. Allow For, Support, Make Time For, and Praise Creative Work

What we allow for in our schools and classrooms will ultimately open up avenues for new ideas to develop. If we don't allow for inquiry, choice, collaboration, digital tools, failure...then usually only the people in charge are allowed to have ideas.

Similarly, a constant complaint I hear from teachers and students is that they don't have enough time. It drives stress levels up, and brings innovative work to a halt when we create curricula and schedules that are jam-packed with content and pre-determined lessons. When we make time for reflection/self-assessment (look at Hattie's work), sharing, and making/tinkering our students (and our teachers) actually go out and TRY new things.

Next is support. Take for instance a school that solely focuses on standardized assessments. The teachers are not supported by the administration by bringing in new ideas or curiosity to their profession. Then it is increasingly difficult for teachers to support students when they create or make. Often they'll never get the opportunity. Yet in schools like Wissahickon (where I taught) I was supported when I wanted to try something new in the classroom. Online and global opportunities like the Flat Classroom Project weren't looked down upon. And when my students wanted to try something outside of the box or run with a project idea, I jumped at supporting their innovative work through ideas like Project: Global Inform. Support is a key ingredient to help those new ideas actually work.

When we change what we praise and look for in a classroom, students begin to adjust what matters. When we praise failure, look for resiliency, and assess the process (instead of only the final product) then students are empowered to share their work and grow as learners in a variety of ways.

Introducing: The Innovative Teaching Academy

Innovation starts with action. It starts with being intentional about how we lead, how we learn, and how we teach.

But, we need a supportive and challenging community to help in the transformation.

We need resources that are time-tested, and we need to talk with people who are going through this journey at all different stages and steps.
The Innovative Teaching Academy is a six-month online learning experience that gives you the tools, resources, support, and community needed to break the mold of traditional schooling.
The Innovative Teaching Academy isn't just a course. It's a master class and coaching system designed to take you through step-by-step lessons and work through the principles and strategies needed to make a greater impact in education and reach more people.

Best of all it provides the accountability and support system we all need to thrive.

Easy-to-follow lessons? Yes.

Supportive community of education leaders? Yes.

Built-in accountability? Yes.

Unlimited personal coaching with the Academy Team? Yes.

The academy is grounded in proven principles and strategies that work. It's broken down into simple, step-by-step lessons that allow you to walk through each of the six phases of innovative teaching and learning.

Each lesson will leave you with an simple action item and schedule so you can methodically implement what you've learned.

No guesswork.

No reverse engineering.

No more hours searching the internet for something that makes sense.

I can't wait to share more details with you on March 26th! Sign up below to be notified when it is live!

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10 Ways to Make Innovation Real in Your School

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Let's stop fighting change. Instead, let's build on the best practices we've developed over centuries as learners, and embrace next practices that reflect our world. Let's stop fighting the tests. Instead, let's build new measures that show student achievement at a much higher level that any test could demonstrate.

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Innovation is becoming a bigger priority for companies; 79 percent of surveyed executives claim it's among their top three business initiatives.

But employees, who are already trying to manage a growing list of tasks and obligations, might not realize the benefits-viewing innovation as a distraction from their everyday work. It's why some companies create an innovation team, or rather, a cross-functional group dedicated to developing new products, services, or processes for the organization.

"One reason for an innovation team is that it's hard to do anything of complexity on your own," says Barbara Larson, executive professor of management at Northeastern's D'Amore-McKim School of Business. "You want to bring different bases of knowledge into the room."

Some executives might argue, "Innovation should be every employee's job." But unless there's a company-wide system in place that supports and incentivizes ideas, innovation can quickly become an afterthought. By establishing a team focused on incubating and launching new products and services, companies can increase their odds of spurring innovation.

Building an Innovation Team

The success of an innovation team relies on whether the right people are involved. An effective group is comprised of individuals from different departments within the company. If the team's goal is to develop a new product, for example, there should be representatives from design, manufacturing, sales, marketing, and finance at the table.

"You want to bring all the knowledge into the same room at the same time," Larson says. "An offshoot of that is getting different perspectives in the same room at the same time, which can be a challenge for teams. You want to not only reconcile that, but get the most out of those divergent perspectives."

Most teams will appoint a team leader, who's responsible for establishing process, including how to communicate during brainstorms and meetings. That person can also help shepherd the ideas and initiatives inspired in those meetings to the top of the organization.

"If you need the team to make decisions, get people on the team who have the authority to make decisions, and then give those people the bandwidth to actually do the work of the team," Larson says. "A common sin of organizations is having one manager assigned to eight different teams, plus his or her own work. That's way too many teams to be on at one time."

