Tag Archives: MICON12

Intent. Design. Creative Process. Teachers as artists of school change. #ASI2012 #MICON12

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INTENT.

Last week and the week before, I communed with artists and designers. They invited me into their galleries and studios. At the time, I thought I was attending educational conferences – first Lovett’s American Studies Institute and then The Martin Institute’s 2012 Summer Conference. However, after watching and studying “John Hockenberry: We are all designers,” and after listening to NPR’s TED Radio Hour on “The Creative Process,” I realize that I communed with artists and designers at these phantasmagoria .

In the large-group sessions, I explored galleries of thinking – both from the featured speaker who held stage at that moment and from the co-participants “thinking and designing out loud” on Twitter (#ASI2012 & #MICON12). Through tweets, we talked about art and artists…designs and designers. During the break-out sessions, I literally traversed the museum of art and design in education as I chose to saunter past some works of art so that I could stop and peruse in-depth a particular frame and painting – like Bob Dillon’s “Picture This: How Images Impact the Momentum of Change.”

Our INTENT as educators and teachers is to design moments and experiences, while capitalizing on relationship and curiosity, that light fires in learners’ hearts and minds. We INTEND to stir emotions and motivations, not by filling vessels, but by lighting passions. We paint and sculpt. “We who cut mere stone must always be envisioning cathedrals.” Our lesson plans are blue prints and schematics. Our classes unfolding are jazz riffs and improvisations that can never be experienced again as they were played that day and period.

We are artists and designers.

And we are crowd sourcing. We are gathering as tribes to share our designs and our sketches and our framed pieces. For we intend to change the world – one student at a time, if need be. Our INTENT is to compare palettes and prototypes and to borrow from the masters and apprentices who gather around our conference fires to tell stories and share tales.

Please don’t think me dramatic or histrionic. I believe what I have written above, especially upon re-reading. I am moved by the artists and designers with whom I co-designed and co-created at Lovett and Presbyterian Day School. I see our paints mixing and intermingling as we contemplate and prepare for Teaching for Tomorrow and Connecting Across Disciplines.

Such is why I fear the silo-ing of subjects, disciplines, and departments. What if we don’t design with INTENT so that the colors might mix and re-mix? For we do not teach subjects. We teach people. And our people deserve the richness of infinite colors – mixed and complex.

What do you see as the INTENT of schools and teaching in the next decade and century? “What is school for?” Are you designing and creating such that our works are beautiful pieces of art WHO can inspire the world in the years to come?

Discipline and creativity must synergize, and we should check our INTENT so that we know we are using our limitations to enlighten that which can be possible next (from Abigail Washburn in the TED Radio Hour linked above).

What do you do?

I teach.

Oh, what do you teach?

I teach children.

No, I mean what do you teach?

I teach the curious to paint and design in this world with grand INTENTIONS.

Oh, so you teach art?

Yes, and math, and history, and science, and English, and… I use all the paints because my canvas deserves the infinite possibilities, and I refuse to limit what could be possible. I teach children and adults and learners of all ages. I teach people, and I learn from them far more than I could ever teach them. For they, too, are artists and designers. And I will not steal their dreams.

And what do you do?

Process Post, Draft 2: Writing is Thinking – Prepping a Bit for Panel Discussion at #MICON12

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Writing is thinking. I would deeply appreciate your thoughts on these 7 questions – please feel encouraged to add your voice in the comments field. As you can see from my pondering, my thinking is not wholly formed yet either. Don’t let formative thinking prevent you from contributing to our growing understandings…

As part of The Martin Institute’s 2012 Summer Conference, on Thursday morning, June 14, I am so very privileged to serve on a panel with featured speakers John Hunter (@worldpeacemovie) and Dr. Sande Dawes (not sure of a Twitter handle), and we have been asked to consider the following questions:

  1. What are your thoughts and reflections from Day 1?
  2. What is understanding and how does it develop?
  3. How can you best inspire and nurture creative thinking and problem solving in your students and yourself?
  4. If teachers, students and parents are generally satisfied with their schools, why should their schools consider moving in new directions?
  5. What are some practices that you’ve seen for implementing 21st century skills in the classroom?
  6. How can you foster a school culture that promotes this kind of learning?
  7. If we are serious about excellence in our classrooms/schools then what questions should we be asking?

