Do we give our students enough credit? #WhatIfWeekly

Posted on April 22, 2013 by boadams1

Do we give our students enough credit?

What are the traits and characteristics that we hope students develop most deeply? What knowledge and understanding?

Certainly, those schools that have engaged in exercises like “Portrait of a Graduate” have wrestled with such considerations as an entire community. A number even work to structure program and experience in such ways that there is intentionality around the development of the graduate, not only the delivering of a curriculum.

Are these some of the attributes you would name?

Curiosity
Development of a passionate pursuit and constructive interest
Persistence and deep practice
Responsibility
Creativity
Multi-media communication skills and language competency
Enthusiastic connection with joy-producing activity
Autonomy and initiative
Scientific knowledge and understanding
Presentation capabilities

What do we credit?

Do all of the credits awarded by a school – to determine successful completion – have to be curated and generated by the school, and only by the school?

Certainly, when a student enters a school from another school, credits can be granted by the receiving school – credits that the student actually earned elsewhere, namely, the previous school.

Occasionally, at the school where I worked last, we awarded credit for summer study, particularly for programs earmarked “Talented” or “Gifted Youth.”

With the rising tide of Khan Academy, badgification, MOOCs, and online learning, surely the time is not too far away that a school will award a seventh grader or eleventh grader credit for completing a physics course via Coursera or Udacity or iTunes U.

Even independent study is not too far afield from what I’m about to ask next – I mean, many schools have systems for students pursuing “independent study.”

So what would it say about a school if the school granted credit for a body of work that a student created on his or her own? Something not originally located in the course catalog. With all of the talk and movement around “student-centered learning” and “student-directed learning,” I would hope and imagine that at least a few schools are contemplating how they might formally recognize student learning pursuits that don’t necessarily arise from the school itself as originator or curator.

Don’t we want to give credit to those students who can show evidence of developing the traits and characteristics named above, even if the body of work in the “course” was not created by a faculty member or administrator? Isn’t that the whole point in the first place – to nurture life-long learners who self-initiate curious pursuits of persistent development of brain cells and heart cells?

Three Quick Examples

One

When I moved back to Atlanta to teach middle school, a high schooler had converted his Ford truck to run on used cooking grease. He would go to local fast food stores and ask if he could transfer their waste grease to his tank in the back of his truck. He had modified his truck so that it was actually fueled by this recycled material.

Today, why would we not grant credit for such demonstrated learning?

Two

A high school sophomore earned his student pilot’s license for single-engine aircraft. See one of the articles here. In addition to joyfully pursuing an interest, the accomplishment demonstrates admirable persistence, commitment, and strong knowledge in a variety of scientific topics.

What if the student could apply – if he wanted to do so – and receive credit for this work in a way that would result in its listing being included on a transcript?

Three

Another high school sophomore writes, directs, produces, and hosts a cooking show called the SWAGourmet! Along with the multiple episodes bundled on YouTube, the SWAGourmet also maintains a blog, from which people can link to the show, request recipes, and connect to related news stories.

When I saw this former student of mine last December at a Sunday brunch, SWAGourmet was the first thing he mentioned when I asked how he was doing. I loved hearing that genuine and non-bragadocious pride in his voice. And, I now love following his work, thanks to his multi-media sharing.

Anticipated Criticism

“But if we absorb that personal-hobby stuff into the credit system, we’ll set a precedent we don’t want to be burdened with. We’ll have to credit anything and everything.”

“Making it for-credit will remove some of the joy from the activity. You know, Bo, not everything has to earn quantified credits.”

“Does that mean that students could forego the course requirements in the course catalog and replace or substitute the entire curriculum with their personal interests? You’ve lost your mind, Adams.”

“Sure, Bo, and we’ll give credit for going to the bathroom, too. And holding the door open for someone… and taking out the trash. … No, that’s not ‘school’ and it shouldn’t be.”

“But what about the NCAA clearinghouse? What about the colleges and universities? They don’t want to see such ‘soft’ work on the transcripts. We’d never get that passed.”

I’m sure there are other criticisms. Those above are just the ones I’ve already heard from actual educators as I brought up the topic in casual conversation – as I was just pursuing my own curiosity.

Yes, and…!

And there were others that loved the idea. They immediately started to think about how such a system could work in conjunction with the current offerings – just like MOOCs, online academy offerings, summer credit, independent studies, etc.

The dreamers seemed to believe that by organizing such a system – granting credit for work not included in a school’s official course catalog – a school community could communicate to students that their self-curated learning and persistent pursuits MATTER. Such a hybrid could show students that their voices and myriad interests can equally contribute to the development of those “Portrait of a Graduate” traits and characteristics. One person I spoke to even suggested that a committee of faculty, parents, admin, and students formulate the process by which a school could launch such a program.

And we all enjoy getting a little credit, now and then, for things that we are excited about doing and becoming, don’t we?

#JustWondering

#FutureLearningEnvironments

“A Radically Practical Vision of Education” via @EdSurge @patwater #MustRead

Posted on April 4, 2013 by boadams1

A #MustRead of #MustReads in my humble opinion…

In a world that’s changing so rapidly, why wouldn’t you build our education system around what we don’t know rather than around what we do?

Patrick Atwater in EdSurge 4.2.2013

“What inquiry-based education could look like in the year 2025–and how we get there.”