If senior leadership doesn't dedicate the proper time and resources to the team, it's likely the company's innovation initiatives won't stick.

How to Enable and Sustain Innovation

Several big-name brands have established innovation teams and labs. Lowe's launched its Innovation Labs to explore the future of retail and "rapidly prototype new technology in real-world, living labs," including a virtual reality tool that teaches customers how to complete basic home renovations. Walmart boasts a similar program, called @WalmartLabs, and has started acquiring businesses to improve the retailer's e-commerce performance, which continues to lag behind Amazon. But something's working: Walmart's online sales spiked 60 percent this year.

Other companies haven't seen the same success. Three years after Coca-Cola announced its Founders program, which sought to support startups that could benefit the beverage brand, the company shut it down. Target decided to shutter two of its big innovation projects before they even launched, while Nordstrom chose to pivot away from its Innovation Lab, stating innovation would become "everyone's job."

What's hard for some companies to realize is that innovation takes time. It requires a longer-term approach and cultural shift within the organization. If established and managed properly, however, innovation teams can make a big impact.

Here are five steps companies can take to better ensure success:

1. Establish a Team Process Early

"There needs to be an establishment of a clear team process early on," Larson says.

This includes defining the roles of each team member, establishing a leadership structure, setting individual and group goals if not already in place, and outlining norms for how the team should collaborate and communicate. By creating a process, every employee is held accountable to the same principles, understands his or her responsibilities in a measurable way, and knows how to respond when conflicting projects come up.

"Norms tend to be the first thing to get ignored," Larson says. "Setting up process upfront can seem like it's delaying the work, but if teams go right into task, they usually spend that time in the latter half of their innovation cycle. They find leaks in the canoe too late."

The more clarity and transparency the team and overall organization has, the better.

2. Allocate the Proper Resources-Including Time

Organizations need to properly invest in the innovation team, whether that's creating dedicated office space and a support staff or allotting time for employees to actually focus on the tasks at hand.

Because most employees aren't working solely on a single innovation project, team members often "experience constant pressure from other work demands and even other innovation team projects," Larson says. While process can help dictate priorities, appointing a leader who can communicate up about what the team is working on and protect employees' time is also beneficial.

3. Encourage and Embrace Failure

If an organization wants big, bold ideas, it needs to create a climate of "psychological safety"-a term coined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson.

"It's about establishing a climate in which people feel comfortable admitting to well-intentioned mistakes without being harangued or punished," Larson explains. "Teams where people feel comfortable admitting mistakes often look like they're making more of them, but they're really raising them in the open air and learning from them."

Failure means the team tried something new and learned an invaluable business lesson. This can only happen, though, if employees know it's safe to take risks. Some organizations have started handing out " Heroic Failure " awards to honor those who've pursued new or unproven ideas and opportunities they thought could benefit the company.

4. Consider Creating an Incentive System

Before any projects kick off, the innovation leader should establish key performance indicators (KPIs), or measurable goals, so that employees know what they're working toward and have a benchmark to measure their progress against.

One way to better ensure progress is by creating an incentive system that aligns each employee's pay and performance evaluation to the innovation team's overall work. To keep members motivated, there needs to be an individual component to the incentive system but, as Larson encourages, reviews should be more heavily weighted based on the performance of the team.

"At the end of the day, you don't want people to become lone rangers," Larson says. "You want the primary focus to be on achieving the team goal."

Research supports that approach: Incentivized teams increase their performance by 45 percent, compared to incentivized individuals, who increase their performance by only 27 percent, according to the International Society for Performance Improvement and the Incentive Research Foundation.

5. Build Buy-In from the Beginning

Although the team should have its own KPIs, those goals should align with the organization's overarching strategy. Innovation teams can sometimes become the "other," so creating a mission that's transparent to the entire company, as well as regularly soliciting input from others, can help the group get buy-in.

While teams don't want to loop too many employees into the decision-making process, the more visibility individuals can bring to their work, the more willing others will be to help and adopt new tools, processes, or services.

"You want to start by having one-on-one informal conversations with people around you, in which you're laying out your vision, asking a lot of questions, and really trying to do some reconnaissance," Larson says. "Ideally, you do this not just in your immediate circle, but with other members of the organization who will be affected by your project."

By meeting with other colleagues, innovation team members can gain a better understanding of the problems facing the organization and uncover any main points of objection they might face before trying to make the big sell.

"When it comes to making the big ask, a data-driven approach is usually the best first approach," Larson adds. "You need to have gathered a lot of facts and done your homework."

Once teams receive that initial approval, they can implement their work and, hopefully, start steering their company in the right direction.

The good news when it comes to innovation?

