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The key is to create a flexible learning site where all are catered for

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Harder in silos

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It's just an ed thing.

It is a way to connect every student to the learning experience, and a way at looking at learning that is fully inclusive and promotes success for all learners, regardless of ability.

Mike Marotta

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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-based framework that helps teachers plan learning to meet the diverse and variable needs of all students. Find out how flexible supports for learning can be embedded into an environment and made available to everyone. Explore how hidden barriers ...

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Discover the power of project-based learning at High Tech High with these examples of student work. It's our record of what we've done and how to get there.

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Auckland Uni says High School is a failed experiment

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Auckland Uni says High School is a failed experiment

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Isn't it time for some tough questions about the high school model? Joanna Mathers investigates.

Bells, uniforms, bullying, rankings, streams. The classification of students as brainy or losers, the competition to be the prettiest, the coolest, the best at rugby. In my humble opinion, high school sucks.

I hated high school. Everything about it stunk of conformity. The factory producing little capitalists that would slot into their predefined places in society upon graduation. Those who didn't toe the line were spat out and left to fend for themselves.

There was always an undercurrent of violence. In my short experience (about six months, tops, long story) I saw a girl laid into outside art class and kicked in the head (by other girls). One kid was so badly bullied on school camp that he ran away and went missing for a day. Another boy had chillies rubbed into his eyes. It was Lord of the Flies, the North Shore edition.

For me there's something sinister about the model of education that we so readily embrace. About the wearing of uniforms, the mass movements of bodies at the ring of a bell. The indoctrination of thousands of young minds in the "right" and "wrong" ways of thinking and being. But somehow high school just keeps ticking along. No questions asked.

As we approach third decade of the 21st century, maybe it's time we started asking some tough questions.

The model of education that we accept as given originated in Prussia in the 18th century. Under the auspices of King Frederick II (Frederick the Great) the education system put in place compulsory schooling for girls and boys between the ages of 5 to 13. Education was free, literacy increased markedly, and the system was funded by tax. It was so successful that it formed the foundation of an education system that has achieved ongoing and worldwide acceptance.

While this model brought education to those who otherwise would never learn to read or write, there is an argument that posits the Prussian model as a form of mass social control. That these compulsory schools trained children to be submissive and subservient, forged into cogs to power the machinations of industrialisation.

Writer and futurist Alvin Toffler provided this analysis of the Prussian system in his seminal work Future Shock (1970): "Mass education was the ingenious machine constructed by industrialism to produce the kind of adults it needed. The problem was inordinately complex. How to pre-adapt children for a new world - a world of repetitive indoor toil, smoke, noise, machines, crowded living conditions, collective discipline, a world in which time was to be regulated not by the cycle of sun and moon, but by the factory whistle and the clock.

"The solution was an educational system that, in its very structure, simulated this new world."

There is certainly much merit in a free education system that teaches people the joys of reading and writing, the alchemy of mathematics. And early education doesn't seem to have the soul-destroying qualities of high school.

But once the structure and the uniforms and the assessments come into play, school seems to take a downwards turn. You can see Toffler's point.

It also seems to turn kids feral. As mentioned earlier, some of the most, um, memorable moments of high school involved bullying. I wasn't bullied horribly like some kids, but I was a social misfit. High school isn't kind to weirdos.

According to figures sourced through the Ministry of Education, nearly 20 per cent of New Zealand kids consider themselves to be regularly bullied. This is the second highest rate in the OECD.

Heathers, the seminal film about high school. / Photo: Getty

Katrina Casey, deputy secretary of Sector Enablement and Support for the ministry, says that it's up to each school to ensure their students are safe.

"Bullying is a complex issue with multiple causes. A 'one-size-fits-all' model does not work for all schools. The best way to prevent bullying is to adopt a whole-school approach that emphasises student wellbeing and inclusiveness, and values diversity," she says.

She goes on to say that the Education Review Office plays a key role in ensuring all school boards are meeting their legal obligations, including inspecting the school's policies and procedures on the provision of a physically and emotionally safe environment for all students and staff.

But it doesn't always work. Take the case of Nicola-Jane Jenks and her 17-year-old daughter.

Jenks took matters into her own hands after two years of systematic bullying against her daughter by another female student at Mt Albert Grammar. She grabbed her daughter's bully by the hair and hit her repeatedly; this after her daughter called in a state of distress outside the school.

Jenks says her violent outburst was triggered by the sadness and frustration that she felt after seeing her daughter wilt under the weight of bullying. She was taken to court in October last year for the incident but was discharged without conviction.

The school knew about the bullying but claims that it occurred out of school. They did nothing, but reiterate their anti-bullying stance.

This is an extreme case, but one in five kids are suffering from ongoing bullying at our schools. That's a lot of traumatised kids. Sure, there are resources and support (although counsellors at high schools are stretched to breaking point) but there is something inherently wrong with an institution that breeds such vileness.

Professor Peter O'Connor head of school at the Auckland University Faculty of Education. / Photo: Chris Loufte

Peter O'Connor is a professor of critical studies at the education department of the University of Auckland. He sees high school as a failed experiment and has little hope for the model ever changing in this country.

"Schools were invented at the same time as factories to stamp out standardised models that would serve the industrial machine. They are designed to sort out the good product from the bad. There are public factories and private factories - they create different products, but they are still factories."

O'Connor believes that the NCEA system and its attendant hyper-assessment is harming both students and teachers.

"There is so much assessment that teachers are burning out. Great teachers who loved their job don't have any time to be creative and pass on their knowledge. It's just about ticking the box."

He points to the much-lauded Finnish education model (which has no standardised tests apart from a single end-of-year exam in the last year), no streaming and no comparisons between schools as something to aspire to. The schools are small, the students get individual help, and Finland tops the international rankings in terms of literacy, maths and other key subjects.

"When they took away testing kids became more creative and capable of critical thinking. Assessment doesn't work."

O'Connor says that our emphasis on "success" in an academic sense at high school and beyond - leading to a job, a mortgage and the continuation the current paradigm - ignores real measures of success: meaning, freedom of expression, happiness.

"NCEA results are meaningless when it comes to true success. When Hekia Parata left her role as the Minister of Education she said that her greatest achievement was achieving the best NCEA results. What sort of claim is that? We have the highest youth suicide rate in the developed world and we are worried about NCEA results?"

The high level of assessment in high schools is an issue for many students. An ERO report from 2016 reported that "many students experienced a very assessment driven curriculum, which caused them much stress and anxiety" and "only a few schools recognised this and were responding to the detrimental effect on student well-being".

Careers seem to be the ultimate outworking of the high school system. From an early age (usually starting at intermediate school) young people are constantly asked what they will do when they leave school.

Katie (not her real name) is a 16-year-old who attends a well-known Auckland high school. She says that she has been harried about her career from about the age of 12.

"It's just got more extreme as the years go on. We are constantly asked what we want to do as a career and told we have to work to get the grades so we can get there. There is an expectation that we will go straight to training from school and then move into a career."

This focus on establishing a linear career path and never faltering from it is wrongheaded according to O'Connor.

"How many people know what they want to spend the rest of their lives doing when they are 16? It's the completely the wrong focus."

There are some people for whom the traditional style of education works. If people are academic, highly motivated, or great at sport, high school can offer a lot. But many others see the entire experience as a trial to be endured until they turn 16 and legally able to leave.

Katie has worked out that the best way to get through is to keep a low profile and serve her time.

