Leadership+Design
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Plan your professional learning adventures with L+D in 2018.
School and Leadership in an Age of Acceleration, Augmentation and The Singularity
March 7, 2018
NAIS
Pre-Conference Workship with Carla Silver, Christian Talbot, Sam Chaltain and Christian Long
An opportunity to think like futurists
and explore and practice the skills that will be necessary to thrive in this new world.
Leadership+Design Bootcamp
March 29-30, 2018
Minneapolis, MN
An opportunity to expand your human-centered design skills and mindsets and develop your leadership capacity through a real-world, community based design challenge.
June 25-28, 2018
Moses Brown School, RI
Uncover and develop your signature leadership presence.
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L+D Board of Directors
Ryan Baum
VP of Strategy
Jump Associates, CA
Matt Glendinning
(Secretary)
Head of School
Moses Brown School,
RI
Trudy Hall (Board Chair)
Director of Strategic Initiatives
Forest Ridge School, WA
Brett Jacobsen (Vice Chair)
Head of School
Mount Vernon Presbyterian
, GA
Barbara Kraus-Blackney (Treasurer)
Executive Director
Association of Delaware Valley Independent Schools (ADVIS), PA
Brenda Leaks
Head of School
Seattle Girls School, WA
Marc Levinson
Principal, Independent School Solutions, CO
Karan Merry
Retired Head of School
St. Paul's Episcopal School, CA
Natalie Nixon
Founder
Figure 8 Consulting, PA
Kaleb Rashad
Principal
High Tech High School, CA
Carla Robbins Silver (ex-officio)
Executive Director
Leadership+Design, CA
Matthew Stuart
Head of School
Caedmon School, NY
Brad Weaver
Head of School
Sonoma Country Day School, CA
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L+D Fellows
2017-18
Peter Boylan
Dean of Students
Turning Point School, CA
Tim Best
Science Teacher
Science Leadership Academy, PA
Michael Coppola
Academic Dean/Dean of Faculty
Chestnut Hill School, MA
Liam Gallagher
Director of Making and Doing
Upland Country Day School, PA
Jeremy Goldstein
Director of Washington Program
Episcopal High School, VA
Lisa Griffin
Humanities Teacher
High Tech High School. CA
Derek Krein
Director of Professional Growth
Tabor Academy, MA
Mike Molina
English Teacher
Gillman School, MD
Tom Taylor
Upper School Director
Breck School, MN
Kate Turnbull
Science Department Chair
Metairie Park Country Day School, LA
Chelle Warbrek
Lower School Head
Episcopal School of Dallas, TX
Emma Wellman
Director of Extended Day Programs
Chicago Lab School, IL
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| Eating Glass and Liking It: How to Fail like Elon Musk |
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Carla Silver, Executive Director, Leadership+Design
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Seasons Greetings, Friends,
As we head into the last days of 2017, our gift to you is the December Monthly Recharge, hopefully providing you with some provocative reading over the break. This month we are talking about "Risk over Safety," inspired by the fourth chapter in Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito and Jeffrey Howe. If we are really going to evolve education for an era of rapid acceleration and global uncertainty, we are going to have to accept risk and even failure as a natural part of the process. Writing about risk also gives me the perfect excuse to wax on about my favorite risk taker of modern times - Elon Musk.
It's true. I have a fascination with the Silicon Valley mega-entrepreneur, founder of PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City. You know that dinner party question: "What three people, living or dead would you invite to dinner?" The Dalai Lama, Van Jones, Desmond Tutu, Sheryl Sandberg, Barack Obama, Lin Manuel Miranda, Oprah - they rotate in and out of the top spots - but Elon Musk is always on the list. Always. I see Elon Musk as a relentless optimist, a creator, a visionary, and above all else, an unparalleled risk taker. Not only does Musk
have intrepid and sometimes seemingly unfeasible ideas, but he has a bias to action, zero use for safety, and an incredible tolerance for personal pain and suffering. Like an athlete who can tolerate high levels of physical discomfort, Musk has built up a resistance to ambiguity, loss, rejection and failure - because let's face it, real risk involves plenty of that as well. As Elon Musk says, "Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death."
I sometimes wonder what education would be like if we had Elon Musk leading schools. Would they all be solar powered? Would all classes be virtual? Would students launch themselves in rockets and colonize Mars? One thing
is
certain, there would be a lot more risk-taking and, I believe, something new (and better) would emerge. For Musk, "different" is not enough; "better" is essential, and pushing not just one company but a whole industry to better is the ultimate goal. But there would also be failures - big and small - and that is the cost of innovation. He has been known to say, "If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."