"Innovation is a series of concrete, definable actions," Larson says. "It's not that you're born with the ability to be innovative or not. It's really a set of behaviors that can be learned. Anyone is capable of doing it."

Companies simply need to prioritize it.

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How to Build an Effective Innovation Team

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Barbara Larson, executive professor of management at Northeastern's D'Amore-McKim School of Business, shares her tips for building and sustaining an innovation team.

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Small Innovation Teams

High Committment

Appropriate Compensation

Willingness to try new things

Healthy disregard for the impossible

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Google tries to keep an entertaining and enriching corporate culture by taking company trips and implementing a dog-friendly policy.At the same time, the company tries to maintain an entrepreneurial culture by forming small teams that act like individual startups. The founders have discovered that the groups tend to become more traditional as they grow larger.

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Google Culture: Encouraging Innovation | Stanford eCorner

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Google tries to keep an entertaining and enriching corporate culture by taking company trips and implementing a dog-friendly policy.At the same time, the company tries to maintain an entrepreneurial culture by forming small teams that act like individual startups. The founders have discovered that the groups tend to become more traditional as they grow larger.

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Main Messages

Fears that robots will take away jobs from people have dominated the discussion over the future of work, but the World Development Report 2019 finds that on balance this appears to be unfounded. Instead, technology is bringing opportunity, paving the way to create new jobs, increase productivity, and improve public service delivery.

The nature of work is changing.

Firms can grow rapidly thanks to digital transformation, which blurs their boundaries and challenges traditional production patterns.

The rise of the digital platform firm means that technological effects reach more people faster than ever before.

Technology is changing the skills that employers seek. Workers need to be good at complex problem-solving, teamwork and adaptability.

Technology is changing how people work and the terms on which they work. Even in advanced economies, short-term work, often found through online platforms, is posing similar challenges to those faced by the world's informal workers.

What can governments do?

The 2019 WDR suggests three solutions:

1. Invest in human capital especially in disadvantaged groups and early childhood education to develop the new skills that are increasingly in demand in the labor market, such as high-order cognitive and sociobehavioral skills

2. Enhance social protection to ensure universal coverage and protection that does not fully depend on having formal wage employment

3. Increase revenue mobilization by upgrading taxation systems, where needed, to provide fiscal space to finance human capital development and social protection.

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World Development Report 2019: The Changing Nature of Work

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Main Messages Fears that robots will take away jobs from people have dominated the discussion over the future of work, but the World Development Report 2019 finds that on balance this appears to be unfounded. Instead, technology is bringing opportunity, paving the way to create new jobs, increase productivity, and improve public service delivery.

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I recently took part in an experimental NextGen startup weekend aimed at designing a new model of schools. The participants worked in teams to come up with structural innovations to move schools beyond our current factory-like structure. A few of us, though, chewed on a nagging question throughout the weekend: All this talk of innovation sounded great, but what about schools that aren't charters with direct access to Silicon Valley?

Imagine a regular public school district that's intrigued by this potential but is a bit overwhelmed by all the talk of "blended learning," "synchronous feedback loops" and other fancy phrases. Maybe they've seen a few of creativity expert Ken Robinson's TED Talks on Changing Education Paradigms or been fascinated by the potential of technology in education or just generally frustrated with our existing one-size-fits-all model.

So what if we placed small teams of Silicon Valley-caliber talent in school districts to support their innovations? Call it the "NextGen Schools Fellowship" after the weekend, and recruit interdisciplinary teams of teachers, analysts, designers, engineers and other ridiculously talented folks around the stated goal of catalyzing the creation of new school models.

Consider a few ideas that bubbled up over the weekend that might make sense in a given school or district:

What if middle and high school classes started at 10 instead of 8 to reflect adolescents' biorhythms? Extracurricular activities could go before, rather than after, school to fit with parents' work schedules.

What if class sizes varied dramatically? Imagine large 100+ person lectures for part of the day, freeing up teachers to hold small, intimate seminars with fewer than 12 students at other times.

What if school didn't mean sitting inside a building? Team Magic School Bus had the fun idea of turning school into a set of buses that would take students on explorations into the community.

What if we brought the community to school? The third-place team had the creative idea of mixing a school site with a tech co-working space so students could organically learn from the professionals around them. Yet the basic model of opening schools for longer hours and creating purposeful opportunities for the neighborhood to spend time there extends well beyond tech startups.

What if we created formal pathways for guest teachers? Just like we have guest lectures in colleges by practitioners from the field, imagine someone like Father Greg Boyle from Homeboy Industries teaching a class, say once a week.

What if we made it OK to have a gap year during high school? Imagine a program to place disillusioned students in internships for a year to give them the opportunity to gain practical experience and explore what they want to get out of school.

