Education Innovation

Killing In The Name of Education: An Analysis Of Creativity- Part 1

I found this video to be very insightful and interesting. It blends several popular videos on the issue into a comprehensive exploration of creativity in education.

South of the Border, Down Mexico Way: Edtech Lessons from Mexico

South of the Border (down Mexico way) Chris Isakk's Baja Sessions

Last week I traveled to Mexico. My first stop was beautiful Cabo San Lucas.

While In Cabo, I traveled via Jeep into the hills above the city. We traveled the dirt roads back into the hills where more cows and goats than people lived.

After traveling many miles, we stopped in a dusty little village and visited a school. It is a boarding school and the students live there almost 11 months out of the year. They are provided room, board, and learning free of charge. This particular school was for students from Kindergarten through 8th grade.

So, imagine my surprise, when out in the middle of nowhere, in tiny dusty little village, in school where times seems to have stood still, I walked into this classroom and found a Smart Board.

Yep, technology has come even to this sleepy little corner of Mexico. The director of the school explained that the Smart Board is used during instruction and is hooked up to a satellite connection so that instructors in Mexico City can be beamed into this classroom to instruct students.

And I ask, why aren't we doing more of this in the United States. Technology could allow us to bring instruction to students where they are at. It just takes an open mind, some creative use of technology, and an innovative school or district. So what are we waiting for.

Companies like EduFire or schools like Florida's Virtual School are a great start. This school is proof. The technology works and learning happens.

I like the motto of the Florida Virtual School..."Any time, any place, any path, any pace."

That is the future of education. Distance is dead!

Catalytic Questions:

What is preventing education from embracing these technologies and models?

In what way could we better leverage technology to bridge time, space, and pace?

What benefits could you imagine to schools and students if expert instructors could be beamed into the classroom?

How might we begin the exploration of better use of these technologies?

In what ways are concepts the like the Florida Virtual school or EduFire changing the role of the teacher and the brick and mortar school?

What role will creativity and innovation play in these issues? 

Recommended Reading:

Why Aren't We Already Doing This?

Three Signs of a Miserable Job: Final Thoughts

The Three Sings of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni

  Part 5

Principals, Directors, Managers, and Superintendents… want to set your school apart? Answer the three questions.

Anonymity: “Do I really know my people?”

Irrelevance: “Do they know who their work impacts and how?”

Immeasurement: “Do they know how to assess their own progress or success?”

If you don’t have any answers for the “big three” questions, then you need to immediately set about creating systems, policies, habits, actions, etc. that can directly address them.

Why you ask? “Employees who find fulfillment in their jobs are going to work with more enthusiasm, passion, and attention to quality than their counterparts who do not, mostly because they develop a sense of ownership and pride in what they are doing.”

The benefit is, “…managers who work to reduce the three signs in their organizations discover an unexpected side effect. Employees themselves begin to take a greater interest in their colleagues, help them find meaning and relevance in their work, and find better ways to gauge their own success, and they do all of this without specific direction from their bosses. In essence, they take some responsibility for keeping the three signs of a miserable job at bay. Ironically, this gives them yet a greater sense of meaning while creating a sustainable cultural advantage that competitors will envy but find difficult to duplicate.”

When teachers feel empowered and engaged, then change initiatives and improvement plans will succeed. A principal or district administrator should wish for just sort of an environment at his or her school. Not that schools should be in competition with each other, but others will notice the change that is taking place at your school when Anonymity, Irrelevance, and Immeasurement are overcome. What educational leader wouldn't want that? What teacher or support staff member wouldn't want to work at that school? 

Three Signs of a Miserable Job: Part 4

The Three Sings of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni

Part 4

Anonymity

“All human beings need to be understood and appreciated for their unique qualities by someone in a position of authority.”

So ask yourself this simple question. Does my principal or superintendent know me as a person or just the person currently teaching third grade, chemistry, or principal of such and such school?  If you aren’t known by your principal or superintendent then you are just a name, and that doesn’t exactly inspire you to get up in the morning.

“How can a person really feel good about going to work when they don’t feel like anyone there know who they are? Or cares?”

