This morning, I realized that I aspire to be a choreographer. While watching “Wayne McGregor: A choreographer’s creative process in real time,” I was moved by the emotion of possibility. Not only was I moved by the literal art and science of McGregor’s work as a master choreographer of physical dance, but I was also moved by the metaphorical force of McGregor’s message – for the translation that this work can be for teaching, school leadership, and education.
As McGregor recounted:
So this is not the type of choreography where I already have in mind what I’m going to make, where I’ve fixed the routine in my head and I’m just going to teach it to them, and these so-called empty vessels are just going to learn it. That’s not the methodology at all that we work with. But what’s important about it is how it is that they’re grasping information, how they’re taking information, how they’re using it, and how they’re thinking with it.
I’m going to start really, really simply. Usually, dance has a stimulus or stimuli, and I thought I’d take something simple, TED logo, we can all see it, it’s quite easy to work with, and I’m going to do something very simply, where you take one idea from a body, and it happens to be my body, and translate that into somebody else’s body, so it’s a direct transfer, transformation of energy.
Likewise, our student-learners are not empty vessels to be filled. They are creative, thinking, energetic forces who can express their constructing understanding of the world…with a bit of support and guidance from a choreographer. [As I learned from Farnam Street’s “What’s the best way to begin to learn a new skill?,”this transfer could also be called engraving.] Student-learners can do so much more than receive, memorize, and recall for testing. They can connect, empathize, and interpret. What could be used as the stimuli? How about world issues? How about big ideas and grand challenges that we face in our schools, in our communities, in our cities, in our nations, and in our world?
School leaders could choreograph the orchestrated dance of a coordinated, collaborative faculty…working in harmonious partnership with business, government, and non-profits. We could dance together with a bit of guidance and support from our school choreographers (school in the BROAD sense).
Later in the talk, McGregor explained:
So they’re solving this problem for me, having a little — They’re constructing that phrase.They have something and they’re going to hold on to it, yeah? One way of making. That’s going to be my beginning in this world premiere.
Okay. From there I’m going to do a very different thing. So basically I’m going to make a duet. I want you to think about them as architectural objects, so what they are, are just pure lines. They’re no longer people, just pure lines, and I’m going to work with them almost as objects to think with, yeah? So what I’m thinking about is taking a few physical extensions from the body as I move, and I move them, and I do that by suggesting things to them: If, then; if, then. Okay, so here we go.
“So, they’re solving this problem for me.” Student-learners, in partnership with their teachers choreographers and collaborators from the “real-world,” could construct phrases to test and trial against a dialogue with the big ideas and grand challenges we face. Our learning architects could assist in designing “structures” that provide for such dancing with ideas and interdisciplinary problem solving. For the accompaniment – the assessment, the communications, the engineering – would have to be re-imagined to facilitate well-architected dancing and duet-ing.
And, nearer the conclusion and the unveiling of the completed dance premier, McGregor articulated:
That was the second way of working.The first one, body-to-body transfer, yeah,with an outside mental architecture that I work withthat they hold memory with for me.The second one, which is using them as objects to thinkwith their architectural objects, I do a series ofprovocations, I say, “If this happens, then that.If this, if that happens — ” I’ve got lots of methods like that,but it’s very, very quick, and this is a third method.They’re starting it already, and this is a task-based method,where they have the autonomy to makeall of the decisions for themselves.
Do I even need to translate this one? “This is a task-based method, where they have the autonomy to make all of the decisions for themselves.” Isn’t this what we all want for our student-learners? Don’t we want to choreograph in such a way that they are not vessels to be filled but the paradoxical wonders of simultaneously independent and interdependent thinkers and doers? That they have autonomy to go and make the dances themselves that will solve our school, community, city, nation, and world issues?
Yes, I aspire to be a choreographer. A choreographer of School 3.0. And I’m looking for dancers.
In education, although there are great new models of learning and schooling, they are the exceptions, and the progressive movement has not gained much momentum.
“I’m astounded at the glacial pace of change in education,” she said. “Like many academic areas, there’s a huge disconnect between what’s known and what’s in practice. It’s very slow moving.”
“The biggest impact you’ll have as a teachers is the relationship you establish with your student.”
Try to integrate what students are interested in within what’s happening in class, get to know each student, and have high expectations.
“There’s probably no better example of the throttling of creativity than the difference between what we observe in a kindergarten classroom and what we observe in a high school classroom,”
In an ideal world, the school day would reflect kids’ changing needs and rhythms.