What if school was epic? The winning team crafted a rich narrative for a middle school that assigned the students to Hogwarts-style houses. Imagine if we ingrained those points about identity and the power of story across a district.

What if students decided what their school day looks like? A college-bound senior graduating from a public high school in California goes from a world in which they have 30 hours of instruction at rigid times to a world where they have 12 hours of instruction with large amounts of latitude when that occurs - all in the matter of months.

Many of these ideas are not new. The value comes from providing an integrated perspective for how these sorts of structures might reflect the local needs of a district or school. Like Silicon Valley, the talent would be recruited globally and placed in a specific district to support their unique needs and desire for innovation.

More broadly, these "what if" ideas by and large don't require extra resources (and may actually save some) but rather repurpose existing resources according to the new structures. The big barrier is in the transition, which is where the NextGen School Fellows come in. To use a chemistry analogy, the fellows provide the activation energy needed to catalyze the reaction.

Moreover, having talented innovators work with those local constraints has the potential to be transformative because those are the barriers any structural innovation faces in reaching the vast swath of public schools.

The basic premise of the fellowship would be to place interdisciplinary teams at districts interested in structural innovation for one year. In broad strokes, during the spring they would listen, learn and engage the local community. Over the summer the team would work with the district to implement the structural innovation. And then, in the fall, they ensure it sticks and work to spin off a local community support nonprofit like the Los Angeles Education Partnership to keep the momentum going.

In addition to the fellows, the nonprofit would have a hub of analytical support to evaluate the innovations and share best practices with other districts interested in innovation.

The model is simple, straightforward and proven. Code for America does something very similar with technologists and cities. Their funding structure relies on payments from cities for the fellows' services and then donor support to cover other expenses.

The key difference here from existing education fellowships like Education Pioneers is the focus on innovating new school models rather than improving an existing model. And while there exist consulting firms that will bring their model into your classroom, school or district, many districts probably already have some ideas and programs in place and want to build from their unique situation rather than just implement someone else's model.

There's broad recognition that schools need to adapt to the world we live in. Yet if we're going to move away from a one-size-fits-all model, our solution cannot be one-size-fits-all either. Each school district needs its own unique bridge to the possibility of school innovation. The NextGen Schools Fellows can catalyze the construction of those bridges.

***
Patrick Atwater is co-founder of Stag Hunt Enterprises, a publishing startup pioneering political economy insights. He serves on the board of the Los Angeles Education Partnership and as a mentor in College Bound.

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Innovation teams can build bridges to schools of future

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I recently took part in an experimental NextGen startup weekend aimed at designing a new model of schools. The participants worked in teams to come up with structural innovations to move schools beyond our current factory-like structure.

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3 Companies That Got Their Innovation Process Right

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From ideation to execution, the innovation process can look opaque. From the outside, it might not seem like much of a process at all. In fact, it can

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This is What a Student Designed High School Looks Like - Mindshift

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This is What a Student Designed High School Looks Like - Mindshift

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As the adviser, Powell checked in with the group every morning; he also offered logistical support and helped the students locate resources. Three other faculty members - a science teacher, a math teacher and a social science teacher - served as an advisory committee, meeting with the students for one period a day to help them in whatever way was needed, such as to talk through some of the more complex ideas presented in a research book. The students also consulted other teachers and outside experts as needed. When members of the community were asked to share their knowledge, "the vast majority of the time, they came running," Powell says.
CHALLENGES ALONG THE WAY
The program encountered some bumps. "We struggled with how to do peer-to-peer constructive criticism," Powell says. "It's a bit different in a classroom, where there's a teacher setting boundaries and helping create structure. They found doing that with peers challenging. But that was a big part of the program-they had to be accountable for what they were doing. ... They're teens, so to think that at that age they will always make good choices and manage their time well is not realistic. Even adults aren't like that."

It was also difficult for some other faculty members to accept that students were earning credit for such an amorphous undertaking. So the group tried to be transparent and made their final presentations - which ran the gamut from performances to cooking a large meal - open to the public.

At the end of the semester, "everyone was satisfied - the parents, the students, and the school," Powell says. The project's " White Paper " notes that parents "were very aware of what was going on in the program because the kids were talking about school at home much more than they ever had in the past."

"There were so many moments where you could see students being inspired," Powell says. "And they learned that with that much control comes a great deal of responsibility, to manage time and be accountable."

The school chose to continue the program, which runs for one semester each year and involves nine to 12 students who receive credit and a pass/fail. "It was really risky, because we didn't know how colleges would interpret this on a transcript," Powell says. "But so far we've had only an overwhelmingly positive response," including from highly selective colleges, such as Oxford and Williams, that have accepted graduates.

