Grow First: 5 Ways Teachers Can be 21st Century Learners

Socrates said that "true knowledge is knowing that you know nothing."  I've known a philosophy major or two who bristled at this paradox, citing the assertion as "ridiculous nonsense."  I doubt Socrates was being literal when he said this.  To me, this quote embodies one of the essential needs in education today: a growth mindset.  I believe that the essence of Socrates' declaration is that as soon as you've got things "figured out," growth ceases.  In some areas, that might not necessarily be the worst thing in the world.  I think I'd be fine with having "basement framing" figured out.  Sure, I might not discover new, more efficient and effective means of framing my basement, but at least I'd be able to frame my basement!

Education should necessarily require evolution.  Societies, and thus the students who live in them, continuously evolve.  We educators bear the responsibility of preparing students to exist within these societies, and thus as they change, so must we.  The old cliché "if you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards" applies in education at least as much as it does in business and in foot races.

I suspect that all educators know this on some intuitive level, but to a few, the constant need to change can be an uncomfortable reality.  We've all been subject to the "new initiative," some mandated-from-upon-high addition to our work load that defies common sense and produces little meaningful good in our classrooms.  If the frequency or scope of these decrees is significant, it can jade even the most optimistic of teachers and cause us to become skeptical of any form of deviation from the status quo.  But it does not alter the fundamental need for adaptation to a constantly shifting societal landscape.  Nor does it alter our individual obligation to be the best we can be for the students we are charged with teaching.

Educational systems as a whole lack for a growth mindset.  Politicians may pay lip service to reform, but, systemically, things tend to stay the same more than they tend to change.  I think it is we teachers who have the greatest power to lead an inertial shift that brings about meaningful change within schools and our individual classrooms.  If we ensure that each of us is operating with a growth mindset, the system upon which we operate will necessarily reflect that.  Much has been written on this subject, including a whole book that I will admit I'm still meaning to read.  What I have gleaned from the edusphere about growth mindsets thus far, however, is that when they are fostered in our students, we see greater resiliency, increased likelihood of overcoming setbacks and failures, and more long term success.  I need to assume the same would be true of similar habits of mind in teachers.

As it is with most things, our ability to encourage a skill, a habit, or a mindset in others is often directly proportional to our own ability to understand and demonstrate that skill, habit, or mindset.

If we're going to preach growth, we should practice growth.

And before I get excessively preachy myself, I will freely admit that this has been a hard line for me to follow personally.  In being reflective of my own practice, I've discovered a good many behaviors and thought patterns that directly oppose the principles of growth and meaningful professional development.  I don't want to dwell too heavily on all the ways I'm doing things badly, but I think it's a useful endeavor to share a few of the behaviors that I know I need to work on in order to improve and grow as an educator.  See if there are any here that you can relate to.

In reflecting on my practices as an educator, colleague, mentor, or mentee, I have at times...

• dismissed opinions or viewpoints that are contrary to my own without first considering them objectively, honestly, and with an open mind.
• been closed off (at times to the point of hostility) in both language and posture with others who have given me feedback that was anything less than ideal.
• been reluctant to engage with stakeholders outside my class (parents, colleagues, admin, etc.) out of fear of being judged or criticized harshly.
• made pedagogical/instructional choices that offered a lesser value to students based on my own reservations about how I would be perceived by a group (students, colleagues, admin, parents, public, etc.).
• avoided pursuing a potentially meaningful strategy or plan because it required admitting a deficit in my own knowledge or ability.
• was dishonest about something I said or did in a class in order to either to gain some manner of positive reward (prestige, esteem, etc.) or avoid some manner of negative repercussion.
• avoided seeking feedback about my teaching from students out of fear that the feedback would be less than ideal.
• gave up on or disengaged from something (a technique, a teaching strategy, an initiative, etc.) much earlier than was warranted by its level of difficulty, resistance, or failure.
• derided a colleague's practice in the presence of another colleague with the ulterior motive of elevating my own status.
• entertained criticisms of a colleague by students for no real purpose beyond "gossiping."

