21k12

Hello Blog visitors!  A special invitation to all of you coming  for information about the ISAS Teacher Conference: Please comment.   Whether you attended the event, or are an ISAS member school teacher or administrator, we want to hear from you here!   Also, take the time to read the comments others have made (which often requires you click on the “more” button at the bottom of each entry on the homepage.      Thank you!

ISAS did a great job with this conference, and their team deserves great praise.    They asked me to remind readers that you can find many of the slide presentations that our speakers presented online, HERE, at their website.    Check them out.

Great to see a Harvard guy make good; Shawn Achor is introduced as a graduate of both Harvard and Havard Divinity school, and for a period, the most popular lecturer at Harvard, on the topic of Happiness.   His project, he explains, is to take the research of positive psychology and bring from it the most important nuggets for parents and educators.

Shawn shares a scatterplot graph with a very clear trend, and as he talks about it, he makes fun, funny, and self-deprecating comments; while soft-spoken, he is already impressing us with his charm.

Traditional psychology is about how we can move depressed people back up to average; but Achor worries that only reduces the purpose and project to only how we help people become average.   If we study positive outliers, we can move up the average to a higher place, and help everyone to become happier.  We need to stop focusing on ‘getting rid’ of the bad things and focus on “other side of the curve” towards thriving. (more…)

Quest is a public school (of choice) in Houston.  The video we watched came from CES.  Quest describes itself this way:

Quest High School facilitators seek to use individualized knowledge of each student to shape that student’s schooling and to teach habits of the heart and mind through three core curriculum areas: Academic Foundations are based on state and national standards and include language arts, social studies, fine arts, mathematics, the sciences, health and Spanish. Learner Behaviors are affective proficiencies such as problem solving, critical thinking, self-discipline, social cooperation, communication and citizenship that are essential for student success in school and work. Workplace Tools teach technology and research skills such as computer graphics, word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software.

Tony tells the audience that these are the critical Questions for Consideration, about the video, but quite possibly, they are good questions to ask in observing any school:

• What skills are these students learning?
• How they are being motivated to learn?
• What is the teacher’s role in how they are being asked to learn?

As before, standard font is largely Tony’s own words, italics are my own commentary.

Cannot help but note as I look at the website for Quest HighSchool that their teachers are referred to not as teachers but as facilitators– as I was just writing in the previous post, sometimes even talking about “teaching” can put the wrong emphasis on the main point of schooling, which is faciliatating learning.

Tony invites the room to discuss his first few questions, and the room is buzzing, and then asks two more questions:

• 1. What would have to change in your schools to make this kind of teaching and learning more the norm?
• 2. What would you have to do to move in this direction? Start doing?  Stop doing?  (more…)

Mark Desjardins, Head of Holland Hall in Tulsa (and newly appointed Head of St. Johns in Houston) introduces Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap, a book which has been a huge influence on my thinking about the necessary reform of high school education to meet the changing demands of a fast changing world.

Mark tells a story of Dr. Wagner’s visit to Holland Hall.   During an evening presentation Mark had an interesting conversation, where some of the attendees were parents who were opposed to school progress and reform at Holland Hall.   One of those parents sought Mark out, and one of them asked Mark why he hasn’t moved MORE swiftly to adopt the reforms Dr. Wagner advocated, to which Mark responded: “If I had adopted all of the changes Dr. Wagner advocated, you wouldn’t have only wanted to run me over in the parking lot, you would have actually have run me over.

Tony begins, with a note that it is hard to follow Dan Pink–”I hate following that guy.”  Most of the below are direct quotes from Tony, but my comments are in italics:

Teaching matters, learning matters more, mastery matters most! This is so important– too often we conceptualize the project of schooling to promote and ensure good teaching, but we have to try harder to keep the focus on good learning.   I myself almost find myself shrinking away from talking about teaching as a project at all, but instead prefer the terminology faciliatating learning.   Over on the twitter feed, other attendees are also appreciative of Tony’s recognition that the name of this conference, Teaching Matters, is a little tiny bit off-base.  (more…)

Thursday afternoon, two sessions ran side by side, and I was unable to attend the Eagleman presentation: the following is a post by Chris Bigenho; you can see his blog here.  My thanks to Chris.

Touring 10 Unsolved Questions of the Brain with Dr. David Eagleman

What are memories and where are they stored? How are they retrieved? How does the brain work? What are emotions? These and many other questions were briefly explored as Dr. David Eagleman spoke to packed house at the ISAS Teacher’s conference in Dallas, Texas. Dr. Eagleman took the room on an amazing and engaging journey of the brain as he introduced 10 unresolved questions of the brain. With humor, wit and an amazing ability to make complex material accessible to the layperson, Dr. Eagleman increased our wonder about the 3 pound organ that allows us to think, feel, cry, laugh, and learn. So what were some of the big ideas from this tour? Here are a few that caught my attention. (more…)

This is only my second time seeing Dan Pink, and it is great to be here.   I count Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, as being for me my single greatest inspiration to entirely rethink, about five years ago, how education must change with our changing times.   To be sure, there have been many more books, articles, and school visits since then which have informed and refined my thinking, but I still vividly remember the day I sat down on a cabin porch near Lake Tahoe to read Pink one summer afternoon, and “waking up” to a new vision of education in what is still our new century.