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-04-02-a-radically-practical-vision-of-education

I think we could get there much more nimbly and quickly than 2025. It would require those who are serious about purposefully using design to work the problem to achieve these new models…in existing schools, not just new start ups. It would require the courage to lead before we reach a place of more crisis-management change motivation. It would require those who want this vision for kids and learners right now.

The Independent Project

Posted on February 20, 2013 by boadams1

“It’s crazy that in a system that is meant to teach and help the youth there is no voice from the youth at all.” That’s the opening line in a video called “If students designed their own schools,” about The Independent Project, a high school semester designed and implemented entirely by students.

from “If students designed their own school…it would look like this.” Washington Post, Feb. 20, 2013

A Golden Rule of School Reform… Okay, Maybe a Few Golden Rules #WhatIfWeekly

Posted on January 17, 2013 by boadams1

From “Why Not Ask Teachers How They Would Improve Our Schools?,” Kenneth Bernstein, Nation of Change, 17 January 2013 (emphasis mine) —

We teachers are aware that our influence can be both positive and negative. To be certain that it is positive, we need to have our voices heard as educational policy is being formed. And yet, for too long, teachers have been forced when they are allowed to speak to do so in a frame that is not authentic. In my conversation with the reporter, she began a question by framing it in terms of “accountability,” and I immediately stopped her. Those of us who take teaching seriously dislike that word because it implies that we would not care nor act responsibly towards our students absent some outside measure. To a teacher, that is a wrong mindset, an improper frame that loses sight of the students for whom we are responsible.

Just to be clear, I agree with Bernstein – educational reform MUST include the voices of educators. But this post is not about my agreement with Bernstein.

This post is about the statement in bold above and repeated here – “Those of us who take teaching seriously dislike that word [accountability] because it implies that we would not care nor act responsibly towards our students absent some outside measure.”

But isn’t this exactly what many of us do to our students? We assume – intentionally or unintentionally – that they “would not care nor act responsibly” towards the curricula “absent of some outside measure.”

#GoldenRuleOfSchooling…
“Let’s do unto our student learners as we would want done to us.”

#ImaginingLearning…
Let’s ask students what they want and need from their schooling reforms as well!

…and parents

…and various industry leaders

…and real-world problem solvers

…and …

#WeShouldAllWorkTogetherOnEducation

What if… we did.

[Hat tip to Charles McNair for passing along the article to me.]

School Innovation Teams – Start with Outrospection #WhatIfWeekly #StudentVoice

Posted on December 10, 2012 by boadams1

Education faces a design challenge. From what I know about design challenges, it seems that the best designs begin with intensive stages of immersion and discovery – putting the designers in the positions of chief empathizers.

One of the best examples I know of related to this commitment of being chief empathizers comes from Dan and Chip Heath’s book Switch. The story of Dr. Jerry Sternin harnessing the local wisdom of Vietnamese mothers who were rearing healthy children amidst a malnutrition epidemic stands out to me. Actually, the story inspires me. Dr. Sternin did not swoop in with pre-conceived notions and ready-made solutions. Instead he committed to a process of immersion and discovery to find sustainable, scalable solutions that came from within the community. He leveraged empathy to create a most-likely-to-succeed solution that honored the end users.

Countless other examples come to mind, but I’ll restrain myself and offer only a few here:

When I enrolled in a design-thinking course from IDEO and Design Thinking for Educators, we began with a mini design challenge, and step 1 was to interview someone about their morning commute. “Learn how they feel, what they wish for, what gets in their way. Your job is to ask great questions, listen, and learn. TIP: Don’t be afraid to ask ‘Why?'”
When I participated in Mount Vernon Presbyterian School’s Design Institute, before we began designing our ideal outdoor classroom, we interviewed students. We collected insights from them before we even thought about preparing solutions to our own notions of classroom design.
When Emily Pilloton asked her student designers to imagine a better chicken coop and design it, they started with observing how chickens behave. “In three days, students would get to know their feathered ‘clients’ by observing their behavior. How do they eat? ‘They like pecking out of the straw, not eating from the trough,’ noted Kerron. How do they sleep? ‘They huddle together up in the roosting box,’ said another student. After three days, our students knew far more about chicken behavior than they ever imagined or wanted.”
When Imagining Learning formed to help crowd source ideas for redesigning education, they began with Listening Sessions – for students.
When University of Missouri-Columbia freshman Ankur Singh thought to study standardized testing, he decided to take a semester off of school in order to ask those most affected – the students.

So, for all of the schools facing essential questions of innovation, I am wondering how you are factoring in “immersion and discovery.” How are you building empathy into the design challenges?

When I was a school principal, one of the most valuable things I ever did was to shadow a student every year. For a day, I would partner with a student – most often a sixth grader – and I would trail along beside them and pretend to be a student for a day. I was off limits as a principal because I wanted to be completely immersed in the experience. In the years that I was most committed, I would even do all of the homework assignments that night of the shadow. Often, on blogs like Connected Principals, I read of other administrators engaging in such empathy gathering. Now, I am wondering if schools should not build this process into their regular routines and habits.

Maybe schools need innovation teams. Among other jobs, these innovation teams could commit to shadowing students, interviewing students, observing school days and after-school activities, talking with parents about what family life is like at home after school, etc. I bet devoting just three days a year to such immersion and discovery would yield invaluable insights and empathies. [Why the arbitrary number of three days? Well, if it’s good enough for the chickens in Bertie County, NC, I figured it was a good starting place!]

Our school innovations might improve mightily if we designed with the students’ voices at the core – if we committed to “outrospection.”