There would be time for free play; school would start later to allow time for students’ much-needed rest; the transition time between classes would be longer, allowing time for kids to walk down the hall and say hi to their friends and plan their next moves; kids would have the opportunity to step away from school “work” in order to regroup and process what they’ve absorbed. “The actual encoding of information doesn’t take place when you’re hunched over a desk,” she said.
arts would be integrated into a curriculum, not as an ancillary addition, but as a primary part of learning.
In “Step 0: Preparation,” the second chapter of Grant Lichtman’s book The Falconer: What We Wished We Had Learned In School, Grant offered a number of thoughts that keep me coming back to this chapter, and they seem to be relevant to this third week of Grant’s three-month, 60-school, cross-country tour exploring innovation in an interesting collection of our nation’s schools.
“Before we solve a problem or overcome a challenge or invent an invention or come to a personal point of realization, we have to be prepared to encounter a problem or challenge or a quest worthy of our assault. The excitement of learning, the compelling personal drive to take one more step on the path towards wisdom, comes when we try to solve a problem we want to solve, when we see a challenge and say, yes, I can meet it. Great teachers lead us just far enough down a path so we can see a challenge for ourselves. They provide us with just enough insight so we can work toward a solution that makes us, makes me want to jump up and shout out the solution to the world, makes me want to step up to the next higher level.” (pp. 19-20)
“If they don’t care about what I want to teach, I will teach what they care about. (p. 21)
“‘Here’s your homework. For next class, each one of you will write down something that you don’t understand, something that interests you that you’d like to know. Anything at all…as long as it’s somehow connected to the physical universe, and you care about the answers.'” (p. 21)
“In the end, we’d covered most of the major points of my original syllabus.” (p. 23)
“Great teachers create opportunities for students to ask questions that excite them to self-discovery.” (p. 23)
“The first task of preparation is to create or take advantage of, the opportunity to explore, learn, lead, or challenge.” (p. 24)
“Happiness and success depend, in many ways, on one’s ability to calmly overcome challenges, to successfully solve problems, and to creatively take advantage of opportunities.” (p. 26)
“Solutions are often found by testing many different assumptions and ideas to see what works, creating options that look at the problem in new ways.” (p. 28)
The schools that Grant is visiting are “testing many different assumptions and ideas to see what works, creating options that look at the problems in new ways.” Those of us immersed in and devoted to educational enhancement, during these times of learning and school transformation, owe a great deal to the schools opening themselves to Grant so that we can see some of what they are testing and creating. And, of course, we owe a great deal to Grant for taking this #EdJourney in order to explore and examine the approaches that schools are taking as they face this educational crossroads…and for sharing his reflections and keeping us all connected so that we can learn with and from each other.
Highlight quotes and links from Grant’s visits this week – Week 3 of #EdJourney:
“But there is another, very critical layer to innovation, and that is what this post is about. That layer is what I call the time of heavy lifting, of building the solid foundation upon which a relatively higher frequency of change and innovation becomes comfortable and a good overall fit for the organization.”
“Here are my major takeaways from Hawken, and I think they are important for any school, but most importantly for those where leaders are being really cautious about making changes for fear of upsetting faculty or parents. First, with clarity, inclusion, and adequate preparation, our organizations can withstand a lot more change than we think. As Scott left me with, “if you are going to make some changes, go big”. Second, taking on an issue like time and taming it to your needs instead of the other way around will change mindsets at your school. People will get comfortable with change where once they feared it; they will embrace evolution where once they were stuck in the familiar. These are critical traits for surviving in a changing world. It takes courage to do these, but examples like Hawken prove what is possible, and the possible is what we should be all about.”
“We walked across the street, left the block walls and tired halls and visited two classes that Eric has arranged with Community College. One is a beginning robotics class, students bent over benches putting together their first remote-controlled cars, fiddling with pieces and asking questions. Eric said it is just like turning a switch when the students leave that place they associate with tedious, normal school life and come over here. The fights and harsh words disappear. They focus on the teacher. They engage. They are actively participating in learning, and much of it is because they have inadvertently discarded their image of what school is.”
“As the Center concept grew, Bill feels they recognized deeper layers, that discovery is the true key to learning, and discovery does not happen in a class where the students are always the recipients of knowledge….
Busting the rigid silos of department was not without a bit of pain, but Koyen feels it was a modest level of pain, and well worth it. It sometimes is messy to know who must be included in what decisions as the interest of the Centers intersect with the interests of the academic departments, but the faculty works it out and have grown stronger in the process. Koyen says “It is pretty obvious that there is conflict between traditional teaching and the way the world works”.