Playing with my thinking by writing to see what I think… (“scratches on the surfaces”)

  1. What are your thoughts and reflections from Day 1? Much of Day 1 centered around John Hunter and the World Peace Game. At the day’s beginning, as a collected whole of community, we viewed a new cut of World Peace and Other 4th Grade Accomplishments (extended trailer linked here). At day’s end, we were blessed to listen to a keynote from John Hunter. As I increasingly consider myself a student of John Hunter’s approach to teaching and learning, I am struck by his intentional creation of space and opportunity for students to engage with the world in a way that is paradoxically the real world and a simulation of the real world. Through the World Peace Game, Hunter provides a multilayer, complex simulation in which students take on role play as United Nations ambassadors, kings of monarchical domains, presidents of democracies, arms dealers, World Bank officials, etc. Participants (4th graders) get into character and face life-like simulations involving global climate change, war, economic opportunity and crisis, fuel dilemmas, etc. And they real-life interact with each other in collaboration and conflict. John blurs the line between school and life, and he allows for (demands that) students stretch their brains and hearts as real, empathetic, problem-creating and problem-solving humans on the world stage. He lets questions linger and fill the atmosphere. He mixes in critical content…in context. He trusts and empowers children to rule and lead and serve the world. And they do. They measure up to the expectations because of the relationship and confidence that Hunter models and spreads to his learners and leaders. At the conclusion of the day, Hunter revealed that the World Peace Game is a “trick” or a Trojan Horse as Jamie Baker referred to it in a question to Hunter. The game is designed to fail. The only way for real success is for students to hyper-focus on collaboration and beating the game rather than on each other. He provides an emptiness for the students to fill with trial and error, argument and compromise, inhumanity and humanity. The game is just the string on which to hang the lights and enlightenment. Hunter also revealed that a trick to “teaching for tomorrow” is to work together with other teachers. And that’s how we spent the time sandwiched between the opening movie and the closing keynote. We exchanged ideas, motivations, practices, and possibilities. We built our understanding of our calling and our days’ work as a collective community of educators – those who commit ‘educare’ – to draw out that which is already there.
  2.  What is understanding and how does it develop? I believe “understanding” is a journey of hypotheses testing and re-trialing. I think understanding is constructed through learning by doing. I see understanding as akin to a sailboat tacking back and forth to reach a destination that cannot be reached in a straight line due to alternating currents and winds. When I listen to students who return to school as alumni recount what they remember and cherish, I come to love that understanding is gained through experience, failure, resilience, and fortitude. Understanding exists with a core of empathy, a sheath of curiosity, and a outershell of permeable attempts at discerning. It is a layering on. Yet, understanding is also a carving out of our being – like a sculptor revealing what lies in a monolith of granite. Service leads to deep understanding. Love is understanding at its purest sense.
  3. How can you best inspire and nurture creative thinking and problem solving in your students and yourself? Tear down the walls that segregate school and real life. At life’s beginning we are made lifelong learners through curiosity, attempts to engage and taste and feel our environment. Then we start to box and segregate the interconnected pieces of learning and understanding. I think we can nurture creative thinking by trusting our students to wade in and deal with conflict and confusion. We can model and guide toward empathy and coaching about the needs and issues of our world. We can play to the passions of our students by KNOWING them and encouraging their pursuits while layering in the critical components from the various ways of thinking and learning. We can create space and time for them to create and problem solve. We can manifest our own versions of things like John Hunter’s World Peace Game, Gever Tulley’s Tinkering School, Kiran Bir Sethi’s Riverside School, etc.
  4. If teachers, students and parents are generally satisfied with their schools, why should their schools consider moving in new directions? As the world changes, so must our schools. We need to design schools to be leadership centers for research and development, as well as implementation, for addressing the real issues that we face in our world – poverty, hunger, racial discord, fuel crises, water and energy mismanagement, etc. We need to make sure that school is preparing students for the citizenship that our world yearns for and craves. Are we?