Over the past week I have read Drive, and for those reading this off-site, I encourage you to view the TED video above which conveys these ideas usefully and succinctly.  I am intending to publish here in the next few days a review of Drive.

Session begins with an introduction by Scott Griggs, who quotes Pat Bassett to make the point that he cannot think of any environment which provide all community members, from Head of School to Teacher to Student,  Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose, than independent schools!

Pink opens with the “old” adage, “behind every successful man lies a very surprised mother-in-law.”

Dan tells us he has spent the last few years studying the science of human motivation– an endlessly, bottomlessly fascinating subject. (more…)

Tough choice this hour; both sessions are very attractive, but I am sticking with the plan to learn from Andrew Zucker on web 2.0 “realities, not hype.”  From quick glances, it seems clear that the other session, Ten Unsolved Questions of the Brain, is considerably more crowded, perhaps two or three times more in attendance over there.   Funny the psychology that exerts itself upon me to want to follow the crowd.

Arnie Cohen, Head of Lamplighter, speaks of the progress his school has made in just ten years, how swiftly and strongly it has come into the digital age.   Andrew Zucker, we are told, has had a long career in teaching and technology, beginning with years teaching at Milton Academy and then all the way to the US Department of Education.

Zucker begins with a warm endorsement of independent schools: “teachers and parents are still more important than digital media,” and “independent schools have a lot to offer to public schools.”    Zucker encourages us in independent schools to write, publish, and share our good ideas and practices with other schools and systems.

Top three reasons our students’ homework is missing in the new century

• I emailed it, didn’t you get it?
• Tech support help was down
• I had to delete, needed space for iTunes

Technology is here, it has advantages and disadvantages, but we have to reckon with it.    Technology is coming at us like a firehose, one which we have to drink from without getting hurt or drowned.  (Interesting conversation over on Twitter: is Zucker disserving his very purpose of encouraging digital integration in schooling by his expression of sympathy for those who feel overwhelmed by this; is his focus on the fear actually reinforcing the fear?)

Take your time, you need to innovate, you cannot keep up with it.” (more…)

An entertaining introduction brings us to our first major speaker, Samuel Betances.   His work, we are told, revolves around the idea “there are many reasons, but there are few excuses.”   A biography of him is here.  As we were told, he has a doctorate from Harvard, yet is a high school drop-out.

Born in Harlem, but then he was raised, he tells us with quite the rolled “r” in Puerto Rico, and we learn more about his family and upbringing, and even his facial genetic heritage– “that is why I look Arab,” he says to rollicking laughter.  Betances urges us to give him some call and response, and after several options are suggested for response, he asks us to use the Emeril “Bam” when we hear something we support and admire.

“How do we make our differences count, how do we ensure we can create the inclusive, diverse teams that are essential to making our society more productive, more innovative, more successful?”

“This is the first nation (ever) to elect a black President by a majority of non-black people! This says something of what we are capable of doing, symbolically.”

Dr. Betances is passionate,  and he cares deeply, calling for a new identity, a new way for children of mixed races and backgrounds: he calls the identity a “Proud Blended Heritage American.”  “Teach the Children!” As a fellow attendee writing on Twitter reports “Depth/wisdom of Dr Betances manages to bring up challenging cultural/political issues here in a way that empowers all that hear him.”

Contact our speaker at Samuel@betances.com, or at his site, www.betances.com; his firm is diversity consulting, and his motto is “strengthening the world of work through diversity.” He assures the audience he will return all emails.

Dr. Betances recalls being told: “You don’t have enough words to graduate; you have intelligence, but middle class people have 3500 words or more, but you and others have only 2000 or fewer.  You don’t lack intelligence, you lack words!” (more…)

Kicking off with remarks from the ISAS President, Arnie Holtberg from St. Marks, and Rhonda Durham, ISAS ED.

Rhonda opens with the point it is a nice day to be inside and warm, and she is right, though I wish it were warmer still in here.   The topic today is Teaching Matters, because after all, that is what our schools exist to do.  Rhonda acknowledges her event planning committee.

(Looking around the room, a quick comment: people here are much (much!) better dressed than at the comparable event I attended often in California.   I thought I was fine, at a Teacher conference, choosing to go without a tie, but I am feeling under-dressed!)

1100 teachers are here for this event, but there are still 4300 teachers are back in their classrooms now, teaching!   But, Rhonda points out, all those of you at home can read along– right here at this blog.  Thanks Rhonda!

Rhonda ends with a huge shout-out to the Saints in the upcoming SuperBowl.

Head of School Arnie Holtberg asserts that he cannot imagine a more impressive slate of speakers for a regional teachers conference, and I think he is right– this is a “conference of the highest order.”

“The core of who we are, the center, is teaching and learning.”  Yes, let us never forget. “Stimulating People Are Stimulating Teachers.”

Arnie ends with the charming, traditional tale of the medieval cathedral: one man reports he is chiseling a place in the wall, a second is making a living, but the third proudly explains he is building a cathedral– which is exactly what all are doing: building a cathedral, creating a very lasting legacy for generations.

