The Right of Revision

As teachers and leaders, we frequently tell our children that it's ok to make mistakes, that is the only way we learn. Sounds great, seems great, but do we believe it. Do we create a culture that not only accepts mistakes but encourages them and celebrates when we overcome our mistakes? Like so many things do our actions match our words.

A student completes a task in math, what feedback do we give them? Do they grade the assignment marking the number wrong at the top of the page and making an "x" by the incorrect questions? Do we grade the assignment and do the same? Do we have them check with a classmate and confer about what they believe they have mastered and what they haven't? Do we have them check against a master document and see which ones do not match and then go back and figure out why they didn't get them to match? Our practices and strategies impact our children's underlying beliefs regarding whether or not it is ok to make mistakes and recover or whether they need to be right the first time.

Jan and Steve Chappuis in their Seven Strategies of Assessment For Learning highlight 2 key factors related to this:

• Teach to Focus on Revision
• Engage Students in Self Reflection and Let Them Keep Track of and Share Their Learning

Powerful actions that promote effective learning. Ones that only exist is we as classroom leaders make it acceptable for them to exist. This is no different for us as adults. Do we believe that each day we too have the right not to be perfect? Do we believe that there are multiple ways for us to lead our classrooms, buildings, or district? What happens when someone else walks into our building or our classroom? Are we open to new ideas, willing to listen to others and see that there are multiple ways to help our children learn and grow? Our we open to revision?

As part of the Google Teacher Academy, we had the opportunity to meet with a number of Google employees. Frequently they would talk about a culture in which they were willing to try new things, fail fast, and make a next iteration better. As I think of Google products, Android, Nexus Q, Google TV. Their culture demonstrates this level of efficacy. We rarely hear about Google executives or engineers being fired because a product failed, yet their products fail all of the time. However, Android Cupcake has been followed by numerous versions including the soon to be released Kit Kat, Google TV and Nexus Q have led to Chromecast. 

At some point, we need to give ourselves the right of revision. That it is truly best practice not to get it correct immediately but rather to work with others to refine our work. We need to accept that each day each of us our giving our best for that day but it doesn't need to be the best ever. The best ever comes from learning from each iteration, collaborating, revising, and honestly moving forward. The only reason we fail is that we don't believe that we can succeed. Our own perceptions that others are judging us rather than their collectively owning our growth and success prevents us from collaboratively owning the right to revision and cultivating greater levels of success. Once we believe that it doesn't have to be perfect, that we can fail and try again then we can encourage our students to do the same. They won't believe it unless we do and we create an environment which promotes it. Google has, can we?

The Power of Passion

I'll admit, I didn't get it. I had been to Google this past summer, walked through their halls, met with their engineers and public relations team. I saw the great gathering areas, fantastically themed rooms, and even a couple of guys playing ping pong. I guess one couldn't see them doing their 20% time. However, even Google was getting rid of their 20% time. Then I came back and lots of our teachers were talking about 20% time. They called it "Genius Hour" and they were serious about it. It seemed so odd to me, here Google is getting rid of some of this and we were jumping on the bandwagon.

As an organization, we support teachers and students taking risks. If we want to reach new horizons, we believe that often that innovation can come from those closest to the point of impact. As such, I listened and I supported our "Genius Hour" plans. The teachers were excited. They were passionate. They were invested. Simply by following them on twitter and listening to their conversations it was clear that the "Genius Hour" experiences they wanted to explore would have students researching new topics, creating new products and presentations, revising their work, and sharing their insights. Clearly the process of learning would not just cover the Common Core State Standards and 21st century skills, but embed it in every component of the practice. This would not simply be some teacher sharing their favorite theme but rather organized chaos of student-led research investigation. I still didn't get it. It seemed like an awful lot of work and a classroom management nightmare.