"I had a really hard time in year 10 and then went to work over summer and learned that people tend to keep their personal lives to themselves at work. So now I approach school in a more professional manner. I don't have anything to do with the groups that everyone is part of. I just go to class, sit with my boyfriend during the breaks, and wait it out.

"There's not long to go now - I'll be finished at school soon."

Frances Valintine, of The Mind Lab.

Frances Valintine is an education futurist and the founder and chairwoman of the Mind Lab.

She believes that there is an over-emphasis on qualifications and even spearheaded a campaign (which was taken up by 200 businesses in New Zealand, including KPMG and ASB) that removed the requirements for qualifications on their applications.

Attitude, openness and the ability to think outside the norm are what future-focused businesses look for - not good NCEA results.

She also says that high schools are also failing students when it comes to the skills they need to engage with a global, digital world. She believes that schools are equipping students for a world that is history.

"We get new students out of school who have no idea how to use programmes like Trello and Google Drive. So much of the new work environment takes place remotely and collaboratively and schools aren't teaching this."

Some high schools are looking to the future, and Valintine lauds the model that Hobsonville Point School has adopted.

The school is based around "learning hubs", which have about 15 students and a teacher who is called a "learning coach". Within these hubs, learning coaches work closely with students and their families to tailor programmes that are suited to each individual student. There is an emphasis on well-being and individual development - rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Learning modules are specialised subjects taught by teaches in line with the New Zealand curriculum. Critical and creative thinking is prized and any issues that arise can be dealt with during the learning hub time allocated.

But this student-centred approach is world's away from the traditional, hierarchical schooling model that many of our young people are living with.

Harry Gerrard (now 20) attended a prestigious Auckland school, which he likens to a military camp. "Listen when spoken to. Speak when given permission. Food only at meal times. Bathroom rights only by permission. If you didn't obey master and his ideals, punishment would soon find you."

He describes a school culture in which a handful of students received praise and respect from the teachers - those with great grades, rich parents or sporting prowess - and who genuinely believed that they were better than everyone else.

"These people would berate and belittle anyone who dared not succumb to the almighty 'school pride'. No outliers were tolerated. No differently minded people were included. The cattle were sentenced to slaughter by the hands of those who were successfully brainwashed by the institution. The social divide was great. Groups of 'friends' were small and contact with other cliques only occurred when absolutely necessary, otherwise everyone was shunned."

This is the danger of the traditional education model. In the highly competitive, hyper-assessed version of high-school education, there are winners and losers. The losers are often those who dare to question, refuse to accept the status quo, strive to be themselves.

And it's these students - the ones who probably have the most real potential in the wider sense - who are falling through the cracks. Isn't it time for a change?

Deep Green Bush School

Deep in the forests of the Hunua Ranges young people are learning lessons from nature. No technology here, just birds and trees and possums to skin and cooking over an open fire.

Deep Green Bush School is as far away from traditional education as you can get. Headed by Joey Moncarz of Miami Beach, it's the antithesis of everything you think about school.
Moncarz began the school after growing tired of the "lies being told to the students at high schools". He worked in New Zealand schools for over five years, teaching both English and maths, but was appalled at what he saw as obfuscation of the reality of the world we live in.

"The entire system is weighed down with nonsense. The world is in a state of near ecological collapse and no one was admitting to it. And I don't think there are any changes on the horizon."

At Deep Green Bush School, there is no daily routine. There is no technology allowed, in fact in its statement on technology claims that "that their use is extremely damaging and a form of child abuse" and its use "cripple them socially, emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually".

Instead they spend their days "freely interacting, socialising with others, making music and having fun".

"When they are ready to learn maths and reading they can. But it needs to be initiated by them."

And this sense of democratic decision making that underpins the ethos of a school that is, undoubtedly, a genuine alternative to the mainstream.

Note: The school was registered as a private school in 2018 and the role is currently less than 10.

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Why the New Zealand high school model does students no favours

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Isn't it time for some tough questions about the high school model? Joanna Mathers investigates. Bells, uniforms, bullying, rankings, streams. The classification of students as brainy or losers, the competition to be the prettiest, the coolest, the best at rugby. In my humble opinion, high school sucks. I hated high school.

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As a teacher are you a 'carpenter' or 'gardener' ?

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This visual (infographic) post was inspired by two quotes said directly to me by teachers this week. They both highlighted how high schools need to change.

1. "It's ok, there's always kids that will never get it."
Teachers are to ready to accept that the "raw material" that arrives at school is sometimes unworkable.

2. "The senior students have waited 7 years to sit on and 'own' the deck area at lunchtime"
If high school (I work in a school that gets good grades) fails to inspire children so much that while getting good grades, 18 year-olds are taking lunchtime seating as a priority, then we have significant changes to make to high school education.

Note: I appreciate it's not a dichotomy but traditional schooling has primarily been one of a 'carpentry' approach and my evidence shows a need to start with a gardening approach and add elements of 'carpentry' where needed.

Here's my infographic post on the matter as I see it and the theme was inspired by Alison Gopnik, author of The Gardener and Carpenter.

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Hey #Teacher, are you a Gardener or Carpenter?

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This visual (infographic) post was inspired by two quotes said directly to me by teachers this week. They both highlighted how high schools need to change. "It's ok, there's always kids that will never get it." Teachers are to ready to accept that the "raw material" that arrives at school is sometimes unworkable.

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This blog is about my life. My life consists of working as Principal of Hobsonville Point Secondary School, doing crazy sports and recreational pursuits with the Opotiki Opossums and anyone else and keeping an eye on what my family is up to. They all surprise me.

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Does your classroom put the cart before the horse?

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Does your classroom put the cart before the horse?

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Most people assume formal education is a process of individual development from being heavily assisted at the age of 5, moving on to only requiring guidance and eventually achieving full independence and confidence to tackle one's own learning and growth. The sad truth is that most teachers of 18-year-olds will tell you that their students remain heavily dependent on constant guidance and support. I produced the following graphic to sum up the three aforementioned stages and I wonder which one best depicts the average teenager in your education system.

Whether, as a teacher, you are tackling a prescribed set of content, have the luxury of devising your own, or even better, are negotiating the tasks and content with your students, it is worth considering who is doing most of the work. You can't develop a top footballer without allowing them to practice, try, fail, and try again. The same goes for what we want from our students. Most classrooms are so busy avoiding wrong answers they maintain and develop dependent learners who check with teacher before making any step forward.

Where do 'good' students come from?

The top students in any school, through family, sporting or performance experiences, are normally high achievers in spite of school and not because of it. They have arrived at the school having regularly experienced situations where their decision-making mattered, they were or remain responsible for for the success of activities, and the possibility of failure was common. This is exactly the conditions that the average school classroom avoids and thus does not develop the average student into a genuinely motivated, confident citizen. At school, I was very much an average student and can confirm that any motivation and responsible decision making was left until after university. I was kept safe from such matters by the education system I went through and spent my twenties working out how to perform effectively in teams and get projects completed on time.

"...But they get the grades"

Please don't confuse success in exams and grade acquisition for genuine achievement. Many, if not most top grades around the world are achieved through targeted teacher coaching. Coaching only tuned for the specific prescribed challenges of the assessment at hand. This only results in what universities and employers report as school leavers lacking initiative, motivation and professional skills. This is not educational success by any stretch of the imagination. You will still get your grades if you devote time in early years to letting learners experience managing their own learning as a norm and not spoon feeding content to them. This will develop people who have their own coping mechanisms when it comes to exams later.

