Author Archives: boadams1

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About boadams1

Learner. Husband. Dad. Mountaineer. Head of School at Mackintosh Academy - Boulder, in Boulder, Colorado. Have worked in transformation design, educational innovation, and school leadership for 30+ years.

Embracing Differences

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Today, a culminating event occurred in the Junior High School – an event that is an important part of a bigger effort and critical project. Today, we experienced the “Embracing Differences” culmination. Yet, it feels wrong to call it a culmination. It is more like a new beginning, a new start, a new chance to move beyond tolerance…to move beyond acceptance…to move to embracing our differences.

For months, students in Mrs. Woods’ and Mrs. Curtis’ art classes have been engaged in producing works of art that expose student feelings about drawing the line against prejudice. Other students participated in the “Power Over Prejudice” workshops. Together, they helped open a student exhibit at Oglethorpe University.

After an advisement session last Friday, today students participated in the “Dots” activity. The advisors used the following resource to facilitate the activity.

Then, we moved into an assembly with a special visitor. I hope you can find 20 minutes to watch the video below, which captures two advisement groups during the Dots, as well as key pieces of the assembly. I am so proud of our students, our advisors, our diversity coordinators (Lalley, Reina, and Jones), our art teachers, our Glenn Institute and Ms. Schoen. What a fine example of project-based learning. More importantly, though, what a fine example of Embracing Differences!

Held Accountable

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Principals, other school admin, teachers, educators, and other learners…STOP! and READ! Bill Ferriter’s The Tempered Radical blog post “What I’d Hold YOU Accountable For.” From the perspective of this principal teacher, Bill’s tweet and post are right on the money…they certainly do NOT rub me the wrong way. May I strive to live and lead by his recommendations!

Are we creating the conditions necessary for innovation in schools? Are we leading learning innovation?

In an effort to complement Bill’s post, I offer these supports, suggestions, and examples:

  1. Tear down the walls that exist between teachers and rebuild an infrastructure that provides for a powerful community of learners. The PLC infrastructure is well-researched, well-documented, and well-utilized (in many places). At the Junior High at Westminster, we have adopted and adapted an aggressive model – replace a class in the rotating schedule with an opportunity for regular, job-embedded PLC work. Our teams meet four days per week, for 55-minutes each day…just like our student learners meet for math, English, science, etc. Additionally, we use a co-facilitator, teacher-leader model, and we rely on a PLC structure to support the facilitators of the various teams. As a facilitator PLC, we meet one day per week for face-to-face time.
  2. Tear down the walls that exist between teachers and leverage social media to provide an “anywhere, anytime” PLC/PLN. For the past month, a growing team of teachers at Westminster has been engaged in the “20 minute experiment” on Twitter. Take a look…
  3. Tear down the walls that exist between teachers and implement a faculty assessment plan that holds growth and development more dear than evaluation. Let’s conduct “physicals” rather than “autopsies.” We are several years into this process at Westminster.
  4. Tear down the walls that exist between teachers and promote innovation, creative thinking, and project-based learning. Find ways to highlight the experiments, innovations, prototypes, and trials of an amazing faculty of lifelong learners.

And, in conlusion for this post, to put the proverbial cherry on top, be sure to watch this Jay McTighe video…
http://jplgough.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/learning-habit-assumptions-experience-practice-and-empathy/

It’s about learning…and learning is all about prototyping, which is just a pretty euphemism for trying, practicing, failing, and trying again.

Pull Together: Part II

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I hope I do not sound overly paternalistic when I say, “I am so proud of the teams of teachers in our Junior High!” Currently, our PLC (professional learning community) facilitators are enacting an action research project. We are facilitating the construction of essential learnings for an upcoming unit of instruction in our various PLCs (math, English, science, history, Spanish, etc.). Among the groups, essential learnings exist at various stages and phases. Some teams are a year or more into the process. Others are just starting. Some take to it like a fish to water. Others struggle. Sounds like any learning endeavor, doesn’t it?!

To help find common ground in our journeys to establish essential learnings, we decided to “shrink the change” (from Switch, by Dan and Chip Heath). What if all the PLCs worked on essential learnings for an upcoming unit? Could that help us all to understand essential learnings more deeply? Could such a project illustrate a variety of ways for teams to respond to the first essential question of all PLCs: What should students learn?

After a few facilitator workshop meetings, in which we strived to understand the basic processes of establishing essential learnings, we got to work in our various PLCs. Take a look at the method the Junior High Math PLC used to discuss and enhance the vertical alignment of their established and evolving essential learnings in 6th through 8th grade math.