My blog is a great place to follow this conference, but another option everyone should consider is following the event on Twitter.   I am there, @jonathanemartin, and there is also, more helpfully, a hashtag that Chris Bigenho (@bigenhoc) established, which you can find at #isastc.   Check it out– Twitter is an amazing way to create a professional learning network for yourself, and stay connected to great ideas.

Good morning, from a chilly room on a rainy day in Dallas.   Here today at the bi-annual teacher conference of the Independent School Association of the Southwest (ISAS), an association of about 85 independent schools across the Southwest, from Arizona to Lousiana and north to Kansas.   I am new to ISAS this year, after nine terrific years as an active participant in the California Association (CAIS), and it is still a bit of a different world to me, but one to which I have been feeling welcomed with warm Southern hospitality.

ISAS has taken its teacher conference to what I would call a “marquee” speaker event, in contrast to the CAIS format of teacher-to-teacher trainings and workshops, and the 1100 attending here (up from 400 two years ago, I was told) are benefitting today and tomorrow from is a very impressive slate of national presenters.  Dan Pink and Tony Wagner are the big names, but there is also Shawn Achor, Samuel Betances, David Eagleman and Andrew Zucker.

I will be posting every hour or so, and I welcome you to read along and to post your own comments too.  Here we go.

Greatly looking forward to the ISAS (Independent School Association of the Southwest) Teacher Conference next week.   The slate of speakers is very impressive, I think, for a regional conference.  I am delighted to be able to see two speakers who are great influence to me in my leadership and writing–Tony Wagner and Dan Pink– and I am looking forward to the others as well.   I am also very happy to be working with ISAS as an official blogger for the event.

My plan is to post an entry after each session,  summarizing highlights from each speaker, trying to embed in my summaries links to articles or other websites they reference, and  of course offering some commentary on how their ideas relate to my vision of 21st century education.    There is only one session in which two speakers are presenting simultaneously; Thursday at 2:00 both Andrew Zucker and David Eagleman present.  I am drawn to both, would love to attend both, but I think I will attend the Zucker.  So I invite any of you attending the conference and choosing the Eagleman session to write up a report and email it to me, and I will post it here (with full credit to you).

Readers are also welcome to join the conversation; use the “Leave a comment” button to submit a post, which does require my approval for publishing.   I welcome all kinds of opinion, and you are welcome to be critical of ideas; my only requirements for approval are that you identify yourself (no anonymity) and that you avoid fierce personal attacks.

For those of you looking to prep for your conference by doing some quick reading about some of our presenters, I invite you to read some of my previous posts.   For Dan Pink, you can read here about his New Year’s Day 2010 “teleseminar” and also see his TED talk about his new book Drive, though in the latter case I should give you a spoiler alert that viewing this video might reduce the pleasure of seeing his ideas live on Thursday.

I have written very often about Tony Wagner here at 21k12blog; our St. Gregory faculty read his book last summer and have been discussing it all fall.   There are several pieces on the blog, including this one about Chapter 1, and this one about Chapter 2, about our faculty’s discussion responses to his book.    I have also written about all the ways we are using Wagner’s book here.   Tony himself, I think it is appropriate to say, is a regular reader and occasional commentator himself on this blog, so you can expect that comments you post here to my blog about Tony Wagner will be likely read by Tony himself.

I also am an admirer and student of positive psychology, the subject of our last speaker at the ISAS conference.   If you are interested in a lighter piece about this topic, I invite you to read my remarks to my students linking happiness research to the plot and character development of the film Avatar.

Drawing again today from the authoritative report from Craig Jerald, Defining a 21st century education. Jerald views creativity and innovation as among the most important 21st century  ”broader competencies;”

The new Skills Commission concluded that academic knowledge and skills, applied literacies, and critical thinking will not be sufficient for the U.S. to maintain its competitive edge in the global economy. “The crucial new factor, the one that alone can justify higher wages in this country than in other countries with similar levels of cognitive skills, is creativity and innovation.” Indeed, employers in the Conference Board survey ranked creativity third among skills they expect to increase in importance over the next half decade….Today, with so many similar products and services available to consumers, companies can only stay ahead by providing customized or uniquely designed versions.

I have said it before, and will say it again: Tom Friedman is perhaps my single greatest inspiration for my embrace of the mission to educate to innovate.   Yesterday he struck again with his message (“More (Steve) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs“), this time with some new references and suggestions.

Like Friedman, I want to see schools produce more ingenious, creative, problem-solvers; I want students to tinker, I want them to engage with real-world problems,  I want them to draw upon their rich, liberal arts learning and scientific know-how and creative thinking to create new solutions.

What the country needs most now is not more government stimulus, but more stimulation. We need to get millions of American kids, not just the geniuses, excited about innovation and entrepreneurship again. (more…)

Creating Leaders, and developing in our students the 21st century skills which relate and support leadership, is one of my main projects in education.