Foiled by time again! I’ll keep thinking. I would LOVE and CHERISH your thoughts and ideas in the comments!

 

Process Post: Writing is Thinking – Prepping a Bit for Panel Discussion at #MICON12

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Writing is thinking. Therefore, I am writing so that I might learn more about what I am thinking. On today and tomorrow, I am attending, “paneling,” participating in, and facilitating at The Martin Institute’s 2012 Summer Conference. On Thursday morning, I am so very privileged to serve on a panel with featured speakers John Hunter (@worldpeacemovie) and Dr. Sande Dawes (not sure of a Twitter handle), and we have been asked to consider the following questions:

  1. What are your thoughts and reflections from Day 1?
  2. What is understanding and how does it develop?
  3. How can you best inspire and nurture creative thinking and problem solving in your students and yourself?
  4. If teachers, students and parents are generally satisfied with their schools, why should their schools consider moving in new directions?
  5. What are some practices that you’ve seen for implementing 21st century skills in the classroom?
  6. How can you foster a school culture that promotes this kind of learning?
  7. If we are serious about excellence in our classrooms/schools then what questions should we be asking?

To be honest, I am feeling a bit guilty for writing just now. I am stealing 30 minutes to journal instead of attending Session #4, and I know I am missing some superb leading and thinking from conference presenters and attendees. Yet, learning and understanding involves a fair amount of quiet, processing time for me. So, I had to steal away for some deliberately quiet processing. Of course, now I am wondering if we would allow our students to do such in schools. Don’t they feel overwhelmed sometimes by the sheer volume of teaching, learning, and information? Can such quiet, reflective time be scheduled and scripted, or is it more valuable to choose to take this time, as I am doing now? For if we are trying to build understanding, there are certainly steps, stages, and phases to such a construction process, and time to reconsider the blueprints seems fundamental and paramount. But I digress, a bit. Tis okay…I am “just journaling.”

As I began my Wednesday at #MICON12, I watched John Hunter’s World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements (http://www.worldpeacegame.org/). This movie by Chris Farina, and John Hunter’s related TED talk, are amazing. The Martin Institute is doing phenomenal work promoting and igniting this teaching, learning, and storytelling.

This morning marked my tenth viewing of this incredible film. Each time I watch, I learn something new, and I am always spurred to think deeply about the nature of learning and preparing citizens for life in this century. And this viewing included a new cut of the film – more to take in and learn. As I watched the film and followed the tweets (I made a Storify of some of the most profound), I continued to be deeply moved by the blurring of school and life that John Hunter facilitates. If you read this blog, then you probably know that I am a huge fan of Kiran Bir Sethi’s work at Riverside School and her TED talk “Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge.” Like Kiran, Hunter believes that school is not just preparation for real life…school IS real life. Students can make an impact NOW on the positive changes that we need in our world. For me, so many of my responses to the questions posed above are fused and webbed and linked together by this fact and approach to “the classroom.”

Does “school” tend to look like real life? Well, it should – if we really hope to prepare students to serve and lead in a changing world.

Oh well, my 30 minutes are up. I didn’t even scratch the surface…very much. But I have some beginnings of a scratch. More later.

Thinking is iterative and prototypical, so I know that my thinking will change as I continue to interact – face-to-face and virtually – with the amazing people at The Martin Institute 2012 Summer Conference.

 

Synergy – Questions are the waypoints on the path of wisdom #MICON12

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On Thursday, June 14, Bo Adams and Jill Gough are facilitating a double-session at The Martin Institute’s 2012 Conference (#MICON12 on Twitter). Below, conference participants and blog readers alike can find an outline of our session (at least as we intend it before we start!), complete with links to the resources we plan to use.