That's a pretty rough laundry list and probably isn't even complete.  But I can't honestly espouse a mindset of learning, growth, and continued positive transformation if I can't emulate parts of that mindset, one of which is acknowledging the ways in which we sabotage our own growth.  Once we are able to be mindful of our own limiting behaviors, it becomes possible to reverse them and their effects.  It isn't easy, but the payoff can be limitless.

From there, we then can examine all of the things we hope for and try to instill in our students.  Each of those goals and outcomes should be features that we have either instilled in ourselves, or at the very least are trying to.  Do you want your students to be innovators?  In what ways do you innovate as a teacher?  Do you hope your students will become effective collaborators with one another?  Where does collaboration take place in your practice?  What does it look like when it is most effective?  

There has never really been a point where ongoing learning wasn’t a critical part of a good teacher’s job. But there may also never have been a point where such a significant shift in mindsets among educators was necessary. There has perhaps never been a point where having a growth mindset as a teacher has been more critical, both for our own needs and for helping students meet theirs.

To that end I present a few approaches that I think can help us to achieve these ends:

1.  Let's open our practices to our colleagues.

Whether you've been teaching for 20 years or 20 days, critical feedback always has the potential to be transformative.  Constructive peer feedback has been transformative in my own practice, and I am convinced it should be a vital part of any systemic transformation.  Seeking out a regular mentor/mentee relationship, finding opportunities to team teach (even if only briefly), or simply asking a colleague for some feedback about a lesson over a cup coffee can all offer a wealth of potential.

In their book Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School, Mark Barnes (@markbarnes19) and Jennifer Gonzalez (@cultofpedagogy) suggest using what they call a Pineapple Chart. The pineapple is a symbol of welcome and hospitality, and the pineapple chart is a mechanism that is used to let colleagues know when they are welcome in one another's classes.  Being able to entertain critical feedback of our practices may be humbling and unnerving.  However, coupled with a structured feedback system, such as the Critical Friends Protocol, the potential for growth is tremendous.

2.  Let's use design frameworks to help each other identify critical outcomes and the paths for achieving them.

The folks over at Stanford (I hear they're smart there) have been putting together some pretty nifty tools in their Institute for Design.  What's cool about their approach is that you don't need to be an expert in a particular field in order to be helpful to people in that field when using these design strategies.  Participants in their workshops and classes come from a wide range of backgrounds and are able to use basic design architecture to give and receive tremendously useful ideas and feedback.  Take a look at one of their crash courses to get a sense of how a group of people can help each other innovate and create.  Applied as a tool for instructional design (or just about any other educational endeavor), great things can happen.

3.  Let's advocate for personalization of our professional learning.

The educational establishment is coming around to the notion that one-size does not fit all for our students.  The same sentiment needs to be applied with teachers and the way we approach professional learning.  Are you an administrator or a jurisdictional leader?  Ask yourself how your approach to professional learning emulates what you want to see teachers in your school(s) do with personalization in their classrooms.  Are your teachers passive recipients of common PL offerings, or is there capacity for teachers to construct and implement growth plans in ways that are individually meaningful to them? One-size of professional learning does not fit all teachers any more than one-sized teaching fits all learners.

If you are a teacher and find your professional development to be narrow, unfulfilling, and unrelated to your practice, you probably aren't alone in the way you feel.  We're all very capable of grousing and complaining about how useless a particular talk or in-service training session was, but are we ready and willing to craft an approach that obsoletes the model we're so quick to complain about?  In a fully realized 21st century school, we imagine students empowered to the point where they are able to script their own learning outcomes and paths to achieving them.  Before we are ready to work within such an advanced model, perhaps we should consider how we might script our own professional learning outcomes.

