Goal Keepers, Part 2 of 3

Posted on July 23, 2011 by boadams1

In this three-part set of posts about goals, I explore the general concept of goal setting and action stepping, and I drill down more specifically into my school’s new vision statement, Learning for Life, as well as my own professional goals for the year, which are a part of my school’s Faculty Assessment and Annual Review (FAAR) Plan.

Goal Keepers, Part 1 of 3
Goals Keepers, Part 2 of 3 – read below
Goal Keepers, Part 3 of 3 – coming soon

Recently, after completing our 2010 SACS-SAIS (Southern Association of Colleges and Schools – Southern Association of Independent Schools) self-study, and during engagement with our ongoing strategic planning as a school, a faculty-administration committee drafted our new vision statement, Learning for Life. In late Spring of 2011, the Westminster board, administration, and faculty overwhelmingly endorsed the new vision statement. A copy of the document can be accessed below via Scribd, and you can read a recent Westminster Magazine article about the vision here (see President’s Remarks on pages 2-3 and Cover Story on pages 6-11 of the pdf).

View this document on Scribd

In a nutshell, I am thrilled about the Learning for Life vision statement! In 2011-12, I will be excited to pursue deeper understanding and implementation of such pedagogical practices as project-based learning and problem-based learning (PBL), integrated studies, and balanced assessment. I am charged up, full of creative tension, to explore schedules and spaces that promote deep learning; to work with my colleagues, students, and parents in learning teams; and to connect globally with the countless “teachers” who can help us achieve our vision.

On the ground, with sleeves rolled up, how are we going to achieve our vision, Learning for Life? Among a multitude of efforts aimed to make our vision our new current reality, I believe a community full of creative tension lies at the center. All of the people I work with want to do our best to enhance learning – what a great trait to possess at the outset and all along the way! To close the gap between our existing current reality and our new vision, we at Westminster have our developing Faculty Assessment and Annual Review (FAAR) Plan to help structure our paths, our undertakings, and our desire to improve and enhance learning. The plan has five, integrated and interwoven parts:

Goals and Self-Assessment
Peer Visits and Observations
Administrative Observations
Student Course Feedback
Feedback from Duties “Outside the Classroom”

During the development of our FAAR plan, a colleague and I made the following video to help explain the philosophical underpinnings of our professional learning framework.

In essence, our FAAR Plan encourages us, as faculty and administration – WE, not “us” and “them” – to set goals that are going to help us learn how to educate in increasingly enhanced ways while pursuing our collective vision as a school. The other four component pieces of the FAAR Plan are supposed to work as a system, in conjunction with our goals and self-assessment, to provide us with feedback (like that reflective mirror and our biological feedback systems mentioned in “Goal Keepers, Part 1 of 3”) which helps us see if our creative tension is steering us to reaching and achieving our goals and vision. From the feedback, if we realize our actions are not steering us closer to our vision, we can adjust course and re-direct our paths.

If you are a reader from Westminster’s faculty and administration, I hope you will carefully reflect during your self-assessment process and establish a primary goal which will motivate you, and all of us, to strive for and achieve the elements of our Learning for Life vision. What’s more, I hope you will utilize your feedback pieces as a whole system to collect and analyze the data which can come back to you from self and others in order to signal how “on target” our efforts and actions are to achieving our vision. Engaging with the FAAR Plan can be so much more than “jumping through bureaucratic hoops.” Engaging with the FAAR Plan can systematize and coordinate our individual efforts into collaborative actions that result in a realized vision – a vision for the best learning that we can provide for ourselves and our student learners.

What matters most is the mindset with which we take on this challenge! What is your mindset going to be? Will you employ a growth mindset? Will you engage with our professional learning plan in such ways that you are energized with creative tension? Will you collaborate with others so that we can work as a team to take on this exciting and invigorating journey as educators and as learners?

I hope you will! I hope you will help me stay focused as both a leader and as a participant team member. It’s about what’s best for our students! It’s about learning!

