Emerging from my principal gestation

Posted on December 7, 2011 by boadams1

Pop quiz: When does learning begin? Answer: Before we are born. Science writer Annie Murphy Paul talks through new research that shows how much we learn in the womb — from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods. (“About this talk” description at TED.com, http://www.ted.com/talks/annie_murphy_paul_what_we_learn_before_we_re_born.html)

In her talk, Annie Murphy Paul discusses fetal origins and the idea that “our health and well-being throughout our lives is crucially affected by the nine months we spend in the womb” (Paul, near 1:45 in talk). She is not talking about the “Baby Einstein” movement. She is talking about gestation affecting our learning about the environment to which we are soon to be born.

At the literal surface, Paul’s TED talk is a powerful listen for educators, as we work to better understand the diversity of inputs responsible for any individual’s lifelong learning. As Paul spoke, I wondered quite a bit about the “nature vs. nurture” debates. But Paul’s TED talk has me wondering on an entirely different level, as well.

As I complete this, my ninth, year as principal, I am curious if a year of being principal is analogous to a month of gestation. If the metaphor works at all, then I am even more excited about what my next phase of life in education will be like, for I am soon to be born into a profound period of development as an educator. And I am eternally grateful for the care that Westminster’s womb has provided me. My gestation has provided deep learning about the educational environment into which I next will emerge, and learn, and grow. I wonder what that world will look like, smell like, sound like, and taste like. What an adventure.

“Fallor ergo sum” – St. Augustine, 1200 years prior to Descartes

Posted on December 4, 2011 by boadams1

Do we structure school in such a way that we truly promote and achieve that intricate balance between: 1) wanting to know and to understand and 2) keeping perspective that we have to be wrong quite a bit in order to gain deep knowledge and understanding?

By the time you are 9 years old, you have already learned, first of all, that people who get stuff wrong are lazy, irresponsible dimwits, and, second of all, that the way to succeed in life is to never make any mistakes. We learn these really bad lessons really well. And a lot of us…deal with them by just becoming perfect little A students…perfectionists…overachievers. – Kathryn Schulz, On being wrong TED Talk, near 7:00 mark, March 2011 (emphasis added)

Is the secret to great success never to be wrong? Of course not! I cannot imagine that even one teacher of children (or adults, for that matter) truly believes that we define “the successful” as those people who always get the right answer, or even as those who tend to get the right answer. Or do we? How do we view our “A students” versus our “C students? Perhaps I have my head in the sand. I don’t think so, though. Yet, I wonder if we people who help to structure the workings of school are ensuring that the fundamental pillars of school reflect this basic principle:

I thought this one thing was going to happen, and then something else happened instead. – Kathryn Schulz quoting Ira Glass of This American Life, On being wrong TED Talk, near 14:00 mark, March 2011

Do we overly penalize learners for their mistakes? Does the traditional, typical school currency – grades – serve best those at the core of the instructional-learning exchange? Do we allow for “returns” to be made after a transaction, or are “all sales final?” Do we allow for enough “do overs,” prototypes, iterative attempts, and second chances? Do we model our classrooms and learning spaces on the real-life tendency for all of us humans to be great mistake makers as we risk to know and to understand our world? Do we facilitate learners growing from “white belts” to “black belts” by awarding them with an average – “a grey belt?” As educators, do we understand the 10,000 hour theory? Are our scope and sequences reflectively cognizant of the 10,000 hour theory? Do we tend to sort and label, or do we tend to recognize that mistakes come with regret that should be embraced if we hope to grow from our errors?

If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or loose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets…the point it to not hate ourselves for having them….We need to learn to love the flawed imperfect things that we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly; it reminds us that we know we can do better. – Kathryn Schulz, Don’t regret regret TED Talk, near 16:00 mark, November 2011

An Intro at the Conclusion

This morning, I had planned to work on my resume. It needs some updating, and I need a job, so I thought this morning would provide me a good opportunity to revise and edit my curriculum vitae. As I awoke from sleep, I even seemed to have some revision ideas on my mind. But then another thing happened instead.

As I sat to enjoy those first sips of morning coffee, I decided to check my Feeddler app – my way of organizing and reading my Google RSS Reader. In the queue was a new TED talk from Kathryn Schulz, the “wrongologist.” I love her work, so I thought I would watch her latest published talk while waking up with my coffee. Then, I would get to “work” on my resume. But then another thing happened instead. I was reminded of this powerful blog post by friend, colleague, and former student Peyten Dobbs. And I remembered the This American Life episode that I listened to during my Saturday afternoon walk with my dog Lucy.

I felt I had important threads dangling loosely in the wind of my thinking. I wondered if writing a bit would help me ground and weave some of those threads together. I puzzled over Peyten’s feelings expressed in her blog post, and I empathized about my own similar feelings from being a perfectionist-bent student of old.

So…do I now have all of these mysteries about grades and being wrong “all figured out?” No. But I am further down the path than I was when I awoke. Do I have revisions completed for my resume? No. If I were to need to “turn in” my resume to a teacher for grading, I fear I would receive an F or an incomplete. Yet, I engaged in some lifelong learning this morning about the nature of being wrong, the nature of regrets, and the structure of schools. I learned. But for that I will receive no formal grade. I may later regret that I don’t have a revised copy of my resume ready on Sunday, December 4. That’s okay. My regrets remind me that I can do better. And I tend to engage in super efforts to learn and grow and get better. Where does that go on my resume?