(Although it is entirely important to note that I am very aware of, and very interested in, the nuance of what we mean by leadership; I have written appreciatively of new models of “innovative leadership,” and I am also admiring and mulling over a recent HBR piece calling for a  new model of a leader, one which might better be labeled “builder.” )

Jerald’s report on Defining a 21st century education I have recently reviewed, very favorably; today I want to look more closely at what he says about leadership and collaboration skill developments.   The topic comes up first when considering a study about various competencies, and their correlation to later success: Math, we learn, is most significant factor (among six)  for students enrolling in post-secondary ed., most in completing bachelor’s degrees, and most in predicting future earnings.  Math matters.

But I am intrigued to see that while leadership roles, and sports-related competencies are not so significant for enrolling in post-secondary or completing bachelors, they are significant for future earnings potentials. (more…)

I don’t write often enough here about the incredible importance of teachers, but as the Atlantic Monthly recently reported, no single factor is more significant to student learning than the quality of the teachers, and St. Gregory students are very fortunate to have so many terrific teachers.  This nice piece, which recently appeared on local TV station KVOA,  displays beautifully one of our fine faculty members, caught in action!   (I also appear briefly in the video.)

Dear St. Gregory Families:

Greetings this January, and a (belated) Happy New Year.   It is now six months into my new headship of our wonderful school, and there is much I want to share with you about our progress.

First, I should say that I regret not having had more time and opportunity to get to know more of you.   Fortunately, I am happily anticipating some forthcoming events being planned to allow me to better get to know you.

I should add that I have enjoyed enormously getting to know St. Gregory students this fall, especially when I have had chances to actively participate with them in their endeavors.   My two great highlights of the school year thus far have been the day I spent on Mt. Lemmon with the 8^th graders rock climbing, and the day I spent with the juniors on our high ropes challenge course.  It is my ambition and intent to do much more of these activities in the months ahead. (more…)

My comments to the student body this morning, edited and expanded for this format:

Yesterday my 7 year old son, completely out of the blue , said to me  ”Dad, wasn’t it interesting when the guy said  “Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream.”

Recognize it? Anyone?   Yes, it is from Avatar, when Jake Sully compared his experience when embodied as his avatar to his self-identity in his normal world of being human.   His avatar experience has become his “true world.”

Mind you, my seven year-old said this to me an entire month after we saw the movie, and we had not previously discussed this quotation.   Somehow, this quote had been lingering and ruminating in my son’s mind for an entire month, and he was still chewing over it.   Why would Jake say that, what does that mean?

Students:  what does Jake’s saying mean to you—why was he feeling his avatar experience was his new “true world”? [Some discussion followed]

Surely there are more literal interpretations, but I want to reach more the metaphorical significance:  I would suggest to you that there are three reasons why Jake discovers his avatar experience to be his true world.

First,  inserting himself first slowly, then fully into Pandoran society, Jake finds himself deeply drawn into the social network of the Navi. He becomes (more…)

I haven’t written often here about Douglass Reeves, but he really is a great resource about leadership and learning (his catchphrase).   In an undated piece on ASCD Express (Hey ASCD Express: Date your pieces!), Reeves poses three challenges to educational leaders like myself seeking to foster vigorously in our schools a “genuine commitment to 21st century learning”: these three challenges he calls the Assessment Gap, the Teaching Gap, and the Leadership Gap.

Reeves is right to begin with the Assessment Gap.  He explains the problem that very few states measure 21st century skills– either in the way of higher order thinking skills such as critical thinking and innovative thinking, and also key personal and social skills, such as collaboration and communication.   If we are to be driven by state standardized testing, and those tests do none of this, then how can we drive learning toward this? (more…)

Really impressed with the recent (Summer 2009) publication from the Center for Public education, a 70 page document (free download!) entitled Defining a 21st century education,  by Craig Jerald, a noted educational researcher.  So impressed with this am I that I have written a posting (below) which is much too long! (Apologies)

Jay Matthews, the Washington Post educational columnist, turned me on to it, and he praised it highly:

Jerald’s paper, by contrast, carefully describes the corporate, economic, political, cultural and demographic trends that have put our children at a disadvantage, and explains how our teachers can adapt what they already teach, the content knowledge and literary and math skills that everyone needs, to help students think critically, collaborate with others, solve new problems and adapt to change.)

This is progress in itself, seeing Matthews becoming ever more accommodating of the 21st century educational movement; he also recently offered praise, belated I must point out, to Tony Wagner and global Achievement Gap, and it was fascinating to see the two of them dialogue, Wagner and Matthews, in an extended conversation.

But back to “Defining” this is a very fine work, offering extensive research based evidence for the significance of students learning 21st century skills, complete with many charts, graphs, and tables (34!).  (more…)

(Spoken remarks to the student body this morning)

Creative, Inventive, Ingenious, Original:  All four are thesaurus-provided synonyms for “innovative”, and these four are the words I shared with our students today to help illuminate the significant goals to which we aspire when we now say we are “creating leaders and innovators”.

Happy New Year.   It is a time for replacing the calendar, and entering into the next chapter of history, and here at St. Gregory, as I know you have seen, we have made a change in our motto for the school to what is now “Creating Leaders and Innovators” … and I know the change may be a bit jarring.

