PROCESS POST: What Guy Hoffman Could Teach Us About Our School Day!

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There are so many reasons for educators to watch the TED talk below – “Guy Hoffman: Robots with Soul.” As for me, I am paradoxically inspired, mesmerized, puzzled and saddened by Hoffman’s talk.

When I watch and listen to Hoffman, I think of what he must have been like as a K-12 student. What amazing curiosity, drive, passion, and persistence this learner must have had – must continue to have. Through his work, I am inspired by what contributions robotics and roboticists will make in our lives.

And yet I am saddened by the conversations I can imagine that some (many?) schools would have regarding the content and context of such an idea-generating talk.

“What department would we place this course in? He wants to build robots as part of his learning, so it must be ‘Engineering Class,’ right?”

“We don’t have a course called ‘Engineering.’ Maybe we just put it in physics?”

“But how would we cover all the stuff we are already doing in physics? There’s no time or room to add robotics like this in my course.”

“Could it go in a math class? Hoffman mentions math in the talk, doesn’t he?”

“No, it should go in Drama class. Weren’t you listening? He said he took a drama course and method acting is what really helped him break through in the contrast between the computing mind and the adventurous mind.”

“But Drama is just a semester elective. Our kids could never get this work done in just a semester, given the basics of acting that we need to cover.”

“It should go in computer animation, when we get that class up and running.”

“What about psychology? He talks about emotions, and our ‘Human Psych’ course is the only course that has ’emotions’ in the learning outcomes.”

“Why not biology? After all, he is using human biology as a mechanism for understanding how to make the robots more ‘human.'”

“Are you kidding me? When would we have time to build robots in 10th grade biology? It’s AP, for goodness sake?”

“Look, if he wants this to be part of his schooling, he’s gonna need to find a faculty sponsor, and the faculty member will need to create a course proposal. It’s already December, so our deadline is passed. Any course proposal would need to be submitted by NEXT December, and then we might add the course the FOLLOWING year, if the academic committee approves the course. And forget about team teaching with a math, drama, physics, and biology teacher-team. That’s way too many resources to commit to an elective, non-essential course.”

WHAT IF…

OR — we could build in time during the school day for passion-driven, cross-curricular learning. So what if the 17-year-old version of Guy Hoffman’s idea doesn’t fit neatly into one of the silo-ed, department-organized, subject-area courses? Those course structures only represent part of our school day and school week. We don’t just organize by departmental subject area. We co-organize by student-interest and make space for just this kind of exploring, searching, questioning, experimenting, and integrating.

After all, we know that to nurture innovators, they must have time, room, and opportunity to practice observing, questioning, experimenting, networking, and associating.

Oh that we might make it so. If not us, then who? If not now, then when?

#iDiploma

Real-World Impact: Guest Post @TylerThigpen #MVPSchool #MVIFI #MVImpact

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Today, the Upper School parents at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School (where I work, learn, serve, and play) received a letter from Head of Upper School Tyler Thigpen, and I am quoting a significant section of the letter below, with his permission, as something like a guest blog post.

To give just a bit of context, the Upper School students at Mount Vernon experience (and share voice in the iterative implementation of) a very purposefully researched, designed and orchestrated transdisciplinary program. Using MVPS’s developed model of design thinking – DEEP (Discover, Empathize, Experiment, and Produce) – faculty and students focused on discovery and empathy phases in September, October, and November. Then, in the first week of school in January, students engaged in a mixture of content/context workshopping, vigorous presentation production, and iterative pitching to convince expert panels to approve further work on the projects into the experiment and produce phases. Pitches were evaluated on ten comprehensive criteria, and projects were also rated by degree of difficulty.

Okay, now onto the guest-blogging-by-way-of-parent-letter…

Dear Upper School Family,

Happy New Year!

I have been itching to share with you the deep learning, college preparation, and marketplace training that have already occurred this year.

Last week, thanks to an innovative plan crafted collaboratively by both students and teachers, Upper School students positioned themselves to leverage content and skills from their classes to design and pitch capstone projects aimed at real-world impact.

They developed creative solutions, honed their presentation abilities, and used constructive criticism to correct previous knowledge and improve ideas. Examples of diving deep in search of learning outcomes in some of their classes included: students writing algorithms, researching flora and fauna, learning profit maximization, understanding search engine optimization, and performing comparative analyses.

Students received pointers from visiting professionals such as the SVP of Business Operations at Turner Broadcasting, SVP of Communications & Investor Relations at First Data, VP of Marketing at Popeye’s, VP of Financial Planning & Analysis at Manheim, Chief Development Officer at Metro Atlanta YMCA, Councilman at City of Sandy Springs, and numerous others.

The learning that is taking place is truly remarkable.

Colleges appreciate when students come equipped to learn how disciplines overlap and how humanistic and scientific approaches can be applied to real-world issues and challenges. Both emphases were front and center last week. About this approach, a Wake Forest University faculty leader writes:

“Mount Vernon’s innovative move, allowing students and curriculum to cohabit in a learning environment, should serve as a model for all schools. The difference between knowing about and knowing is profound. When students engage the realities of their study–the good, bad, and the ugly– the result is ownership; students become actors who come to believe they can act. The point of education is to sanction agency for students to win their future. Hats off to Mount Vernon.”