Can you fathom the potential of this team-oriented work? They are breaking down the silos of individual courses and teachers. They are building an essential learnings “scope and sequence” to ensure that our math students develop deep and enduring understanding of critical math concepts. To know what students should learn then allows us to build assessment strategies to ensure that deep learning is occuring and enduring. And we can work out the kinks of overlaps and gaps so that student-learning is part of a system, rather than a vaccuum.

In the background of the current, short version of the video, the Science 8 PLT is completing a new draft of their essential learnings. Those go on the board next! Can you see what’s coming? The potential for integrated studies that weave together the related essentials of math and science. [I am looking forward to showcasing that video journal.] What potential! I am so proud of our teams of teachers learners! When we pull together, we can accomplish more.

What’s In a Name?!

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Schools around the United States, as well as throughout the world, are discussing “21st century education.” Some are getting on with it, and some are spending considerable time just debating the name of the movement. The version of the phrase which seems to cause some folks the most consternation is “21st century skills.” From what I gather, some people get irritated because few, if any, of the skills named in any such list have just now become important simply because it is after January 1, 2001. [Some distractors even want to debate the actual start of the 21st century!] Of course…these skills have ALWAYS been important, but they are increasingly important now.

As for me, I say that those who want to spend time debating the best moniker to unite us all under a mutually agreed-upon banner are distracting the real essence of what students, educators, parents – ALL LEARNERS – should be discussing. Forget about the name! It is simply a categorical title to get us all talking about a set of shared language, shared knowledge, and shared values. Let’s spend our time talking about what’s best for learning in the 21st century…at least for the next 80 or so years! Can we just get on with what really matters?!

My vision, simply stated, for 21st century teaching and learning:

  • The 20th century is thematically characterized by the Industrial Age. My vision for 21st century education accepts that learning is not about assembly lines, production widgets, efficiency, and adult convenience. Learning is integrated! Let’s really examine sending our most precious commodity (see…our language is even habituated from an Industrial Age !) – CHILDREN – down an assembly line of siloed instruction in math, science, history, English, etc. The brain is a beautifully complex network of integrated systems. It is a SYSTEM! So should be school! [see Ken Robinson’s RSA]
  • The 20th century is thematically characterized by “sit and get” instruction. My vision for 21st century education accepts that learning is project-based. Before people seat us in rows and columns of desks among four walls, we learn through “projects.” After formal schooling, we learn through projects. Learning is project-based! Context precedes competence. And there is a spectrum of “project-based.” The most advanced projects are those that integrate the all-too-departmentalized subjects, those that develop from STUDENT-learner QUESTIONS and INQUIRY instead of teacher-driven decisions, and those that make a real, authentic, relevant difference in this world – a world that begs for problem identifiers and problems solvers who recognize that great ideas emerge in “coffee houses.” [see Kiran Bir Sethi’s TED talk, Linda Darling-Hammond, Steven Johnson’s TED talk and/or RSA]
  • The 20th century is thematically characterized by an overemphasis on assessment OF learning. My vision for 21st century education accepts that assessment is FOR learning. Assessment is FOR learning! We need to utilize assessment carefully and thoughtfully to maintain a strong, healthly lifestyle and attitude about learning. Autopsies are for dead people, and they don’t offer much assistance to those on whom the service is being performed. If we only do one thing for learners in the 21st century, we should assist their (OUR!) development of the growth mindset over the fixed mindset. [see Robert Marzano, Tom Guskey, James Popham, Rick and Becky DuFour, Bob Eaker, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, Alfie Kohn, Bill Ferriter, Joe Bower, Jonathan Martin, George Couros, and the list goes on, etc.]

“What?!” you say. “He didn’t even mention technology. What a fool!” Technology is just a tool to help us accomplish the three points above…it is a means, not an ends, even in our digitially-dominated world.

Let’s get on with it already! It’s about LEARNING!

Pull Together

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For the past two weeks, I have experienced virtually countless reminders about the importance of “pulling together” when engaged in team work. A chorus of “heave ho” echoes in my ears. For when we don’t pull together, we often get stuck.

On January 19, we engaged the Georgia Tech Leadership Challenge Course for our 8th graders. Here is a short video clip of one segment in the team-oriented course:

When the students did not pull together, the cable pulleys got “tweaked” and the moving bridge would not move. To make forward progress, they had to pull together. To pull together, they had to communicate!

This week, a team of mine got stuck. Forward progress was halted. The left hand and the right hand did not know what each was doing. Both had good intentions. But now, we are temporarily stuck. We are struggling to regain momentum and progress. Strain on the muscles to overcome inertia is evident. The wheels are squeaking. If we had just communicated. We could have pulled together.

The 8th graders were wise to wear safety gear. A mistake could become a lesson from which to learn, but not a tragedy. I wonder if my team of educators had our safety gear securely and properly adorned. I guess we will discover the answer to that as we look for a mistake that becomes a lesson…or a tragedy.