Goal Keepers, Part 1 of 3

Posted on July 23, 2011 by boadams1

For much of my life, I played soccer. I was a goal keeper. Growing up, being a goal keeper was a major component of my identity. For whatever reason, I never really liked the term “goalie.” I far prefer “goal keeper.” I do wonder sometimes if my strong self-concept as a goal keeper has anything to do now with my strong feelings about keeping goals.

What are you goals? Do you practice the habit of setting goals and establishing action steps to achieve those goals? Do you enlist support from a circle of friends – a team – to help you reach your goals, or do you tend to go it alone? Do you choose your goals carefully and thoughtfully so that you feel the energy to achieve your goals – an energy referred to as creative tension?

In Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, Senge explained the concept of “creative tension.”

But the gap between vision and current reality is also a source of energy. If there was no gap, there would be no need for any action to move toward the vision. Indeed, the gap is the source of creative energy. We call this gap creative tension (Amazon Kindle App location 2430 of 7726).

In fact, we often take for granted how goal-oriented we actually are – closing the gap between a current reality and a vision confronts us countless times everyday in simple, as well as complex ways. Consider just a few of the simple cases:

When we look in the mirror in the morning to comb our hair or apply makeup, we are comparing our current reality to a vision we have for our appearance. We attempt to close the gap by grooming and primping. Feedback from our reflection in the mirror becomes critical.
When we run or bike, we have a current location, or current reality, and we seek to change our location to achieve our goal, or vision, destination. Some of the best runners and cyclists in the world choose hundreds of intermediate goal or vision locations along the way – “I can make it to that next telephone pole or tree in x seconds.” Feedback from our biology (breathing, muscle ache, etc.), and from our will power, becomes critical as we strive to reach our goal.

Of course, our professional learning takes on similar paradigms, albeit in more complex ways, as we attempt to alter our current reality to reach and achieve our goal or vision. Perhaps we have been practicing assessment plans that are more summative in nature – we have developed habits of testing at the ends of units to record a grade in a grade book. Maybe we want to utilize more formative assessment in our strategies to assess student learning, so we set goals about learning more about balanced assessment systems. We may establish action steps to achieve our goal, like reading about formative assessment and practicing more formative assessment strategies with our colleagues and with our student learners.

As we work to achieve our goals, the gap between our current reality and our vision becomes the source of learning – it is in the gap that we can explore creative ways to stretch ourselves toward our set vision. Again, in The Fifth Discipline, Senge reasoned:

Imagine a rubber band, stretched between your vision and current reality. When stretched, the rubber band creates tension, representing the tension between vision and current reality. What does tension seek? Resolution or release. There are only two possible ways for the tension to resolve itself: pull reality toward the vision or pull the vision toward reality. Which occurs will depend on whether we hold steady to the vision.

The principle of creative tension is the central principle of personal mastery, integrating all elements of the discipline. Yet, it is easily misunderstood. For example, the very term “tension” suggests anxiety or stress. But creative tension doesn’t feel any particular way. It is the force that comes into play at the moment when we acknowledge a vision that is at odds with current reality (Amazon Kindle App location 2440 of 7726).

Often times, if not EVERY time, a first stage of dealing with creative tension is just trying something new. In the following, short TED talk by Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days, Cutts encourages us to shrink the change (a la the Heath brothers in Switch) by running a 30-day experiment in which we change our current reality by striving toward a new vision for ourselves.

But are there points of advice for becoming successful in striving for and reaching our goals and new visions? Of course! The points of advice can be found in myriad, countless sources, and they are virtually innumerable. One of the best sets of advice, in my opinion, comes from Richard St. John in another short TED talk, Richard St. John’s 8 secrets of success:

In part 2 of this three-part series on goal keeping, I will post Westminster’s new vision statement, Learning for Life. Additionally, I will remind or reveal to readers the developing Faculty Assessment and Annual Review (FAAR) Plan, which is designed at its core to help us reach our vision as individual and interdependent professionals…and as a school. I am hopeful that other education professionals, as well as student and parent readers, may share their thoughts on our vision, FAAR plan, and my professional goals. Also, I am hopeful that other educators and professionals may share their systems for goal setting and vision accomplishment. To make our current reality snap toward our vision, we must all be goal setters, goal strivers, and goal keepers.