– Dr. Allan Louden, Communication Studies Department Chair, Wake Forest University, and Director of United States Grant for the Ben Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Institute

From the private sector, another professional comments,

“Mount Vernon’s transdisciplinary approach focuses on building strong critical thinking and problem solving skills that will better prepare students to compete in a global marketplace.”

– Joanne Burke, Banker, Goldman Sachs; and Member of Board of Overseers, Boston Symphony Orchestra

Lastly, one of last week’s panelists remarks,

“Thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of such an exciting experience! Not only was it meaningful to me because I witnessed tremendous growth in the students…but it was also incredible to see students tackling problems that exist in the world outside MVPS, offering significant and relevant solutions. I am impressed with the level of thoughtfulness and detail students put into their projects. Thank you again for allowing me to join!”

In my career I cannot remember seniors, during their final semester of high school, spontaneously celebrating success by running down a hallway and high-fiving classmates because of a school project. But that is what happened.

Levels of engagement, relevance, and challenge are high, and I look forward to sharing more updates as the process evolves.

…

Tyler S Thigpen

Head of Upper School

Mount Vernon Presbyterian School

MODA Film Festival, February 7-9, @modatl

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Screen Shot 2014-01-16 at 4.32.52 AMhttp://www.museumofdesign.org/film-festival/

 

If time is money, then how are you investing yours as a school leader?

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Time is money.

Over my lifetime, I’ve heard that phrase countless times. As a teacher in the field of economics, I certainly tried to help student learners see the power of time in their investments and savings.

To oversimplify things, you can approach monetary saving and investing from one of two approaches. As you get your paycheck:

  1. you can instantly commit a certain dollar amount or percentage to savings and investments, before you ever spend a dime on any other living expenses; or
  2. you can spend, spend, spend and wait until the end of the month to see how much you have left over for savings and investments.

Which approach do you think actually ends up with more deposits in the bank?

So, if time is (like) money, then how are you investing your time as a school leader?

Do you earmark certain amounts or percentages of time to the big investments you want to make for the long-term development of your school? And do you instantly “pay your calendar” those savings and investments, so that you know time will be devoted to those all-too-important accounts?

Or do you spend your time on all of the things that happen to come your way, only to realize at the end of a week or month that you don’t have a lot (of time) left for the critical investments for the future of your school?

A Case Study of Time Investment: Me

For about five years, I’ve disciplined myself to create what I call a “scheduling paradigm.” It’s one way that I take my monthly time paycheck and make my saving-and-investment commitments first. In past years, I’ve written about this under titles such as “Big Rocks First.”

This year, much of my first semester at Mount Vernon was devoted to an advanced ethnography plan. (That needs to be an entire other set of leadership-practice posts!) Now that I’m shifting into another phase of my work, I used a number of insights from the observations and engagements first semester to build a prototype of my second semester scheduling paradigm.

As part of the prototype testing, I sent the following email to about ten colleagues for feedback:

Dear All:

I’d really appreciate some feedback, coaching and advice from you all. I hope it will take 10 minutes or less.

I’ve attached version one of my scheduling paradigm, and I would so appreciate your eye on it. It reflects some of what I learned S1, as well as what I anticipate in S2.

  • What regularly scheduled happenings in your division/department do you want/need me a part of?
  • If you were me, how would you spend your time – what would you focus on and prioritize?
  • What do you expect from me – from your CLIO – that I might not yet be delivering on? What do you want me to keep/continue doing?

Creating a paradigm like this is a relatively long-standing practice of mine. (You can read about it here, if you are interested.) By no means does this rigidly lock me into a predetermined schedule. Rather it helps me make sure that I intentionally create space for importance. The current schedule does not reflect the impromptu talks, the project work like ATLK12DC, MVIFI & fuse14, iDiploma, etc. that we know will be a part of S2.

Thank you! I want to ensure I am serving you and the school best!

Bo

Part of my decision to seek feedback was influenced by a recent leadership podcast from Andy Stanley (hat tip to Shelley Clifford). The November and December episodes focused on “The Art of Inviting Feedback,” and Stanley’s suggestion to ask, “If you were me, what would you do?” seemed a perfect combination with my developing habit of creating a scheduling paradigm.

Well, the feedback has been amazing. Seven of the ten colleagues have provided me with very specific information about what to continue, what to add or change, and what I might drop. Earlier this week, I met with two of my co-leaders who had also created similar scheduling paradigms for themselves, and we were able to trade notes and exchange ideas about what we saw and how our time investments might synergize and complement each other’s plans.

Now, it’s time to ship the idea – something akin to an MVP (minimum viable product) – and learn from the actual commitment to the time investments.

As a school and education leader that looks for wisdom in the practice of other school and education leaders – and leaders from multiple industries, sectors, and walks of life – I thought I would share my own practice here. If any of you find even a smidgen of wisdom in the idea, then I hope you’ll make it your own and make it better. I don’t much care for the verb we often use in educational leadership – “steal.” We often hear educators say, “Oh, I like that. May I steal that idea?” Well, I offer this one freely. And I hope you’ll let me know if you have a practice that works for you in terms of devoting intentional time to the investments that matter most in our schools.

As for me, I’ve learned that time can get away from us as school leaders. So, I set aside a portion of my time paycheck at the beginning to ensure that my long-term accounts are deposited with savings and investments first.

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