To help encourage conversations and dialogue about improving the learning environment, our topic/question of the week is: What are the 'things' we should be thinking about to improve the learning process and our school? What Are The Right Things? (Week of 1/21/18) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Blake's Guiding Lights
Our Students
Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
It has been nice to have a warmer stretch of weather as of late, and I hope that it was a nice weekend for all. With Katie away for the weekend with friends, it was nice to spend time with the kids - going to the Holliston High basketball game, attending the kids' games, and catching up on some reading. Sunday was an exciting afternoon with the Patriots win!
What are the right things?
This is a question that has been floating around in my head for the past couple of weeks, even though I did not realize that it was. Let me try and explain...
It could be the time of year (new year, new beginnings, January), the fact that we are approaching the midpoint of the school year (I can not believe we are scheduling transition dates for the 18-19 school year!), the realization that one of our kids is going to high school next year, or simply where my head is right now, but I have found myself to be in a more reflective place than typical. With my resolution/intention of 'slowing it down' for the 2018 calendar year, I have been trying to build in some time for intentional reflection, reading, and less busyness. And, as I know, that can create both the blessing and curse of reflection - or, as I am coming to find out/experience, potential over-reflection - with both personal and professional endeavors. How does that translate to Blake? Well, I have been trying to 'slow it down' and identify the work/initiatives we are undertaking as a status check, per se, by asking questions...How are we doing? Is progress taking place? What are our needs? What should we continue? What should we change? What questions have not yet been asked? These are questions that are hard to answer, but they are important. Although I knew the practice of reflection for this work was/is important, I have to admit that I had a hard time finding some clarity.
Some (not all) clarity began to come to light when I participated in a webinar/workshop with Will Richardson (@willrich45) and Bruce Dixon (@bruceadixon). Dixon and Richardson are the co-founders of Modern Learners, and their work is centered around forward and progressive movements, structures, ideas, and implementation for educators and leaders in schools. I have been a follower and 'disciple' of Richardson for several years and the reasons for that are simple - he pushes me in my thinking and I am always learning from him. The webinar that evening was rooted in principles from Change School, with the title: Reimagine Learning in 2018: A Five Step Plan to Launch High-Bar Change in Schools. During the workshop Richardson referenced the work of Russell Ackoff (see post below) and his thoughts about the difference between doing the right thing and doing the right things right as well as the inherent problems of doing the wrong things right (Ackoff was referencing Peter Drucker as well).
These premises resonated with me on several levels, bringing me right back to a visit some of us made to Oak Middle School in Shrewsbury in early December. They have been engaged and implementing standards based reporting for a number of years, and the site visit was helpful and invigorating - it's always so refreshing to see other schools in action. During the visit and conversations with teachers and curriculum coordinators, we discussed the process of change, successes and challenges with their work, the different iterations of their practices, and the elements they are still looking to improve - it was both affirming and encouraging to hear their 'story' as it mirrored much of our experiences. As I was visiting classes, I shared with one of the curriculum coordinators that I felt as though we were on the path, but have a lot of room for improvement, tweaking, and growth. I remember sharing something to the effect of..."I know we could be doing this better and we are getting there, but I know it's the right path - I'm more ok with having the right structure/realm with wrong or incorrect elements than having the wrong structure/realm and trying to improve or tweak that structure/realm." It's not as though I was predicting the future back in Shrewsbury, but somethings things just 'click' and you can find meaning and connections. That's what happened for me over the last week.
We will hopefully always maintain our drive for improvement and continually evolve our practices and structures to meet the needs of students, but we must be doing this under the structure and realm of 'the right things'. This is how the clarity for me came to mind and that question noted above came to light - 'What are the right things?' The posts I am highlighting this week are ones that helped me to find some clarity and I hope they may do the same for others...
Interactive Competence
by Esko Kilpi (@EskoKilpi)
Kilpi is a Finnish sociologist who explores the future of business models and organizations, and I 'discovered' him through Will Richardson's work. This post emphasizes the role that context, interdependence, and social processes play in learning and growth.
Creative learning is becoming the fundamental activity. The new competitive edge comes from interactive capacity: the ability to connect with information and people, as and when needed. Knowing depends on how you are present and how you communicate.
