Trailblazers- Student Driven EdMagazine

Posted on June 11, 2017 by boadams1

During the spring semester of this 2016-17 academic year, senior Anya Smith-Roman and junior Abigail Emerson, of Mount Vernon Presbyterian School, led efforts to create and publish a new journal for education – all originating from the student-learner voice and position. Check out their first publication!

The Life of Pinya

It’s official, the first edition of Trailblazers, a student driven magazine on the Education Transformation Movement, is here with young writers from around the world contributing!!!! My peers in the Innovation Diploma, Abigail Emerson and Kaylyn Winters, and I have been working at this project all year after some last minute edits over the summer, we now feel it is time to ship the idea and get it out into the world.

So please check out our first edition which includes:

A Letter From the Founders

Meet the Curators: Anya Smith-Roman, Kaylyn Winters, Abigail Emerson

The learner-centered movement: Q&A: Sparkhouse Conference

Creating Something New: Brady Vincent

Change is a Conversation: Neel Pujar

Free Ranged vs. Caged: Kim Mi Yeoh

Intelligence: Cali Ragland

Community Connections

Good Reads

Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible!! Can’t wait for issue 2!

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How’s your heart? From being busy to just being.

Posted on December 9, 2016 by boadams1

Two incredibly powerful, interlaced lessons about relating to others — about making time to truly be present with another.

In “The Disease of Being Busy,” an article shared by Krista Tippett’s On Being, columnist Omid Safi challenges what seems to have become the way many of us respond to each other when asked, “How are you?” Safi encourages us all to look past the to-do list when answering and instead to know the contents of our hearts — so that we might share heart with others.

And in Elizabeth Lesser’s TED talk, “Say your truths and seek them in others,” she offers a beautiful story about her “soul marrow transplant” with her sister. Lesser describes three lessons: “1) uncover your soul; 2) when things get difficult or painful, stay open; and 3) every now and then, step off your hamster wheel into deep time.” For in that soul-bearing openness of deep time, we discover true connection, compassion, empathy and awe.

And we need a bit more awe in our lives. Awe shared by making time simply to be…with one another.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

Posted on May 22, 2016 by boadams1

New Normal Leader — Radar Journal

Maybe one of the most important leadership articles we can read…and implement.

tags: leader radar leadership newnormal #MustRead #MVIFIshares change
- Keeping pace with the hockey stick curve of exponential change requires being deliberate about evolving as a leader.
- Too many leaders — both at the top and across organizations — are taking a linear perspective that focuses on small incremental gains, often achieved by squeezing harder on what they already know. The problem is that, in a world of exponential change, a linear path is an exit ramp.
- RADAR believes that “new normal” captures the emerging truth that change and volatility will continue to accelerate and intensify. Equally important, we believe many leaders have been led to think that new normal means things will level out again, and that there will once again be stable times they can get their arms around.
- Transforming from normal to new normal leadership is the single most important variable in sustainable success.
- transforming how you lead is difficult because leadership has become, more than ever, a team sport. A leadership team’s ability to become more adaptive requires not just individual change, but collective and coordinated change.
- Something makes us think that greater speed should require more intense focus on the road immediately in front of us. In reality, it is exactly the opposite.
- The most powerful and dramatic shift you can make toward new normal leadership is to reset your and your team’s perspective, to follow the racer’s rule of thumb and look out of the top 1/3 of the windshield. Like in racing, focusing farther ahead is the key not only to speed, but also to both seeing greater possibility and avoiding potentially
  deadly disruptions.
- What stands out most about how this team works is the time commitment they make to developing and maintaining up-and-out perspective.
- “Perspective is worth 80
  IQ points.”
- However, managing speed requires more than perspective. Leaders also need to develop alignment.
- In organizations, alignment is what makes foresight an accelerant.
- Resetting perspective is the most powerful evolutionary step you and your team can make toward new normal leadership.
- With strategy, sensemaking pushes leaders back into the role of explorer rather than just decider.
- With leadership development, sensemaking forces leaders to teach high potentials how to learn, rather than what they know.
- Sensemaking — especially when approached as a team with a goal of producing aligned foresight — gives an organization one of the most remarkable assets imaginable: clarity of possibility.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

Posted on May 15, 2016 by boadams1

TeachThought: A Diagram Of Pedagogy in the 21st Century –

HT Angél Kytle

tags: pedagogy #MustRead #mvifishares
How an Ecosystem Mindset Can Help People and Organizations Succeed

HT @MeghanCureton

tags: ecosystem mindset #MustRead innovation designthinking
- The journey is one that everyone, individuals and organizations alike, can benefit from: start from a self-centric position, and meet, talk, and fail your way outwards. Along the way, partner with others, try small tests, and learn.
Authentic Design Challenges in Project-Based Learning: Fostering Innovators — Medium

Check out my new blog for @wrldleadership on #designthinking challenges in #pbl! https://t.co/OLjH0jYshS #pblchat #edreform #innovation

tags: pblchat edreform innovation PBL designthinking #MustRead #mvifishares
- By connecting Design Thinking with Project-Based Learning, these amazing teams helped their students see how innovation and imagination can solve not just local challenges, but those faced by humans around the world. The design process required the kind of critique and revision PBL asks of students, and the resulting increases in risk taking and resilience will serve students well in any field. Most importantly, by grounding the design work in empathy interviews and authentic challenges, students were invited not only to witness the world as it is, but also to begin crafting the world as it might be.