Character Scholarship Leadership, our former school motto and slogan, is certainly a wonderful expression of our school’s great traditions and foundational qualities.  Our school mission is unchanged—as always, we are here to challenge students to pursue excellence in character, in scholarship, and in leadership.

I want you to know that though I may not talk very frequently about character and scholarship, I am working behind the scenes to strengthen them further as the core components of a St. Gregory education.   For character, I have worked with the Academic committee to ensure we are reporting to you and your parents in the “Egg” (Essential Goals for Gregorians) how well we think you, our students, are growing in the Essential Goal of integrity, compassion, and ethical decision making.  I am also working hard to develop for next year a new advisory program: a structured way for you and an advisor-teacher to work together to support your growth in character.  In both ways, I am working to make character growth not less but more important than ever here at St. Gregory. (more…)

I hope this is OK to share here; Dan Pink didn’t say it wasn’t.  Pink, certainly a prominent figure in my pantheon of influential thinkers, offered this morning a New Year “teleseminar” with his 2010 recommended reading, trend predictions, and personal actions; this was provided for a lucky 500 who sent in a receipt for his new book, Drive.   To quote him, “This is stuff I haven’t talked about, and for the most part, will not be talking about again.”

• 10 publications I will be reading.
• 5 Trends I will be watching.

The below is just sharing directly what I heard from Pink, but before I do, some quick comments.  I appreciate his enthusiam for the intersection of art and science, and the ways in which they reinforce each other.  His endorsement of Artsjournal is partly on the basis of how well that publication relates art and science, making the bridge and seeing the interconnections, and it is no coincidence that Artsjournal is on his list immediately adjacent to the New Scientist.  As we all work so vigorously to educate students to become creative scientists and deeply knowledgeable artists, the thinkers who will best flourish in the new era, we need to follow Pink’s lead and look for these intersections.

A second quick comment: Pink recommended with many of these sites that we subscribe to the e-newsletters, and I did, but I also chose to follow them on Twitter, and I think that will be more effective for me.  I haven’t written much about this topic here on the blog, but Twitter is fast becoming, hugely, my best tool for staying informed and aware of what is being discussed and written about on the topic that interest me.

Again, everything below is in Dan Pink’s own words… his teleseminar for 2010.

10 publications:

1. Springwise.com.  A website and fabulous electronic newsletter. Thousands of people out there, looking for new business ideas, from all over the world.  Every time the weekly email newsletter comes, it is full of great stuff. (more…)

This is terrific, and free for all, posted here with full permission by the generous sharing of Godin and his contributors.   Every slide is great, but my favorites are 14 (Chris Meyer); 19 (Chris Anderson); 20 (Tom Peters); 25 (Dan Pink); 43 (Dan Balter); 54 (Tom Sanders); and 67 (Dan Dougherty).

Chris Meyers (14) writes about the obligation we have to adapt to changing environments: “The shape of companies will evolve as the world changes around them.. (more…)

Two pieces published in the New York Times this week entirely separately support the argument made here that our students need not just “hard” knowledge and skills to prepare them, they need also to be powerfully effective in their ability to create, imagine, innovate, and apply these skills in the real world.  In one, a military expert pleads for more innovative thinking from our Army leaders, and in another, we learn about preparing students for careers which blend digital skills and creativity.  I will end by connecting these ideas to a recent piece from Yong Zhao, arguing our schools need to teach creativity more effectively.

The first piece, an op-ed by Mark Moyar, a professor of national security affairs at Marine Corps University, is entitled “An Officer and a Creative Man.” The crisis emerging in the armed services, Dr. Moyar writes, is “a significant portion are not demonstrating the vital leadership attributes of creativity, flexibility and initiative.”

Researchers have found that the leadership ranks of big organizations are dominated by either “sensing-judging” or “intuitive thinking” personality types. Those in the former category rely primarily on the five senses to tell them about the world; they prefer structure and standardization, doing things by the book and maintaining tight control.

Today, the Army has more intuitive-thinking people among its lieutenants and captains than at the upper levels.   (more…)

Over at a blog I have not seen before, On our minds at Scholastic, they have published an interesting list of the decade’s ten big ideas for education.   I think it is a very helpful way of thinking about the changes of our era.

Some on their list are not in my focal area, and/or I am not sure I would have chosen them:  1. alternate paths to teaching; 5. charter schools; 6. a focus on adolescent literacy 9. it takes a village; and 10. the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

But I am quite intrigued with the other five:

2. Transformative Technology — From interactive whiteboards to online education, 1-to-1 computing to eReaders, for the first time in the history of American education, classrooms are increasingly plugged in — and so are the students.

Regular readers know how important this is to me– and how enthusiastic I am not just about getting technology into the classrooms, but getting it into the hands of students, empowering them, engaging them, and respecting their powerful proficiency with technology as tools for their learning.   (more…)

In the spirit of the season, I am seeking to offer small bouquets of appreciation to some with whom sometimes I argue here.  Last week I offered kind words for Daniel Willingham, and this week I wish to do so for Bob Compton (producer of the Two Million Minutes movies), with whom some readers remember I had a sharp (perhaps too sharp) quarrel in October.