This new understanding of competence suggests that the capability to act is a social process. People are simultaneously forming and being formed by each other at the same time — all the time. We want to be agile and resilient and we want to learn effectively and scale up learning. The tension of our time is that we want our firms to be flexible and creative but we only know how to treat them as systems with a fixed number of lines between the boxes, the functions that are still seen separated.
What we have still not understood is that people need to have access to information that no one could predict they would want to know. Even they themselves did not know they needed it — before they needed it. Thus an organization can never be fully planned in advance. When information is transparent, different people see different things and new interdependencies are created, thus changing the organization. The context matters more than ever. The easier the access that people have to one another and to (different) information is, the more possibilities there are.
Relationships Are the Foundation of Great Schools (But They Aren’t Enough)
by George Couros (@gcouros)
Couros's post focuses on innovating inside the box and the need to continually push ourselves to innovate and grow. I appreciate both assumptions that are articulated - wanting to be valued as well as pushed - desires I know are embraced here at Blake by students, staff, and community.
When people feel valued, they are more open to being pushed. When they are pushed without feeling valued, they will either push back or leave.
...I focus on innovating inside of the box. There are constraints and measures that we have to live up to in our schools, agree with them or not, and how you find a way to improve that while ensuring kids walk out of your schools as better and more curious learners is part of the complication of the work. Here is the thing…I assume people want to feel valued, BUT I also assume they want to grow and get better.
We’re Trying To Do “The Wrong Thing Right” in Schools
by Will Richardson (@willrich45)
Richardson is on my list of 'must follows' and this post sparked the focus of my thinking - within, he references the work of Russell Ackoff, an organizational theorist and professor at Wharton. There are several important messages here with implications for our work, and the questions within are important to reference on a regular basis.
Words from Russell Ackoff: “Peter Drucker said ‘There’s a difference between doing things right and doing the right thing.’ Doing the right thing is wisdom, and effectiveness. Doing things right is efficiency. The curious thing is the righter you do the wrong thing the wronger you become. If you’re doing the wrong thing and you make a mistake and correct it you become wronger. So it’s better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. Almost every major social problem that confronts us today is a consequence of trying to do the wrong things righter.”
Sadly, “doing the right thing” for our kids in schools is difficult. In education, our structures, our histories, our nostalgia for trying to do the “wrong thing right” runs deep. Regardless of how we got here (and the story is complex,) we are profoundly wedded to what now constitutes this “education system” that dominates our learning world. The roles and expectations of students and teachers and administrators and parents are so clearly reinforced by our own experience, our cultural representations, and by those who have millions of dollars invested in the status quo that any serious suggestion that we might be doing the “wrong thing” is simply layered over by a new initiative, a new technology, a new curriculum, or a new success story to avoid having to grapple with the more fundamental question.
Doing the right thing in schools starts with one fairly straightforward question: What do you believe about how kids learn most powerfully and deeply in their lives? Once you’ve answered that as an individual and as a school community, the question that follows is does your practice in classrooms with kids honor those beliefs? In other words, if you believe that kids learn best when they have authentic reasons for learning, when their work lives in the world in some real way, when they are pursuing answers to questions that they themselves find interesting, when they’re not constrained by a schedule or a curriculum, when they are having fun, and when they can learn with other students and teachers, then are you giving priority to those conditions in the classroom? Are you acting on your beliefs?
So, what are the right things? How do we know what the right things are? Will we ever know for sure? To be honest, I'm not sure and I believe it is always evolving. That might appear to be 'the easy answer' or an artful way of skirting the question, but I really do believe it's true. We need to keep asking the questions and then be willing to ask a few more questions, listen, and be open to reflection. Three elements I am very confident are 'right things' are environmental conditions for learning, listening, and a spirit/willingness to evolve (as our mission says, 'a willingness to adapt'). Innovating inside the box (Couros), relationships, interdependence, effective systems, questions, relevance, and a continued thirst for identifying the right things - these are structures that will serve our students well and foster learning. I am interested in hearing others' thoughts about 'the right things' and would love to engage in the dialogue.
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Take care.
Nat