Find allies (strength in numbers after all), develop an alternative (otherwise it's still just complaining), and make your pitch with humble honesty.  I don't know too many administrators so draconian as to deny a reasonable request at self-improvement, particularly if the requests are sincere, well considered, and detailed.  For those who are stymied, perhaps we can put our heads together and develop some strategies for navigating (and in some cases toppling) barriers.  Maybe a topic for a future blog...

4.  Let's engage with the world outside our school's walls.

That you are reading this blog means I'm "preaching to the choir" on this one.  I'm becoming a bit of a broken record with regards to advocating the cultivation of critical relationships outside the school community, but it's something I don't think can be overstated.  It's a big world out there and a connected teacher will be much better able to connect students.  YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, blogs, podcasts, and webinars have already joined literature and conferences as staples in the connected educator's arsenal of professional resources.  More tools continue to surface regularly, including collaboration tools like Voxer, Blab, and Periscope, allowing teachers to connect with more colleagues, more educational partners, and more ideas than ever before.

5. Let's not worry about getting it perfect on the first try.

We want our students to reflect, revise, and refine don't we?  We need to do it too.  Our first attempt at doing things differently might not produce all the results we're looking for right out of the gate.  As in all design processes, iteration will be necessary.  We have to take the time to be reflective with as much objectivity as we can muster, work on getting the approach right, and not simply falling back into the habits of comfort and control.

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Growth isn't always easy, but when it's sought in earnest and achieved, it is tremendously fulfilling.  Ghandi said to "be the change you wish to see in the world."  For an educator, no sentiment could be more relevant.

TL;DR: The first step to developing growth mindsets in our students is developing them in ourselves.  Innovate, collaborate, self-advocate, reflect, refine, and accept critique in your practice, and you will be much better at helping your students do all of these things.

Vive la revolution!

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Why Innovation?

The word innovation comes up a lot in educhatter these days.  Entire books are written on the subject.  We have apparently already closed the door on the information age (can we really call it an "age" if it only lasted 20ish years), and are now told that we live in the innovation age.  Educational literature abounds with a push to produce innovators in my country and abroad.  But what is the big deal with innovation anyway?  How many people in a society do we really regard as being "innovators?"  Sure Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg did some pretty spectacular innovating, but there's only so much room for the Apples and Facebooks of the world right?  We can't ALL be innovators, can we?

Before making a case for innovation and practices that generate more innovation in our schools and more innovators from them, we should make sure we're on the same page with regards to what innovation IS.  Innovation often gets mixed up with creativity, and I think the two words are used almost interchangeably.  This isn't that big a problem.  Personally, I think both matter, and the two concepts interact with one another in many ways.  That being said...

Innovation is the act of changing something that already is (methods, practices, policies, products, etc.).  It is fundamentally an alteration of what currently exists.

Creativity is the act of creating something that never was.

The distinction isn't tremendously important, and the two words are typically listed as synonyms of one another in the thesaurus.  For whatever reason, however, it's "innovation" that seems to get more play when we hear about the kinds of people society apparently needs more of.  You see this word routinely in business circles.  Where creativity often gets ascribed to artistic practices, innovation is apparently the quality that we need to cultivate in our youth if we are to stay competitive in the global economy.  Personally, I think the two concepts are tightly intertwined, and the common distinction of creativity (art) and innovation (practical stuff) is a false dichotomy.  Whether creative or innovative, our next generation is well served if they are either or both.

So why then should innovation matter so much in our classrooms?  I once had a lengthy discussion with a colleague where he asserted that most kids don't really need to be innovative, and that the notion distracted from their real needs.  He argued that the skills most of them actually need are learning how things are currently done in a particular field so that they can get a good job in that field, do what is needed of them by their employers, and thus, stay employed.  Innovation was for the elite few students capable of making it in the world "on their own" and that these kids will likely emerge regardless of the system they are educated in.  Suffice to say, we disagreed.  If he had made that argument in 1967, or even maybe 1986, I think he would have had some data to support the argument.

