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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.

"... innovation ... goes beyond telling people in one place to replicate someone else's reported success. It means letting the people in the schools try things they believe will work for their students." Other Systems Are Innovating, Dramatically - Traditional School Suppresses Innovation - To Succeed We Will Have To Innovate with School - How Might Innovative Schools Be Different? - 'Innovation' Is a Strategy for Systemic Reform - We Cannot Afford the Risk of Failing to Innovate -

"In order to 'think different,' you have to act different." - Ask yourself...when was the last time you heard of a new initiative in a school and said this? "Wow! That's truly innovative and is a completely unique approach to education!" - Where is the innovation and innovators in our schools? How do we foster innovation in education? How do we find and support innovators?

Here is a challenge to my fellow fellows...let's continue to move our work forward by sharing it beyond the #VTed borders. "The 2013 WISE Awards Submission period now open until March 31, 2013 The 2013 WISE Awards will celebrate six innovative educational projects for their positive contribution within a community or society. WISE seeks to share best practices world over and inspire others to spark change in education. The WISE Awards thus highlight today's most innovative solutions and approaches that are addressing educational challenges confronting the world at large. Project holders from any region, educational sector or level are encouraged to submit applications which demonstrate the quality and impact of their activities in accordance with the criteria.  Whether you are involved in a project that provides access to quality education, creates new opportunities for lifelong learning or develops innovative educational technologies, WISE invites you to apply for the 2013 WISE Awards."

Another piece that puts the focus of Innovation on People rather than Programs. My personal belief is that #EdReform should start and end with empowering PD which is Personal and Purposeful. With that, what if schools modeled their PD on the Rowland Foundation's model of #EdReform? What would it look like if PD were not determined and delivered but instead supported and shared? What if PD were about providing resources and teaching teachers to be data collectors, researchers, developers of innovation? 2 year Action Research cycle? What if every teacher in a school spent a school year coming up with a hunch, collecting data, researching ideas around their hunch...then spent the second year testing it out/implementing it in the classroom, more data collection, presenting outcomes to their peers, and collecting feedback for reflection and refinement?

"What has proved to matter is...the building of knowledge and innovation skills, which are much harder and take longer to get in place and maintain. Leading-edge competency in one's area of practice is indispensable; practice at turning ideas into reality is a must." "...while learning is hard work, and the value is not quantifiable, it is the only way to remain valuable in an economy that thrives on innovation. The more you invest in your people's knowledge, the more innovation you can expect to reap."

13 schools categorized by area of focus / innovation.

It would be a great resource for the Vermont ed community to put together a categorized list of schools such as this. Sometimes the most innovative practices are happening right down the road. (And, sometimes right down the hall)

"New York City is experimenting with new tools and tactics with its Innovation Zone, a devoted unit for trying out new approaches to learning and sharing best practices with like-minded educators." "Schools across the system are trying out different learning approaches, including blended learning, online courses and project-based teaching. As with the most lofty aspirations of educators, the iZone's goals are to personalize learning, provide real-world experience, change the ways staff and students view their roles and take advantage of the vast number of tools available to students and teachers."

Great resource on creativity, innovation, and change. Has implications for working with students, professional development, program design and implementation, and more.

Page 10 "Planning for Innovation" could be helpful to the 2012 Fellows.Tables 3 and 4 are great ways to assess the environment for change in any of our schools when "I" is replaced with "we" or "our school".

"True innovative people have a certain drive and energy about them that you like to be around. They are always full of ideas and looking for ways to improve things. Keep in mind that they aren't born as black belts in these mental traits…they've developed them over time."

Great pieces to reflect on for personal professional development over the summer.

"In this groundbreaking book, education expert Tony Wagner provides a powerful rationale for developing an innovation-driven economy. He identifies a pattern in the lives of young innovators - a childhood of creative play leads to deep-seated interests, which in adolescence and adulthood blossom into a deeper purpose for career and life goals. Play, passion, and purpose: these are the forces that drive young innovators."

"As part of IDEA'’s efforts to foster dynamic conversations around powerful learning, we invite you to join us for an Innovation Tour in Vermont. Thirty participants will spend the day visiting three innovative schools and programs and reflecting on our experiences together." Rowland Fellow Tom Sabo's work at Montpelier High School will be one of the three stops!

"The ingredients of social and collaboration have become key factors in successfully fostering innovation. But often it's not easy for organizations to transform their approach from single-area silo discussions to open, collaborative conversations."

Cooperative Learning is something that not only works for students...it works for adult professional groups (teachers) also.

"When engaged in consistently, these actions-questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting-triggered associational thinking..."

"Most of us think creativity is an entirely cognitive skill; it all happens in the brain. A critical insight from our research is that one's ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind, but also a function of behaviors."

"...when we encourage entrepreneurship, we're actually trying to get people to the place where they care enough and where they are confident enough to stand up and try to make things change."

IMHO, the transformation of education isn't about "Innovation" as much as it is about creating Educational Entrepreneurs. And...IMHO, that is what the Rowland Foundation allows for and supports. The question is how do we convince more school and district leaders to do the same? Answer that question first and innovation will follow. Innovation is the Product Of rather than the Means To EdReform

"It takes people with big ideas - and smart ways to implement them - to make any progress. And that's the point of the Big Ideas Fest, held December 4-7 in Half Moon Bay, Calif., a gathering of leaders and innovators who will share their thoughts and tactics with educators and all those interested in education innovation."

"The key to generating truly innovative ideas, he says, is learning how to challenge the status quo-which is why he's busy trying to teach people how to "think wrong'"

How two schools are linking Tony Wagner's ideas in Creating Innovators with Project Based Learning

Recognizing PatternsPredictingQuestioningCoordinatingMasteringExperimentingDecidingNetworkingPersistenceOptimistic

"Today knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, growing exponentially… Today knowledge is free. It's like air, it's like water. It's become a commodity… There's no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you. The world doesn't care what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know."

"Rather than worry so much about graduating all students college-ready, I have come to understand that the most essential education challenge today is to graduate all students innovation- ready."