Today however I want to send sincere words of praise for his fine post last week on a school he visited in South Korea, a post entitled “Returning to Middle School Engineering and Creativity–IQ-EQ– Class.”  It is excellent; I hope he doesn’t mind my quoting some of his fine observations:

In American public Middle and High School, I’m unaware of any formal hands-on classes in actually designing and building things.

The Korean economy seems firmly committed to staying in the design and building of products and this three-year course is a unique way to introduce students to that thinking and have them experience the process first hand.  Based on the principal’s translated explanation and the EQ/IQ teacher’s enthusiasm for this class, it is clearly one of the students’ favorites and is highly regarded by the school.

This sounds like a great learning program for these students: this is an educational approach I also am very enthusiastic about, one where students “actually design and build things.”   (more…)

Happy to see today that  this new publication from NAIS, (National Association of Independent Schools), a two page flyer on myths of independent schools, includes myth number 8: independent schools are traditionalists.  When this list was first published on the Bassett blog in September, the list included only seven, but your humble blogger suggested to NAIS President Bassett that they missed one, that we as an industry need to correct mis-perceptions that our schools are stuck in the 19th century educationally.   In fact, some of our member schools are on the cutting edge of educational innovation, and we need to celebrate that!  The list, now republished for a wider audience, includes my suggestion as the 8th Myth:

MYTH #8: Independent Schools Are Traditionalists

Fact: It’s true – Independent schools are (educationally)
preserving a tradition of excellence and perpetuating
a legacy of learning. BUT – independent schools are
also educational innovators where students are learning
21st century skills of critical thinking, real-world problem
solving, innovation and creativity, and collaboration.
~

Engage and Prepare: the distillation of quality education.  Last week I wrote at length about engagement; here I want to return to two topics: the right data for data driven decision-making, and what it means to be serious about preparation.

As Tony Wagner writes in the Global Achievement Gap, Schools that work “hold themselves collectively accountable for quality student work and student success in college and beyond.. they keep track of how many students go on to postsecondary education and how well they do there.”

We are not serious about either topic, preparation or data,  if we limit our attention to SAT scores and the names of the colleges which admit our students are admitted.   Now I am not saying to eliminate altogether this pair, but I am saying that there is other information far, far more valuable to collect and use, and at the top of this list is the proficiency of our graduates in colleges, graduate schools and careers.

Addressing the topic this month is a valuable new monograph from College Summit and the Center for American Progress: “How College Proficiency Information Can Help High Schools Drive Student Success.”  ”College proficiency reporting makes sure we don’t leave the success of America’s high schools to chance.” (more…)

A colleague asked me recently to share the ways in which we are using Tony Wagner’s Global Achievement Gap with our faculty this fall; this post is  my answer.    The book has been hugely valuable for us this year as a guide and foundation as we seek to further advance St. Gregory as a 21st century school and as a “School that Works” to teach the “new survival skills.”   I think that often schools assign faculty summer reading, and then do very little with it– maybe a meeting/discussion or two– but we have deliberately erred in the other direction: I am seeking to infuse the ideas of the book into many different arenas of the educational work we are doing at St. Gregory, even at the risk of overdoing it.

Some of the ways we are using it  include, with full explanations after the jump (more):

1. Rich reading discussions
2. Describing the St. Gregory Wagnerian Classroom.
3. Respecting and applying the four principles of Schools that Work
4. Implementing new Measurements of student learning: the Egg, CWRA, HSSSE, PISA, and dashboards. (more…)

Friday I presented at a Tucson Rotary Club, on the topic of 21st century learning: closing the global achievement gap.   It is a presentation much like the one I made at ISAS last month, but I thought I would post the slides here.   These are presentation slides, not full talking points, so please know they are a quick visual trip through the main ideas, rather than a full narrative. Enjoy!

Thrice of late I have posted to criticize cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham (and author of Why Don’t Students Like School?), although in every case I have also said he has a lot to offer; here I want to offer my appreciation for his essay in the Washington Post in praise of arts education.

Willingham is drawing upon a lecture by Harvard’s Jerome Kagen, and does so identify six arguments for arts education, three of which speak most loudly to me:

Kagan argues that children today have very little sense of agency—that is, the sense that they undertake activities that have an impact on the world, however small. Kagan notes that as a child he had the autonomy to explore his town on his own, something that most parents today would not allow. … The arts, Kagan argues, offer that sense of agency, of creation.

Participation in the arts allows children to see the importance of creating beauty, of creating an object that others may enjoy. When a child gets an A on a math test, the immediate benefit is to the child alone. But when the child creates a drawing, she makes something for the pleasure of others as well.

The arts offer an opportunity for children to work together. Most school work is solitary, but when a band is congratulated for a performance it is the band as a whole that receives the compliment, not the individual child. Kagan ties this value to a larger moral complex. Too many of children’s activities are solitary, and solely for the child’s benefit. Morality and concern for others grows, in part, from understanding what it means to have a common fate.