Nevertheless, not a lot of students apply to participate in the project. "They know it involves more work [than taking regular classes] and that they have to push themselves to do it," says science teacher Daniel Gray, who served as the group's primary adviser this year. (He also had prior experience with this type of model-he had studied democratic education and then helped introduce some of those principles to a public middle school.)

Most high school students are neither interested nor ready for such an experience, he says. But he adds: "I think that if they had been given progressively more responsibility over the years, they would be ready. My seventh- and eighth-graders, after a year or two, they got it, and they were more mature than you would expect them to be at that age."
APPLYING LESSONS LEARNED
Although some teachers at Monument Mountain remain skeptical, the majority of them now support the program. Some have even copied elements of it, for example letting English students choose which books to read. It has also spawned "positive" discussions about the most appropriate role for teachers, Powell says.

There have been a number of refinements over the years. One has been to hold the program in the spring, to avoid a sudden and tough transition back to taking regular classes where students can no longer control what they're learning. And the number of faculty assigned to the project was reduced to three and then (for scheduling reasons) two. Each group has also introduced its own twist - this year the students had even more leeway and no subject-area requirements. The constants have been the weekly research question, the books component, and the individual endeavor, which has ranged from vocational pursuits such as building a kayak, to artistic tasks such as writing a novel, to scientific explorations such as examining how Western and Eastern medicine deal differently with Lyme disease.

Securing assistance from teachers sometimes proved challenging. "It's something most students aren't used to doing," says Logan Malik, a just-graduated senior who organized the program this year. "Instead of a teacher telling you what to do, you're telling the teacher what you're learning, what you want information on, and when you want to meet. And then they would have to do some prep." Nevertheless, "teachers were very willing to help us, even if it was on their own time." (The students also served as "a first-grade support group for each other," Gray says.)

Although he's heading to college to study pre-med, Logan's individual endeavor this spring was to learn classical guitar. He watched a YouTube tutorial to learn the proper fingering and then practiced about four hours a day. He says he would never have been able to dive into the activity like this if he'd continued with his rigorous course load, and learning it over a summer wouldn't have been as productive without a group and some structure. The Independent Project work kept him busy, he says, "but the busy-ness was easier to get through, compared to slaving through something you don't want to be doing and don't value as much."

The stress was also less, because the evaluations (other than the final pass/fail) were formative rather than summative - intended not to judge, but to help students improve their work.

It was challenging sometimes to stay on task to meet deadlines that were not enforced by authorities, Malik says, "but we did well overall." The students tried to be flexible and fair, and to account for the natural ebb and flow in people's attention and motivation levels, as well as unexpected complications. Extensions were granted to students who asked for more time to research a question. "Once the person was given an extra week, they felt they needed to do more, and they worked hard," Malik notes. Other times individuals were given a pass to give them a chance to get back on track. In the past, when tensions have arisen or the group's energy has seemed particularly low, the group has literally taken a hike, while discussing their goals and potential improvements to the program.

Malik enjoyed many of his regular classes and sees this program as a complement rather than a complete replacement for them. "For a lot of subjects, like chemistry, it's good to be taught by someone, so the structure of the class helps. And in social science, it's good to be introduced to ideas by someone who understands those ideas really well." But The Independent Project offers benefits that aren't available in an adult-led classroom, he adds. "It really establishes an idea of what self-motivation is. There is critiquing, but it all comes back to you. That's really valuable."
CHANGES IN STUDENTS
Students who have gone through the program ask more questions and have a greater awareness of how to answer them; construct their questions more carefully; became more thoughtful in the way they consider ideas and evaluate sources; and became better at managing their time.

The "White Paper" also notes that the project instills a "sense of ownership of their education has stayed with the students long after the program ended. Although some students have continued to struggle academically, feedback from parents has suggested that they are pursuing more interests outside of school than they were before The Independent Project."

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It continues: "That is not to say no one will fail; any program or system will contain failure. In fact, in the pilot of the Independent Project one student struggled to complete the work, and did not receive full credit for the program ... The goal, then, is to not make The Independent Project so that no one fails, but to make it so fewer people fail than in the current system, and to make success in The Independent Project carry more intellectual meaning than success often does in the current system."

The program doesn't require a lot of additional resources, and other public schools have visited Monument Valley to find out how to replicate it. (A professional filmmaker has also produced a video about it.) Powell says it requires administrators who are open to focusing education on students, rather than teachers or a curriculum. But he offers a caution: "Because the focus is on the student, that's where you need to start. This came from a student and was pushed by him, through all the red tape. A program like this probably won't be terribly successful if it's teacher-driven. If a group of adults want to replicate this, ... I would have conversations with the students about it, and see how they respond and where they take it. If students are interested in the concept, it will guide itself."