The Classroom is for developing people

The habits of many schools hand the responsibility of growing the person to extra-curricular activities and not the classroom where the students spend most of their time. The number of times I've heard the words 'all-round education' in discussion of sports or cultural events and at the same time the classroom is reduced to only a place in which information is passed from teacher to student. Many adults make the mistake of thinking "I went to school and turned out alright." But when challenged they will conclude that any confidence or initiative they have has been developed post-school not during. This I feel is a massive missed opportunity that many non-high achievers miss out on.

It's time to make the classroom as challenging as the sports field or theatre stage. Make the students more accountable for what takes place and whether or not it succeeds. Shift the responsibility from teacher to student for organising how the current challenges get tackled. It may go wrong initially by like football players, they'll get better and better until they are ready to face their final school challenges independently.

Play safe and start early

This does not happen overnight. What I propose here is a vision for your school in 5 years time, not tomorrow. Don't dismiss this because you can't picture your more senior students handling the responsibility of devising their own plans for learning. If they haven't had the prior practice they're not going to take charge tomorrow. You have to build the expectations and competencies over a 5 year process. Rethink the learning environments that your school's youngest learners experience and let the current students live out the teacher-directed education they were introduced to as much as they need to. Focus on what your school will offer the next intake and how it will develop them to tackle the content without it being spoon fed from day 1.

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Does your classroom put the cart before the horse?

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Most people assume formal education is a process of individual development from being heavily assisted at the age of 5, moving on to only requiring guidance and eventually achieving full independence and confidence to tackle one's own learning and growth. The sad truth is that most teachers of 18-year-olds will tell you that their students...

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Harvard says high school is now inappropriate 

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Harvard says high school is now inappropriate 

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Todd Rose isn't your average Harvard professor - but not because he dropped out of high school, spent time on welfare, and had 10 different minimum wage jobs and a wife and kid before he even finished being a teenager.

Todd Rose isn't your average Harvard professor because when it comes to people, the average is a statistical myth, he argues. There is no average. Repeat: There is no average. No average professor. No average worker. No average soldier. No average Joe.

And what might just be the single most important lesson for educators: There definitely is no average student. Not one. Yet, as Rose, Ed.M.'01, Ed.D.'07, a lecturer at the Ed School and director of the Mind, Brain, and Education Program, writes in his forthcoming book, The End of Average, from the moment we're born to the moment we die, we are measured against a mythical yardstick - the average human - and it's hurting everyone. That's why with this book and through his nonprofit, the Center for Individual Opportunity, Rose is on a mission to dismantle this myth of the average and instead help the public understand the importance of the individual.

"We talk so much about the individual, " he says, "but there's such a divide between what we say we believe and what we actually do."

HOW DID WE GET HERE?
When it comes to school systems, Rose says it's no accident how we got here: Schools were designed during the industrial age by people who were "absolutely obsessed" with averages because averages worked so well in managing factories. The goal wasn't to nurture creativity and develop individuality. The system mostly accomplished what it set out to do: prepare students for standardized jobs in an industrial economy. Since then, we have continued to think that the average - a human invention - represents everyone or that any deviation from the average is what defines you. You're gifted, and you don't need as much help, for example.

During the 1950s, the United States Air Force began thinking a lot about averages. At the time, pilots were having trouble controlling their planes. As Rose explains, at first the problem was pinned on pilot error and poor training. But the real problem turned out to be the cockpit or, more specifically, the fact that the cockpit had just one design: one for the average pilot of an earlier era, the 1920s.

The Air Force concluded that Americans had gotten bigger over the past couple of decades and they simply needed to update their measurement of the average pilot. With the help of a young Harvard College graduate named Lieutenant Gilbert Daniels, they measured more than 4,000 pilots on 10 dimensions of size that seemed important for fitting into a cockpit - torso length and chest circumference, for example. The thinking was that once they redesigned the cockpit for the average pilot of the 1950s, controlling the plane would no longer be so troublesome. Most pilots, they assumed, would be within the average range on the majority of dimensions and that a good number would even be average on all 10 dimensions.

"Do you know how many really were?" Rose says. "Zero."

Even when just three dimensions of size were picked, fewer than 3.5 percent of the pilots fell within the range defined by Daniels as average. Instead, what Daniels found is that every single pilot had what Rose calls a jagged profile. One pilot with long arms may also have long legs while another may not. Not everyone who was average height (5 feet 9 inches) had the same chest circumference or head size.

Finally, the Air Force had its "aha" moment: If every pilot had a jagged profile and the cockpit was designed for the average pilot, it was actually designed for no one. Its response was bold - it banned the average and forced reluctant manufacturers to instead design "to the edges, " meaning a cockpit that would be adjustable for even the extremes - the tallest or the shortest, for those with wide or narrow chests. Manufacturers balked, but once they realized the Air Force wasn't budging, they figured it out, creating options like adjustable seats.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH EDUCATION?
Rose's "aha" moment came when he was a doctoral student at the Ed School. Based on his own struggles in school, he came to Harvard interested in understanding individuals. But, he says, "like everyone else in psychology and neuroscience, I had been trained to use group-level statistics as an undergraduate to study people." When he was a teaching fellow for Professor Judy Singer's statistics class, he remembers having a conversation with her about individuality. She told him that the statistics they were using were not meant to make claims about individuals, but rather about the population at large. Rose started seeing what she meant when he was doing his own research on kids who were struggling to read.

"There would be what the research says these kids should be like, " Rose says, "and then the reality of their individuality that hits you in the face if you spend even a few minutes with them."

Rose approached his mentor, Professor Kurt Fischer, one of the leading pioneers in the science of the individual and the brain, to talk about this dilemma - the reality of individual kids and what the research says - and why we think this way.

"Rather than giving me a generic answer about people being too messy or complex, he just said that the root of the problem is our belief in averages - that somehow averages will tell us what we need to know about individuals, " Rose says. "He really pushed me to accept that understanding individuals means really explaining individuality and variability rather than ignoring it or explaining it away."

In the context of schools, Rose says that while most of us will never need to worry about the flexibility of a fighter plane, we do need to worry about what he calls "the cockpits of our economy" - classrooms. We're spending more on education and getting not-so-great results, but instead of looking at design and fit the way the Air Force did, we blame bad teachers. We blame lazy students. We even blame parents.

"But how much of this problem is just bad design?" Rose says. Students are grouped in grades based on chronological age. Curriculum and textbooks are written to be "age appropriate." Most standardized assessments, like the SAT or IQ test, are designed based on a comparison to a hypothetical average student. Walk into an elementary school classroom and even the literal design of the room is for the "average" kid: one size desk, one size chair, one size table.

But just as there isn't one size pilot, there isn't one size student or one way to learn. "Human beings don't line up perfectly. There is no average learner, " Rose says. Every student has a jagged learning profile, too.

"They have strengths and weaknesses. They all do, " Rose says. "Even geniuses do."

The danger in not understanding and appreciating this, Rose says, is that we will continue not reaching all students. Fischer once told Rose that today's schools basically fail about 80 percent of students. A student who struggles to read may be talented in physics, but that talent gets lost because math requires reading textbooks and worksheets. A gifted student may get bored and only do the minimal amount of work, which was designed for the average student. As a result, some students fall behind or act out. Others get ignored or eventually drop out. As Rose pointed out in a TedX talk on the topic, of the 1.2 million high-schoolers in the United States who drop out every year, about 4 percent, or 50,000, are known to be gifted. And even if a student "gets through, " Rose says, he or she may never reach full potential.

