A riff on school thinking…inspired by “There are no mistakes on the bandstand.” Stefon Harris

Posted on December 10, 2011 by boadams1

Listening. Responding. Refusing to bully one’s ways. Pulling ideas. Improvising. Innovating. Working with the color and emotional palette. Collaborating in concert with one’s team and one’s band. Making beautiful music. [Watch the TED below, and more of those phrases may be put into greater context.]

I think a lot about what school could be like. I love school. I have always loved school. But I think school can be better.

This morning, I viewed the four TED talks that were awaiting me in my RSS reader:

I learned about “Captchas,” and I learned about spider-silk biomimicry. I learned about MRI-focused ultrasound for non-invasive surgery, and I learned about jazz improv. But I learned about so much more than just these things. As a whole, I learned about people working to make things better…to make things more beautiful. From the whole, I learned some meta-lessons about innovation and improvisation.

When will school reflect the ideas that Stefon Harris espouses in his talk? When might we see the only “mistakes” in school as those moments which reveal that we failed to respond as deep listeners? Where are these types of innovations and improvs happening in order to enhance schools in ways that we are working to enhance language translation, armor and connective fibers, medical procedures, and jazz music? Where is the real R&D? Where are the jam sessions? Rest assured, there are some! There must be more!

I believe teacher teams – PLCs (professional learning communities) – can function very much like that quartet that is playing with Stefon Harris. I have been blessed to be a part of such a team in the Junior High at Westminster for quite some time. But we might need to think of ourselves less as pianists, drummers, bassists, and vibraphone-ists – less like history teachers, math teachers, science teachers, and English teachers. We may need to think of ourselves more like a quartet…a band – more like teachers of children, problem-finders and problem-solvers, innovators and improvisationalists, and challenge-facers. Then, our efforts could begin to work more like pulling ideas and listening and responding. And we administrators should be making space and time for such work. We should not restrict with regulations. We should be more concerned with pedagogy and practice than with lawsuits and legal. We should facilitate – make easier to accomplish.

Schools that operated as such would not make mistakes on the bandstand – we would make music!

How would you listen and respond to this riff? What would you add to this palette of thinking? Will you play an E or an F#? How will I consequently listen and respond? Let’s make schools better…let’s tune them to create more beautiful music!

Can we play together? Wanna jam?

“This is so next level!” Video Team-Teaching in #Synergy

Posted on December 8, 2011 by boadams1

Twenty-four, eighth-grade synergists are working in six discreet groups – their projects originated from the data-mining of over 300 observation-journal blog posts that they collected. The projects are:

Graffiti (is it art, vandalism, both? how can we use it for good?)
Nancy Creek (what can we know and understand about the creek that runs through our campus?)
Crusade for Cleanliness (how could organizational-flow changes enhance the stewardship in our dining hall?)
Obesity (how can we improve the alarming issue of obesity in American youth?)
Sleep (what impact on school do our sleep habits create?)
Habitat for Humanity Spring Fling (how could a school fair raise money and awareness for homelessness?)

Because Jill Gough, one of the two Synergy facilitator-coaches, was presenting at the Learning Forward Annual Conference on Monday, Dec. 5, she was in Anaheim, CA. The other facilitator-coach, Bo Adams, was in Atlanta, GA. Having grown accustomed to and convinced of the viability of team-teaching in such a project-based course, Bo and Jill felt some anxiety about having only one facilitator present to serve best the six groups during this critical phase of their project development.

[In your mind’s ear, cue that quintessential cartoon superhero intro theme.] Never fear…video conferencing is here!

As we think about preparing students for a work world that will most likely include significant use of such tools as iChat, Facetime, Skype, and other video “conferencers,” then it seems natural to practice such work processes. Perhaps students already use such tools socially, but school could help coach the use of such tools for more formal, business-like purposes. Additionally, we should all be thinking more about how we can invite various co-teachers into our classrooms – to break down the walls that seem to preserve the arcane model of one adult per group of classroom students. Practice leads to enhanced proficiency. On Monday, Dec. 5, Synergy engaged in some additional practice of tearing down those 20th century classroom walls. Who knows who else we might next invite to teach with us…from the exterior of our learning space’s four physical walls.

As one student-learner can be heard exclaiming in the video: “This is so next level!”

[This post is cross-published at Experiments in Learning by Doing.]