I think there are many other great, and practical-pragmatic, reasons for arts education as well, which are not touched upon in the article.  Certainly arts education demands, or should demand, of students that they think through and identify original ways to express ideas and new approaches to old questions and concerns.   (more…)

I have written often here about the importance of measuring what matters, and treating the data seriously; I have also written here about the value of the High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), which has been called an idea to save the world in the Atlantic Monthly.   At my behest as the incoming head,  St. Gregory administered the HSSSE for the first time last spring, and we now have these results to share with readers.

Inside the powerpoint are a series of 20 graphs, representing our results in about 50 different criteria, with, in every case, our average compared to the average of the respondents nationally who participated.  The national respondent base represents over 100 diverse schools, private and public, urban, suburban and rural.   (we believe there is a slight self-selection bias, that schools more committed than average to promoting student engagement are more likely to participate in the survey!).    For each set of questions, two graphs are provided: the first compares averages for the one “top” option (among four), the “Often” or “Agree strongly” option.    The second compares the averages for the top two options (among four): the often and sometimes, or the agree strongly and agree simply.

I also am providing (after the jump)a table of the categories of greatest difference; those where our students reported much stronger engagement than their national peers (there were NO categories where St. Gregory students reported lesser engagement).

Meanwhile, we are also analyzing the results to identify areas which we as a faculty wish to target for improvement in the years to come, a list I will provide at some time in the future.

	St. Gregory	National Avg.	Difference
Written paper more than five pages: Often	51	17	34
Written paper more than five pages: Often and Sometimes	94	51	43
I place a high value on learning: Strong agreement	63	35	28 (more…)

Businessweek’s innovation guru Bruce Nussbaum offers a view on educating for innovation by comparing what he sees happening in Chinese and US education; meanwhile, over at Harvard Business Review, Rosabeth Moss Kanter argues for the advantages for innovation the accrues from serving the disadvantaged.  First, Nussbaum, reporting as he travels China for four weeks:

* Asia wants to shift its education from math and science to creativity. America wants to shifts its education from creativity to math and science. Maybe we should just exchange teachers.

* Asian universities are opening thousands of design programs and departments to promote creativity. The most popular degree in America continues to be the traditional business degree (22% of all degrees granted in the US are in business). (more…)

I love this ladder of  ”social technographics,” as described by the authors of the book Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies.   Hat tip to my colleague and fellow (very fine) blogger Josie Holford, Head of Poughkeepsie Day School, and her blogging about this ladder.   The ladder represents various stages of social technology use, from “inactives” to spectators to joiners and on up to Creators; Josie and I agree vigorously that an important goal of our two schools is to educate and empower our students to rise to the top rung.  At her blog, the Compass Point, she argues that

That top rung is small in the wider world but in schools with students beyond the early elementary years it should be 100%. In schools [like PDS, ( and like St. Gregory)] getting engaged, being creative and collaborating is not an optional activity. And technological innovation makes it possible  to engage with a global reach.  And if we believe in the importance of innovation and creativity,  making a positive contribution and changing the world – there is the purpose. It brings a whole new meaning to the eduspeak catch phrases of problem-solving and ethical and creative thinking. It makes our mission possible in effective, dynamic and inclusive ways.

I have written here often that 21st century schools educate, empower, and enable students as publishers– that they should be asked to share their content with a wider audience, and use the many new technologies available (like wordpress!) to do so.  Our students at St. Gregory are blogging, but still primarily within the walls of stgregoryschool.org domain; it is my intent we find ways to broaden the reading audience for their publishing.

Some terrific elaboration on this approach is provided at another excellent blog, The Innovative Educator.   The post is entitled “21st century educators don’t say hand it in– they say publish it!” Right on.    (more…)

Our work continues here to implement our new expanded student reporting project, the essential goals for Gregorians, or the “egg.”   The report card piece has been prepared and distributed to parents and teachers and students; the new poster appears on every classroom wall now.    This week we are working to provide more information by offering some color to the framework by offering short descriptions of what each “essential goal” might look like in the classroom when performed by our students.    Note: We will not be evaluating students on each of the descriptions (in italics); the italicized descriptions will not appear on the report card format itself, which is only the much simplified framework.  But the italicized pieces are intended to offer some greater illumination of what we mean for each criterium.

1. Effort

Work ethic and perseverance

Works hard

Persists in the face of difficulty

Takes responsibility for his/her own learning (more…)

It is an exciting time of transition and progress for us here at St. Gregory, and while there are many examples of this change, no single item better encapsulates it better than our new slogan and tag line, Creating Leaders and Innovators for the 21st century.   Today I want to share some of the background, significance, and the future opportunities this new slogan offers us; this new “mantra” is intended as the successor to (building upon, retaining the value of, and enhancing) our school’s previous statement: Character, Scholarship, Leadership.

The current issue of Independent School magazine features a cover article about Missions, Mantras and Meaning. Author Peter Gow quotes Guy Kawasaki, a 2009 NAIS Annual Conference keynote speaker, on the value of a “three word mantra: a guiding idea that can both inform a school’s planning, and provide it with a sparkling marketplace identity.”  Gow then cites another NAIS speaker, Dan Heath, on the value of sticky messages: “potent expressions that drive and differentiate.”   I believe that our new statement, succinctly expressed as  Creating Leaders and Innovators, does meet Kawasaki and Heath’s mandates in exactly the ways they advocate.

