Will Smith's Truth

“The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill.

 

 I will not be out-worked, period.

 

You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things…in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’re two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.”

 

- Will Smith

It really is this simple. 

Work harder and work smarter!

Can

I was paid a wonderful compliment recently by a very smart and very effective educator, she said, "It is great to work with someone who believes we can make it happen, even if we have no clue how it will happen."

"How" will never slow us down. "How" will never stop us.
We know we "can," because "Belief is the silent side of action."

Our vision is big and we understand and relentlessly prepare for the work that it takes to implement that vision.

William Easterly, writes "Planners announce good intentions, but don't motivate anyone to carry them out; Searchers find (or create) things that work and build on them."

Everyone who focuses on HOW to do it, may never do it. These are Easterly's "planners."

Everyone who focuses on WHY we do it, can make it happen. These are Easterly's "searchers."

Be a Searcher.

Learn. Act. Imagine. Repeat.

Best advice I ever gave.

Grand Slam

On February 16th, Newton's Lab and the Greengineers hosted the MA Secretary of Education, Paul Reville, Newotn Mayor, Setti Warren, and almost 200 other guests for a showcase of educational innovation. The central theme of the day was "collaboration."

The link below will connect you to a short and wonderful slideshow/video of the event, produced by the Newton Patch.

Innovation and Inspiration at Newton's Lab

We seem to use that word (collaboration) a lot in the lab. And the more I think about it, the more I agree that it is the correct word to describe the work of innovation and ingenuity.
Despite the recent spin on the power of introverts, I believe that real implementation and progress depend upon collaborative efforts.

I know that most of the impetus for change often comes from that singular and quiet place of introspection, but it would also die there, in that quiet place, without the axis of collaboration to motor and maintain change.

I invented the Greengineers, from an intellectual  quiet place, but the Greengineers have grown far beyond my vision because of the students' ability to engage that vision and make it their own.

One of the most important aspects of that engagement comes from Preston Cline's research on Mission-Critical teams. He's articulated that one significant element of a mission-critical team is that every member sees themselves in a leadership position regardless of their role on the team. That's true for the engaged student and classroom.  I've written this before, but one question that keeps popping up for me is, "how necessary are our students?"

In most classrooms, the answer is "not." The truth is - Students are not necessary.  Well, engagement will not happen in that environment. Impossible. Never going to happen.

Every time a teacher begins planning a lesson, they need to grapple with that question before they plan one minute of curriculum, instruction, or assessment. And if they don't have a good answer, (hint...the only answer is "I have no lesson without the total (87%) investment from my students, or I better pack it up and head home, if my students are not essential to this plan), then STOP.

STOP and find an ally to help re-imagine how to design your students back into your lessons.

And YES the times demand this reverse engineering, this re-imagination.  In the past (limited to industrial education, aka modern, traditional education), essential students  were not necessary, because "teacher" was sole source of information. Now, schools and teachers must see themselves as translators and inventors in this information age. Access to information is no longer limited to the classroom and teacher. Those two things (classroom and teacher) should not be in competition with the endlessness of digital information either. Our role as educators is exactly how Umberto Eco predicted in "Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare," when he hints that it's not the source of information (he called it "communication") that's important anymore, but the destination. We, as teachers and scholars, are responsible for facilitating the discussion of the arriving message, at the destination of information (our communities) - "in light of the codes at the destination, comparing them with the codes at the source."

In the past, power sought to control the source and the channel of information. That was the function of industrial, traditional, modern education. However, the internet forced a change, similar to telephone and television, but on a scale unimagined.

EVERY AGE has been the information age. Listen humans. For humans, every age is the information age.

Pre-Gutenberg the source, channel, and destination of information were close in proximity and shared. Which means information was verifiable by experience and observation.  Circa Gutenberg these three (source, channel, destination) were distant, but shared, and limited in translation and interpretation. We had to hope the great documents were being honestly translated and interpreted. This post-Gutenberg (internet) time is a bombardment of information, a ceaseless, scope-less, purposeless mess of incredible, horrifying, and beautiful information.

We, the educators, must facilitate the complex and ill-defined dialogue to engage this endless information. We, as we have always done, will guide communities (and more importantly INDIVIDUALS) to filter out, slow down, and grapple with this new (not new) information age.

That's 21st century learning.  Which is actually 1st century learning, with new tools and new challenges.

We began this semester, with our advanced research students (aka CAPS-SYP), exploring the analogy of archaeology and artifacts as a great metaphor for research. We co-opted the language and process of archaeology  - mapping the dig site with a grid, excavations and the variety of tools used, and ultimately calling all discoveries (on the research dig) artifacts.