Curiosity and Connections – #edu180atl 11-29-11 cross-posted

Posted on November 29, 2011 by boadams1

Curiosity and Connections

This morning began like most mornings for me. I rise early so that I can read and write, mostly about educational ideas related to the future of schools and schools of the future. I began this practice years ago because I wanted to enhance my own knowledge and understanding so that I might better serve others on this dynamic path of school transformation in the 21^st century. My formula is easy: maintain deep curiosity and make strong connections. The catalyst for the reaction, though, demands constant commitment and daily practice. Like I tell my two sons, ages seven and four, “If you want to get better at anything, you must practice.”

So, by 5:30 a.m., the time at which I am drafting this post, I already have two more hours of learning practice under my belt. I have made a field of mental Velcro so that I can be ready for connections of curiosity throughout the day. This Velcro is made of numerous “curiosity-connection hooks and loops” formed by the countless curiosities and connections pursued by others. I am indebted to others for sharing openly. For you see, my morning routine utilizes Kindle, Twitter, Google Reader, and the blog-o-sphere to connect me to curiosities and connections from vast numbers of amateur and professional educators around the world. Every morning, I am fortunate enough to enter the greatest faculty lounge on the planet wearing David Letterman’s Velcro suit!

Today, I feel Velcro-ly grateful for curiosity and connection practice!

_______________________________________________

Bo Adams (@boadams1) is a learner first and foremost. Currently, he is the principal learner at The Westminster Schools Junior High School. The photo shows his older son’s recent artwork as he, too, pursues curiosity and connections.

[This post was created and posted originally for edu180atl (http://edu180atl.org/), on Nov. 29, 2011.]

Connecting Ideas – Action, Traction, Reaction

Posted on November 24, 2011 by boadams1

In Synergy, a non-departmentalized, non-graded, transdisciplinary, community-issues-problem-solving course, we use blogging as a means to communicate and collaborate on ideas as well as to reflect and to revise thinking.

Currently we offer our learners an Action-Traction-Reaction prompt to spur their thinking, reflection, and writing.

One of our learners offers this reflection that connects his thinking about his team’s project with the ideas from Jamie Oliver’s TED Prize Wish:

Relating Jamie Oliver’s Prize Wish to my Project

Posted on November 17, 2011

Jamie Oliver, a celebrity chef, wished to educate every child about food as a use of his TED prize. I’ve known about his fight against obesity and eating right since learning about his TV show in 6th grade, so this wish makes sense to me. He’s creating a

Strong, sustainable movement

to educate every child about food.

The core of this action is to create a movement. This core action could be applied to my project, because in my project we are trying to get people to clean up after themselves, and stop cutting in line. Both of those problems are just bad examples that people have seen and copied. Creating a movement would create new standards in the community for cleanliness in the lunchroom, and could reverse the bad examples in place there.

For Jamie’s wish, he wants to create an online community and also a movement. He said

The grassroots movement must also challenge corporate America to support meaningful programs that will change the culture of junk food.

I didn’t know what a grassroots movement is, so I looked it up. I came up with this. “A grassroots movement (often referenced in the context of a political movement) is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures.”

For Jamie’s project, he is relying on creating a following, that would create the foundation for his project and help spread the message. But he also would like to create traveling kitchens and a traveling food theater to make his project entertaining and interactive. From my perspective, the traction for this project is based on two components: people and interaction. This is a good formula for other projects who are looking to gain traction in a community. You draw the people in with interaction, and then rely on them to feel passionate and spread the word.

In the comment section of the article, many people were eager to partner with Jamie’s project to support and help organize his ideas. I think that the biggest way to attract reaction like this, is to be backed by TED! But the other large factor is that he’s addressing a large problem and is presenting a sound project plan. Creating this plan is an easy thing to do in Synergy to make sure our projects look attractive in the eyes of the administrators inside and outside of Westminster. If our projects only look half-baked, they won’t attract support.

“Grassroots.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 July 2004. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

[Permission to post obtained from student and student’s parent.]

Do we write to read and learn what we are thinking? Do we prototype, seek feedback, and revise? How do we connect our thinking to the ideas of others?

Shouldn’t we practice?

[Cross-posted at Experiments in Learning by Doing]

Connections, Frontiers, Oxytocin, Empathy, and Walls…Say What?!

Posted on November 12, 2011 by boadams1

Connect! Relate! Become interdependent! What if these pursuits had been immortalized as the motto of the American Dream? I wonder where we might be as a whole culture by now, if we had as much focus on relationship and connectivity as we seem to have on getting ahead and achieving at all costs.

This morning, as I engaged myself in my typical a.m. routine of learning, I watched a few TED talks, I studied a few resources on PBL (project-based learning, problem-based learning, place-based learning, etc.), and I immersed myself in my Feeddler RSS to catch up on some coveted blog reading. Among all of that, two pieces of that learning web really called out to me. Perhaps they were like the chief anchor points on my learning web – the foundations on which the web stands when possible learning meals go by.

From the Paul Zac TED talk embedded below, along with the @occam98 blog post linked below, I am reminded and pre-minded of the power of human connection. Actually, as I write, another chief anchor point comes to mind – Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From.

Empathy, trust, morality…they may originate from those moments and places of collision. May we be careful of the walls and fences that we build to prevent these critical collisions. [See Robert Frost poem below, too!]

Learning Web Anchor Point #1: Paul Zac: Trust, morality — and oxytocin

Learning Web Anchor Point #2: Blog Post from Quantum Progress

Reaching Out to Dispel the Myth of the Wild West Internet

Learning Web Anchor Point #3: Steven Johnson’s RSA on Where Good Ideas Come From

Some Dew on the Learning Web: Mending Wall, Robert Frost,

Mending Wall

SOMETHING there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:	5
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,	10
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.	15
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.	20
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.	25
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.	30
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down!” I could say “Elves” to him,	35
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,	40
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”