It’s about closing the gap between our current reality and our vision. It’s about exercising our creative tension. It’s about a growth mindset. It’s about learning.

Works Cited:

Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. Currency-Doubleday: Random House, 1990, 2006. Accessed via Amazon Kindle App.

Unslumping Myself

Posted on June 1, 2011 by boadams1

For the first time in my life (hyperbole, but it seemed like a good intro), I disagree with Dr. Seuss. In Oh, the Places You’ll Go, he wrote, “unslumping yourself is not easily done.” I think it can be easily done. Just do something. This post is my “something.” And…I tweeted a few “somethings” this morning (early!).

I have felt that I am in a “blog/twitter slump” for a couple of weeks. Here are some of my excuses. Do any resonate with you about something you feel slumped about?

I am too busy. I can’t prioritize blogging and tweeting right now.
I don’t have time to write. I need to work on all the close-of-school and 2011-12 opening-of-school stuff.
I can’t think of anything good to write. I don’t want people to be disappointed in my posts or tweets. I want to say something profound.

Then, it hit me. I was slumped, at least partly, by a fixed mindset. If even a fraction of why I did not feel like writing was because I was worried what other people might think, then I had slipped into a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset [see Carol Dweck’s Mindset]. Hey, it happens to all of us. So…what to do? Just tweet. Just write. Don’t do it for any recognition, and don’t not do it for fear of failing. To quote the famous Nike adage, “Just do it.” So…this is my swing at the ball for this morning. I might miss. So what. I am writing. I am unslumping myself. Is there something you need to unslump yourself about? Pick one actionable item, and try. Ignore all the reasons not to try, and just do something.

Some folks might say, “Bo, it’s just blogging and tweeting. What’s the big deal?” (Of course, few if any of those folks probably read any of this.) The big deal is this (for me) – blogging is a great way for me to think out loud. I get to see what I am thinking by reading what I am writing. And if that’s all that happens, it’s worth it. But sometimes, someone reacts or responds to something I have written. Then, a conversation can happen. And I can do this for others on their posts and tweets. A seed can grow roots and stems. For me, blogging and tweeting (tweeting is just blogging in shorter bursts)
has connected me to a community, a network, of learners for which I am very thankful. I have felt disconnected from this network for two weeks. I want to reconnect. This will help me get started. This may just unslump me. It’s worth a try. Excuses got nothing on the screen. Taking 10 minutes and a risk produced something so that I could see what I am thinking. And, who knows…maybe a conversation can start.

Update on TEDxKids@BC Excitement!

Posted on May 18, 2011 by boadams1

On May 13, I posted about the excitement that a couple of eighth graders expressed about the possibility of engaging with TEDxKids@BC. One person commented on that post – Goran Kimovski, who is with TEDxKids@BC. THANK YOU, Mr. Kimovski. If nothing else even happens, I appreciate you taking time to comment, communicate, and excite! Such is a bedrock of learning, isn’t it?

Over the past weekend, a veritable flurry of communication exchanges occurred among the two eighth-grade learners, Ms. Gough, and me (Ms. Gough and I are part of the Synergy 8 team with these two eighth graders). After about 13 prototypes of a formal communication to Mr. Kimovski, here is what the eighth graders sent…

Dear Mr. Kimovski,

    We would first like to thank you for responding to Mr. Adams’s blog post in such a quick and inviting manner. Secondly, we would like to submit a proposal for the TEDxKids conference. Please let us know what would be the best way to do that, whether it be sending our thoughts to you via email or submitting some sort of application. We’d love to talk to you via skype; anytime from 2:40 to 3:30 EST is fine on our end, what time works for you? Below is a summary of our ideas and thoughts for this conference.