“SLA is a public magnet school and a partnership with The Franklin Institute, a major museum and science center in Philadelphia. They have a rigorous college prep program, though devoid of AP’s. All of their classes are taught in a project-based environment and as a community they embrace the core values of inquiry, research, collaboration, presentation, and reflection. ”
If school is meant to prepare students for real life, then why doesn’t school look more like real life?
This is the primary question that has kept me research-busy for the past seven to ten years, at varying degrees. Of course, there are countless corollaries that spur me to sidebar explorations, integrated component searches and implementations, and related co-primary investigations. For example, during my middle-school principalship, I concentrated significant efforts to studying and orchestrating professional learning communities (PLCs) as a foundational structure and ethos for the way we worked. If the world at large is moving to more collaborative ways of working, then our educator workforce should operate in such paradigms and methods, too. (Of course, 25-years of research from public schools helped enormously!) By becoming a more formalized professional learning community, we blurred some of the lines between “school” and “real life,” and we enhanced the ways in which we worked as team problem solvers and educational designers – for the benefit of ourselves and our students. What’s more, we were able to empathize more genuinely about what we were asking students to do when we asked them to collaborate.
One of the most important and critical co-primary investigations in which I continue to search is How might we transform school to look more like real life?
As schools explore sustaining (tier 1 and tier 2) and disruptive (tier 3) innovations, one strong way to transform schools into more life-like analogues is to reconsider the traditional departmental structure. Typically, schools sub-divide into departments called “Math,” “Science,” “History,” “English,” etc. Curriculum tends to be categorized by these departments and divisions – by subject-area or topic. Often times, silos develop…sometimes intentionally, but more understandably in unintentional ways.
But what if we re-imagined curriculum to be more about the issues and challenges that we face? What if we had departments like…
Through project-based and problem-based learning, students in K-12 education could engage genuine issues, concerns, opportunities and possibilities. Whereas the traditional departments – math, science, history, English, etc. – have been used to segregate the disciplines, with a newly devised departmental structure, the traditional subject areas would continue in importance and vitality, but they would do so as lenses co-ground into the same optic glass.
Imagine a Department of Energy in school. Student learners could explore and work in the fields of energy research and investigation, and they could employ mathematics and statistics as lenses through which to understand energy – math in context. They could hypothesize and experiment as genuine scientists working to discover the emerging, integrated sectors of biofuels, solar energies, and other non-fossil-dependent sources – science in context. They could research through lenses of historian, anthropologist, and sociologist, and they could write persuasive and expository pieces – humanities in context. They could examine the economics and psychology of energy consumption – interdisciplinary human studies in context. Design and visual prototyping could play an integrated role – industrial arts in context.
Context should inform content and cognition. And student learners deserve to gain practice with “the app for that.” We know that athletics require much practice, but the athletes regularly have opportunity to apply their skills and development to “real-life” settings called games. We know that musicians require much practice, but the instrumentalists regularly have opportunity to apply their skills and development to “real-life” concerts and performances. When do student-learners regularly have opportunity to apply their content learning and skill development? A test is not a game or concert. An essay for a teacher is not a game or concert. Contributing to a blog about experimental energy sources is more like playing in a game or concert. Designing alternative-fuel engines is more like playing a game or concert. Partnering with local businesses, NGOs, universities, and other co-creators of our energy future – such experience most certainly is comparable to playing in the games or concerts of real life. Surely, we don’t really believe that students should wait for application until they are finished with formal schooling. Surely, we can devise better responses to the age-old question, “When will I ever use this?” Student-learners could be using their imaginative, developing understanding now.
Compassion should also inform content and cognition. The world needs problem finders and solutions makers. Todays students care more deeply about the world than I think my generation cared when we were in elementary, middle, and high school. By engaging student-learners in real-life, problem-based work, we could essentially connect the millions of students like batteries in a series to light the solutions to some of our greatest challenges in society. Business and non-profit could become involved in more integrated ways with education so that a symbiosis of efforts would build self-reinforcing and sustaining capacities – innovators guiding future innovators for for a more dynamic and productive future.
I am not just theorizing and hypothesizing. The type of real-life schooling described above is already happening in many places. Kiran Bir Sethi’s Riverside School comes to mind. Bob Dillon’s Maplewood Richmond Heights Middle School comes to mind. Project H Design comes to mind. Whitfield County Schools comes to mind. Geoff Mulgan’s Studio Schools come to mind. Projects at High Tech High and Partnerships at Science Leadership Academy come to mind. Even in my own personal experience, I co-piloted Synergy 8, a non-departmentalized, community-issues, problem-solving course for 8th graders. One group of four boys organized a job fair for residents of English Avenue and played a major role in helping people secure jobs. Other programs at Westminster, like the Summer Economics Institute, Philanthropy 101, Dr. Small’s Research course, and the Junior High Leadership Experience Advisory Program come to mind.