In 2015, however, that just doesn't hold water.  Businesses and corporations have come and gone for decades.  That's nothing new.  What IS new is the pace at which new processes, new technologies, and new markets emerge, both on local scales and on global ones.  Microeconomic platforms such as Esty, Kijiji, and Teacher Pay Teachers multiply daily.  The appetite for all things "new" and "improved" around the globe grows unabated.  The world of work today is not what it was 20 years ago and is almost unrecognizable from the economies of our parents' generation from which it has evolved.

There is a prevailing myth circling the internet that some large percentage of jobs that our kids will hold 10 years from now will not have been invented yet.  This same ridiculous claim was made 10 years ago, and other folks who are much better at research than I am have demonstrated that this is very likely to be false.  The trend, however, that isn't being talked about in seminars your school's career counsellor is attending is the growing rate of contract work over traditional employment.  In Canada, the US, and other developed nations the shift toward temporary contract work is unmistakable.  More and more people are having to market themselves as a brand throughout their adult lives over selling themselves as employees a few times throughout a career.

This reality requires that a much greater percentage of the working public needs to have the ability to stay abreast of their fields, whether they be in software development or spot welding, without the support and ongoing training of an employer to spur on innovation and growth.  Contractors must continuously learn and adapt as they transition between contracts and markets in order to stay employed.

And in economies that are narrow the need for diversity, innovation, and skill agility is more apparent than ever.  Albertans should be clamboring loudest for changes in our educational systems.  Our ability to train future oil executives and future righands is pretty well established.  But in the bust times of our boom-and-bust economy, the level of panic and stress in this province is palpable.  Do Albertan parents really want their kids to be subject to the same rollercoaster rides the majority of our economy lurches through roughly every seven years?  And this doesn't even touch on the notion that one day, perhaps a day closer than we might want to imagine, we could be facing a global reality where oil simply isn't the thing we use to power the planet any more.  This could arise because oil becomes obsolete or because the damage that is done by the practice of burning hydrocarbons becomes so glaringly atrocious that we have no choice.  What then of our need to innovate when we must reinvent an entire provincial economy?

When we couple this reality with that of exponentially increasing computational power in our technological systems, the future looks even more uncertain.  In the mid 20th century, automation replaced millions of middle income blue collar jobs, transitioning the middle class into predominantly white collar careers.  Today, technology is replacing many of those white collar careers as well.  For instance, computers running AI software can now take the place of journalists in preparing news copy, which represents only the tip of a very large iceberg.  Even teachers may be subject to the shift towards automation.  A teacher who acts only in the capacity of Information Dispensary is already long past obsolete, with MOOCS and YouTube able to easily and at least as effectively (if not more so) take the place of the average Stand-and-Deliver-er.  We too are not immune from the need to innovate and adapt.

Albertans, and Canadians in general, can continue to trundle along riding the rails of our resource-based economics that have driven our nation since its inception.  If we're smart, however, we will recognize that a changing world will offer changing opportunities.  We have as much at stake in keeping our planet humming along productively as any other nation on this planet.  Globally, we must eventually figure out how to feed and water tens of billions of people, provide energy to all of them, keep disease at bay, and find harmony and happiness in a global village that is cramped and angry in many of its parts.  We are long past the point at which turning the environmental ship entirely back to a sustainability setting is realistic.  We must invent ways to reverse inevitable damage being done to our atmosphere, oceans, and land.

And all of this will require innovators.

So why not us?  Why would we leave this to other nations to shape?  My answer is a simple one: we shouldn't.

Instead, let's teach our kids how to DO things again.  Let's give them an opportunity to work on problems that matter in their lives and in the lives of the world around them.  Let's show them that trying something, failing at it, going back to the drawing board, and trying again is worth it.  Don't think they can?  Just watch your kid try to nail a trick on his skateboard.  Iteration is ingrained within us.