Thinking back on his own education, Rose says that poor working memory was something he struggled with and teachers didn't recognize. As he wrote in his first book, Square Peg, "By not understanding how much people vary in their working memory, teachers force kids constantly to jump through needless hoops, much as if they were obliging their students to ride unicycles between classes. Were that the case, a kid who was a budding genius at math but hopelessly uncoordinated might never be able to get to his class and show what he could do."

Unfortunately, Rose says, "if we ignore jaggedness, we end up treating people in one-dimensional terms" - the struggling student, the good tester. "If we want to know your intelligence, for example, we give you an IQ test that is supposed to tap a range of abilities, but then we merge that into a single score." Imagine two young students have the same IQ score of 110 - the exact same number. One has great spatial abilities but poor working memory, and the other has the exact opposite jaggedness. "If we just want to rank them then we could say the students are more or less the same in intelligence because they have the same aggregate scores. But if we wanted to really understand who they are as individuals enough to nurture their potential, we can't ignore the jaggedness - it is the essential information for providing them with an optimal environment and matching them with optimal strategies for success."

In order to do this, Rose says that rather than forcing students to fit to the environment, we need to have the environment fit each student, just as the Air Force was only successful when it stopped making pilots fit into to a one-size-fits-all cockpit. Rather than getting mad at a student with poor working memory who constantly forgets to write down homework assignments, a teacher could easily help that kid by verbalizing assignments and writing them down on the white board. Rather than making all students in a grade fill out the same worksheets, assignments could be customized.

BASED ON EXPERIENCE
This issue of "fit" is exactly what helped Rose go from being that struggling student, the "troublemaker" with a 0.9 GPA in high school, to a Harvard professor with a doctorate.

"It wasn't that a switch just got turned on one day, " he says. He wrote in Square Peg, "I know there was no single intervention that turned my life around. No heart-to-heart talk with a great teacher. No perfectly tailored drug that helped me sit still and concentrate."

Instead, he adds in his new book, The End of Average, "I gradually realized that if I could just figure out how to improve the fit between my environment and myself, I might be able to turn my life around."

Fit, he believes, is the birthright of every person.

"Right now because we believe in the myth of average, we believe that opportunity means providing equal access to standardized educational experiences, " he says. "However, since we know that nobody is actually average, it is obvious that equal access to standardized experiences is not nearly enough to provide equal opportunity. To me, if you accept the reality of individuality, then it means that we have to rethink how we define equal opportunity in education and beyond."

Equal opportunity, then, requires equal fit between individuals and their educational environments.

"Anything less is inherently and profoundly unequal, " Rose says. "I believe that we should set a much higher bar for ourselves in the 21st century. If we are going to be a country that cares about equal opportunity, then we must strive to ensure that equal fit is the birthright of every single child in this country. But right now in education we do not take this idea seriously, in part because until recently we didn't have the science or technology to do it. But we do now. So if you accept the idea of equal fit, then it means something radical for the future of education - it means we cannot accept a system based on averages; it means we cannot accept standardized curricular materials, or simplistic one-dimensional assessments, or fixed amounts of time for learning or one pathway to academic success."

And now, he says, is the perfect time to focus on individual learning. Using the technology we have on hand, educators can easily create learning environments that are flexible. Language translation programs, for example, can help students - at any school - better sound out puzzling words as they read.

Professor Howard Gardner, one of Rose's first professors at the Ed School, says, "Todd's focus on what we know about the individual student and how we can mobilize pedagogical and curricular resources to meet the particular student is of fundamental importance. We are fortunate enough to live at the first time in human history [when] such individualized teaching and learning is not restricted to a tiny wealthy elite but can be distributed far more widely, if not universally."

Rose says we have already seen how technology has helped scientists around the world understand the individual, leading to major breakthroughs in everything from cancer research to the treatment of diabetes.

"And this only happened after scientists broke through a mental barrier, " Rose says, "after they recognized this one all-important fact: that you can't understand individuals using group averages" because there is no average cancer, no average cell, no average genome.

So how do we, as a country entrenched in an education system that distributes standardized tests and groups students based on chronological age rather than rate of learning, break through its mental barriers and start to embrace - and demand - the science of the individual?

Well, if you're Todd Rose, you start by turning to Hollywood.

"People in places like Hollywood, they're used to thinking differently or being told they're not good enough," Rose says. "If you want to have a public that understands this new science and this new way of thinking about individuality, then it will require more than just the dissemination of information through usual channels. Instead, you have to get these ideas to permeate the culture - to change the way that people think about themselves and the people around them. To do that, I believe that you need to engage the storytellers in Hollywood because they are in the business of creating culture and changing social norms whether people realize it or not."

Walter Haas, a founding director at Rose's nonprofit, specializes in digital marketing and has worked on projects for Levi Strauss and Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. He says getting the message to people is a first - and critical - step.

"Once you understand the world through the lens of the science of the individual, you can't see it in any other way, " he says. "Our goal is to simply allow more people to have that same moment of realization. We do not have the resources, frankly, or the patience to engage in a traditional policy lobbying effort. Instead, we plan to share this science-based idea in an accessible manner to stimulate ground-level demand for institutional reform."

It's the same approach, Rose says, that the Harvard Alcohol Project took in the 1980s, when it teamed up with every major movie studio and television network to help launch a new term into society that resulted in demand from the public: the designated driver. With the help of Hollywood, over the course of just four years, more than 160 popular movies and shows like Cheers and L.A. Law added designated drivers into scenes and drunk driving prevention into dialogue. PSAs flooded the market. The term "designated driver" even officially appeared in Webster's Dictionary in 1991.

"It is such a terrific example of what is possible if you combine a good idea with a clever approach to getting it to the public, "Rose says, noting that he is starting to team up with Hollywood in the same way.

His nonprofit is also creating partnerships with non-Hollywood groups that can also make a difference, like Teach For America, which places young teachers in high-needs schools, as well as influential companies that create tests for schools. They also plan on creating a free flexible digital textbook that will allow teachers to customize learning for each student.

Eventually, he says, "I want CEOs to say, 'What's our plan for this?' I want schools to say, 'Wow! We need to get our act together. This is the new thing.'"

The bottom line, Rose says, is that we all need to ask ourselves who we are supposed to be as a country.

"I'm incredibly grateful, even though it wasn't easy, that I got a second chance, " he says. "We need all of the potential we can possibly get. We need innovation and creativity. That's where all of the jobs are. I keep thinking, this letting go of the average and instead focusing on the individual is just in our best interest."

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Todd Rose isn't your average Harvard professor - but not because he dropped out of high school, spent time on welfare, and had 10 different minimum wage jobs and a wife and kid before he even finished being a teenager.

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What is assessment for learning? / Underlying principles of assessment for learning / Assessment for learning / Home - Assessment

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Assessment for learning is best described as a process by which assessment information is used by teachers to adjust their teaching strategies, and by students to adjust their learning strategies.

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Now I have your attention, let me give you perspective. This post is about integration of traditional subjects (silos). When I say "Stop teaching Math," I mean as an isolated hour of just Math, but I also mean all other subjects too. The reason that the world often finds school leavers and even graduates lack basic skills is not because they haven't had an hour of English and a separate hour of Math every day for over a decade, it's because isolating each skillset means children never get to put any skill into real practice, i.e. in the context of the other skills. Because life doesn't challenge in this isolated and abstract way, children can become reluctant or fearful to try more complex tasks - real life! No matter how much discussion takes place about the speed of world change in tech, population, and the environment, most schools continue the way they always have.

