Cut it to your core and concentrate on clarity

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Rob Evans spoke of taking things off of our plates before adding more on. Gary Hamel introduced the notion of core competencies. And Greg McKeown gave us the clarity paradox.

“the clarity paradox,” … can be summed up in four predictable phases:

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success. 
Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities. 
Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts. 
Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, success is a catalyst for failure.

– from “The Disciplined Pursuit of Less,” Harvard Business Review, August 8, 2012.

It’s a fundamental principal of design, too. Take away all that is non-essential. Reduce until you cannot reduce any more. Then, the best will remain. When I think of this principal, I think of a sculptor reducing a block of marble to the essential remains – I see something like Michelangelo’s David. In fact, now that I think of it, the content of the statue points strongly to the lesson, as well – a small boy with only a sling defeating an enormous giant.

One way in which a school can achieve systemic unity and cohesive pedagogical architecture – don’t add so much to your plate…know your core competency…maintain your clarity of purpose…strip away the stone to reveal the statue…master the sling and know your creator instead of carrying too many weapons and weighing yourself down with too much proudly worn armor.

Is departmental structure for the kids or for the adults?

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Departmentalized school structure is increasingly interesting to me. During my teaching career, I have taught in a math department, a history department, and an economics sub-department. My placement in these departments was based on my own passions and “expertise” for certain subject matter.

I wonder what school would look like if we based the structure on the interests and passions of the student learners? Even for just part of the day. Oh, that might look more like clubs and athletics.

In my past two years of my teaching career, I considered myself inter-departmental because of the nature of the Synergy course that I co-facilitated. Depending on the project pursuits of the students, we could be considered a math department on some days, an English department on other days, a science department on many days, a sociology department on most days,…. And because we had multiple groups, we were all of those departments, and more, on every day.

Those most recent two years felt the most like school designed for the students’ interests, instead of just designed for my interests.

PROCESS POST: Thinking out loud about the systemic architecture of school pedagogy design

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I am deeply curious about and invested in systemic learning and change in schools. Understandably, a great deal is written for and presented to teachers. Individual teachers. There are countless articles, blog posts and conference sessions about implementing different approaches and methods in class. I know that a number of teachers try and implement those suggestions, recommendations, and tested-by-others ideas. I have been one of those teachers – on the giving end, as well as on the receiving end – many times. I am all for that kind of learning and sharing.

But how does such adaptation and evolution happen on a systemic level? For an entire school, system, university, or network. Not every teacher at a given school is reading the same body of research and blog-posting. Not every teacher at a given school is attending the same conference sessions. Not every teacher at a given school is actually implementing the collectively designed enhancements that they have garnered for their pedagogical slice of the school pie.

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Today, this has really been on my mind. I began my day re-listening to a podcast of Dan Pink’s Office Hours with Gary Hamel. It was my third listen. I will need to listen a few more times before I unpack the density and richness there, but I know that it is related in powerful ways to what I am pondering here about the systemic nature of change and evolution in a school. One thing that immediately sticks out to me is Hamel’s explanation of being “prisoners of the familiar.”

So, in a single school, some teachers remain imprisoned by the familiar, while others are breaking loose to explore, discover, and innovate new practices. Doesn’t this separate a school house? Isn’t this another kind of educational achievement gap? Didn’t Abe Lincoln say that a house divided upon itself cannot stand?

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Later in the morning, I read “Five Ways to Bring Innovation Into the Classroom” by  on KQED’s Mind/Shift. It is an extraordinary read! Excellent! The article contains rich links to other articles by Mind/Shift contributors, such as Shelley Wright, Kimberly Vincent, and Susie Boss. It’s the kind of post that makes me want to sprint to a classroom so that I can try that, and that, and some of that.

And then I imagined that a sub-set of teachers is reading this article and other related articles. Which I am all for! And I imagine that many of those teachers are trying what they are learning from the post and the related links. Which I am all for!

But we are developing schools within schools…and not really “on purpose” with carefully designed blueprints for what the entire, whole system could be. Is this okay? Is this sustainable? Is this why so many new start-up schools are happening? Tribes of innovators and doers are seceding from the unions to form their own countries. And in some schools, there can be real tension at the borders.

The cycle seems to continue. Schools within schools develop. The pedagogical achievement gap widens within schools. Is this what we want? Could there be a better way? Better ways?

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During another Dan Pink Office Hours, I have also heard a caller explain a related issue this way, essentially citing Jim Collins – about 35% of the people in an organization tend to really know – at a deep, core level – what exactly the organization does. Not at a 10, 000 ft. level, but at a deep and detailed level. If that were a soccer team, then only 3-4 people on the team would know what game was being played when they stepped on the field at each practice or competition.