Recently I began to see the tweets on our hashtag #dg58learns. Pictures coming from different rooms of kids doing research. The kids in the background too busy to look up and smile at the camera. Children with books, papers, and devices scattered around them on the ground. I walked into a classroom of seven year-olds and the children wouldn't stop talking to me about all the great things they found. I didn't even ask. They didn't know who I was other than just another guy who worked there. They were sure I needed to know everything about this mammal they were researching. It was passion. Their passion. Children so invested in their narrow band of interest that they had a hard time putting the information down. Children reading so much simply because they needed to know it. Creating amazing products because everyone else needs to understand why their thing is the coolest thing in the world.

I get it now. A little slow on the uptake, but I get it. "Genius Hour" is about their curiosity, their passion, their work. While in its infancy, this time has the opportunity to cultivate more learning than perhaps the entire rest of our day. Not that it should be our whole day, but rather that coveted part of our day that makes our work special. The passion and investment of students and teachers discovering those interesting nuggets, analyzing the seeds of newly found information, synthesizing these into unique products are everything we should be about as a learning organization. There is great power when we are passionate. The power to utterly destroy and the power to build amazing things. It is our job to allow the risks that channel our passions to create the innovative works of art that may someday change all of our lives.

21st Century Teachers

My child participated in Destination Imagination last year. The task was to build a structure that could hold a certain weight and have certain forces act upon the structure. He and several other 9 year old children worked for weeks engineering a structure. Like many children, he has a younger sibling. In the first five minutes of the group working on the first day, the younger brother walks into the room, takes a shoebox, flips it over, places the weight on it and states, "Like this?" He is immediately shouted out of the room and his structure ignored. Months later, the children still didn't have a structure as the now long forgotten 5-year-old's product.

In education, like many professions, we often miss the forest from the trees. We get caught up on the next challenge, such as "college & career readiness" or "PARCC" that we lose track of the greater goal. We, like the children working diligently building their structure for Destination Imagination, are so busy looking for solutions to the next challenge that frequently we forget the tools that we have in front of us. For school districts, typically 60% of the budget is teaching staff, 85% of the budget is personnel overall. These are our biggest assets, yet frequently we are looking for the next software, the next publisher's program that will be less than 1% of our budget to provide the solution. Yes, we miss moving the big rocks because we are distracted by the newest pebble.

The overall goal of Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, and the Partnership for 21st Century Learning is to prepare students for a world that we cannot predict. The challenge is for children to be able to manipulate information, utilize skills creatively, collaborate together to make new innovative solutions, critically analyze situations, and communication internally and externally to ensure the challenge is solved appropriately. These skills aren't partial to any particular time period, but rather products of all time periods. The most innovative members of every society demonstrate some of these attributes. Furthermore, societies have risen and fallen based on their capacity to implement these skills.

What I don't understand is why we as educational leaders believe that in order to build these capacities within children that we should provide children with a lock-step path requiring teachers to teach with the same recipe provided by a software developer or textbook publisher. The dialogue goes like this:

Administrator: "I want you to teach or children to be innovative and critical thinkers."

Teacher: "Great, we are going to have lots of challenges and problem-solving activities at their level."

Administrator: "Absolutely, they are all in this book. Just follow a chapter at a time at the same pace as your colleague in the other school. Each chapter contains appropriate challenges for children each from a different diverse ethnic minority that is thematically appropriate for your children's age. Also, there is a specialized software program that complements each chapter."

Teacher: "Ok, so how are they supposed to be creative."

Administrator: "Each unit has creativity challenges."

Dutifully, the teacher goes into her room, follows the pacing guide, and executes the same learning experiences in the same order as her colleague in the other school. Children receive the same experiences and create the same outcomes. Clearly, while having a consistent experience that exposes the children to knowledge, none of the actual 21st century skills are developed by either the adults or the children.