Hoop Jumpers not required

When speaking to employers this year, four have independently brought up the fact that they shy away from employing graduates (never mind school leavers) because they lack initiative and confidence. I believe it's due to conditioning by both elementary and high schools that focus on compartmentalising each challenge so that official lists of required learnings can be ticked off, regardless of their context. In addition to isolating each skill, it is normal for all parameters, expectations, and desired output to be placed before the students. This leads to unengaged "hoop jumpers" only willing to deal with problems if they have already been fully documented. The world is changing fast and employers now ask "what can you offer me in coping wth the unknown?" as apposed to the previous century where most jobs had their hoops already well defined for newbies to conform to. Last millennium, hoop jumpers were useful but not any longer.

"Soft" now beats "Hard"

The isolating of subject matter into 'manageable chunks" fails to address the skills required to merge things together in preparation for life outside the 'factory' school. It is the 'soft' skills that are used to bring everything together and make progress. These soft skills are now regularly valued more highly than the traditional knowledge-based hard skills.

Soft Skills such as:

Communication

Creativity

Problem-solving

Collaboration

Adaptability

Positivity

Learning from criticism ...

... make any hard skill useful, are harder to learn, and relate better to a much more interpersonal and connected world. We now live in a skills-based job market and prepackaged, departmentalised learning modules do not allow children to truely practice any of the skills listed above. As schools continue to devalue these soft skills (many people think the term 'soft' doesn't help their cause), they hold onto their tradition approach where co-curricular activities like shows and sports are carried out with fingers-crossed that maybe they might develop them. Simply hoping they might develop soft skills is not good enough and they must become the focus of the school day (not just an hour). They should also not be compartmentalised themselves into a subject called 'life skills.' This is just as damaging and the focus should be on making learners conscious of the their development within complex tasks and not just as more subject matter to be memorised.

New Zealand makes integration official

This bit is really just for kiwi educators. I must highlight that in my home country, integration of learning areas is not just my opinion but official mandate. The National Curriculum, the Education Review Office (ERO), and the Ministry of Education, all have integration of subjects as a target. The curriculum states:

"[Traditional learning areas] should not limit the ways in which schools structure the learning experiences offered to students. All Learning should make use of the natural connections that exist between learning areas and that link learning areas to the values and key competencies."

In New Zealand, if you are still running an hour of isolated maths, you are officially heading in the wrong direction. I know it might be habit and difficult to imagine mathematical thinking being taught as part of an integrated programme, but it's officially your target for 2018 to turn your math teaching into contextualised math consultancy.

Extra Math Videos:

Here's a Math teacher explaining that even Math Teaching itself isn't in great shape(excuse the pun)

Here's a world top mathematician also explaining why schools don't teach Math in the first place:

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Now I have your attention, let me give you perspective. This post is about integration of traditional subjects (silos). When I say "Stop teaching Math," I mean as an isolated hour of just Math, but I also mean all other subjects too. The reason that the world often finds school leavers and even graduates lack...

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If you ask me, the elephant in the classroom, especially high school classrooms has always been the fact that teachers would rarely choose for themselves, the daily experience they inflict on their students. [Img Cred]

If you ask a high school teacher if they'd be happy with a daily experience such as:

an hour of trigonometry;

an hour of Macbeth;

an hour of plate tectonics;

an hour of tennis, followed by

an hour of chemical reactions

with no attempt to relate any of the learning.

oh, and do you want to sit in the middle of 300 teenagers for an hour long assembly?

Nearly all teachers say NO! (I've asked many)

So, two questions for schools:
1. What excuses do we have for creating a learning experience we wouldn't choose for ourselves? 2. Why are we surprised at an increasing dropout rate and general switching off from school in a connected and active world of Facebook and Youtube?
An alternative with positive outcomes.

This year a visited a school that had re-purposed their existing physical classroom / corridor spaces, and redesigned their timetable to create a whole new learning experience. I could see within 10 minutes that the students were more driven and positive about school than in most schools I've been to. It did this by dividing itself into a mini-schools within the site. Rather than confine each student to a particular room from which learning would be 'received', every student had permission to design their own school day (every day) and had free access to up to 4 differently purposed rooms depending on what their needs were at any particular moment.

New use of school space

The 4 rooms that each child had free access to would include:

1. a "Cave" (silent room),

2. a pairs room (for peer tutoring),

3. a group room (for project/teamwork)

4. a tutorial room (They had to book into tutorials that the teachers ran on a rotation).

It was up to the children to use these spaces according to needs and be responsible for productive time management. Something that was very evident during my visit, where I could see that through practice and extensive experience in self-driven learning, the average student was more confident, organised and keen to discuss their progress.

New use of School time

Students are free to organised their own day. They had to book into a certain amount of tutoring in a week but by choice could tailor the tuition to their needs. They negotiated inquiry projects at the beginning of terms and worked on them in teams. They were encouraged to work together and solve their own problems. They also booked out technology from a central hub when required, rather than assume that technology was a must all day, like some schools suggest.

New use of Teachers

Teachers rotate between giving tutorials and roaming as mentors. A nice touch is for the principal to be signing off the final projects. Teachers have more time to talk to students and guide teams in their negotiated inquiries. Teachers were happier through working with students who were intrinsically motivated to learn on projects designed by themselves. All the national curriculum and regular content was still covered and any direct teaching needed was available, just never in a one-size-fits-all approach.

Question the old, not the new

One simple piece of advice is to spend more energy challenging your school's status quo, than any alternative that might be suggested. Turn around and challenge that "elephant" that so many teachers and even more students are talking about.

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If you ask me, the elephant in the classroom, especially high school classrooms has always been the fact that teachers would rarely choose for themselves, the daily experience they inflict on their students. [Img Cred] If you ask a high school teacher if they'd be happy with a daily experience such as: an hour of trigonometry; an hour...

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Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.

In Project Based Learning, teachers make learning come alive for students.

Students work on a project over an extended period of time - from a week up to a semester - that engages them in solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by creating a public product or presentation for a real audience.

As a result, students develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication skills. Project Based Learning unleashes a contagious, creative energy among students and teachers.

And in case you were looking for a more formal definition...

Project Based Learning is a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge.

Watch Project Based Learning in Action

These 7-10 minute videos show the Gold Standard PBL model in action, capturing the nuts and bolts of a PBL unit from beginning to end.

This project features teacher Rayhan Ahmed at Leaders High School in Brooklyn, NY, with his 11th grade chemistry class.

This project features Kimberly Head-Trotter of McKissack Middle School, in Nashville, TN, with her 6th grade ELA/History class.

This project features teacher Cheryl Bautista of Katherine Smith Elementary School, San Jose, CA and her third graders.

How does PBL differ from "doing a project"?

PBL is becoming widely used in schools and other educational settings, with different varieties being practiced. However, there are key characteristics that differentiate "doing a project" from engaging in rigorous Project Based Learning.

We find it helpful to distinguish a "dessert project" - a short, intellectually-light project served up after the teacher covers the content of a unit in the usual way - from a "main course" project, in which the project is the unit. In Project Based Learning, the project is the vehicle for teaching the important knowledge and skills student need to learn. The project contains and frames curriculum and instruction.

In contrast to dessert projects, PBL requires critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and various forms of communication. To answer a driving question and create high-quality work, students need to do much more than remember information. They need to use higher-order thinking skills and learn to work as a team.
Learn more about "dessert" projects vs PBL
The gold standard for high-quality PBL

To help ensure your students are getting the main course and are engaging in quality Project Based Learning, PBLWorks promotes a research-informed model for "Gold Standard PBL."