That does not seem like the best way to operate as a team. Isn’t a school a team? Granted, like a team, a school can have a variety of specialists, but they all should at least possess a common understanding of the game that is being played. And, in my opinion, the game cannot be as loosely defined as, “We teach children.” To me, that kind of mutual understanding about purpose is akin to “We are all playing sports.” But the team must know more specifically which particular sport it is playing. If a school is focusing on service learning, should there be more unified work around the methodologies of service learning? I think so. If a school is focusing on problem-based learning, should there be more unified work around the pedagogies of PBL? I think so.

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Recently, at a breakfast with an amazing educational leader, we discussed master plans. Many schools invest large sums of money in campus master plans. Many schools invest large sums of money in technology master plans. Many schools invest large sums of money in strategic master plans. How many schools are investing comparable sums of money in pedagogical and professional learning master plans? Are we designing the blueprints in such a way that our builders and sub-contractors all possess a common, collective understanding of what the overall house is designed to be? If we don’t invest in such planning and purposeful construction, then why are we surprised that classrooms along a hallway can appear to be drastically different in architectural, foundational structure? And, no, I do not believe in standardizing classrooms. I am not interested in cookie-cutter construction. But I do believe that a school’s pedagogical purposes should be unified in their architectural foundations. Built on common plans, then the learning spaces can be differentiated by the equivalent of interior design and style.

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A school, to some degree, ought to be a systemic whole. There are myriad ways to accomplish such unification. Exploring these myriad ways will continue to be a fundamental pursuit of mine.

PROCESS POST: Big Shifts, Revolution, and Foxfire

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I only have a few minutes to write, and I wanted to record a bit of what I am researching and thinking about…

Big Shifts

Thanks to Twitter, I picked up on a post from @MikeGwaltney (Mike Gwaltney): “A Conversation about Big Shifts.” In the post, Gwaltney recounted NAIS president Pat Bassett’s main points from his March NAIS address and his later talk at TEDxSt. George’s School.

1. Knowing must become Doing.

2. Teacher-Centered must become Student-Centered.

3. Individual must become Team.

4. Consumption must become Construction.

5. Schools must become Networks.

6. Single Sourcing must become Crowd Sourcing.

7.High Stakes Testing must become High Value Demonstration.

8. Disciplinary must become Interdisciplinary.

Maybe because I, too, was present for Bassett’s NAIS keynote and because I had listened to the TEDx talk, Gwaltney’s post really resonated with me – I was primed to hold the post and its message in my mind.

Revolution

Thanks to The Lovett School’s fine American Studies Institute in June: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised? American Culture: 1970-present,” I have had Jay Bonner (of The Asheville School) in my mind, as I have continuously contemplated his idea that “revolution” is a cyclical re-turning…perhaps a revolution is a return to things of the past.

Foxfire

Thanks to a research project I am working on, I was re-reading Thomas Armstrong’s The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice. Of course, this line really struck a cord with me:

Educators who employ Academic Achievement Discourse often highlight the existence of a so-called achievement gap that has beset our nation’s schools. However, there is a far more profound educational gap that needs bridging. It is the gap between the ‘schoolhouse world’ and the ‘real world.’ All children, but especially those at the elementary school level, have as a central developmental focus the need to find out how the world works. (pp. 89-90)

I went on to read about best practices in “real-world schooling,” and I discovered The Foxfire Project, which is a brand of community-based education.

Another way that children can learn about how the world works is through direct contact with their local community. Perhaps the most well-known example of this approach is the Foxfire Experiment [I did not know about it]. In 1966, Eliot Wigginton and his students at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School in northeast Georgia embarked on a mission to interview local elders in the surrounding community….Their project gave birth to a magazine called Foxfire…, and later to a book, a movie, a museum, and a foundation that still operates to further this kind of approach to learning in schools around the country (Wigginton, 1973). (pp. 104-105)

The Braid – Weaving Together Big Shifts, Revolution, and Foxfire

I am fascinated by the juxtaposition of “Big Shifts” and “Revolutions.” As I read and discover more about the Foxfire Project, I realize that the “Big Shifts” are all there. All of them. In 1966, the Foxfire Project possessed all 8 of Bassett’s big shifts.

Could the big shifts in education be returns – revolutions – to methods of the past? Many speak of the cycles of educational methodology. But are we long-term meandering around a more powerful approach to school-based education? What will be the catalyst(s) and stimuli that actually cause the big shifts (returns?) to occur large-scale in schools? When will the revolution be achieved?

Are we trying to push an enormous stone of inertial resistance up a huge slope of fear-of-change? Is that why the revolution never seems to apex and move with momentum down the other side of the slope?

Works Cited

Armstrong, Thomas. The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice. ASCD, Alexandria, VA: 2006.

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