Interdisciplinary PBL Collaboration (with a side of Design Thinking thrown in!)

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An enticing introduction to a great story of collaboration among educators and colleagues, made possible by their vision and action, with support from our school and the Institute for Innovation. Look forward to learning more as this experimenting and building journey emerges in the fall.

romathio's avatarromathio

I’ve had the pleasure of working with 2 fantastic colleagues, Zach Strother and TJ Edwards, on an Interdisciplinary PBL “Unit”.  TJ had the idea of HMW we redesign a bike for an urban commuter that he wants to use in his Tech, Engineering, and Design (TED) class.  Zach teaches AP Physics.  I teach Algebra 2.  As I left our time of collaboration this morning, I reflected on how fortunate I am to work with these guys, how well we work together, and how learning from them is making me a better math teacher, which benefits my students.  Part of what works in our collaboration is that we chose the project and each other.  We come from similar mindsets to education, though not identical, which probably minimizes the disagreements.  Yet, we also feel comfortable enough to push back on certain things and talk through disagreements as we get to unity.

This…

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Exploring the circular – generating routes for future exploration

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Curiosity, exploratory drive, and determined persistence define Dame Ellen MacArthur’s remarkable story of sailing the world. And while her feat was tremendous, for me it pales in comparison to the mission that her journey revealed to her. MacArthur experientially discovered that the world is, in fact, circular and not flat. From that experience and developed capacity, MacArthur poses a small set of exemplar “What if” questions from which we might all derive navigational inspiration for the courses we set and support in our own lives and work.

But what inspired me most about the circular economy was its ability to inspire young people.When young people see the economy through a circular lens, they see brand new opportunities on exactly the same horizon. They can use their creativity and knowledge to rebuild the entire system, and it’s there for the taking right now, and the faster we do this, the better.

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[Note to self: explore connection of these inspired emotions and cognitions with recent Instagram post (Amelia Island, July 5, 2015) and current reads of A Curious Mind and How We Got to Here.]

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

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

#MustRead Shares (weekly)

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

What drives the most high-achieving teams? How are you nurturing such work in your schools?

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How should we build teams so that we accomplish truly great things? In a tremendous TED talk, Margaret Heffernan implores us to concentrate on the mortar far more than we focus on the bricks.

Once you appreciate truly how social work is, a lot of things have to change. Management by talent contest has routinely pitted employees against each other. Now, rivalry has to be replaced by social capital….Now, we need to let people motivate each other. And for years, we’ve thought that leaders were heroic soloists who were expected, all by themselves, to solve complex problems. Now, we need to redefine leadership as an activity in which conditions are created in which everyone can do their most courageous thinking together.

We know that this works.

– Margaret Hefferman: Why it’s time to forget the pecking order at work