Predictions for the Next Decade of Education

I recently read this article from the Atlantic titled, Elementary Education Has Gone Terribly Wrong. It’s an interesting read for a variety of reasons, but what stood out to me was the plethora of evidence that confirms what many of us have known for decades: the standardized testing movement simply doesn’t work. Despite our efforts to systematize learning and add more “rigor,” we continue to end up with the same results along with an ever-expanding achievement gap.

The author, Natalie Wexler poses the questions, “

“What if the medicine we have been prescribing is only making matters worse, particularly for poor children? What if the best way to boost reading comprehension is not to drill kids on discrete skills but to teach them, as early as possible, the very things we’ve marginalized—including history, science, and other content that could build the knowledge and vocabulary they need to understand both written texts and the world around them?”

She pokes holes in many common literacy practices in the U.S. as well as presents examples of teachers who are finding success in trying out different approaches. The article got me thinking about education overall, how we have tried so many new things, abandoned many ideas, gone back to the same ideas, but education has, for the most part, looked the exact same way for generations.

The start of a new decade feels like a fresh start for everything, education included. There is no guarantee of what the next 10 years will bring, but I am optimistic that this decade will bring what the past hundreds of years have not, an education system that is valuable for all. There are a plethora of amazing educators who are leading the charge and sharing their stories on social media and beyond giving me hope that we can and will create powerful educational experiences to help ALL kids succeed.

Predictions for 2020-2030

The ideas I present in this post are a result of two decades of personal experience working with students, a lot of reading, watching & learning, and most of all, connecting with amazing educators across the globe. (Thank you PLN!) You will notice that no idea is brand new. I believe that we already have the answers which we seek, it is the way that we use them with students that has the power to shift education for the better.

Less About the Right Answer & More about Great Questions

One of the chapters that stood out to me in The Innovators Mindset was the chapter where George Couros discusses the importance of students being “problem-finders.” This was sparked from the work of Ewan McIntosh. The premise is that we spend a lot of time working with students to come up with solutions to problems, but what we really need in a dynamic world is students who can find problems and innovative ways to solve these problems.

Besides the fact that solving problems with predetermined answers can be monotonous and insanely boring, (geometry proofs anyone?), if we spend all of our time giving students problems to solve with a finite answer we are giving students the impression that the purpose in life is to simply get the right answer. Students leave school thinking there is a simple methodology to life and if they follow the success formula given to them they will be successful when really the opposite is true. We need creative thinkers, students who can look at the world with a new lens and make it better.

A great way to develop this skill is by teaching students to ask great questions and giving them opportunities to explore ideas that are meaningful to them. Genius Hour or Passion Projects, QFT, TQE Method, and Socratic Seminar are just some ways that educators around the globe are working to develop the questioning ability in students. Each of these methodologies helps students to not only create questions of their own, but they encourage rich discussion among students as well which can lead to new ideas from students. It is exciting to think about what kind of learning will take place when we spend more time empowering students to question, explore & discover as opposed to encouraging them to simply find the right answer.

Experiential Learning

In the next ten years, whether virtual or in-person, learning will extend more and more beyond the four walls of the classroom. Mentioned in the Wexler article, research confirms students learn best when they have experiences and background knowledge to be able to comprehend the texts they are reading. Creativity is the number one quality that employers are currently looking for. Reeves & Reeves suggest in their book on creativity, The Myth of the Muse that one of the ways to enhance creativity is through inspiration from experiences. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) recommend starting science lessons with a phenomenon so that students have a shared experience to ask questions and develop theories from. Although I still think the best experience is one in real life, Augmented and Virtual Reality makes this a daily possibility for students.

One school that is doing an amazing job at teaching from this approach is the GEMS World Academy in Chicago, Illinois. In this school, the teachers plan out larger units that explore a broad question related to an essential idea. Included in each of these are field trips to a place in the city where students can explore. From the shared experience students then create questions they have and spend the unit exploring answers to the questions they create. Each subject area is tied into this big idea including specials. The result is that students see learning as interconnected as opposed to limited to one subject area which enhances their creative ability to connect ideas and create new ones.

A More Personalized Approach to Education

If you would have asked me if this was possible ten years ago my answer would have emphatically been no. It takes too much time. It’s not necessary or realistic. It is amazing what a decade of experience can do. I now believe it is more necessary than ever. As you will hear me mention throughout this post, in the dynamic world we live in we no longer need students who can just get the right answer, we need students who are curious, think creatively and can find new problems to solve. We want students to leave school with a positive view of themselves, recognizing not only what their talents are, but how they can use them to make a positive impact on the world.