It's working.

This hunch is working. The students are getting it and are not afraid of the language/process of research. With this archaeology metaphor, research is now a fun and messy mystery to be solved. There are artifacts to find and stories to tell about them.

Here's the slide show we used to start the process.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/pub?id=1kiVBxzWC-EAPfJpiJvs3sleH8W34FJamU3uJy6gZ4e4&start=true&loop=true&delayms=3000


Stanford's Design School says, "research should be seen as a creative act as much as it is analytical."

Disruptive juggling, part 2

So, we're jugglers. Some are better than others. Some are happy juggling their three bean bags for an entire career. Some are not. Here's the rub...

So, in our jobs as educators, juggling is a life long pursuit. Teaching is an eternal competency. The variables are always changing, at least yearly, with new students.

But, some of us grow tired of the bean bags and want to juggle torches and swords. Now, just the mention of juggling swords and torches is disruptive to most. It's disruptive even if you promise not to include others in your attempts and practice sessions. Never mind public performances. Never mind reaching out and asking those bean bag jugglers to partner with you in a new flaming sword juggling routine.

So, this is how I see educational innovation and the disruption it brings - trying to juggle swords and torches next to people just trying to keep their bean bags moving and not dropping.

So, to those people who are afraid of the flaming sword jugglers across the room, the innovative jugglers, I say, "don't worry," or "trust us, we're professionals, too."

And until we ask or demand that you participate in the flaming sword routine, just back up and know that we'll give you a head's-up if one of the sharp torches gets loose and is heading your way.

Until then, let us innovate.

disruptive juggling

So, I have a new analogy for innovation in the classroom and the disruption it causes. First let me explain why disruption is a beautiful thing. I was asked by members of a school committee (another name for a school board), "what is innovation?" My response was and still is, "You can call innovation anything you want. You can park it in the arts or the sciences, but what innovation will always be...is disruption." Now, that word is a bad, bad thing for most folks, especially in the static walls of a ancient educational model. Can you hear the old school masters echoing, "You will not disrupt this classroom!" or "You are a disruption to learning, young man." Maybe that was just my history. In any case, we spend most of our lives, personally and professionally, trying to avoid any and all disruptive situations. I'm certain it's tied to some evolutionary force for survival.  It's root is in Latin. It means "to break apart." In our modern connotations, we've added, "to throw into a state of confusion." Hence the fear and negative attention the word draws. But if we could go back to something I wrote a few sentences ago, to this concept of "some evolutionary force of survival," I think we'll start to see how beautiful and necessary "disruption" is as an evolutionary force  for our species.

We're only human. It is necessary for us to build, to make, to create, to survive. Innovation is evolution, is disruption to known systems and patterns of operation. Innovation is analysis - remember to "break apart" - of a modus operandi. Now if we called innovation "disruptive analysis" we'd sound all sorts of smart. Even though we'd be linguistically challenged and redundant. But that's all this is folks. If innovation is disruptive and disruption is analysis, then innovation is analysis. Analysis is Greek for a "dissolving." Invention is what you do with the parts you've separated. Innovation is the environment that facilitate and celebrates the itemized analysis of parts of a systems. If we don't create this space for innovation we will not evolve.

The analogy is this...

How many people here can juggle? And remember juggling is at least three objects in motion at the same time in and out of your hands. Tossing around two objects is not juggling. Ok, usual response to the question is 2-3 out of 20 people can juggle. A few more have tried.  Now let's look at the face of a first attempt at juggling, either complete cluelessness or total concentration. If you've ever been coached by a juggler, they always say face a wall, neophyte jugglers are sent to the corner of the room. Take that for whatever it's worth. Let's speed this up...

So let's imagine our jobs as juggling. It's an appropriate metaphor, almost cliche. A new job, hopefully you're juggling bean bags. No, negative impact. Just gotta focus on keeping the bean bags moving. but you cannot turn your head away for a second. And as a newbie, you will drop. The effect is actually in the fact the the bean bags are being pulled away from you. Hence the face the wall instruction from jugglers. Ok, as experience grows, you're still juggling, and now you can turn your head, now you can possibly have a conversation while juggling,  maybe even you have added an extra bean bag, whoa, how fancy of you now, go stevie, go it stevie, it's your birthday, its your birthday.

You know the feeling. As a newbie and as a moderately experienced juggler and the feeling of satisfaction of talking and juggling and keeping the bean bags moving. That's part one.