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This Is What a Student-Designed School Looks Like

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As the adviser, Powell checked in with the group every morning; he also offered logistical support and helped the students locate resources. Three other faculty members - a science teacher, a math teacher and a social science teacher - served as an advisory committee, meeting with the students for one period a day to help them in whatever way was needed, such as to talk through some of the more complex ideas presented in a research book.

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This article helps bring balanced perspective in regards to innovation that has a positive impact and innovation that has a negative impact

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Commentary

Education policymakers are too driven by fads-at the expense of tried and true approaches

I'm against innovation in education-as currently conceived and conducted. I'm not against small-scale educational experimentation, where new methods are tested, refined, and proved before they are widely implemented. But I'm against our inordinate obsession with what's new at the expense of what works-with exceedingly superior (if much older) evidence-based practices. The difference in impact isn't slight: Michael Fullan, an international authority on education, believes that our best high-leverage methods produce "stunningly powerful consequences" in schools. And they will do so, as professional-development expert Bruce Joyce has noted, "very rapidly." Our willingness to recognize and act on this difference may be the central educational issue of our time.

Consider John Hattie's research on the power of formative evaluation and feedback. His exhaustive studies confirm what we've known since the 1960s: that ongoing monitoring and adjustments to teaching, informed by feedback, may have more impact on learning than any other instructional factor.

Doug Lemov concurs. In his mega-best-selling book, Teach Like a Champion, he identifies "checking for understanding" as the pivotal element in an effective lesson.

I know teachers in two different schools in the same district whose adoption of these methods contributed to enormous one-year, whole-school gains on their state writing exam. After learning of these incredible gains, I joined these teachers to advocate the expansion of their efforts in their district-but their successes were entirely ignored. To our astonishment, their respective school leaders opted to pursue a string of popular-but weak or unproven-innovations, including SmartBoard training and standards-based grading.

Or what of New York City's New Dorp High School? With the struggling school in danger of closure by city officials, the principal decided to go all in on exceedingly traditional instruction in reading, public speaking, and writing in every discipline. In just two years, the school made immense gains and is now a mecca for visitors. As author Peg Tyre explained in a 2012 article in The Atlantic, the school's success was not a function of innovation or experimentation, but of old, proven instructional "fundamentals that schools have devalued or forgotten" (my emphasis). As Tyre points out, the fundamentals-first instructional model on which New Dorp based its program "would not be unfamiliar to nuns who taught in Catholic schools circa 1950."

And then there's the simple power of curriculum. Nothing cutting-edge here. Yet meta-analytic evidence from Robert Marzano and other researchers indicates that a coherent curriculum-if implemented-has more impact on learning than any other in-school factor. Not long ago, I attended an award ceremony for a school in Arizona that ranked in the top three for statewide gains in math. They achieved this in a two-year period, a direct result of having teams of teachers map out, for the first time, what they would teach in each math course, by grading period. I'm friends with an elementary school principal in Boston who persuaded his faculty members to do the same for every course at his high-poverty school. Scores rose, in his words, "with amazing speed": from the bottom to the top third in the state, in a single school year.

Finally, consider working-class Brockton High School, in Massachusetts. Brockton was among the lowest-achieving schools in the state. The faculty responded to dire performance indicators by making "reading, writing, speaking, and reasoning" in every subject area their mantra. In 2001, the first year of their effort, the state's education commissioner called to inform them that Brockton had made the largest gains in the commonwealth. In the next few years, Brockton rose from the bottom rungs to the top 10 percent in Massachusetts.

Perhaps the most promising fact about the best evidence-based practices is that they are currently the least implemented. Because of that, their use would have a swift and substantial impact in thousands of schools and on millions of students. But not if they continue to be supplanted, as they now are, by innovations like the flipped classroom, student-centered learning spaces, teaching with mobile apps, gamification, or the now-ubiquitous variations on personalized learning. Not one of those ranks high on any list of what's most effective. What researchers Thomas B. Corcoran, Susan H. Fuhrman, and Catherine Belcher wrote years ago in their study of professional development is still true: Those in charge of what teachers learn are not an "evidence-based community." They are driven, on the contrary, by "whims, fads, opportunism, and ideology."

When I donated a kidney to my sister, the doctors didn't experiment on her with the latest anti-rejection drugs. They gave her the best, evidence-based anti-rejection medicine available at the time-Cyclosporine. And it saved her life.

We have a pretty stark choice: We can either implement the best we know or continue to treat students and teachers like lab rats. It's time for education to make the leap to a more authentic professionalism-by giving innovation its due, but never letting it supplant or precede those practices that would produce "stunningly powerful consequences" in our schools and in the lives of students.