“Restoration of the ability to perceive beauty is inspiring” – Charles Limb

Posted on December 7, 2011 by boadams1

Charles Limb performs cochlear implantation, a surgery that treats hearing loss and can restore the ability to hear speech. But as a musician too, Limb thinks about what the implants lack: They don’t let you fully experience music yet. (There’s a hair-raising example.) At TEDMED, Limb reviews the state of the art and the way forward. (“About this talk” description at TED.com, http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_limb_building_the_musical_muscle.html)

At this point, I have watched Charles Limb’s talk multiple times. I am intrigued by it. For me, the talk elicits all kinds of excited thinking about possible projects of integrated studies. In my mind’s eye, I can see a team of student-learners, guided by a pair of co-teacher-learners, studying the intersection of music, physics, biology, robotic medicine, and beauty. Who knows, perhaps such a course would plant the seed that would grow into the physician-researcher who advances cochlear implants to the next level.

But, as regular readers here will surely anticipate, I am also touched by a more symbolic message inherent in Limb’s talk. I wonder: Are we working with students in our schools who have grown to be partially “deaf or blind” to the beauty around them? As young children – particularly around ages two to seven – people seem defined by their sense of wonder, exploration, and sense of searching and discovery. Often I worry that we dull those senses when we insist that children sit so long inside of school houses and study disjointed, disconnected facts.

How can we educators help to enhance the senses of our student learners? For that matter, how can we help to enhance the senses of all of the learners in a school house? How can we restore the ability to perceive beauty and inspire? Certainly, I think we do this for some students, but do we do this for all of the students in our care? Does school allow students to fully experience the wonder and beauty of their world? How can we ensure better that it does so? What would that school look like, smell like, taste like, and sound like? What an adventure!

Emerging from my principal gestation

Posted on December 7, 2011 by boadams1

Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows how much we learn in the womb — from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods. (“About this talk” description at TED.com, http://www.ted.com/talks/annie_murphy_paul_what_we_learn_before_we_re_born.html)

In her talk, Annie Murphy Paul discusses fetal origins and the idea that “our health and well-being throughout our lives is crucially affected by the nine months we spend in the womb” (Paul, near 1:45 in talk). She is not talking about the “Baby Einstein” movement. She is talking about gestation affecting our learning about the environment to which we are soon to be born.

At the literal surface, Paul’s TED talk is a powerful listen for educators, as we work to better understand the diversity of inputs responsible for any individual’s lifelong learning. As Paul spoke, I wondered quite a bit about the “nature vs. nurture” debates. But Paul’s TED talk has me wondering on an entirely different level, as well.

As I complete this, my ninth, year as principal, I am curious if a year of being principal is analogous to a month of gestation. If the metaphor works at all, then I am even more excited about what my next phase of life in education will be like, for I am soon to be born into a profound period of development as an educator. And I am eternally grateful for the care that Westminster’s womb has provided me. My gestation has provided deep learning about the educational environment into which I next will emerge, and learn, and grow. I wonder what that world will look like, smell like, sound like, and taste like. What an adventure.

Seeing Schools in the News

Posted on December 7, 2011 by boadams1

I am grateful for those who challenge and stretch my thinking. Often, a metaphor or simile, posed by another, helps me to consider the core and the edges of an issue. To compare “this” to “that,” if not overly done, helps me to understand a thing better.

Recently, I tweeted a blog post by Seth Godin. In response, @occam98 connected me to a Clay Shirky piece, “Institutions, Confidence, and the News Crisis.”

This morning, I finally made time to read the recommendation from John. Now, my mind is pleasantly tumbling (like a dryer, not a fall) about how education may be in a similar state to newspapers. I wonder about the similarities, the differences, the not-worth-comparings.

All of this seems to offer the grandmotherly option between Starkman and the FON crew — “You’re both right, dear. We need institutions and we need experiments.” Even given this hybridization, though, our views diverge: Plan A assumes that experiments should be spokes to the newspapers’ hub, their continued role as the clear center of public interest journalism assured, and on the terms previously negotiated.

Plan B follows Jonathan Stray’s observations about the digital public sphere: in a world where Wikipedia is a more popular source of information than any newspaper, maybe we won’t have a clear center anymore. Maybe we’ll just have lots of overlapping, partial, competitive, cooperative attempts to arm the public to deal with the world we live in.

What is education’s “plan A?” What is education’s “plan B?” What might the hybrid between them look like? In schools, do we need both institutions and experiments? Or “Maybe we’ll just have lots of overlapping, partial, competitive, cooperative attempts to arm the public to deal with the world we live in.”