What if more learning happened “in the field,” and we only occasionally gathered in that place we now call “the classroom?” As it stands, most of school happens in the classroom, and we only occasionally take field trips. What if we flipped that? What if we grouped according to certain criteria and attributes and did most of our learning in the field. Then, when necessary, or on a regularly scheduled basis, we could go on a “classroom trip.”
At bedtime, my two boys, my wife, and I often return to Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.
For me, the story has always been aspirational. Throughout my life, I hope to grow closer to the end of the spectrum where giving is more valued than receiving. In the book, of course, the boy takes and takes from the tree and his happiness is only temporary and fleeting – it lasts until he needs the next thing…maybe shorter. But the tree finds its happiness and joy from giving, and the tree’s joy seems to be more permanent and long-lasting.
This weekend, as we read The Giving Tree, I was struck by the lessons that this story could teach school. I am constantly amazed by the latest generations’ generosity. As a school principal, I had countless students come to me seeking permission to have a fund raiser for a special cause to help others. I had numerous others want to stage events to make a positive difference in the world. In fact, my school had to create a policy to deal with the number of requests for coordination and organization reasons.
Interestingly, most, if not all, of these special requests existed outside the curriculum. Shouldn’t such giving, and work, and lessoning BE the curriculum? Or at least more of the curriculum?
Schools seems so geared to getting. So much of the fundamental set-up is about what each student gets, as they enroll in math, English, science, history, etc. We send them from class to class to be filled like vessels with departmental knowledge so that they can “get” into a good college and so that they can “get” a good job.
What if school were re-imagined and re-purposed to be about what students can give? What they can contribute to the world now.
This is why I feel so passionately about PBL – project-based learning, problem-based learning, passion-based learning, place-based learning, etc. This is why I love examples like Kiran Bir Sethi’s Riverside School. This is why I feel so strongly about school curricula being more integrated and participatory in design-thinking and problem solving.
This is another piece of why people talk of 21st C education.
Twentieth-century education was modeled on the widget-creating, assembly-line system. Send the product down the line to have parts added and reservoirs filled. It was about 1.0. It was about receiving, like radios taking the signals from the towers.
Twenty-first-century education can be about giving. It is 2.0 and 3.0. Students can be co-creators of systemic improvement in the world – from better design, to water solutions, to energy enhancements, to health improvements, to more powerful robotics, to improved communications tools, to…, to…, to….
Tis better to give than to receive. Let’s facilitate kids “giving an education” instead of just “getting an education.”
Does any of this make any sense?
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Young people today think in terms of fixing the world,…
Young people today think in terms of fixing the world, by making things, and selling them. Selling them is just the necessary end point of the process.
[“A piece of ‘why,'” A piece of ‘what,'” and A piece of ‘how'” are strands of a series on why school needs to change, what about school needs to change, and how schools might navigate the change.]
This morning, I discovered Kelli Anderson. She is brilliant, and I will be thinking for days on end as a result of watching her TEDx talk. Her designs leverage pathways between the expected and unexpected. [This makes me think of water and butter again.] In addition to being incredibly creative in their own rights, Kelli’s design philosophies seem to encourage re-examining the familiar and the everyday across many domains. Her advice and inspiration could certainly be applied to what we have come to expect from “school.” What if we expected more? What if we tweaked and re-designed to build something even more creative and purposeful for the next decade? What if we harnessed “disruptive wonder for a change?”
With new ways to begin on day one and the first days of school. What if teachers staged a flashmob of sorts on the first days of school in 2012-13? As an entire profession, united as one, what if teachers put aside syllabi and course explanations, textbook distributions and notebook organization, grading policies and seating charts? What if we began with student voices and with listening to what they hope to learn and become. What if we did something like:
At this time of year, I am used to thinking about welcoming and orienting faculty who are new to the school. While I won’t be doing that this year, I continue to think of such things. Of course, my own newness and orientation is happening right now at Unboundary, so such is fresh on my mind – from the other end of the rope or side of the coin. Oh, how empathy and perspective teach!
If I were to be welcoming new faculty this year, I might just push for a new experiment or pilot. What if new faculty were allowed to choose their own mentors? Philip Cummings offers a fabulous blog post on this front with his “Find Your Yoda.” I haven’t figured out all of the logistics yet (and probably won’t by myself!), but I wonder if one could do something like…
Assign a temporary facilitator (or activator) for a small cohort of new faculty. This cohort could experience the beginning days and weeks as a team, and the facilitator could assist with “need to knows.”
As the weeks move along, each new faculty could choose his or her own mentor. Perhaps there could even be some social-media fun associated with this as veteran faculty – Yodas – “advertised” their own strengths and weaknesses on some SM resource, either internal or external. From a combination of the advertising and identity work, along with the face-to-face encounters during the first month of school, new faculty could make a pick for mentor…Yoda.
With careful cultural shaping, such a system could take on an EdCamp feel, as mentors and mentees agree to partner with someone else if the partnership is not meeting the needs of the mentee.
Maybe it all depends on whether we want to operate from a platform of delivery and assignment OR discovery and authenticity. Such platforms can really shape how we design and implement…how we try and experiment…how we grow and learn. It’s about learning.
it's about learning 