Published in Print: May 2, 2018, as Why I'm Against Innovation in Education

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Commentary I'm against innovation in education-as currently conceived and conducted. I'm not against small-scale educational experimentation, where new methods are tested, refined, and proved before they are widely implemented. But I'm against our inordinate obsession with what's new at the expense of what works-with exceedingly superior (if much older) evidence-based practices.

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Books are listed under the following Categories: School Models, Education Philosophy, Higher Education, Learning Environments, Instruction, Technology, and School Leadership

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Grandmas (and other respected and knowledgeable community members) who come into our classrooms (or watch videos of lessons), observe our interactions with students, and give us real feedback about how to improve our interactions- particularly with students of color. I have done zero research...just thinking outside the box about how to better serve our students by being more culturally competent and enhancing relationships to reduce the number of suspensions, reduce absenteeism, and raise student achievement.
Imagine what we can learn if we let "grandmas" (or parents, community leaders) in to observe our interactions and give us real feedback about how to improve our interactions? How are we communicating expectations? How are we meeting the needs of students? How can we build a better community of learners? How is our classroom dialogue and curriculum culturally inclusive?

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Yes, And... 5 more lessons in improv-ing collaboration and Creativity from Second City

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Yes, And... 5 more lessons in improv-ing collaboration and Creativity from Second City

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The power of changing from a "Yes, but.." mentality to a "Yes, and..." mentality

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Second City execs Tom Yorton and Kelly Leonard do not claim their new book will teach you how to become a world-class comedian. However, they do argue that the same improv techniques absorbed at The Second City in Chicago by Tina Fey, Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler and dozens of other funny alumni can be used to jump start creativity in the workplace.

Yorton, who oversees improv workshops for corporate clients as CEO of Second City Works, says, "When we teach comedy in the business world, it's not in the service of pure entertainment. We're doing it to help change behavior and get people to try things they otherwise wouldn't do within the typical stiff, boring patterns of communication."

Yorton and Leonard, a longtime Second City producer, held forth from their snow-bound Chicago headquarters to talk about how gibberish, "following the follower" and other brainstorming games foster outrageous ideas and tight-knit ensembles.

(standing, left to right) Bill Chott, Rachel Hamilton (sitting) Ali Farahnakian, Frances Callier, Amy Poehler, Pat McCartney and Ed SmaronPhoto: courtesy of Second City

You may have heard a lot-too much-about the "Yes, And" approach, but there's a reason it's jumped from the improv world into more mainstream usage. "Yes, And" improvisers always agree with the partner's statement, then build on that premise with something new. Shooting down the initial idea squashes creativity, Kelly says. "What you learn about improvisation when you apply 'Yes, And' is that there's a bounty of ideas, way more than will ever get used. Everyone in the ensemble produces hundreds of ideas, so even though most of (the ideas) will die and never be seen again, people don't hold on out of fear that they'll have nothing to offer at the end."

In the business environment, he adds, "Fear does creep into the process; it's the job of the boss to remind everybody that it's okay to fail because when you say 'Yes, And,' you're dealing with an abundance of possibilities. This creates an environment where ultimately you get the richest material."

Second City's "Yes, And" exercise "Word at a Time" trains people to create a tall tale by taking turns building sentences one word at a time.

Scott Adsit, Jenna Jolovitz, Tina Fey, Kevin DorffPhoto: Jennifer Girard

Most Second City improv exercises, developed by Chicago social worker Viola Spolin and later adapted by her son Paul Sills when he co-founded the troupe in 1959, train participants in the simple art of listening. "When you're a very smart domineering alpha personality, a lot of people shut up around you because they see you're smart and maybe think "I'm never going to have more stuff to offer," says Yorton.

In a corporate environment, Leonard notes, "Some people feel like they need to control the conversation out of fear that they're not going to be top dog or God forbid, someone else will get a little bit of credit. But the truth is, you're only so smart for so long. You're only original for so long, so at Second City we like to say, 'All of us is better than one of us.'"

For "String of Pearls," the group forms a line. The person at one end is given the first sentence of a story. The person at the end of the line is given the last sentence. Each person in between takes a turn improvising a line of dialogue aimed at making the story progress logically to its pre-set end point.

In "Last Word Response," two people converse. Each person must begin the first word of his or her sentence with the last word of the partner's sentence. Both exercises hammer home a simple message: pay attention.

