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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A Day in the Life -- Building Futures

Just a quick post today of a little video that we put together to showcase our Building Futures kids.  This particular video perhaps isn't the best example of how hands-on things can be for our kids.  Feel free to poke around the videos in the rest of my channel to see some examples that are even more involved.

It Does a Teacher Good

I struggled with Project Based and Inquiry Learning for years.  I mean... I did some of it.  I always had the best of intentions for having kids working on engaging, interesting projects that gave them personal choice and (at least hopefully) motivation to do do their very best work.

Years ago our school's science department ran an annual research symposium that we called "Festivus."  The name was a vicious ripoff of a Seinfeld bit, and the name was about the only thing that our event had in common with Frank Costanza's made-up holiday.  It was a reasonably cool thing.  Kids would prepare presentations on a scientific research topic of their choice in 11th grade across 3 different subjects.  Students could even work with partners in other classes.  We would invite members of the scientific community and academia to come and judge the presentations.  Students would get all dressed up and we'd make an evening of it.  Pretty progressive for being over a dozen years ago, hey?

What ever happened to it?  Quite simply, we axed it.  It was just too much work.  The coordination and communication of all the judges was hours upon hours of work alone.  But that extra effort would have been tolerable had it not been for what the project did to the rest of our classes.  We set aside multiple class days for students to research and prepare their talks.  Each presentation required a visual, so triboards and PowerPoints all needed to be completed.  All the talks were dry-ran in front of peers for feedback before the "real thing."  Hours of in-class and out-of-class time was spent perfecting the research, its synthesis, and its presentation.

But once we were done squeezing open our semesters to fit in Festivus, we then had to race like mad to stand-and-deliver our way through to completing all our course objectives in time for final exams.  It was exhausting.  We poured all this time and energy into a two to three week project only to pretty much destroy the other 14 or 15 weeks of our terms.  It was hard on the kids, and hard on us.

Where had we gone wrong?  Was Festivus a waste of time?  Certainly, in retrospect, I'd have changed a few things, but more recently I've realized that it wasn't Festivus that needed to change.  It was the rest of the semester.

It's taken some time, but I've come to realize that the exclusive use of teacher-centered methods, while safe, familiar, and comfortable are ultimately as bad for my mental health as for that of my students'.  The body of literature extolling the virtues of progressive education models for students is massive.  I'll concede that the jury (at least the scientifically supported with data jury) is still out on many progressive methodologies as far as their efficacy for students goes.  In this post, however, I'd like to share my equally unsupported with data theory that certain progressive methods are good for teachers too.  That is, they offer us both the opportunity to be more effective teachers, but they also give us the opportunity to do a better job of balancing our work lives and non-work lives.

I'm not going to try to bite off every progressive method.  Some are more illustrative than others, and I'm already wordy enough.  Let me, however illustrate why adoption of certain progressive habits makes such a big difference in the life of the average educator:

Team Teaching:

I've already expressed my insistence that this is the most important systemic change required in education today, so I shouldn't need to beat the horse much "deader."  That said, I've got one of the most salient and juicy sales pitches to you teachers still on the fence about this one:

No Sub Plans.

I'll give you a sec to let that sink in...  Go ahead... Let it rattle around a bit.

Picture this: it's a Tuesday morning.  You wake up and your head is pounding, your throat feels like it is harboring tiny porcupines, and your sinuses are so runny, you're considering crushing up Sinutab tablets and just snorting them Scarface style.  You need to call in a sub.  Your options are to frantically type out a set of plans for them in the desperate hope that the day won't just wind up being a complete write-off for your kids or just sucking it up and heading in despite the likelihood you will spread this plague to every colleague and student who passes within a meter of you.

But what if instead, you've got a partner teacher or two that you're cohorting with at school?  Well then it's nothing more than a simple phone call: "sorry to do this to you, but I've got the plague.  Can you handle them today?"  They tell you it's no problem and you settle in with a pack of Dayquil and enough Dristan to unclog a toilet without a second thought to what's not happening in your classes. Down the road, you'll probably return the favor, and you'll be happy to do it, for you'll understand the wisdom that is not living on an island as a teacher.

I bet there will be people reading this who will want to make a shift for this benefit alone (I too loathe doing up sub plans).  So I don't even have to go into the value of being able to trade off shouldering the kids for a period while your partner gets caught up on some marking or planning.  Or having an extra set of eyes in the room when you're trying to manage a number of smaller group discussions.  Or being able to meet privately with kids to give feedback or assess while the other teacher is managing a larger discussion.  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  Trust me gang... you want this in your lives.