For the last year and a half, I've been framing my teaching and my learning around the explicit "design thinking" language shared by IDEO and Stanford's d.school.  This was an easy move because my practice was already there. I have been a design thinking teacher since 1996. I didn't know there was a language and maybe there wasn't in 1996, but I was doing it, along with scores of other committed teachers. We were committed to our students, not our principals or state standards. In design-thinking, Observe and Empathize sit at the center of design thinking and thats where you'll find great teachers.

I heard Steven Johnson say, "Chance favors the connected mind," during his TED talk in 2010. I believe design thinking helps create the "space" that fosters the connected mind. I would alter his sentiment this way, "innovation, imagination, and ingenuity favor the connected mind."

So, what is a connected mind? where is the connected mind? how do we create or facilitate the connected mind?

Read, Herb Childress's, "17 Reasons Football is Better than High School," or read up on Jane McGonigal's work on gaming and complex social solutions. They both offer wonderful insights on the connected mind, where to find it, how to cultivate it.

My job has always been to create the "space" that facilitates the connected mind. "Space" for a teacher is sometimes physical, but more often "procedural." What we do in class, is always more important than where we do these things.

Here's a photo of a flow chart (my version) from David Kelly's and Stanford's d.school (IDEO's) ideas on design thinking.

I'm constantly tweaking it to fit my vision and my practice.  But that's the easy (fun) part, because as I said, the core of my practice is already there.

I think there's something foundational in this approach to learning. In the best way, design thinking was reverse-engineered around learning.

I've already made changes to this mind-map.

I'll post those soon.

 In Spike Lee's, "Mo'Betta Blues," Bleek, played by Denzel Washington, says, "I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night." I think about this quote often because I believe this represents my learning curve as a teacher. Steep. New. Fast. Endless.

"Fail fast, succeed sooner." (via Tom Peters)

I'm a fast failer.

Two quotes that direct my action and my belief...

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds"
-Albert Einstein

"When the last fish has been caught,
When the last tree has been chopped down,
Then you will know that money cannot be eaten."
-Cree Nation

a tree?

I think one root of learning is the art of imitation. Frank Smith inspired this concept in his brilliant book, Insult to Intelligence. Smith writes, that we are attracted to learn, first from people doing things we think are worth doing. He calls those things clubs we'd like to join. We learn to play guitar because we want to be in the musicians' club. We may never be good enough to play in a club, but we're in the club as players. We learn to play chess, to act, write, debate, build, make, sell, etc, because, first someone we admired demonstrated those skills and second because we would like to see ourselves in that community of thinkers and doers. This echoes Pearse's "the only think we teach is the enthusiasm to learn." If you think about all things you know well, most of them would fit into this process, in some form.

So what's the pattern? What is the common denominator?

I think it's the profound step, the autonomous act of an individual. It's the conscious/conscience decision to be - Something in this world. To engage something, that offers us the cognitive and visceral experience of living on earth. Something that confirms our selves as existential beings (I really tried not to use that word, sorry).  Is this FREEDOM? Is this concept of freedom, Emerson's "Self-Reliance"? Is it one half of Buber's "I-Thou"?  I'm not sure, but I lean towards  -YES.

This works across human culture, in jungles of soil and jungles of concrete. Anthropology can teach us a lot about this. Tribal roles (healer, warrior, hunter, counselor,) and the decisions to adopt those roles are valued and necessary for both the individual's well-being, as well as, the society's.  And this (tribal role) process is very much alive in all of our modern cities and towns.

School, like the society it mirrors, offers a beautiful contradiction regarding this concept. We offer students a variety of roles and clubs to experience. We support kids in joining the clubs of writers, artists, musicians, scientists, etc.  In some ways, in some good schools, that's still the mission. But, the contradiction comes when schools believe and behave less in the student's interest and need of this autonomous act of learning, and demand control. Most school decisions are decisions of control and mediocre management. Most schools are not willing to let go enough to trust in this core function of human development. Most schools tend the ever-important leaves (of learning) by pruning and such, but forget or actively deny the roots - and the soil.

I want to tend the soil, first. and trust that the leaves will shine in the sun.

This is poetry...(the underlined bits)

"Beyond the numbers, the impulse to return to Greece’s rural roots itself represents a telling new tendency since the onset of the crisis — a turning inward, a quiet kind of national pride in response to the overall gloom. Dimitris Kaloupis, who left his job as a construction worker 20 years ago during the boom years and now is a full-time farmer in Volissos, raises his own animals and vegetables and runs a local tavern. He said he thought Greece could handle this crisis, as it had many others."