Synergy – Questions are the waypoints on the path of wisdom (Framework Plans) [100 minutes]

  1. Marshmallow Challenge [18 minutes + setup + debrief = 30 minutes]
  2. Synergy 8 Preso + Showcase Project Products/Q&A [15 minutes + 15 minutes = 30 minutes]
  3. Reading from The Falconer re: Questions [5 minutes]
  4. Gamestorm to share about others’ experiences/practices with PBL (see “Post-Up”) + Gamestorm to generate future ideas for PBL (see “Storyboard”) [30 minutes]
  5. Wrap-Up + Goodie Bag[5 minutes]
    1. “7 Essentials for Project-Based Learning” article + “4 A’s” protocol
    2. Peak Learning Experience Exercise – “Think about your own life and the times when you were really learning, so much and so deeply, that you would call these the ‘peak learning experiences’ of your life. Tell a story (you may include pictures, symbols, or other icons, too) about this peak learning experience, and respond to the question, ‘What were the conditions that made your high-level experience so powerful and engaging?'(adapted from 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, Trilling and Fadel, 2009). Jill and Bo often use this prompt as a pre-writing exercise in order to connect people with the project-based nature of our most enduring learnings throughout life.
    3. Synergy2Learn (resource on PBL)
    4. Synergy 8 Logo, Essential Learnings, and Learning Targets (via Scribd) [also embedded below]

Title of the Conversation
Synergy – Questions are the waypoints on the path of wisdom

Conversational Focus/Audience
High School
Middle School
Upper Elementary School

Short Description
Like a tribe around the fire, let’s discuss how we implement PBL as an entire course or as an input to a class. The conversation starters will describe Synergy – an 8th grade community-issues course. Then, through story exchange, we will share a variety of PBL ideas and implementation methods.

Extended Description
In Westminster’s 8th grade, we are experiencing year two of a new course called “Synergy 8.” Synergy is a non-departmentalized, transdisciplinary, non-graded, community-issues, problem-solving course. While we begin with an “alpha project” to practice project process, we use the “Falconer” method to empower student questioning and curiosity. From the student questions, the entire team generates the projects on which learners of all ages ultimately work.

Our conversational focus will be PBL (project-based learning, problem-based learning, passion-based learning, place-based learning, etc.). We intend to generate ideas from an exchange of current practices and possibilities. We hope to move beyond mere conversation and bridge into collaboration by building for the future more student-learner generated PBL…perhaps even “big, hairy audacious” PBL that unites our various schools and increases the mass of folks working on the problems which define our world.

For more detailed stimulus about “Synergy” and “PBL,” see categories and tags on Bo’s and Jill’s blogs: It’s About Learning (Bo’s blog) and Experiments in Learning by Doing (Jill’s blog).

[Cross-posted at Experiments in Learning by Doing]

Leading Learners to Level Up #MICON12

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On Wednesday, June 13, Bo Adams and Jill Gough are  facilitating a session at The Martin Institute’s 2012 Conference (#MICON12 on Twitter) on formative assessment entitled Leading Learners to Level Up.

Leveled formative assessment that offers learners the ability to calibrate understanding with expectations and, at the same time, shows the path to the next level will improve learning and teaching. Use assessment to inform learners where they are on the learning spectrum, where the targets are, and how to level up.

Leading Learners to Level Up (Framework plans) [50 minutes]

  1. Formative Assessment presentation [15 minutes]
  2. Examples of Leveled Formative assessments
    1. Algebra: Linear Functions, Slope [5 minutes]
    2. Synergy: Essential Learnings, Observation Journals [5 minutes]
    3. SMART Goals and other PLC examples [5 minutes]
  3. Use PollEverywhere to decide the next step:  many individual/pair workshopped rubrics or mini individual workshopped rubric to then share out to whole group (like faculty web presence; group work – engaged participation) [5 minutes]
  4. Participant workshop time to develop leveled assessment for use with learners   [10 minutes + 10 minutes to share out & wrap up]

[Cross-posted at Experiments in Learning by Doing]