Making Community Connections:

Finding experts, allies, initiatives, and partners outside your school's walls is powerful for a lot of reasons.  Some of the unmentioned reasons include the fact that it gives you the teacher an opportunity to learn alongside your students.  Going into a "field experience" with a limitation on your own understanding puts you in the position that your students are in.  That is a truly invaluable perspective and may even allow you to better refine your own teaching practices in light of what you learn by taking on the role of learner.

It also potentially offers you more productivity in your day.  For instance, if you've brought in a carpenter to help your physics students design and construct their projectile hurling objects, that potentially provides you with more freedom to work with students who are struggling a bit more with the physics behind their trebuchets.  The saying goes that "many hands make for light work," but in this context, it also makes for better work.

Projects:

I may or may not do a post on Project Based Learning down the road, but it won't be a How-To if I do go there.  That's because there is such a wealth of internet resources on the subject, that there is no way that I would be able to approach the quality and quantity of even a thin slice of the best sites.  If I do a PBL post, it will likely be more of a "hey just because you're doing PBL, doesn't mean you stop teaching" post.



Being an effective PBL teacher can also very liberating.  One of the things that doing a lot of PBL forces you to do is to take stock of all the little bits of work you used to make kids do before your PBL-life.  Sitting down with your curriculum and your resources and carefully asking yourself (or better yet, asking your learning team) why you make kids do the things that you make them do, and being very honest about your answers, will often reveal that your students probably do a lot of busy work.  It's probably very well designed busy work, but having both done this exercise and seen other educators do this exercise in a number of different settings, I'm reasonably convinced that most of us will find that there is actually a lot of fat to trim in most of the classes we teach.  Replacing that fat with engaging, intense, visible, connected, and relevant project or inquiry work releases you from a lot of that paper burden. 

I often advise my students that it's not just about working hard, but about working smart -- making the most of the time you have and getting maximum bang for your buck.  I used to do that while carrying around stacks and stacks of marking that often didn't get completed until a final exam break started and I would finally have time to catch up on it all.  What hypocrisy.  More recently I've started taking my own advice and have learned how to give more precise and useful feedback with less paper coming home with me.  Emphasizing quality of assessment over quantity of assessment can make for better and more efficient feedback with less paper to take home each day.

Making Learning Visible:

Having students exhibit and present their work to an audience outside the school environment is tremendously powerful for improving productivity and buy-in from students.  But we also can't deny its effect on us either.  When we invite our stakeholders in to observe our kids, we invite them in to observe us as well.  That layer of accountability works for us too, and I think it's a good thing.  And let's not also forget that feedback, whether bad or good can be valuable.  We can't ignore the positive bump in job satisfaction that comes with hearing a thank you from a parent who is thrilled with the work their son or daughter has done in your class.

Additionally, exhibiting also gives us an all-important avenue for making more community connections.  It's part of the networking process that I think will be essential to effective 21st century education.  Inviting even just your students' parents in to see the display of student work throughout the year might just supply you with the connection for the next great project or partnership.

*****

TL;DR: Are the pressures of teaching driving you to an early grave, or at least an early retirement?  Collaborate with colleagues, make connections in your community, shift to more student-centered practices, and exhibit their (and your) learning.  Then enjoy your new lease on life and the career you imagined back when you first applied to teacher college!

Vive la revolution!!

It's Not About the House

I've blogged about the program in which I teach on more than a few occasions.  "Yeah yeah," you say "Your class is great. Whoop-dee-doo.  I don't teach in a class like that. What good is it to me?"  Today that is just what I want to talk about.  You see, the revolution is not about the class I teach or the project we're doing.  It's not about the house.  There are a lot of reasons why I like the spot I'm in, but today I want to talk about changing the spot you are in (assuming, of course, that you are a teacher).

I genuinely believe that an effective model of pedagogical change can be layered on top of just about any curriculum.  I say "just about" because I very much recognize the specter of high-stakes tests that loom over many jurisdictions.  At some point down the road, I'm going to try to make an argument for why teachers should stop putting so much energy in prepping kids for those things, even if nothing changes regarding their role, weight, value, design, or use in your jurisdiction.  But for now, let me just say that I understand where you're coming from in not wanting to let kids down on those tests.  Alberta Diploma Exams, for instance, are a real thing and we can't ignore their impact on our students.

Outside of that mindset, however, I'm going to challenge any teacher who wants to make an impactful and positive change for their students, for their career, and for their outlook for the future, to head in some or all of the following directions.

First...

Find a buddy, or maybe a few buddies that you think (a) are also looking to shake things up and that (b) you can work with amicably.  We'll deal with the non-amicable folks later.  For now, let's get people together who are drinking the same brand of Kool-Aid.