When I say a more personalized approach to education, I am not saying that every student would be doing something different in every moment of the day. Students need foundational knowledge in order to be creative, ask questions and generate new ideas. However, I think it’s a different approach to looking at the school day. Design39 Campus in California has been exploring this idea for the past five years. You can check out this link for more information, but their day is split up into Integrated Learning Time, Deep Dives & Explorations. During Integrated Learning Time is when they explore content across curriculums for purposeful application of skills. Deep Dives is time for students to explore their passions in an academic setting. Explorations give students time to explore new things they are interested in trying. I love the way they organize their day because it gives students foundational understanding as well as time to explore passions and build new ones. For more information on how the idea began and the success they are having with students, check out this podcast from Modern Learners.

Going Gradeless/Meaningful Feedback

At some point, we have to recognize that grades are just meaningless little letters that students look at and then toss. Even when we add in comments to the grade or SBR number students associate more meaning with the grade and typically ignore the feedback. Both John Hattie and Susan Brookhart have written books on the topic and the research shows that feedback is a much more effective learning tool for students over grades.

Many educators are already moving towards a feedback-heavy or gradeless classroom. (check out the #gradeless on Twitter) Instead of using grades or fear of punishment to motivate students to complete their work, they have shifted their instructional practices to have students set goals that are meaningful to them. The teacher and/or peers give them feedback on progress towards their goal to move their learning forward. Learning then becomes a continuum as opposed to an endpoint. I’ve linked a few useful resources below if you are considering making this shift.

6 Tips for Going Gradeless by Starr Sackstein

More Teachers are Going Gradeless. I Asked Them Why. EL Magazine July 2019

Teachers Going Gradeless (TG² Podcast)

Collaboration Over Competition

One of the best videos I have seen this year that has had a huge impact on the way I think about the classroom is Why School Should Be about Us Instead of Me from Trevor Muir. Besides the fact that it has a totally Hamilton-esque vibe, the premise that school sets up a culture of competition as opposed to what our world needs, a culture of collaboration, rings completely true. I’ve watched it probably 20 times.

I was definitely one of the students who groaned every time I heard it was time to work on a group project. There was always the people who did everything, a few people who did nothing, and then somehow a project evolved. It never felt to me like there was any purpose in working together. As a teacher, I tried to circumvent this issue by assigning roles to each student, but even this had uneven results with students continuing to work in silos as opposed to creating something together.

After reading a wonderful post by John Spencer about collaboration, what I realized was missing was students seeing the value in one another’s strengths and using those strengths to build something greater than what could be done alone. Instead of starting group projects by assigning roles, have students share their strengths, set goals for the project together and give them opportunities to give one another feedback along the way. This creates greater meaning for the work and also mirrors the type of work they will be doing outside of school. In the working world students will be collaborating daily, we have to increase the amount of collaboration they do throughout the day, but it also has to be done in a way that is meaningful so that it doesn’t just become another one of the dreaded group projects.

If you’re looking for ways to create this type of classroom, Trevor Muir’s new book, The Collaborative Classroom, filled with practical ideas and examples, is a great place to start.

The End of Labels

This last one I am most excited about, although I think it might take a little bit more time. I predict that gradually the labels we use in education, “gifted, special education, EL” will disappear. As we start to shift the focus of school from everyone ending up in the same exact spot to encouraging students to be curious learners who explore their passions and develop their talents, the need for labels will go away because we will see students for their greatness of whom they already are, not some arbitrary standard we want them to become.

“Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein

We have spent the past hundred years approaching education from a logical standpoint. Students need to learn ______________ so we will teach them ___________________. We will set standards that everyone needs to reach and if they don’t reach those standards we will fix them with _____________________. This is a very logical approach if we are working with products, but hasn’t always served us well with students. We need more creativity and flexibility if we are going to reach all students.

I am optimistic about the shifts I continue to see happening in our schools. I believe that through these shifts we will have students leaving school with more creativity, empathy, equity, and curiosity than we ever have in the past. It is inspiring to think about the wonderful world that these students will create.

Coaching for Innovation

This post originally appeared here on the LaunchPad: Official Blog of TeachBoost.

Over the past decade, innovation has become one of the more popular buzzwords in education. Thought by many as a path to make students successful or “future ready,” innovative teaching practices are highly sought after by leadership at all levels. The problem is, when many educators hear the word “innovation,” images of technological grandeur and unimaginable teaching strategies are often conjured up, instead of something that can be as simple as a small shift in practice.