All of us have people we work with at school who know us. They might even be very good friends. This is a good thing. However, the one person who makes the biggest impact on or work situation is usually the principal, or in some cases, the superintendent. The make the decisions and issue the directions. So, if they don’t know us as a person, it can make each day miserable.

“…consider whether you have appreciated it when your manager took an interest, a real one, in you and your life.”

I wonder how many people I have worked with ever knew I was president of my college fraternity, had cancer, served in the Marines, or that I played rugby. I wonder if my principals or superintendents ever knew that I want to get an executive MBA and my Ed.D. How many ever knew my hopes or dreams? How many have even ever read my blog?

So principals, directors, and superintendents, take heed…

“Mangers need to understand that the people whose lives they impact are their employees. And if they don’t know who those people are, and what their lives are all about, how can they possibly do that?”

“To manage another human being effectively requires some degree of empathy and curiosity about why that person gets out of bed in the morning, what is on their mind, and how you can contribute to them becoming a better person.”

Do you know your staff’s hopes and dreams? Do you care? Do you know your staff’s kids names or where they live? Do you know what is going on in their personal lives that could be impacting their workday?  There are so many ways in which you can take a personal interest in your staff. Does it matter to you when others take a personal interest in who you are as a person? Of course it does.

“A better way to remove any sense of anonymity or invisibility from employees’ situation at work is simply to get to know them. Take time to sit down with each of them and ask them what’s going on in their lives.”

But you better be genuine. People will hate it if you are temporarily interested or fake it. You have got to be in it for the long haul.

We all want to be recognized and validated and educators, but more importantly, we want to be known as a unique person. We want to be ourselves at work and with those whom we work.

“Because you shouldn’t have to be a different person at work. That’s part of what makes people miserable, pretending to be something or someone they’re not. And that means their boss needs to know who they are beyond the job description alone.”

We want to be known. We want to matter to those we work with and those who lead us.

Three Signs of a Miserable Job: Part 3

The Three Sings of a Miserable Job by Patrick Lencioni

Part 3

Immeasurable

“People ought to think about measuring those things that make difference to the person or people they serve. If you exist to help students, measure something related to that. If your purpose is to help your manager, find a way to measure that.”

Principals should be in the business of finding ways to help teachers discover how they are serving the students, parents, and co-workers each day. When you can show them what to measure you will enable teachers to decide for themselves how they are doing at their jobs each day.

Your support staff will need the same ability to their jobs for themselves as well. How are your office manager, custodian, food service worker, and instructional aide measuring his or her work each day? Your role should be to help them find things related to their work to measure each day.

“The key to establishing effective measures for a job lies in identifying those areas that an employee can directly influence, and then ensuring that the specific measurements are connected to the person or people they are meant to serve.”

We have all seen a goal that has come down from the district and thought to our selves, “Hmm, what does that have to do with me?”  Telling a custodian, or teacher that one of their goals should be the fiscal solvency for the district doesn’t exactly inspire them. How could they, each day, answer the question about how much the contributed to the fiscal solvency of the district?

Raise the test scores. Raise the test scores. What if you work in food services, maintenance and operations, or the business office? How would you judge your work each day based on these measurements? How could you measure each day based on the measurement of test scores?  Seems a bit disconnected.

“Too often, an executive will try to rally employees by giving them some macro objective.” 

Each of us should find those measurables the directly relate to their job and then measure our work each day. Only then, can you feel satisfied and fulfilled at what you do.

“People want measurables so that they can get an intrinsic sense of accomplishment.”

Imagine a school or district where every employee is fulfilled and satisfied with their work and can measure for themselves how well they are doing each and every day. That school or district would have a lot of happy, fulfilled, and empowered employees who love their jobs. 

Immeasurement: Sign of a Misearable Job- Part 2

Part 2

The Three Sings of a Miserable Job

Immeasurement

“Basically, a job is bound to be miserable if it doesn’t involve measurement.”