Sit down with your friend or friends over some coffees, perhaps some delicious baked goods.  If a bottle of wine or a case of beer is more to your liking, have at 'er.  Good food & drink always helps to make an experience even more rewarding.  Bring some pads of paper, or maybe even chart paper or whiteboards (perhaps now the title of this blog will make some sense -- whiteboards and a few tasty beverages are all you need to start your own corner of the revolution).

Where the conversation goes from here is up to you.  The goal: find an excuse to teach the same kids at the same time.  The "Next Level" goal: The excuse will offer a novel, engaging, meaningful experience that gives your students an opportunity to create something that is meaningful and relevant to them -- work that they can take pride in beyond just showing mom and dad the letter on the report card.  Maybe you look at ways to merge your classes for a large project or field experience.  Perhaps you see if team teaching all or part of course makes sense.  Maybe you think about a large-scale project that has tons of flash, redefines what it means for students to learn, and launches you into a completely new and exciting trajectory in your career.  Either way, put it all out there on the table.  Throw up the ideas on the wall and see what sticks.  Find out where your teaching spheres collide and crossover.  Find out where your passions and interests as educators and as humans crossover.  Ask yourselves how would you do things if you had the freedom to do it the way you wanted?  In the end, you'll hopefully have at least one idea that finds you impassioned and inspired to take the next step.

Before you take the next step, I want to add one piece of advice: It has been my observation that as the educational landscape shifts, stakeholders are carving out their individual niches whether it be within individual schools or educational jurisdictions at large.  Many schools and school divisions want to be able to demonstrate their forward progress and commitment to improving education for the kids put in their care.  The shinier the penny, the more easy it is to show off.  I'm not saying that you should do things just to show off.  But, frankly, if you want to get buy-in from the people you're going to need to ask permission from, you may need to give them a compelling reason to break from the tried and true.  You'll have to gauge the climate and culture of your own setting, but personally I'd rather err of side of ambitious.  If you offer them a plan that has the potential to showcase your school or division as exceptional, your chances of getting approval will likely increase.

Then...

Figure out what it will take to make it happen.  This is obviously a big step.  You don't just snap your fingers and marvel at the plan that appears before you.  But this is where some exciting stuff happens.  It's where these questions get answered:

• Who needs to approve the plan?  How do we convince them that it's good for kids and that it's good for them too?
• Who might we need to partner with in order to bring this plan to life?  Industry?  Small business?  NGOs?  Non-profits?  Academia?  A few parents?  Partners might not always seem essential, but I'd like to suggest that they certainly have the potential to be essential.  The greater your idea's scope, the more hands will be needed to bring it to life.  Finding essential partners will have to be a whole future blog post (these are really starting to accumulate).
• How do we find these partners and how do we ask them to get involved?
• How do we fit this work into the existing structure of our school (or do we need structures to change in order to make this work)?
• How do we make space within the work we already do in order to accommodate this new thing?

Those last couple questions are ultimately about pedagogy -- about re-framing what you already do into what needs to be done.  For some teachers, it's going to be the most significant barrier.  There was certainly a point in my career where I simply couldn't have done this kind of work.  Finding teammates who are already headed in this direction -- whether they're in your school, jurisdiction, or web browser is also part of the process.  Last question: Who can help me?  Don't have an answer to that one?  Start here.

Lastly...

Make your pitch.  Whether its a department head, a principal, a superintendent, a learning specialist, a parent council, or a politician, someone probably needs to hear the proposal.  There are probably a whole host of things these folks will think they want to know in advance.  Cost, manpower, time frames, impact on other areas of the school or school system, etc.  Ultimately, though, three things are going to win you their approval:

(1)  A compelling emotional reason to get on board.  Who will this make an impact on and how big could that impact be?  Tell the story.
(2)  A degree of certainty that their own jobs aren't going to be made substantially more difficult by the change.
(3)  A plan of action.*

Congratulations!  You've got an exciting new project under way.  Now the fun really begins.

Does it all seem like far more work than you've got time to manage?  Objection noted.  In my next post, I'll try to explain why I think the more you do this, the more you'll be able to shift your work load away from the ever mounting prep & grade cycle toward work that is more meaningful to your students.  Don't get me wrong: there will be some hours invested on the front end to be sure.  But crafted properly, the kind of projects that will have the most meaningful positive impacts on your students will also have the most meaningful impacts on your work/life balance.  Done right, the revolution can work for your students and for you.

TL;DR:  Join the revolution! Find friends, brainstorm, smash together your classes, design a project at the intersection of your subject matter and/or your interests, take time to plan, pitch it to your gatekeepers, profit!

Vive la resistance!!

* Credit where it's due: Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip & Dan Heath is owed for helping me to understand this.