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And just this week, I heard Brittany Wenger share in her TEDxAtlanta talk about her experience creating an artificial intelligence app to help more accurately diagnosis breast cancer. However, she did reveal that only about 10% of the project was supported as actual school work. The kind of work and contribution that Brittany Wenger is making could BE school.
Business leaders understand the inter-related, interdisciplinary nature of real-world problems and issues. Consider Michael Moreland’s explication on his SEEDR website:
No single discipline or sector can drive meaningful progress alone. To meet the most intractable challenges, we built SEEDR as a vehicle for next-level collaboration, building bridges among industry, philanthropy, government, and academia worldwide. We value wild multidisciplinary, cross-sectoral work and if you share our passion for global development and thirst for learning the languages of technologies, causes, and cultures, we want to work with you.
– http://seedrl3c.com/team
Does our world possess high-quality activists and efforts geared toward making the world a better place? Absolutely! Do these people come from our existing schools and educational institutions? Of course. However, I believe there is a realization gap. The type of interdisciplinary and cross-sector work that Moreland espouses above could be significantly enhanced with innovative thinking and implementation to transform schools into more “real-life” organizations. We could realize an amplification and acceleration of problem solving by activating our schools as more contributory blends of practitioner-based learning labs. With the proper attention to pedagogical and instructional master planning, I can imagine many scenarios in which content knowledge and cognitive accountability would only be enhanced. In other words, I challenge the typical rebuttal that students would loose content-knowledge attainment chances by working in the ways suggested above. Numerous researchers and practitioners are finding otherwise…especially as they focus more on what is learned and retained, instead of what is delivered and taught.
To summarize several of the points discussed earlier, and to introduce a few not detailed above, I believe that a number of advantages could come from re-organizing school departments in such ways that make school more like real life:
Student engagement would improve, as school studies became more relevant and contextual. Attendance issues could improve. In the current state of testing, assessment performance could rise, as shown by people such as Kiran Bir Sethi.
Testing could be re-balanced, even replaced in cases, with performance-based assessments that are more realistic and aligned with those performance assessments encountered in the “real world.”
The 21st century skills, particularly the 7 Cs, would be more purposefully and realistically integrated into the school day. The practice would better match the games and concerts.
Curriculum would move to curricula vitae – “the course of life” – as learning goals and objectives aligned more authentically with the challenges facing our societies and world.
For-profit business, government, and non-profit organizations – spokes of a wheel, in some ways – could be connected through the hub of education. Innovation could breed innovation as social entrepreneurship and education became more intertwined and interrelated.
Students could experience more giving and contribution as an eventual norm in schools, instead of school being so focused on what students get during their school years. Yet, students would also gain tremendously as they experienced more of a powerful mixture of cognition and affective domains.
The issues we face as a human race could be addressed in a solutions-based manner with amplified and accelerated attention from and with schools…schools working more in partnership than in precedents with real-world problem solvers.
Of course, such a move to organization around Departments of Energy and Departments of Justice and Equality could strike fear and trepidation in school administration and faculty and parents. Transitions and transformations could occur in a number of ways. Schools could invest more in master planning. Schools could experiment with a mini-test of such a department with those teachers, students, and parents who were interested and willing. Or wholesale changes could be bravely attempted. In fact, many of our new-school startups are exploring just such re-imagining and re-organizing.
What are your thoughts? Where are the opportunities? Where are the challenges? Do you know of more examples, exemplars, failed prototypes, and not-yet-realized possibilities? How might we think together on such multi-tier innovation in schools and education? I would appreciate your idea, links, questions, and insights. It’s going to take many of us working together to make reality a school.
“Much as the first generation of software entrepreneurs were kids like the young Bill Gates, who grew up with the first machines and intuitively grasped their potential, so the next generation of 3-D-printing innovators may be children. High schools would be smart to bring back shop class but rename it design class, a shift that really would entail just adding a few MakerBots to the school’s existing computer labs. How many students wouldn’t rather design and print real things than mock up yet another PowerPoint presentation?”
How might we re-imagine school so that student-learners are more engaged on a regular basis with designing, modeling, crafting, creating, drafting, building, and producing…crafting and making things, especially things that are designed for relevance?
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