As those of us in education are acutley aware of, measurement means test scores. Test scores, after all, are a valid measurement. They are used to generate data which, in turn, is then used to direct instruction. While the public considers these valid measurements of who were are as educators, I certainly don’t measure myself by one test taken by students on a single day or a single week. I don’t judge the quality of my work by student test scores. I hope you don’t either. So the question becomes, how do we measure ourselves as professional educators?

“…if a person has no way of knowing if they’re doing a good job, even if they’re doing something they love, they get frustrated.”

How many times have you driven home and wondered what kind of job you did that day?  Principals and administrators rarely visit your class frequently enough or long enough to give you feedback that is meaningful each day. What I am talking about is being able to answer honestly to yourself each and every day how you are doing as an educator. We each need some objective criteria to measure ourselves by.

“Employees must be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for themselves. They cannot be fulfilled in their work if their success depends on the opinions of whims of another person…”

We can’t wait for infrequent visits from administrators or end of year test scores to tell us how we are doing each day.

“It’s about lack of feedback.”

We each need to develop our set or list of criteria that we can measure each day. Don’t we all want to know how we are doing? It’s human nature to want to know how we doing? We want to know we are doing a good job. We want to know that we are doing it right.

“…objective evidence that tell you you’re doing something right. Even supposedly exciting jobs get old when there’s no way of measuring progress.”

Take this example from Hollywood. People who work on films don’t know if they have done a good job because, “by the time you know what the ratings or ticket sales are, it’s months and months after you’ve finished the project.” 

Imagine it. Every day they worked on the film, they had no way of knowing if they were doing a good job. They had to wait until the film was released, ticket sales measured, and reviewed by critics before they knew if they had done a good job.

“…if you don’t get a daily sense of measureable accomplishment, you go home at night wondering if your day was worthwhile.”

What to measure? “…always measure the right things. If you measure the wrong things, people still lose interest.”

Here is a list of things that a principal might measure their day by.

How many classrooms did you visit today?
How many PLC agendas or minutes did you take a look at today?
How many or who did you coach today?
What articles/books/resources did you provide to your staff?
How many parents did you talk to?
How many teachers did you affirm?
How many students did you spend time talking with?
How much time did you spend out at recess or lunch?
How many/much one-on-one coaching/training did you have with your support staff?

How would you measure your day?

Rob

Three Signs of a Miserable Job: Part 1

The Three Sings of a Miserable Job

In his latest management fable, author Patrick Lencioni describes the three signs of a miserable job.

The bad news…education has all three.

The good news…educators and educational leaders have it within themselves to address all three.

The three signs of a miserable job are…

1. Anonymity
“All human beings need to be understood and appreciated for their unique qualities by someone in a position of authority.”   
In other words, we need to be recognized a special individual by our principals, or managers. 

2. Irrelevance
“Everyone needs to know that their job matters, to someone. Anyone. Without seeing the a connection between the work and the satisfaction of another person or group of people, an employee simply will not find lasting fulfillment.” 
Ok, I know what your thinking, what could be more relevant than shaping the young minds of America’s future? Now ask yourself, do you really feel relevant? Maybe, but maybe not.

3. Immeasurement
“Employees need to be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for themselves. They cannot be fulfilled in their work if their success depends on the opinions or whims of another person.”
I hear you screaming about constant assessments, benchmarks, and high stakes tests. But those are measuring our students. What do you measure yourself by everyday?

I will explore each of these in depth and their connection to education in the coming days.

Early Innovation and Creativity Education

Gordon MacKenzie is sort or a personal hero of mine. Though he has now passed away, I still turn to his book In Orbit Around the Giant Hairball for inspiration. In his book he relates a famous and oft repeated story about a trip to visit an elementary school.

As he meet with each grade level, he related to them that he is an artist. He would look around the room and notice all the student work and then wonder aloud who had created all the wonderful artwork.

He would then ask, “How many artists are there in the room.”  “Please raise your hands.”
The responses were very telling. In kindergarten and first grade class rooms, every student threw their hand up in the air. In second grade classrooms, about three-fourths raised their hands in response. In third grade, only a few students help up their hands, some very timidly. So it went, each grade a little worse than the one before it until he finally reached sixth grade. In response to Gordon’s question, most students looked around to see if anyone would admit to being an artist, as if such an admission was a violation of group norms.