The Gold Standard PBL model encompasses two useful guides for educators:

1) Seven Essential Project Design Elements provide a framework for developing high quality projects for your classroom, and

2) Seven Project Based Teaching Practices help teachers, schools, and organizations improve, calibrate, and assess their practice.

The Gold Standard PBL model aligns with the High Quality PBL Framework. This framework describes what students should be doing, learning, and experiencing in a good project. Learn more at HQPBL.org.

Yes, we provide PBL training for educators!

PBLWorks offers a variety of workshops, courses and services for teachers, school and district leaders, and instructional coaches to get started and advance their practice with Project Based Learning.
Learn more

This project features teacher Rayhan Ahmed at Leaders High School in Brooklyn, NY, with his 11th grade chemistry class.

This project features Kimberly Head-Trotter of McKissack Middle School, in Nashville, TN, with her 6th grade ELA/History class.

This project features teacher Cheryl Bautista of Katherine Smith Elementary School, San Jose, CA and her third graders.

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Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects. Project Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching method in which students learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.

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So, you've heard about student agency or student-driven learning, and possibly the same thing under some other awesome buzzword :-). The idea of learners taking charge of, and feeling responsible for their learning is yet to challenge any teacher I've spoken to. But there are issues. The problem lies in three common questions:

1. Are all children capable of driving their own learning?

2. What's the role of the teacher?

3. How do I start?

So we need to consider what this looks like in all contexts. I can confirm that it does apply in all situations but is only successful if the teachers know their role and they equip students with the tools to, and practice in driving their own learning. So I thought I'd produce a simple template for teachers to use to develop their student-driven learning. I've written before about the most difficult part in this process being the shifting of both teacher and student mindsets. It requires an open mind in regards to the purpose of school and the idea that maybe existing education approaches have failed to ready most teenagers for what the "real-world" has in-store ... as if they don't already exist as citizens in the real world already!

Learning to drive

When people seem pessimistic towards student-driven learning, I often find myself making the ironic conversational segue to "learning to drive." Even the most conservative teacher or parent accepts that to learn to drive a car, people have to drive a car! Even one's first driving lesson includes making the car go forward yourself. Driving a car is one of the most dangerous things we do in life and yet we still don't hesitate to place 16-year-olds immediately behind the wheel if we expect them to cope on the road after lessons. It's the role of the driving instructor we need to consider. The instructor's role (sometimes carried out less than successfully by parents) is to ensure the learner will be able to drive without them. This seems like an obvious and sensible approach, so why do most schools still take the opposite approach to learning other things? After 13 years of education, most 18-year-olds are still being coached by their teacher, point-by-point in preparing for assessments. The classroom might be the primary vehicle for learning but teachers must start letting students drive the vehicle if they expect them to cope without their direct instruction.

Tools for learning

The first thing needed is learners equiped to learn. To learn anything, one needs to be immersed in an authentic situation as possible, be making decisions and learning from them, aware of all options available, including time and collaborators, and measuring success and planning next steps. For example, this is exactly how I learnt to both blog at the age of 35 and skateboard at the age of 12. In a world that prioritises one's ability to adapt and relearn, the new role for teachers is equipping students with the tools, experience, and thus confidence to take charge of their own learning.

This includes tools that allow the learners to:

1. Think deeply (time - discussion)

2. Set goals/purpose and choose/locate resources (people/info)

3. Organise workflow (What to do 1st/2nd/3rd)

4. Measure current success (Designing assessment matrix)

5. Plan next steps (What to develop / move on from)

Here's my infographic for learning tools:

Teachers need to equip students to quickly point to the tools they use to:

Know what to tighten / do next (What's my adjustable spanner?)
Design thinking is a good example of this.

measure current success (What's my tape measure?)
co-constructed assessment matrix are good for this

Decide from a range of outcome / output options (What's my paintbrush?)
Presented in class, published to the world, connected to community?

manage time and resources (What's my stopwatch?)
Project management apps and negotiated timetables can help students feel responsible for time and resources.

communicate and connect with people inside and outside the classroom. (Where's the conversation?)
The professional use of social media is still alien to most classrooms.

A teacher's new script

The primary tool in developing student-driven learning, while also helping to change the mindset towards learning for all involved is a new script for teachers. This is the part that I personally found difficult. Despite discussing it for decades, thousands of teachers still struggle with switching from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side." To be a successful guide or mentor, you have to use a different script from that of a teacher. How teachers communicate with students can define who feels responsible for the learning, so choose your words carefully. Any questions to students need to emphasise their responsibility for progressing further. The conversations need to be learning focused rather than topic focused and expect further thinking. Here are just some examples:

move from "What are you doing?" to "Why are you doing this?" or "Why is this the priority at the moment?"

move from "how's it going?" to "What do you need to improve so far?" or "How do you know you're on track?"

move from "Are you finished?" to "What might this lead to next?" or "Who could this project or information have an impact on?"

move from "Do you understand that topic X is ABC?" to "How do you know you understand that topic X is?"

Questions must demand specific, quantifiable answers from learners who show an obvious sense of responsibility for the activity. This can't be achieved if the ground work isn't done by teachers to equip the students with the learning tools, skills and most importantly, the expectations that they can drive their own learning.

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So, you've heard about student agency or student-driven learning, and possibly the same thing under some other awesome buzzword :-). The idea of learners taking charge of, and feeling responsible for their learning is yet to challenge any teacher I've spoken to. But there are issues.

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The key relationship each ākonga will have will first be with their puna Ako teacher, and then with all of the adults in their hapori. There will also be lots of opportunities for ākonga to work with adults in other hapori across the school.

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University of Georgia education professor Peter Smagorinsky wrote a piece last year about a promising young teacher who chose to leave education. She has now returned to the classroom but in a different Georgia district.

In this column, Smagorinsky explains how her new district, with a focus on enhancing relationships rather than test scores, has revitalized her enthusiasm for teaching.

By Peter Smagorinsky

A year ago I wrote a Get Schooled essay about an outstanding early-career high school English teacher in Georgia who had become so frustrated with testing and scripted curricula that she decided to leave the profession. She had been a participant in a study I am doing of the career development of teachers, with interviews each semester since 2010, when she was still at UGA education major.

I'm happy to say she contacted me in the spring with the news that working in the private sector for a year had produced a yearning to be back in the classroom. Her job had been quite pleasant, and she had appreciated the way her day began at 9 and ended at 5, and did not involve late afternoons and evenings filling out forms, tutoring, grading papers, planning classes, recovering from exhaustion, and consuming her life until she started over again the next day.

It was a nice respite from what had become a grind in the classroom. But, ultimately, to her it was unchallenging, a bit boring, and unfulfilling. It was time to get back to the kids.

We talked for about 90 minutes recently about her first semester back at work. She did not return to her old position, her old school, or her old district, all of which she had found stultifying to her creativity and her relationships with her students. Her former district relies on test-driven curriculum and instruction, determining teacher effectiveness by test scores, no matter what kind of shape the kids are in. It was exactly what she wanted to avoid.

Her new district provides quite a contrast. At the school's orientation before classes began in the fall, her superintendent spoke about the importance of human relationships, above all else. Not test scores. Not real estate values tied to test scores. No, he spoke compassionately about how everything follows from developing and fostering productive relationships within the district.

The emphasis on relationships was the central driving force in her return to teaching and in her happiness with this new position. The school is not perfect, of course. She has quibbles with some of the policies, for instance. But she loves the fact she has tons of latitude in what to teach, and how to teach it. And she loves her students and the idea that her main task is to ground her instruction in the relationships she develops with them.