Perhaps we should reconsider the question we ask of every young person regarding what they want to do when they grow up.  Maybe it's time to start asking them what they want to do right now.  Yes, many of our kids will say "play hockey," or worse: "play Facebook games." Heck, most days I want to play hockey and Facebook games!  But if, within our schools, we foster cultures of creation, of innovating and generating solutions to compelling problems, we'll also get to hear them reply with things like "write a story," or "build a robot," or "make a difference to people on the other side of my school's walls."

We need innovation right now.  Not sure how to start?  I'll recommend Tony Wagner's Creating Innovators as a great place to begin.  Then the next step is to get some dialogue going in your school and in your community.  We need more people starting and engaging in these conversations with urgency and agency.  And then we need to get moving on that revolution.

How do you foster innovation in your own classroom?  How does your school encourage innovative practices in its students?  Its staff?  Comment below or Tweet me your thoughts!

TL;DR: Creating innovators gives our kids and our economy the best chance for a bright future.  Being innovators gives us teachers that chance as well.

Vive la revolution!


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Coasters Optional: Are These Exciting or Frustrating Times?

Depending on the kind of teacher you are, right now might either be one of the most exciting or one of the most frustrating times in education in decades.  If you are a teacher who has found a high degree of comfort in what you do, feel that you are effective at it, and are operating in a fairly teacher-centered ("traditional") learning environment, you probably find current edu-culture  and edu-chatter to be pretty frustrating.  You're hearing a lot of talk that doesn't fit with your teaching paradigm, a paradigm that already looks and feels like it's working very well.  All this 21st century business is just another ill-fated attempt at fixing what isn't broken.

And you have a pretty good idea what I've got to say about that, don't you?  I'm going to try to convince you of how wrong you are and that you should come over to my line of thinking about changing the educational system and being a completely different kind of teacher, right?  Well don't get too defensive just yet.  I mean... yes I am going to do all that, but I don't think that your view of things is without validity or merit.  The other day I gave a trigonometry lecture and handed out some worksheets.  Pretty traditional.  I don't think you are the embodiment of evil because that's how you principally operate, especially so if you've never been offered a compelling reason to do it any other way.  I get it.

If anything, I feel like I'm the "bad guy" here, not you.  From your perspective, what you've been up to has worked pretty well and there isn't any good reason to fix what "ain't already broke."  I, on the other hand, actually think that it IS broken, and I nevertheless teach quite traditionally sometimes.  So it seems I'm being a hypocrite, and some days that is honestly the case.  I don't always practice what I preach.  I should point out before moving on, however, that I'm working daily on not being a hypocrite.  Rome wasn't built in a day.  Back to you, though:  Presently, you're probably hoping that everyone will leave you more or less alone and just let you do your job.  You work hard at it, and you do it well, right?  Well here's what I'd like you to do:

Ask yourself honestly if yours is the job that needs doing for your kids right now.  If you're a high school teacher, and you're well established and effective, you are probably very good at getting students into college or university.  I'll be frank when I say that as a young teacher (fresh out of university with an Ed degree that followed a BSc in biochemistry) I had a very university-oriented mindset, which had a profound impact on my teaching for years.  I placed a tremendous amount of weight on getting my students ready for university, regardless of the grade I was teaching, and regardless of how university-bound my students seemed to be (teaching them all that way gives everyone the chance to make it, right?).

Today, scrutiny of our post-secondary institutions is growing, as we start to understand how poor a job many of our research-based universities are doing in the teaching and learning department.  There is a wealth of literature damning the quality of post-secondary education, particularly in the US.  Our statistics in Canada are slightly better off, partially because we place a much higher emphasis on vocational training and certification programs that actually get people jobs here, but the university graduate game isn't everything it's cracked up to be north of the border either.  Only a quarter of Canadians get Bachelors degrees these days, and of those, roughly half of them report getting jobs that are in their fields.  Scrutiny of teaching practices here reveals similar findings as in institutions around the world -- quality teaching is not the top priority of our "elite" universities.  Don't get me wrong here.  I'm not saying that we shouldn't be sending kids to college.

