Category Archives: CHANGEd: What If…Weekly

Change the World… Change School

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From “Young People Are the Geniuses Who Change the World,” Angela Maiers, Switch & Shift: Human Side of Business, 7/28/2013 [HT Angél Kytle]

At Choose2Matter, our opening line in speaking to young adults is “You Are a Genius, and the World Needs Your Contribution.” Next, we tell them they can change the world.

Why do we say this?

Because studies show that, at the age of five, 100% of students believe they can, and will, change the world. When I visit with first-graders, they always confirm this by enthusiastically charging the stage en masse when I invite them to share their genius and tell me their ambitions for changing the world.

By the age of 9, only half of students believe they are geniuses who can change the world.

By the age of 16, just 2% of students believe they are geniuses who can change the world.

When I visit high schools, I see something very different than I do in elementary schools. The genius is still there, but it’s buried under years of schooling. How? I’ve actually had educators and parents comment on my posts that we shouldn’t tell students they can change the world, because it sets unrealistic expectations. My response: unrealistic for whom?

An incredible post that then highlights nine young people who are changing the world. One of the people is Jack Andraka, whom I spotlighted on my own blog before. And there are eight more.

Correction. There are THOUSANDS more! MANY THOUSANDS!

A few more of the many – all whom I’ve met thanks to TEDxAtlanta:

Brittany Wenger – post and TEDxAtlanta Profile and Talk

Brittany Wenger, a high-school senior, is well on her way to making the diagnosis of breast cancer less painful and more accurate.

Clare O’Connell – TEDxAtlanta Profile and Talk

At age 20, Claire O’Connell is a co-founder of EyeWire, an online game / “citizen science initiative” that’s helping to map the human brain by mapping the connections between retinal neurons.

Hannah Salwen – TEDxAtlanta Profile and Talk

Kevin Salwen is a writer and entrepreneur. With his 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, he is co-author of The Power of Half. The book is the story of a eureka moment by Hannah that resulted in the Salwen family’s commitment to reduce their consumption by half — started by selling their house and moving into one half its size.

School is not just preparation for real life. School is real life. And real life could be school.

Einstein said, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Survives.

How might we enable curiosity to THRIVE in formal education?

By helping school become more about the “business” of real-life, relevant work. There are armies and armies of young people who care and want to change the world. A few will demonstrate the initiative to do so in spite of the rigidity of an industrial-age school system. But how many more might be activated, inspired, and motivated IF school were structured to nurture such inherent passion for wanting to make the world a better place – while the learners are IN school?

Recently, at our school, Mount Vernon Presbyterian School, faculty T.J. Edwards (@TJEdwards62) and Mary Cantwell (@SciTechyEDU) have invited and enlisted others in our ranks who might want to work on OpenIDEO’s Creative Confidence Challenge.

What if we ALL participated?!

#RipplesInAnEndlessPond

#ItsAboutLearning

#ItsAboutMakingADifference

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Related Posts:

Is School Enough? via PBS (HT @aenclade, @willrich45)

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amanda enclade (@aenclade)
9/1/13, 4:12 PM
Preview of a soon to be released PBS video. Wondering: why can’t passions exist in school as well? buff.ly/18bFe2B via @willrich45

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“Is School Enough?” Preview from PBS.

Edu-morphology?

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I wonder why we don’t have schools, departments, and/or MOOCs for “edumorphology.”

I mean, we have schools, departments, and MOOCs for geomorphology.

Recently, I was listening to “Reading the Rocks,” a long-form radio interview on the program On Being with Krista Tippett. Krista was talking with David Montgomery (“David Montgomery is Professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he leads the Geomorphological Research Group. He’s the author of The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood and Dirt.” – from the On Being program site)

Maybe if we had Edumorphological Research Group(s), we’d understand better and build more wisdom around school transformation.

What if…

#NewVenturesToBuild

Make learners conform to the room, or make the room conform to the learning? #EdSpace

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$9.99

That’s what a small can of chalkboard paint cost at a hardware store nearby. With several cans of chalkboard paint and a few cans of whiteboard paint, a lower school teacher transformed the learning environment for the student learners coming to her soon.

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Instead of students “getting in trouble” for writing on the desks, Miss F altered the typical “classroom” environment so that desk writing was not only permissible, but encouraged and fun.

For 1st graders. Learning to write and express themselves through writing.

When the student learners gathered in the room for the first time, during a recent orientation day, there was much writing and drawing on desks! They owned their learning environment with those acts of defiance turned and transformed into acts of creativity.

And should the student learners tire of sitting, there are standing-level desks and exercise balls to bounce on while one learns. A far cry from “Sit still!”

What an act of transformation. To reverse the typical paradigm. Instead of expecting students to bear the lion’s share of conforming to the rules of the room, the rules of the room were re-conformed to promote the desired dispositions and learning explorations of the student learners!

And with such a flip in conformity expectations, transformations are made possible. And deep relationships forged.

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Recent, incredible resources on space re-design:

“8 Tips and Tricks to Redesign Your Classroom,” Edutopia, August 6, 2013, by David Bill (@DavidSBill) and The Third Teacher+ (@TheThirdTeacher)

Being called and curious. Being an explorer. Widening our options.

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“Certainly to enter a world of terror, you should not be pushed by someone. You should be called. You should be curious. You should have the heart of an explorer.” — Philippe Petit, high-wire artist (from here)

In Dan and Chip Heath’s newest book, Decisive, they illuminate a process for making better decisions. It’s called W.R.A.P.

W = Widen Your Options

R = Reality-Test Your Assumptions

A = Attain Distance Before Deciding

P = Prepare to Be Wrong

On the Heath Brothers’ site, one can register and gain access to some great resources. One of them is a one-pager summary of the WRAP process.

For “W” —

Screen Shot 2013-08-01 at 5.56.14 AMIn looking for “analogies from related domains,” I often turn to TED and NPR. Recently, I listened to the TED Radio Hour feature called “To The Edge” – a curation of talks about exploration.

Many people talk about “fear of the unknown” and our “V.U.C.A.” world (Volatile, Uncertain, Chaotic, Ambiguous). While the future of schooling is not a “world of terror” in any way, shape, or form, in my opinion, I wonder if some view it that way, even if subconsciously.

As for me, I feel called. I feel curious.

I am an explorer.

And I am grateful to be a member of a team that believes in systemic exploration – driven by curiosity – to generate increasingly better models of school-based learning and education.

I learn a lot about my role and my calling and my curiosity by approaching educational innovation as an explorer.

How might we enhance the manner in which we systemically explore innovation in schools? 

One idea (among many) – BE an explorer! Encourage systemic exploration and nurture methods and manners to explore educational enhancement AS a school team and community.

Most, if not all, schools highlight the explorers and inventors in world and U.S. history, mathematics, science, etc. How many of us are practicing exploration and invention, as an organization – intentionally, purposefully? How are we creating time and space for exploration and invention?

Here’s to being called out on that high-wire, to that summit, for that row across the ocean. (You’ll just have to listen to To The Edge, if those references make you… curious.)