Many of the kids come from low-income households, are immigrants, have personal challenges, and, in general, represent the demographic groups whose test scores often reflect poorly on a faculty and administration. But here was the superintendent telling the faculty to tune out the noise about test scores and focus on making the school feel positive to kids, teachers, counselors, principals, and I'm sure the cafeteria staff, grounds crew, and custodians as well.

What, then, helps teachers form these relationships? It's useful to contrast her current district with the district she left a year ago in frustration. Her previous district administration had created a lot of barriers between students and teachers that produced alienation of each from the other.

The school's scripted curriculum had reduced her flexibility in teaching on the basis of what she believed her students needed most. A curricular barrier of this sort assumes all students in the district (and other districts that purchase the same materials from edupreneurial corporations) have the same interests and needs. Anyone who has raised two children in the same household knows even the most closely bonded youth have different needs, however, and those needs are probably quite different from what a remote corporate textbook writer provides for them.

Making instruction responsive to the textbook's materials and accompanying assessment products, rather than to what teachers understand about kids, alienates teachers from kids, and kids from both teachers and school. In a school like the one that now employs this teacher, with a predominant population of students of color whose heritages get little representation in these corporate products, the likelihood of estrangement from the institution of school is great.

The testing mandates further damage the possibility of constructing and cultivating strong relationships with students. These bonds in turn may lead to instructional insights that produce relevant, on-target instruction. Tests intervene in relationships by warping instruction toward the most reductive, least compelling ways of thinking: picking the best of four multiple choice items in response to a question the test-taker has little interest in answering.

The teacher I interviewed asserts this emphasis discourages teachers from teaching in any way that is not ultimately tested. This requirement means shutting down all open-ended, creative, constructive thinking and focusing on how to pick the best of four possible answers to irrelevant questions, posed only for diagnostic purposes. Kids see through this sham pretty quickly. It's a shame policymakers are too dim to understand what any teenager could tell them in a second.

Relationships are not developed by limited-choice options. They follow from genuine interaction, mutual listening, generosity, care, responsiveness to emerging needs and hopes, and constructive thinking in relation to shared challenges. These processes are fluid, not restricted to four choices. By presenting teaching and learning as static, with fixed answers to immutable questions, the possibility of growth into active citizenship in a tumultuous social world is damaged.

I often hear administrators lack the will or fortitude to buck the assessment movement and its grounding in business-style accountability measures that reduce complex actions to single numbers. There's at least one district in Georgia, however, where the superintendent has rejected the premises behind that assumption and has insisted good teaching begins with forming relationships with kids.

I wish there were a whole lot more school systems with leadership of this sort. I suspect most teachers would agree with me, and that kids would buy into education much more if such alienating barriers to the building of relationships were removed.

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What if schools focused on improving relationships rather than test scores?

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University of Georgia education professor Peter Smagorinsky wrote a piece last year about a promising young teacher who chose to leave education. She has now returned to the classroom but in a different Georgia district. In this column, Smagorinsky explains how her new district, with a focus on enhancing relationships rather than test scores, has revitalized her enthusiasm for teaching.

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Why We Should Stop Asking Kids What They Want To Be When They Grow Up

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Why We Should Stop Asking Kids What They Want To Be When They Grow Up

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While I was putting my son to bed the other night he was uncharacteristically sad and when asked what was wrong, he said, "I don't know what I want to be when I grow up." This is not what I expected to hear from my 6-year-old and it broke my heart to see that he was upset and ashamed that he didn't know what he wanted to be. After a bit more conversation, he shared that he had been asked a few times by family and at school what he wanted to be when he grows up and had felt pushed to have an answer. I told him that I never knew what I wanted to be growing up and tried to assure him that he doesn't need to know what he wants to be when he grows up. Realistically, the job that he will end up doing may not yet exist.

This conversation has been on my mind a lot lately and I have been more aware of how I talk to kids (mine and others about their futures). Asking kids what they want to be when they grow up seems to be an easy way to get to know what kids are interested in but it is too often how we categorize them. There are countless units and projects from preschool on up where teachers ask kids to identify what they want to be when they grow up and expect every kid to pick something. I am guilty of doing it myself even though I always hated when adults asked me growing up.

Even though this question is typically asked with the best of intentions, it can also end up having a lasting impact how kids see themselves. Early messages about what is valued and what is accepted in both family and in social circles are translated by reactions to this question. Career theorist Linda Gottfredson says that the career aspirations of children are influenced by the perceptions of what is appropriate for one's gender and class than private aspects of their self-concept such as their skills and interests. At this early age, kids are forming their self-concept and identity by attaching value to what adults like and is seen as acceptable based on what gets positively reinforced.

How can you aspire to a career that you don't know exists?
I can empathize with my son. Growing up, my mom was a teacher and my dad was a car salesman. This was all I really knew about careers or all that I really saw as a career path. I had very little exposure to any other jobs aside from a career day at some point in high school that I probably treated as a day off rather than an investment in my future. I remember thinking I don't really want to sell cars so I guess I will be a teacher.

We are influenced by our surroundings and what we experience, which can limit our understanding of the world and especially the possibilities that exist. My colleague and friend, Ed Hidalgo's poses the question in his TEDx talk, How does a child aspire to a career they don't know exists? He argues that the key to changing a child's trajectory is providing diverse experiences early on that allow them to see themselves in the world of work and see new possibilities for their future.

Rather than narrowing the path for kids and pushing them to think about a career disconnected from one's own passions and interests, Jaime Casap urges, "Don't ask kids what they want to be when they grow up but what problems they want to solve." I think this is a great way to reframe this typical question and it made me think about what else we could ask kids instead of, What do you want to be when you grow up? What if we asked kids questions like:

What are interested in?

What do you love to do?

What makes you happy?

When do you feel like you are successful?

How do you like to work/play with others?

What comes easily to you?

What do you want to learn more about?

What is important to you?

As my children are in the early years and developing their identity, I want them (and ALL children) to have opportunities to understand and build on their strengths, explore their passions and be empowered to solve problems that matter to them. I want them to see the world full of opportunities where they can create jobs rather than ascribe to what they perceive as the "right" path. This can begin with asking different questions than " What do you want to be when you grow up?"

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Why We Should Stop Asking Kids What They Want To Be When They Grow Up

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While I was putting my son to bed the other night he was uncharacteristically sad and when asked what was wrong, he said, "I don't know what I want to be when I grow up." This is not what I expecte...

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Richard's posts on OC integration progress (1 of 8)

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Richard's posts on OC integration progress (1 of 8)

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Your school may have implemented many new initiatives during the last decade. Your students might now be using mobile digital devices or doing project-based learning for part of the week, but it really is time to think big. , are now aware that Researchers governments, and tens of thousands of numerous pressures are encouraging a change to the very purpose of a day at school to meet rapid developments in economies, technology, business, the environment, and social issues around the world.

But ... I work in a normal high school. You know, those things with lessons, subjects, and teachers. Why change this and what should schools change into if they are to meet the current world challenges and demands from industries? More importantly, how does a school make real change and keep everybody (most) happy?

Time for a Revolution

This is the first in a series of posts I will be writing over the next two years about the practical issues in revolutionising a school. Now 60 years since its establishment, my own school is formally starting on a journey to launch as a very different high school experience in 2020. Probably one without timetabled subjects, class lessons, and tests. An institution that understands its part in and engages with local and global communities. A school whose structures and systems are designed around respecting and developing the individual for who they are and not processing the masses. I thought it was important to document our journey but let's start with how my currently traditional high school got to this point and what our aim is.