If we want our students to be 21st century learners we need to embrace our classroom leaders as 21st century teachers. District and building leaders need to outline the challenges, analyze the data in partnership with their instructional team, and cultivate the opportunity for the team to create innovative solutions. We need to embrace the publisher materials, whether traditional or digital, as tools to help us accomplish the learning and growth for our students rather than full-scale solutions for all of learning. 21st century teaching requires leaders to trust their teams to work together, share, innovate, and try new things in order to promote growth. We can't expect these skills in the students if it is not part demonstrated by the classroom leader.

The Enemy's Gate is Down - Lessons in Learning from Ender's Game

Twenty-five years ago, I picked up my favorite book for the first time. I remember getting caught up in the story of a young boy who learns to find the means within himself and the other students to save the world. I read the book through the eyes of an adolescent. They eyes that saw the struggle to find oneself, the challenge of making difficult decisions, the need to win in order to survive and the desire to learn at times in spite of the teachers. It quickly became my favorite book, one that I read several times and when I became a teacher I passed down to many of my students. As the movie comes out, I have spent the last week listening to the audiobook. Reliving many of my memories as a child, but seeing the book through different eyes. At 40 years old, no longer do I relate as well young Ender Wiggin, but more to Colonel Graff. Now as I reread this book, once again does it bring meaning to my life and to my work. There are many lessons we as educators can learn from Ender's Game.

Learning Needs to Be Challenging Not Simply Rigorous:
Throughout the book, the children are presented with a multitude of games. The games itself are initially interesting, but it is not the game aspect that holds the students attention. After a while, the game aspect begins to fade and the children identify that the game itself is less fun. However, the children continue to pursue completing the game or task because the task itself provides interesting new challenges. Children become intrigued when they believe there is something solvable but the solution is not readily apparent. Simply increasing the amount of work, the detail within the work, or the level of precision required within the work does not increase learning or the desire to learn, but increasing the level of challenge can.

Learning Needs to Follow a Logical Progression:
When designing Ender's instructional program, the games were designed to become increasingly more difficult. Learning challenges started easy and became increasingly more difficult. Instructors started with managable tasks that engaged the students but were doable and increased both the challenge and pace as students were ready for them. The pacing of learning was based on the learners achievement and readiness for the next challenge. It is easy in committee meetings and administrative offices to establish pacing guides. However, if the objective is learning, shouldn't the learner's progression and success determine the pace.

It is the Students' Problem to Solve:
It is emphasized throughout the story that in order for Ender to reach the peak of his abilities, that he must never ever believe that the adults will rescue him. His success is solely dependent on the solutions he and the other students can create and implement. This is hard for us. Our compassion and empathy push us to lend a hand. However, we graduated. We passed the class. It is our task to create the logical progression, to provide the resources, but then we need to step back. We need to teach children to find answers, create answers, and seek each other out to solve challenges. The hardest part of teaching is to let the students do it without us. However, if we want them to do well on whatever measurement is before them, we need to let them figure out how to solve the problem on their own.

The Enemy's Gate is Down:
Ender's first learning in Battle School is that just because you enter a situation with one perspective, doesn't mean that it is the right perspective or that it is the perspective that should stay. In a world of Common Core, PARCC, and Smart Balance, doing more of the same with greater rigor isn't always right. Stepping back, shifting our view points as we approach challenges of teaching and learning. Risk-taking while keeping the end objectives in mind can create more powerful solutions. Finally keeping the overall objective first and foremost while not getting lost in details that distract but in the end do not matter is difficult but important. The "Enemy's Gate is Down" is all about becoming conscious of our perspective and questioning that vantage point in order to open up to possibilities of new solutions.

We aren't raising children to fight aliens, save the world, or to become little soldiers. However we are raising them to become innovative leaders with creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking skills. Our desire each day is to help them discover the best within themselves and others. As we prepare them for their adult world, one we can imagine but not necessarily predict, it may be time for us to re-orient ourselves. The Enemy's Gate is Down. I am excited that next month one of my favorite books will become a movie. I hope the movie doesn't ruin it for me.