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An Open Letter to My Beloved Community @MVPSchool and @MVIFI
To My Beloved Community at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School and The Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation:
You inspire me.
Your inquiry. (You’re inquiry.)
Your innovation. (You’re innovation.)
Your impact. (You’re impact.)
They inspire me, and you inspire me. And so I challenge you.
What is your “mold?” What is your idea bubbling forward and exploding out from/to your inquiry and innovation and impact?
I challenge you to spend as long as it takes to watch “The Year in Ideas: TED Talks in 2014.” (And if you are “older,” please consider starting with the TEDx below from Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein: “It’s Not Too Late to Make a Difference.”)
The talks themselves are incredible, instructive, and educational. I learned quite a bit from watching them all myself. They are full of content. They model remarkable skills. They are stories from innovators nurtured.
But that’s not why I share them here and challenge you.
I share them with you and use them to catalyze a challenge that you are already engaged in. More than most schools, our school is designed for us to find our mold and make a difference, whether defined through an inquiry, an innovation, or an impact…or perhaps at the intersection of all three.
We have our courses. We have our co-curriculars. We also gloriously have our (i)Project. We have our (i)Diploma. We have MoVe talks. We have #MVIFI. We have our R&D teams.
Yes, more than most, we live in a system that encourages us and supports us to be just like the people on that stage in the TED and TEDx talks.
What will your talk be about? What actions and pursuits will provide the meat and potatoes for your talk?
I cannot wait to listen and learn from you!
And please let me know how I can help, join in, participate, celebrate, provoke, applaud, provide feedback, nourish, spur, support, and challenge you even more.
Thank you for all you do to inspire and challenge me daily. I am grateful and humbled at being a part of this beloved community. I am thankful to be a #Transformer alongside you.
On to 2015!
Sincerely,
Bo Adams
Parent, Colleague & Chief Learning and Innovation Officer
Semester One: Purposeful Wandering
Meghan Cureton (@MeghanCureton) provides a zoomed-out perspective and reflection on the inaugural semester of the Innovation Diploma at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School and the Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation.
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Great piece about creating entrepreneur-oriented educational paradigm, NOT simply inserting an “entrepreneurship course” into school curriculum.
Thx @YongZhaoUO for highlighting the value of @MViDiploma: Not a course, a new model. http://t.co/d2rxdQmCCg cc @jbrettjacobsen @boadams1
HT @MeghanCureton (tweet above)
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Entrepreneurship is fundamentally about the desire to solve problems creatively. The foundation of entrepreneurship—creativity, curiosity, imagination, risk-taking, and collaboration—is, just like the ideas of engineering, “in our bones and part of our human nature and experience.”
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To cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset cannot be achieved by simply adding another course to teach entrepreneurship to the existing paradigm. We now need a new education paradigm—entrepreneur-oriented education, instead of the employee-oriented education. Such a paradigm is really about the human dimensions.
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It is about respecting children as human beings and about supporting, not suppressing, their passion, curiosity, and talent.
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Mount Vernon students use 3-D printer to build a new hand – Reporter Newspapers
An amazing story of students using a 3-D printer to build a hand! #edleader21 #deeperlearning @boadams1 http://t.co/BeVdM8gIB5
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How Dissecting a Pencil Can Ignite Curiosity and Wonderment | MindShift
Very powerful read about how VTR and design thinking can empower learners as agents of change.
HT @Deacs84
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Jahresplaner – The Round Method – Kalender / Calendar
What an incredible innovation to the linear block calendar on 12 printed pages. This circle calendar is this strategic thinker/planner’s dream!
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Participatory Pathways for Teacher Research | T. Steele-Maley
New Post: Participatory Pathways for Teacher Research: http://t.co/vjVG5eJtaD cc: @boadams1 @GrantLichtman @pgow @GeoMouldey
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To create pathways for innovation we must replace myths with methods. I strongly believe one seminal way to do this is through teachers being participatory researchers in the innovation process.
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Opening up our innovation process to ongoing and meaningful contributions from everyone in our institution not just surveying opportunities offered in professional development or school initiatives, but offering ongoing involvement in a measured cycle of experimentation for the practitioner. This is sustained, measured participatory research driven by the end users to contribute to innovations on the ground.
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Grading Standards Can Elevate Teaching – Education Week
HT @NicoleNMartin
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Nearly all administrators readily admit that their teachers’ grades are flawed. And yet teachers receive almost no support for grading in most preservice, in-service, or professional-development study. Why, with this clear need for change, is grading so often a silenced dialogue in schools?
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We need to create a structure that allows each teacher to question her own understanding and beliefs about grading; for example, the assumption that giving zeroes will motivate students to work harder and better equip them to earn a passing grade.
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In 2011-12, I tested this design with a dozen teachers in a medium-size district in Northern California. Together, teachers examined conceptual and empirical research around grading, reflected on their own grading practices, piloted new practices in their classrooms, shared results with their colleagues, refined their prototypes as a group, and then repeated the cycle several times. We saw results we had hoped for: Teachers improved the accuracy of their grading practices, and their students’ passing rates increased significantly. Participants experienced what one veteran teacher described as “the most authentically collaborative experience I’ve had professionally.” But what was truly remarkable were the unintended consequences.
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In addition to the improvements in their grading systems, the teachers’ reflective inquiry changed other aspects of their teaching, including their homework assignments, formative assessments, and even the language and cultural norms of their classrooms.
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it's about learning 