    School that cultivates a love of learning:
– increased student discussion less teacher lecture
– improvement and retention rather than learning for test and grades
– incorporating technology to reach all learners

    Over this academic year, we believe that we have grown as students and in our beliefs of what makes up good schooling and what school ideally should look like. Also, as participants of a prototype course, called Synergy, we had the opportunity to explore the concept of “ideal school” further. We would like the opportunity to let others know about what we, as students, feel about this important issue of education, and the evolution that’s necessary to better serve the needs of learners.

Thanks once again,

T. S. and S. Z.

If for no other reason (and there are many!), I am thankful for social networking media used for educational purposes. Connecting learners with passionate, critical topics for exploration and discovery and possibility…that’s what is required for innovation and improvement.

What are you excited about? With whom are you connecting? With whom are you exchanging ideas and possibilities? Who is on your team to help push the change and improvement we desire in the world? How are you spreading ideas? What ideas are you catching that others are spreading?

Get connected. It’s about learning!

A Team of Learners Innovates Writing Workshop

Posted on May 18, 2011 by boadams1

On rare occasions, I sometimes think it would just be easier to go start another school instead of working on teams of educators trying to innovate curriculum and instruction that has a long history and tradition. However, each and every day (seriously) something or someone brings me back from that relatively irrational cliff face. One of the great hallmarks of my current school – my place of work for the past 16 years – is our regular practice and willingness to analyze and consider ourselves. And I don’t mean admiring ourselves, although all people and institutions can fall into that trap periodically. No, I mean “considering ourselves” in the sense of examining our practices and asking if we can do better for the learners in our care. No matter how frustrating some issues of static inertia or dynamic change may seem, I believe we are genuinely into continuous improvement.

A few weeks ago, the chair of the English department came to see me. He said he had been thinking about what PBL (project-based learning, problem-based learning, passion-based learning, etc.) would look like in a 21st century English classroom. Now this man is a great thinker, so when he said he had been “thinking about,” I knew he had put some serious time, research, reflection, and conversation into the effort. In short, his idea for 21st century PBL in English involves the complexities and integrated nature of publishing. An idea with genius and endless potential!

What to do with the idea? Well, we work in PLCs (professional learning communities) in the Junior High. While not everyone is formally involved – YET! – it is our developing way of working…our ethos of working and learning together. So…the idea was taken to the JH English PLC and, specifically, the Writing Workshop team. Several members of this team had been thinking about potential innovations to the Writing Workshop course and its intersection with Synergy and Economics, which are two more courses in a triad of classes for our eighth graders. Now a confluence of thinking and thinkers used Steven Johnson’s “coffee house” to swirl and rift on some possible manifestations of publishing in the Writing Workshop course. What a blessing that we have four hours a week built into our work days in order to collaborate in this way. May we never take for granted that we have a developing infrastructure to get us anywhere we want to go!

Largely because we could collaborate in PLC meetings, a proposal was quickly drafted and presented to a few administrators. Largely because we have a dynamic vision statement for our work as a school, a foundation existed that practically inspired this type of curricular and instructional innovation and improvement. This week, we were able to send a letter to parents of rising eighth graders explaining that Writing Workshop would be innovating for 2011-12 in order to utilize topical or thematic electives. Here is the letter that was sent:

View this document on Scribd

Today, rising eight-grade students will hear about the innovations in group homeroom, and they will be able to respond to a survey which requests their desired topic of elective focus. Now, they have a choice much greater than that which existed before in this course. Now, they will be able to develop an authentic audience through publishing work. Oh the places we could go!

Possibilities and realities enacted through the passions and determinations of a team of educators. How fortunate I am to work with these teachers! How fortunate I am to work with these learners! How fortunate I am to learn with these learners! It’s about learning!