Background: I began my headship here in June.   Immediately it was impressed upon me by board leaders and others the critical need for a clear and new strategic vision, one that would help organize our school’s future and offer a compelling value proposition to school families, present and prospective.    I was also urged by board members to have pieces in place by January, for enrollment season, of what we were adding and building into the school’s program and profile to enhance the school’s value for our students. (more…)

Ken Kay, President of the Partnership for 21st century skills, (hq’d right here in Tucson), offers this month a clarion call for “a social imperative” in the Southeast Education Network, SEEN.      It is a helpful primer and overview; it provides a history of the partnership and its research, and it underscores the importance of this change:

This blinding rate of change has, largely, pushed aside the 20th century social contract, under which possessing a great understanding of core subjects guaranteed ascent on the economic ladder. Now, the 21st century social contract states, in addition to deep content knowledge, all citizens need a broad range of skills to be productive and prosperous. Knowledge, while a cornerstone of success, is no longer enough — 21st century skills — which ensure people can adapt to circumstances, work in teams, innovate, and communicate — are a requisite of a successful life.

Important to note Kay’s recognition that knowledge is a cornerstone, and that we in this movement are not appropriately caricatured for dismissing the importance of knowledge.   But as this blog regularly argues, knowledge is best mastered in an educational environment that integrates a skills approach. P-21 recognizes this too, and I am especially appreciative of Kay not just arguing for skills, but for a pedagogical approach that is integrative:

A rigorous education in today’s world lies in the nexus of core subjects, 21st century themes, and 21st century skills — this combination redefines what a rigorous education must be. (more…)

Tom Vander Ark, always an important commentator, offered recently a short blog commentary on a formula proposed by Sir Michael Barber, an important educational reformer in the UK and for McKinsey.   Barber’s formula for what students should be able to do is E(K+T+L):  Ethical underpinnings wrap around the value of Knowledge, Thinking, and Leadership.     Nice.   I enjoy the little formula structures; just yesterday I was arguing for E2I as a valuable expression for capturing the importance of educating to innovate.    And as I seek an Aristotelian golden mean of thinking skills  and knowledge mastery, it is helpful to see this expression which works to unite them in the formula for the 21st century education elixir.

But regular readers, and St. Gregory followers, know I will want to offer one additional element to the recipe, creativity, ingenuity, or innovation.   My simple, and perhaps obvious amendment: E(K+T+L+I)

Vander Ark’s elaboration:

K is for knowledge.  Michael dismissed the ‘kids can just use a search engine’ argument against strong content standards, “Pupils need both theoretical and applied knowledge and the skills to go with it.” (more…)

Two cheers, or maybe only one and a half, for the Obama/Duncan education administration’s launch today of Educate to Innovate.   Clearly there are many things to like about the federal government’s decision to prioritize the skill of innovation as the highest of all priorities; this is what we too have decided is most important (or equally so, when paired with leadership) at St. Gregory.

I like the phrasing “educate to innovate”; I have found myself saying it regularly the last few months, and I think it creates a nice little abbreviation in E2I.    This statement, too, from President Obama is constructive and valuable: “Reaffirming and strengthening America’s role as the world’s engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation is essential to meeting the challenges of this century,” though I wish he hadn’t needed to qualify the central word, innovation, with the limiting word “technological.”

I also appreciate some of the brand new program’s features, such as the national science fair in science, technology, and robotics to be held at the White House, and the initiatives to use interactive and immersive gaming to advance the cause: “Five public-private partnerships that harness the power of media, interactive games, hands-on learning, and 100,000 volunteers to reach more than 10 million students over the next four years, inspiring them to be the next generation of makers, discoverers, and innovators.”

Which brings me to the larger point, my great disappointment that the E2I initiative is configured in such a way as to be limited to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), rather than being more broadly, and more valuably, defined as  STEAM (with Arts added!). (more…)

Below is our new expanded reporting report card, to be used this semester at all grade levels in all subjects, as approved this week by our Academic Committee.  We believe that what gets measured gets done, and that by measuring and reporting these areas each semester, we will see our school evolve to ever better meet the needs of educating for the 21st century.  We are also pleased to be among the first NAIS schools to adopt a version (we amended it) of the NAIS Commission on Accreditation Schools of the Future Essential capacities for the 21st century. (I know this is not very legible; after the jump (“more”), I have provided the slideshow I presented to students this morning detailing each item of the Egg.)

Returning now with a second post challenging Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School? In this post, I want to confront his claim in Chapter 6 that there is a “flawed assumption;” that students are not “cognitively capable of doing what scientists or historians do.”    This really cuts to my quick: it is my sustained argument here and elsewhere that we best engage, motivate, and train our young minds when we respect their capacity and challenge and support them to act like young professionals, to act in the mode of historians and scientists.

Again, Willingham makes some good points in this chapter, things I admire and appreciate and value.  But on the main point, on whether students can think as scientists,  and whether we should teach them to do so,  he comes across as a cranky curmudgeon: “Trying to get your students to think like them [experts, scientists, historians] is not a realistic goal.” (more…)