George Couros, author of The Innovator’s Mindset, defines innovation as “something that is new and better.” I love this definition because it recognizes that innovation isn’t changing things just for the sake of change. If something is to be innovative, it needs to be not only new but better for students. In order for innovation to thrive in our schools we have to build school environments that foster idea generation, collaboration, reflection, and risk-taking without fear of repudiation if something doesn’t go as planned.

So where does the role of a coach come in? To strategically enhance these key elements.

Laying the Foundation: Assessing Needs and Trends

It starts with foundational best practices for anyone in a school: build relationships, be present, and get to know those you serve. In this way a coach finds out the needs, interests, and strengths of both students and staff. Not only does this lay the foundation of a great relationship built on trust, it also gives the coach an idea of current practice around the building. If we want “new and better” practices to flourish then we have to first be experts in the great work that is currently happening with students and build from there.

One of the things that I did as a learning support coach was meet with every teacher both at the beginning of each school year and halfway through. We would discuss what they loved most about teaching, areas they were interested in, ideas they were working on, puzzles they just couldn’t figure out, what they enjoyed most outside of school, as well as areas they might want to work with me on.

In addition to meeting with them in person, I’d send out a Survey and a Needs Assessment to get to know the staff a bit better. Over the years, these tools have been modified to meet our school’s improvement plan, previous work we had done, conversations, and coaching cycles I was regularly involved in.

After my meetings, I compiled all of the information I gathered into one large document and looked for trends. From this information, I was able to personalize my coaching and create strategic groupings and partnerships based on the needs or interests of teachers, plus send them articles or videos as resources. As a result, innovative practices spread more quickly, teachers began to collaborate, and relationships built on trust flourished.

Being Vulnerable Through Modeling

An integral, and often scary, part of innovation is the possibility of failure that leads to risk-taking. In order to encourage others to take risks, we need to first model it ourselves. One way to do this is by being vulnerable and to share both your success and setbacks of a new strategy or idea you’re trying out.

In my fourth year of coaching, I found a lot of teachers asking me about the difference between compliance and engagement: “What does it look like in practice?” or “How do we know if students are truly engaged or just complying?” From these conversations the “Student Engagement Inquiry Group” was born. The purpose of this group was to define student engagement versus compliance and then explore teaching practices that would enhance student engagement during lessons. Knowing that a large part of engagement is offering choice, during the first few meetings staff members explored a hyperdoc—a master document with links to various resources.

Using Video

After creating a deeper understanding of student engagement, as well as teaching practices needed to support it, we (the student engagement inquiry group) created an observation template with student engagement “look-fors” when in a classroom.

Knowing that it’s difficult to be judged in front of one’s peers, I offered to teach and record lesson and then have the group evaluate me using our template. Afterward, we used our next meeting to evaluate how engaged the students were. This led to some great discussions and increased the learning process because teachers could focus on what the students were doing. Ultimately, the video process led our group to eventually observe and provide feedback to one another—which supported a shift in an innovative process throughout the building.

Going Further: Building Teacher Leaders

One of the greatest discoveries in my first year as a coach was that teachers who loved the work we were doing together would go back to their team and share. This would cause a ripple effect and the innovation would spread!

Coaches looking to spread innovative practices need to be adept at building up teacher leaders in their schools. Educators love learning from their peers because they’re literally “in the trenches” doing the work daily with the multitude of outside factors that might affect how successful or unsuccessful an idea might be.

Co-Presenting

There are a variety of ways to build leaders of innovation in schools. Besides selecting leaders at each grade level to work with, another great way to build leadership in innovation is to ask a staff member to co-present with you at a staff meeting or professional learning day on an idea you have worked on together in their classroom. This highlights great instruction but also takes away some of the pressure a staff member feel when they have to present by themselves.

Edcamps

Another way to build up teacher leaders is to offer an “Edcamp”-style professional learning day where teachers can learn from their peers. Teachers can present on their own or with a peer or group. The other teachers who are not presenting get to select sessions that they would like to attend. Oftentimes this results to more learning beyond the day because teachers will continue to reach out to that staff member after the event. Check out #hawthorneignites on Twitter for some examples of how this has been successful in one of the buildings I am currently an administrator at.

Making Innovation Visible

I read a recent blog post by AJ Juliani where he talked about the importance of highlighting the instruction we want to see in our schools. As a coach, I created a biweekly newsletter that I send out to staff; in this example, I organized the newsletter into different categories, all related to the practices we wanted to see in our classrooms. Additionally, I’d provide examples of the work that I was doing with staff to spark interest in new ideas as well as show cohesion in our work. Even if someone only briefly glanced at the newsletter they could see the focus of the work being done for the year.