What I am saying is that if you're a teacher who is highly adept at getting your students to win at diploma exams or SATs and AP finals, that's great.  But you're really only serving a thin slice of students and that slice could probably be served just as well (if not better) by folks with more tech and more pizzazz who post educational videos on YouTube.  Like it or not, your skill set has been obsoleted by the internet.  For all you know, Salman Khan might be more responsible for your students' test scores these days than you are.  So unless you've got retirement within striking distance, I think you might want to consider taking a sip or two of the progressive Kool Aid.  We've got work in store.

On that note, I mentioned two groups of teachers at the beginning of this post, and I'd much rather talk about the other bunch: the teachers for whom these times in education are so exciting.  For those teachers willing to consider that the current educational paradigm does not serve the current societal paradigm, we have no shortage of opportunity laid before us.  We are tasked by our children to create an education that serves all of them and not just the thin slice destined to get a degree and work within their chosen field of study.  We are asked to prepare them for a world that will demand unprecedented levels of innovation, civic engagement, and creative solutions to very real problems.

That might sound particularly daunting, but I'm here to tell you that while daunting it may be, it also has so much potential to be fulfilling, energizing, and empowering.  I don't know many teachers working right now who aren't struggling with the fact that we can feel the erosion of our ability to make a difference in our traditional teaching.  One of the reasons I started teaching was that I felt I was a good story-teller.  But like most people without a Hollywood budget to back them, my ability to entertain my way into good teaching has been utterly usurped by the stimulation rich 21st century.  I can barely compete with YouTube and Facebook, much less 24 hour streaming movies and the few hundred new video games uploaded to the iTunes and Google Play stores every day.

Recreating education places us squarely back in the role that most of us imagined having when we joined the profession: difference makers.  Designing the shift that will connect more of your students in your classrooms with real-world problems, creative endeavors, and opportunities to explore and innovate will give all of them the chance to have rich, rewarding lives both in their time with you as students and after they leave your building.  That process won't be easy, but it can be every bit as thrilling and engaging as the experiences you hope to give your kids.  We want our students to find their passions and then to pursue them vigorously.  Shouldn't we be doing the same?  Educating students effectively is (or at least was at one point) each of our passions.  And right now we have a chance to innovate, create, and problem solve just as we hope our students will.  Personally, I find that process richly rewarding, challenging though it is.

I've tried to outline ways that teachers could start making steps toward positive transformation in earlier posts.  I'm excited to report that I'm not just a peddler of my own snake oil, but a customer as well.  Building Futures is but one step on the road to revolution.  I look forward to reflecting on the transformations that me and my colleagues are working on crafting in coming months and years.  For now I'll end this post with a final suggestion, something that I've alluded to before as being vital to the revolution:

Whiteboards and Watermarks.

It's not just the name of the blog.  It's where the journey begins.  I've heard the term "EduCoffee" or "EdCafe" before.  Whiteboards and watermarks is the same idea; I just don't feel the need to limit the beverage choice to coffee.  My personal preference comes from the malted beverage family.  Here's how it goes:

1. Find some friends, allies, collaborators.
2. Get some "whiteboards" (pads of paper, laptops, chart paper, whatever you like).  
3. Pour yourselves a cup, a mug, or a glass of whatever excites your palettes.  Some of those beverages may have cause to leave a watermark or two.  Coasters are optional.
4. Discuss.  If you could do it the way you wanted in order to give the maximum number of kids the maximum number of opportunities to have rich, rewarding educational experiences, what would that look like for you?

Who knows... yours just might be the discussion that changes the game for an entire generation.

Exciting times indeed.

TL;DR: If you want to do things "the old way," I'm afraid you're running out of time where that's going to be OK.  Make the switch now, and come join us on an exciting wave of innovation and creative design where we teachers literally get to help change the world for the better!!

Vive la resistance!!

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