Stage 1: Our groundwork for change

Although we have allowed only a two year run-in to redesign and launch the school day for most of our students, we have been building towards this shift for at least 10 years. After a decade of talking about change and "modernising," we have tinkered with the common minor shifts like Bring-Your-Own-Device (2011) and some inquiry-based learning (only for younger learners) but only if they didn't impact on the core systems that had existed for 60 years. We went digital, we discussed SAMR (most stayed on substitution), we changed observations of teaching into learning discussions with students, we made sharing teachers' inquiry into their own practice a norm.

In fact, teachers were often talking about having initiative fatigue, having to make shifts to their routines and habits every year. Any negative conversations I had with teachers about these initiatives clearly indicated that it was precisely because we weren't changing the core business of the school day that made things like BYOD and Student-centred-learning seem arbitrary and difficult to justify within the context of aiming to do what we've always done.

Step 1a : Build a Convincing argument

It's not comfortable when a leader feels they're out of the loop on something. If other 'important' people are talking about and doing things, then this is what can drive leaders to rush back to school with yet another initiative. But fortunately for people wanting genuine revolution, there is such a raft of evidence and demands for whole-system change from all sectors of society around the world, that making leaders aware of a multi-pronged argument is easy enough with a little homework. To get started, here's part of my collection that convinced leaders & teachers in my school to start work on our "revolution":

Step 1b: Spend on time to support change

Once the administration are convinced it's worth looking at, it's time to involve your middle leaders but remember, everyone is busy. To prove that real change has true value, you have to prove that value by allocating proper time to debate and plan around what the evidence means. For us this means whole days out of class for planning, school visits, increased PD budget allocation, conferences and training. Only by the administration showing true commitment to supporting the leaders and teachers through this change will momentum be maintained. Too much time between 'events' and most teachers will return their mind and body to old routines and habits. Another tool that is helping us is a categorised digital collation of evidence, discoveries, problems, and ideas from all involved. For this, we are using a Google Community. Once we have decided on the final scope for our revolution, this community discussion will be expanded to include as many stakeholders as we can get involved. This approach allows everyone to have a say within their own busy schedule.

Now we have a reason for change and the initial momentum. it's time for Stage 2

Stage 2: Announcing and shaping our revolution
Click here for Part 2

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Your school may have implemented many new initiatives during the last decade. Your students might now be using mobile digital devices or doing project-based learning for part of the week, but it really is time to think big. Researchers, governments, and tens of thousands of teachers are now aware that numerous pressures are encouraging a...

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In this blog, Bede Gilmore, principal of Winchester School in Palmerston North, outlines some of the processes undertaken, and explains some of the decisions made, when reviewing their school curriculum with their community.

Which is the most important? Knowledge or skills?

Shane Kennedy's post, " Curriculum, the culprit?" certainly caused me to pause and think more deeply about what is most important, content knowledge or skills. In deciding what is important we often turn to measures of academic performance, and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has been a favourable measure by many who make decisions about education in our country. If however, we change the lens by which we judge the outcomes of our education system, then we might be surprised by what we learn about our students and what we see as a result of our system.

What if student well-being or happiness was the most important outcome?

What if we judged the success of our education system on what we observe in our society?

Have we got our priorities right?

To clarify, I do believe in content or knowledge teaching because there is a time and place for us as teachers to impart ideas and clarify understandings. However, if all we do is teach content, then we're neither fulfilling the full vision of The New Zealand Curriculum, nor are we equipping our students with all the necessary skills that they will need to actually "cut it" in today's society. Also, who decides what's most important or what will make our youth most likely to succeed?

The only way to really know is to ask your school community. I interpret this as developing a local curriculum. That is, one where our school's community has decided what will be prioritised. In New Zealand we have the autonomy and the freedom to develop our own curriculum and to decide what we believe is most important for the students of our schools. Asking our community what they value above all else determines what we focus on. And what is focussed on gets achieved.

We've placed key competencies as being important within our school curriculum. When I had been principal for a few weeks at my current school, I simply asked, "What kind of learner do you want your child to be?" All responses were Wordled, and the following image helped us see what our community wanted.

There was some initial alignment to Michael Fullan's New Pedagogies for Deep Learning work, which has six competencies: collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, citizenship, character, and communication. After further consultation with the community, staff and students, we've decided on our outcomes for Winchester School.

Students, teachers, and parents were consulted as to what they considered to be important to learn about. As the outcomes emerged it was important to consider what we would learn and how this would support our outcomes. For example, in the Wordle above, our community indicated that we want our children to be confident. Therefore we have to consider what learning experiences will enable this outcome to occur.

I gave thought to where "curiosity" would fit and whether it would be a stand alone outcome. I was conscious of not letting there be too many Cs to remember. Four sounds good when you say them aloud - "Confident, Creative, Connected, Communicators." The next step was to match these outcomes with learning experiences. It's important that there is a "connect" between the two. Many schools have values or have created leaver profiles, but many have not matched these valued outcomes to what is actually being taught and learned.

Inquiry curriculum summary

Using an inquiry approach to learning became apparent because this would support our prioritised outcomes. Kath Murdoch's work ( The Power of Inquiry) was a major influence on helping shape what our inquiry curriculum would look like. Having surveyed the community on what they thought was most important to learn enabled us to prioritise learning contexts.

These ideas were coupled with our outcomes and then The New Zealand Curriculum was considered again to ensure all learning areas would be explored by our students.

Learning to Learn (PDF, 1 MB)

A local curriculum

Developing a local curriculum is important because the process consolidates what each school does. A local curriculum should not be about cutting anything out, but rather highlighting what is most valued from the school community's perspective. A local curriculum enables a common language to be developed within each school and is the framework for planning. The review process gives a focus and a reason for doing what we do. Considering what the NZC states and ensuring that all learning areas are included is also an important part of the process.

Our New Zealand Curriculum places a heavy emphasis on the key competencies, and some critics would question how these outcomes might be measured. Questions asked could include: "How will our school know if students are improving at being confident or creative?" This is a fair question. We are embedding our outcomes into reporting to parents so that progress and achievement can be seen over time. We are developing key descriptors for each of our four outcomes so we can report against those.

We have now obtained feedback from parents about this aspect of the report and most of those who responded feel informed about these outcomes and what they mean for their children and that, coupled with a mid year interview, things are well explained. We now have school wide data that enables us to identify areas of strength or weakness in a class, team, or across the school.

When placing key competencies so importantly within our curriculum, a key component in knowing whether students are developing their skills is through teachers observing students. Kath Murdoch has a term for this - "release". She names "release" as one of nine key teacher attributes in her book, " The Power of Inquiry". A teacher who can release themselves from the learning process for periods of time is able to observe what is actually happening in the class.

There are many facets to consider when developing a local curriculum. Our next step is to add the Māori component to the 4Cs. We wish to have translations for each of our 4Cs and to have an accompanying whakataukī for each aspect.

I hope that outlining the process we undertook is useful for any reader considering what process they might use as they review their own school curriculum.
Related resources
Reviewing your curriculum
This section supports school and curriculum leaders, and professional learning and development providers with the process of curriculum design and review.

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In this blog, Bede Gilmore, principal of Winchester School in Palmerston North, outlines some of the processes undertaken, and explains some of the decisions made, when reviewing their school curriculum with their community. Shane Kennedy's post, " Curriculum, the culprit?" certainly caused me to pause and think more deeply about what is most important, content knowledge or skills.

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To help reach our goal of actively supporting and enhancing the work of the United Nations' efforts within K-12 classrooms, our TeachSDGs organization contributes to the 2030 Agenda in the following...

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