Group items tagged

"Can schools as we currently know them ever accomplish the mission we've established for them? This week Richard Elmore, one of the nation's most prominent educational thinkers, emphatically shared his conviction that they cannot. "

"Clinging to dysfunctional models will actually do more damage to our children in the long-run, and so more dramatic shifts of thinking and practice now seem in order."

Looking at our efforts and our work as Rowland Fellows...are we providing "palliative care" to our schools? When we think about what we do, our work must embrace true innovation rather than "fortifying existing institutions that no longer work." I feel we are on the right track and am humbled by the work that is being done through this foundation.

This is the report we discussed in my reading group at the Rowland Fellows meeting this week. The Pew research Center's report on the Millennials, the generation born between 1980 and 1997, is full of interesting findings which have implications for how schools will need to change in order to reach the Net Generation.

EdCamp Flyer "EdCamp Vermont (http://edcampvt.posterous.com), an education conference like no other, will be held at Essex Middle School on Saturday, April 14th. The structure of the conference is very informal, with attendees signing up to run sessions first thing in the morning. The conference will be free from corporate vendors and booths, with the focus being solely on conversations about education. Attendees will come from all over Vermont and will range from classroom teachers to administrators to coaches and school board members. There will be time for attendees to gather informally to share ideas as well as a variety of sessions for them to attend, run by their colleagues and fellow educators."

What a great way for a group of Fellows to share either individual initiatives...or to talk about the process of change...how change happens...how to maintain an initiative...how admin can be generative leaders...or any of a number of pieces that Fellows and their schools have learned from our experiences.

I am going to be there with our school's art teacher. We couldn't miss this.

"...there is an important lesson about the molding power of story. When we read dry, factual arguments, we read with our dukes up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally and this seems to leave us defenseless."

Interesting read as we prepare for our presentations next week. Also...has interesting applications for how administrators communicate new ideas with faculty and teachers engage students.

"...we are beasts of emotion more than logic. We are creatures of story, and the process of changing one mind or the whole world must begin with "Once upon a time."

Interesting and short bit of writing that hits on my personal beliefs about where the majority of transformational focus should be...simply supporting good teaching.

"Education reform needs a face lift -- one that includes higher standards for entry into the profession and mentor teachers assisting those needing to improve."

Agree about the necessity to pursue improved educational outcomes, yet as with other professions (i.e. doctors & lawyers) 50% finish in the lower half of their class. As with all things educational funding is the sacred cow and asking for higher standards of entry, while a worthy goal, would ultimately fall on the sword of budgets.

"What capacity do we need as leaders to demonstrate authenticity and build credibility and trust? One of the most critical is our ability and willingness to engage in challenging, sensitive - in a word, courageous - conversations."

"If we are leading for improvement, we are inevitably leading for change and can expect some degree of discomfort, disagreement or resistance along the way - whether on the level of the individual, or the organization."

"Leadership often involves challenging people to live up to their words, to close the gap between their espoused values and their actual behaviour. It may mean pointing out the elephant sitting on the table at a meeting - the unspoken issue that everyone sees but no one wants to mention."

OK...I have been trying to avoid the incessant Steve Jobs idolatry. But, it is hard to not admire his thought processes. So, here is a quick read of one of the many inspirational pieces that are out there.

Master the message. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't communicate your ideas, it doesn't matter.

See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.

Article based on The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators Focus on concluding three chapters, People, Processes, and Philosophies, which draw on and offers 15 takeaways for Principals and School-Leaders.