“We invented civilization, and we’ll take it back,” Mr. Kaloupis said over a lunch of stewed lamb that he raised himself. If the Greek economy really plummets beyond repair, “I will take the rock in my hand and squeeze it, and from the water that comes out of it, I’ll make pilaf to feed my daughter. We’ll manage.”

FROM: the NY TIMES, "With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land," By RACHEL DONADIO

Published: January 8, 2012

rage and resolve, part 1

In some disconnected, yet tangible way I still carry the memory and the function of memory of an existentially overanxious and somewhat angry 14-year-old boy, who despite his personal history, has finally learned the value of homework. Rage and Resolve define my practice. The rage as a child was rooted in my memory of being a student who remained invisible beneath the raw mess of teenage angst. As a teacher, the rage resurfaces when I see a system that perpetually ignores the very people we are to serve. My resolve was born in learning how to circumvent the system and listen to students even in their silence.

The terrible beauty of childhood is language. The ability (or inability) to reflect and articulate the chaos of real experience is a standard expectation unfairly held against all students. To confirm emotion, real feelings when language fails to, was a great discovery in my personal and professional life. The need to be heard and understood is the ache of existence. The great teacher and leader will seek and or create the paths toward this goal (to be heard and understood), even if it means becoming a mind reader. In schools, invisibility sits beneath both success and failure. Kids at the top are just as invisible as kids in the middle and kids at the bottom. My practice is driven by an attempt to balance understanding the value of students as they are and as they can become. I needed rage and resolve to see beyond, speak beyond, and most importantly to listen beyond the limits of language and experience. My rage was natural and easy, as it is for most 14-year-old boys, but only through 21 years of experience with students, did I discover my resolve.

Someone recently asked why I titled a blog about education "contagious enthusiasm."

Here's my answer.

In Patrick Pearse's brilliant little manifesto, "The Murder Machine," (please find it and read it, it's online) he wrote, "The only thing we teach, is the enthusiasm to learn."

I believe this is true.

SO, I thought I could suppress some of my thoughts and beliefs about grades in education. But, as I always say, "belief is the silent side of action," except in my case, silence is not one of my virtues. So, I slipped. My rage against grades cannot be stifled. I try often and fail every time.

Rage, as a word, scares people. It's not a light word. The word does not hint at its definition, it is its definition. Similar to "disruption," we'll talk about that word later. People hear the word and immediately there is a defensive reaction, conscious or not. I like the word for these reasons. But I've also become more aware of my responsibility with words and the reaction of others. I have to be, if I want to be part of the leadership of my school community. As a member of the followership, that may not be as important. But for leaders, understanding and reflecting on the power of language is critical.

Thomas Sergiovanni, professor of Education at Trinity (San Antonio, TX) hinted that unpacking "rage" was a useful tool for educational leaders. He implies that, rage is the manifestation of a reasonable person's values being compromised. So, instead of reeling against the rage of teachers, school administrators could see rage as a concrete example of a teacher's core values being disrupted. An effective, thoughtful teacher that communicates rage, should be heard.

Here goes...

Grades are the single most destructive force in education. Grades have zero connection to learning. There is no correlation between the arbitrary alpha-numeric system and an individual's authentic learning. I know too many honor's students and graduates of Ivy leagues, that are dumb as stumps. This destructive and disruptive force is most apparent in the culture that believes grades equal intelligence. They do not. Grades will never do this. Grades cannot do this. There are a lot of intelligent people that get good grades. And the exact opposite of that is true as well. Grades indicate one thing, they reflect how well a student plays the game of school. That's it.

Think about it this way. I play guitar, and my new love, the ukulele. I have played guitar since the 4th grade (30 plus years experience). I've played in bands, I've made money playing guitar. I play everyday. I write original songs. People, who don't know me or know that I wrote these songs, enjoy these songs. In other words, plenty of objective validation. However, I can't play "Guitar Hero" or "Rock Band" to save my life. I can't earn the points necessary to advance to any level in these games. I argue that school is like that game. And grades are nothing more than virtual points applied to an unreal, or as Umberto Eco likes to call it, "Hyper-real" environment, we call it school. An average classroom functions this way. An above average classroom offers our students more than grades.

Here's another way to think about grades as an absurd "hyper-reality"...