Social media is another great way to spread innovative practices. Tweeting, or posting to Instagram, videos and pictures of instructional practices that you see in classrooms is a simple way to make practice visible. A fantastic way to enhance this is by tagging other teachers who you think might be interested in the post.

Final Thought

Innovation for the sake of doing something new is meaningless and leads to frustration by others. However, once we get to know the strengths of those we serve and connect new ideas to the needs of the building, we can truly create something new and better benefits all parties!

Making the Positives So Loud

I’ll admit it.

George Couros is one of my favourite (spelling intended) people in education. Not only is he skilled at telling a captivating story that can cause both tears and inexplicable laughter, but his ideas about education are thought-provoking and real, grounded in his own experience or ideas he has recently read about or seen.

Since being introduced to his work and hearing him speak at a conference last year, I’ve been influenced by not only his book, The Innovator’s Mindset, but also his regular blog posts, podcasts, and tweets.

When I originally encountered his popular quote, “We need to make the positives so loud so that the negatives are almost impossible to hear,” I quickly connected it, as many people do, to the context of making sure that the positive voices are heard so loudly in the school that they outweigh any negativity from the naysayers. In a year of rapid changes in my district, this quote resonated with me as a great strategy to build a positive school culture.

What I realized recently though is that although that interpretation is completely valid, it actually has a variety of meaningful contexts that relate to not only students and staff, but to education as a whole. Administrators need to regularly share the strengths of their team and teachers need to do the same with students.

In one of the studies mentioned in Paul Tough’s book, Helping Children Succeed he discusses a strategy that social workers used with parents of toddlers to improve their parenting skills. Instead of focusing on what they were doing wrong after each visit, the social worker gave feedback explicitly naming what the parents were doing correctly. The impact of this study was profound, elevating not only the overall confidence of the parents, but their parenting skills as well.

At first as an instructional coach, and now an administrator, I have tried a variety of strategies to emulate this philosophy and grow a positive culture.

Every time I visit a classroom I send an email to the staff member explicitly stating positive observations related to their instruction, interaction with students or even classroom environment.
“Bite-Sized Feedback” cycles are also an awesome way to highlight great instruction. First, we talk about something they would like me to observe and then we set up a 15-minute time slot each week for me to come into their classroom. Afterward, we talk for 10-15 minutes about the laundry list of awesome things they are doing followed by me offering a tip for how to enhance one of their strengths. I have seen more impact on instruction as a result of this practice than any traditional observation.
I regularly tweet out pictures and videos of the amazing instruction I see when I pop into classrooms. Sometimes it is a student, sometimes a staff, and sometimes me reflecting on what I saw and the impact it had on students.
This year we have started a podcast at one of my buildings where we interview one of our staff members about their instructional practices. This helps our staff to get to know one another’s strengths, and also gives us an avenue to share the amazing learning happening in our building.
Involve students in telling the positive story of the school. This year I am working with groups of students in both of my buildings to do this. At one of my buildings this developed into creating a documentary about our entire school and in the other building, the students have been creating short videos about individual classrooms.

In the book, The Multiplier Effect: Tapping The Genius Inside Our Schools, authors Wiseman, Allen & Foster agree with the importance of not only recognizing, but sharing strengths with those whom we serve.

“But if people aren’t aware of their genius, they are not in a position to deliberately utilize it. By telling people what you see, you can raise their awareness and confidence, allowing them to provide their capability more fully.”

Walking through classrooms or in conversations with students & staff, I am amazed daily in the creative genius that surrounds me. Telling them their brilliance shines a spotlight on their talents and says, “DO THIS MORE!” This builds not only confidence and a positive school culture, but causes even brighter ideas and more innovation to spread in our school.

Please know that by saying we should highlight the positive, I am not saying that we should never have reflective conversations about shifts that may need to be made in instructional practice. It has been my experience that when I focus on sharing strengths instead of telling a list of changes to be made, that we end up actually having even more of these types of conversations. This is because when people know that you see them for their unique strengths and talents as opposed to a project that needs to be fixed a greater trust is built. Staff members often come to me with ideas asking for feedback or I am able to ask reflective questions resulting in instructional shifts. When change comes from within, it is deeper and more likely to last.

Educators don’t always see the amazing strengths within themselves. As leaders, the more we recognize and celebrate the strengths of those we lead, the more we create a positive culture that drowns out negativity and grows the innate talents of our school community.