The Second City 2001; Holy War Batman! Or The Yellow Cab of Courage Stage 007
(Left to Right) Samantha Albert, Andy Cobb, TJ Jagodowski, Jack McBrayer, Abby Sher and Keegan-Michael KeyPhoto: Michael Brosilow

Second City performances draw their power from ensemble thinking that draws equally from each player. Yorton points out, "In the business world, people who've had too many lousy team-building experiences become jaded to the point where 'team' becomes a loaded word. 'Ensemble' gives that idea a fresh look because when you put together an ensemble, you're looking for different points of view. To use a baseball analogy, you don't want to stack your lineup with nine sluggers; you don't want the ensemble full of alphas."

You also don't want an ensemble full of "straight white men," observes Kelly. For decades, Second City troupes rarely included more than one or two woman and people of color. That all changed in 1995. "Tina Fey was in the first gender-equal cast, and then, after the 9/11 attacks, we had Keegan Michael Key performing on stage, relating to that event in a completely different way than his cast mates," recalls Kelly. "As a creativity laboratory, we've seen the shows have become better and stronger and deeper since we started using more diverse casts."

The strength-in-diversity concept applies to corporate structures, Leonard says. "It's just a fact. Ensembles become more powerful when they express the differences that exist inside an organization."

Successful improv performance depends on a willingness to share the spotlight. In the workplace, Leonard observes, "Yes, And" concepts go a long way toward dismantling unproductive control freak behavior. "Top down hierarchical management style doesn't work any more," he says. "In a global, web enabled environment, teams disband and form all the time when you've got software developers working on a product around the clock, you don't know who's going to lead, who's going to follow. This idea of a pyramid with one person at the top supported by legions of underlings has fallen away as the world itself becomes more improvisational."

Second City exercise "Follow the Follower" compels shy people to assert themselves while "Giver Taker" forces everyone in the group to take turns being the center of attention. Yorton says "A smart company embraces the 'Follow the Follower' style knowing that there are times when you need to cede control to another person."

"The single most requested class we have is presentation skills and storytelling because it's the one that invokes the most fear and loathing," says Yorton. "Most business presentation are 12 people in a room. You might have a monologue at the top but it quickly turns into a dialogue and that's where improv skills of listening and reading a room and turning objections into agreement become things that matter the most."

The ability to decipher body language, intonation and facial expressions is nurtured in the "Gibberish" game. Improvisers speak nonsense to each other while an "interpreter" figures out the essence of each statement solely through non-verbal cues. "Improvisation is like yoga for your social skills because it teaches you to see what someone else maybe isn't noticing in the room because you're picking up on gesture," says Leonard. "Are the other people leaning back, leaning forward, are they checking their email? Improvisation, you build something out of nothing, so you learn how to pay attention to the environment you're in."

Each time The Second City creates a new satiric revue, its "Dare to Offend" slogan is never far from mind, says Leonard. "We challenge convention. What that means when we go into the business world is we don't avoid the thing that everybody in the audience would be talking about later the bar when they've had a couple of drinks in them. If a merger hasn't worked out and the two cultures hate each other, comedy is a good way to pop the tension bubble around a thorny issue because what creates cynicism is when everybody pretends the problem's not there."

Leonard says, "'Daring to Offend'" does not mean we're going to drop F bombs, but we do help companies be honest. At Second City, If somebody screws up on stage, acknowledge it. When sketch starts out and somebody's name is Tom, then later an actor calls him Ted, the first actor might might say "So when did you learn my true identity?' If you bring the audience in, they'll love you for it and it's the same thing with companies. Comedy is a safe way to hold a mirror up to reality and when you do that as management, you gain enormous credibility."

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Yes, And ... 5 More Lessons In Improv-ing Collaboration And Creativity From Second City

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Second City execs Tom Yorton and Kelly Leonard do not claim their new book will teach you how to become a world-class comedian. However, they do argue that the same improv techniques absorbed at The Second City in Chicago by Tina Fey, Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler and dozens of other funny alumni can be used to jump start creativity in the workplace.

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10 Favorite ideation tools - Board of Innovation

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A good ideation session is hard work! It is a structured process of guiding the right people through a number of carefully designed ideation tools to come up with innovative ideas.

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Imagine if you could teach your passion to one group of students all day for an entire week? On campus or off campus. How can we teach the "whole" student a skill, passion, habit, or hobby that can enrich their lives? Art, exercise, health, college visits, camping, sports tournament, sewing, coding, gardening, meditation, taxes, cooking, baking, poetry, woodwork, etiquette, be part of  a choir for a week, SAT Prep, origami, you name it.
(Students get a "course catalog" and identify three to five they'd be interested in- maybe they get 1 or 2 elective credits if they attend all week and complete a culminating activity?)

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https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance

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Creativity and innovation flourish when schools empower teachers to take risks and provide a flexible structure that gives them support and opportunities.