There's a reason way coaches do not call a game. That's what referees are for, they call the game. I believe that grades are a travesty to learning because a teacher cannot be a guide and a gatekeeper at the same time. If my job as an English teacher (17 years and counting) is to make my students better readers and better writers (and as a result or as a prereq.) better thinkers/communicators, then my focus should be on guiding my students. We need to invite external, objective gatekeepers into our schools and classrooms (or send our students out). They already exist in every industry and every community. If our students are better writers, let them write for the local newspapers (online versions, of course). If our students are better readers let them extract the nuance of a legal document with a local law firm. That's an appropriate indicator of learning.

How would you teach, if grades did not exist?

What would you teach, if grades did not exist?

Why would you teach, if grades did not exist?

are your students necessary?

I asked a few teachers that question. "In your classroom, how necessary are your students?" In other words, "how essentially necessary are the students to the material/content you bring?" In this question, I believe, is the root of educational reform. In every classroom, a student must be engaged as an absolutely essential necessity. If the textbook or the lesson plan, or god-forbid, the internet is the most essential component of the classroom, something is very wrong. Kurt Hahn wrote, "On this journey there are no passengers, only crew." How many classrooms operate with this mantra? Well, the answers is, only the classrooms that are highly effective.

What's the difference between a piano lesson and a piano recital - What's the most essential difference? Well, a good teacher is critical as well as a piano that's mostly in tune. There's a great story about Charlie Parker playing a sold-out show on a plastic saxophone he bought at a Woolworth's because he lost his real saxophone. So, if there's truth in that legend, then a master player can deliver with a less than master instrument. But that's still just a recital. What about the lesson? Well, in a lesson the necessary student is the difference. Because if there's no "student," there's no lesson and if there's no lesson if there's no learning. We can have the best, most accomplished piano teacher/player and put them at the most finely crafted piano and have them play for an informed audience. The members of that audience are passengers, not crew; they are not necessary. And while listening to great piano playing is a wonderful experience, it is not experiential. Only students as crew in a classroom make the difference. Patrick Pearse, Irish educator and revolutionary, wrote, "The only thing we teach is the enthusiasm to learn." After 21 years with students, I believe this to be true.

The failure to unpack and grapple with this fundamental aspect of learning, of education is a great non sequitur. It's not true that students are ESSENTIAL in classrooms across the country. In our average English classroom, Macbeth is more important. In Science, the right answer to the chemistry lab is more important. In History, the Hammurabi Code is more important. That's what we find in most Ed. reform plans. I've never been to a meeting or heard any educator ask this question (How necessary are your students?) when the topic was closing the achievement gap or empowering students to take the lead in their learning. (that sounds like a great workshop title. Sign up for my workshop today!) How essential are your students to your lesson? Now, all top-down mechanisms for change in a classroom that do not put this question front and center will create an Epic Fail. always.

So, to sum this up...

What if you took away grades? Because I think grades are the tangible mechanism that keeps students from being necessary. Grades are a false gate-keeper. They're too tidy and neat. The brain and learning are not. We say, as educators, that grades are not important, but we've elevated that alpha-numeric laurel to the bottom line. We've packed this symbol, which is symbolic of everything except learning and intelligence, with the power to cloud our judgement and delude the masses into thinking that the little letter/number lie is learning. It is not.

Let the teachers say, let the students know...

This class can't function without you.

innovation and education

The most innovative thing I have ever seen in a classroom happened around 20 lines from a Walt Whitman poem. The poem was from Leaves of Grass and students took turns reading sections and they became the voices of Whitman's America. They heard, in each other, the real history, the real diversity, the real joy and pain, the wonderful and awful of the 1890's post-war United States. They did not need the internet or a smart interactive white board. (And let me just interject, the smartest thing in the classroom should not be a white board.) They needed the community of thinkers. They needed a teacher who would set-up the learning space to allow for that magic to happen through a powerful poem. Did the teacher plan for that magic to happen, no. Did that teacher know that the voices in the poem would echo off the walls and through the students, no. What this teacher did was create the space and time, where it could happen. Those students became essential to that class.

Yes

The power of a simple word is profound. Yes is one of those words. I think less about the use of the word in some particular context and more in its function to inspire. Yes, with a smile is what we strive to provide in any industry, any relationship, any context. Unless of course, you're one of those other people. The negative people that suck the fun and function out of every breath on earth. We don't like those people. Especially if they call themselves realists. Really, they're not.

In a classroom, Yes is transformative. Yes, empowers and inspires students towards more. If we create the structure in our classrooms that enables more Yes, then we'll be see positive change and growth. This is choice architecture. This is our job as teachers.

Remember, change is inevitable, but growth must be guided.

Be a guide.