In the span of Kindergarten to sixth grade, students had un-learned their naturally tendency to be an “artist.” Why?

Sir Ken Robinson has been the rage lately on the web. He gave a talk at the T.E.D conference several years ago about how schools systematically kill student creativity. I posted a clip of his talk several months back. You can find it here (Is Creativity As Important As Literacy). I am hoping to finally get to his book one of these days.

But there are so many people who seem to get it. I was very interested in what Doreen Lorenzo had to say at frogblog in his post Innovation Needs to be Nurtured Early.

He says…

“I believe that the emphasis on this frantic search for innovation is a result of our inability to foster this concept starting at the elementary school level. Shouldn’t we all be innovators? Part of what makes us human is our ability to think and reason. With that in mind, innovation should be part of our fiber. Why can’t children maintain their creative innovation past the 2nd grade? At some point the concept of innovation is ripped out of their souls. They are told to follow the rules, prepare for the standardized tests and think about getting a good job that pays well.”

In an age where standardized tests are the measuring stick by which schools and students are measured, we are creating an environment where we can’t afford to spend the time necessary to allow children to be as creative as they can be. We focus on getting the one right answer for each question because this is what the system has forced us into.  Politicians do not brag about the quality of educational programming, or how school X has made growth over time. Newspapers can’t print growth over or quality teaching. They can print a test score. The can print it next to the scores of other schools. It is very neat and orderly. Who is good and who is bad is a matter of running your finger up and down a column of scores.

Doreen goes on to say…

“Finding great creative talent continues to be the biggest issue in our world where in reality it should be the easy part. However, since schools begin to dismiss the notion of creativity once a child leaves kindergarten, the pool of applicants gets very small by the time they actually enter the workforce. How can we shift the focus to allow kids to explore, think bigger, reward their drive and ambition as not just an anomaly but a must-have in today’s world? Instead, creative kids are often labeled ‘creative,’ which means ‘different.’ And different is too often not a good word for a child.”

Education is beginning to have the conversation, but with much in education, the wheels turn very slow. Doreen’s voice is another to add to the growing call for change. I for one believe in Tom Peters call for NO INCREMENTALISM. But that is the prerogative of the idealist. I hate to wait.

Also check out these posts.

Free Your Mind

Color Within The Lines

Do We Limit Our Children's Creativity?

How You Think Is Everything: Think Creative

From Busayo Akanro

"Why do people hate intentional creativity? Why must things be done in one particular way or another? Who makes the rules? Who sets the boundaries? Life itself imposes no limitations on us. After all, even though the law of gravity is fundamental, it can be broken through once one understands the principles of aerodynamics. Even then, the law of gravity doesn’t have as much relevance as it does on earth outside the earth.

"Who says everything that goes up must come down?  Someone who lives in space would give you a strong argument because what he knows is that you can throw something up and it will never come down in your life time. It would keep going on and on since the force of gravity is six times weaker there than on earth. So I guess that will help someone like me who has always wanted to be superman. You can be superman once you are on the moon.

"Take a look at this: A survey was done to discover the creativity level of individuals at various ages. After all the testing, the statistics indicated that 2 percent of the men and women who were in their forties were highly creative. As they looked at younger people, the results emerged that 2% of the 35-yr-olds were highly creative; 2% of the 30-yr-olds were highly creative. This went on down to each age group until they reached the 7-yr-old children. 10% of them were highly creative. However, further study showed that 90% of the 5-yr-olds were highly creative.  

"Between the ages of 5 and 7, 80% of us who are highly creative develop an image, a picture, an attitude that we are not creative, and we begin to deny that particular part of our God-given equipment. Pablo Picasso the great artist said “Every Child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

I agree. Those of is in education need to keep the "artist" alive. We need to be intentional about helping our students be innovative and creative.

Education or Schooling

From Educational Paradigms...

"I don’t teach the kids that Education’s bad. I say that Schooling’s bad. Education is a personal thing: you develop your powers and your singularity to the utmost But Schooling is NOT Education.   Schooling’s an attempt to write the one right way for everybody."  -John Taylor Gatto