What You Can Do to Become Stronger Innovation Leaders in Your School: 1. Own as Principal the role of Innovator-in-Chief: You can't delegate innovation. 2. Make your practice of "active innovation" visible. 3. Create complementary teams in school leadership. 4 . Observe closely what other principals and schools are doing. 5. Arrange for employee swaps. 6. Ask "Why?" 7. Seek people who had invented something, held deep expertise in a particular knowledge area, and demonstrated a passion to change the world. 8. Remember that innovators want to work with and for other innovators. 9. Embed innovation as an explicit, consistent element of performance reviews. 10. Develop formal and informal processes to facilitate knowledge exchanges. 11. Network externally. 12. Practice Beta testing and Prototyping. 13. Build many small, diverse teams. 14. Communicate and reinforce that Innovation is everyone's job. 15. Make innovation an explicit core value of your school. 16. Give more time for innovation. 17. Create "a safe space for others to innovate. 18. Model your risk taking and your learning from failure.

The book is framed around the Five Core Skills of Innovators, a framework highly valuable for ourselves and our students: What are we doing to do more of and become better at *Associating, *Questioning, *Observing, *Networking, *Experimenting.

This excellent Horizon Report, generated by the New Media Consortium, sets a remarkable and aggressive timetable for significant changes in teaching and learning due to emerging technologies.

It's been a lot of fun to work on.

Thanks so much Jim for this post. It's a great piece with lots of very interesting links. The RF is investing directly in learning about the two technologies--cloud computing and mobile devices-- on the report's most immediate time horizon. These two, among the others, are poised to take education in new directions. They are transformative, in and of themselves, and it's exciting to think about how they can and will (and do) support the other many initiatives being worked on by RF Fellows.

"The Rowland Foundation: Teacher Workshops 2011-2012" In order to sustain and extend the conversations from the Conference on High School Transformation, The Rowland Foundation will offer the following workshops during the 2011-2012 school year. By limiting enrollment to about 20 participants, these workshops are designed to provide more participatory discussion and greater detail than that which was offered at the Sept. 22 conference. In each case the host school and its Rowland Fellow will be able to illustrate in practice the principles being discussed. These workshops are offered in two parts: a session in fall and one again in the spring to enable participants to engage in conversations while working to implement changes in their own schools. We look forward to furthering the conversations that were started in Burlington.

"Chance favors the connected mind." Why the Rowland Foundation Group Diigo can be the keystone to school change in Vermont. How do we create a system where we can allow our collective "hunches" to come together to form something bigger than the sum of their parts?

This reminds me so much of the Rowland Foundation! Tremendous potential in our network of educators...provided we can use technology to sustain ongoing collaboration.

"On August 4-6, 2010 in Boston (MA), 150 invited education leaders convened at the SIIA-ASCD CCSSO Symposium on [Re]Design for Personalized Learning. They gathered under the common belief that today's education system is inadequate to meet the needs of tomorrow, and focused on identifying changes essential to transform learning for each student. Following are the Symposium participants' key findings about how to redesign our current education model to a student-centered, customized learning model that will better engage, motivate, and prepare our students to be career and college ready."

Today's students adjust to rapid technological and social changes, navigate vast flows of information and learn to work collaboratively with diverse individuals and cultures in a global economy. Discover cognitive tools and teaching techniques to help them cultivate the skills and abilities required to succeed in the new millennium. - November 18, 2011 - November 20, 2011 at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel in Boston, MA

Sign up for the Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum 2012 | An Ongoing Conversation Among Friends

If we really want to "transform" education we need to stop worrying about if the initiative is going to succeed or fail. Because, as I've said before...there are no failures...only first attempts.I know I post quite a bit...this article, however, has more to teach than most.

"...the most important insight from design thinking was that you have to make sure you've defined the right problem before you try to solve it. So, you act like an anthropologist to understand human needs and problems before jumping to solutions."

"...this shift in mindset requires a different kind of leadership. ... linear analysis for planning and executing when the decision-making information is known, and a discovery mindset when they must use small bets to create the data."

"It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail." Great piece to consider as we engage in our work as fellows.

"The industrialist mindset of productivity and predictable perfection has infected all elements of our lives, from school to science. Once you see it, you'll understand how it pushes us to avoid the hard work of doing truly interesting science, and how it encourages us to avoid the maker mindset. In this informal talk, I'll try to get under your skin, at least a little, about what's at stake."

"We need to teach students to STOP following directions."