I hear the arguments against high risk, drastic change in schools. Usually these excuses are variations on the statement: "We are not creating widgets, bur rather educating children. You can't take risks with children." As far as I know, no children have been harmed in the lengthening of the school year or moving to more project-based instruction or getting rid of AP courses. Frankly, most of the arguments I hear feel grounded in adult needs, not student needs. We don't have an Elon Musk equivalent in education - not even Sal Khan (Khan Academy) or Ben Nelson (Minerva Schools) - at least not yet - but that is no excuse for our inability to think boldly, dig in, and allow us to emerge with something not just different but better.
What might allow educators and school leaders to get out of our own risk-averse ways? Maybe there are a few design principles we could draw upon to help us take a leap.
Principle One: Be Student-Centered in your Risk-Taking. Ground your risks in what you believe (and know) is right for the students you serve. Start asking the big questions and have the hard conversations about the future and not the past. What is most important for students to know? What is most important for them to be able to do? How do we want them to treat each other? How do we want them to feel about learning? How do they find purpose and meaning in their work and lives? How are they whole? What in your school is no longer serving students? What in your school is currently an obstacle to providing students with what they need? When you think this way, you are taking risks ON BEHALF of children not WITH children.
Principle Two: Engage in Mission/Values-Centered Risk. Our hesitancy to take risks often comes at a much greater risk - not achieving our mission and values or accomplishing key elements of our strategic plan. It comes at the risk of becoming a color-less, bland version of what we could be. If you want to be vibrant and bold, align your risks with your values and your mission as a school. If you are a school with a mission "to prepare students for life" and yet you hold onto 45-60 minute class blocks silo-ed by discipline with content generally delivered as lectures or teacher-led class discussion, you might be inhibiting your mission, not living it. If you say you value student wellness and health, and yet you let college admission statistics and practices drive your curriculum, schedule, and assessment regardless of student stress levels, you might not be living your values. Take risks that support and enhance your mission and values and bring you closer to your strategic vision.
Principle Three: Articulate the WHY - again and again and again. Rarely is radical and bold change tolerated without a true understanding of why it is necessary and what the outcome will be. First you need to get clear on the why. Your job as a school leader is then to communicate the why, to develop a vision of what "better" looks like, and to clarify how you will know and measure your progress. Be prepared to tell the same story over and over again. Use clear, specific language. Use visual representations of your idea that make the goal understood. It might feel like you have said the same message 100 times - you probably haven't - and you are bored of saying it. But that might just be the beginning. Studies have shown that people won't buy your idea (or product) until they have heard about it at least 6, but more often 20, times.
And what if things fail? And they will. Scream, shake your fists at the sky, and channel your inner Elon Musk. According to his recent Rolling Stone Interview, Elon Musk suggest calling upon the Musk Family Rules:
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Number One: "Don't panic."
A
nd whatever you do, don't back down and regress to safety.
"Safety third,"
says Musk in the interview. "There's not even a Rule Number Two. But even though there's nothing in second place, safety is not getting promoted to number two."
Warmly,
Carla Silver
P.S. Speaking of risk, why play it safe when it comes to professional development? L+D offers programs that are experiential in nature and bound to surprise, delight and challenge the status quo. Different AND better! Registration is open for both our Spring L+D Bootcamp and Wonder Women! More coming too!
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| Transforming Education with the "We Need" List |
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Jeremy Goldstein, Director of the Washington Program, Episcopal High School (Alexandria, VA)
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First, I need be up front about the fact that my foundation in education is experiential. I direct a program that includes weekly off campus experiences for all of our students at Episcopal High School. I am in the business of connecting our school to real-world learning opportunities that range from dialogues with experts in Public Policy, Cultural Awareness, Entrepreneurship, and Sustainability, to a deep dive senior externship during the month of May.
Jeff Howe and Joi Ito's discussion of "risk over safety" provides some food for thought about how we can develop a comfort with risk taking in our students and learning communities. It's important to take a moment to assemble some takeaways that connect to my experience as an educator. In graduate school I called this a "we needs" list.
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| Summary of 9th Grade Experiential Education Program. Artist Credit to Greg Gersch. |
I believe that
experiential education and externship opportunities
touch on all of the "we needs" list. Here are a few "we needs" to consider:
We need to help students test ideas more often and earlier, when risk is at its lowest level.
The first thing I thought of was a fab lab environment where students test prototypes-- great design thinking! But the process of preparing, doing, and reflecting for an experience outside of the classroom (the Kolb cycle) gives us all of the key pieces of testing ideas. How many times do we predict how an experience will unfold before we begin? I have seen students change their minds, challenge opinions, and ask questions that test ideas every day, but the courage to do so with people other than your teachers can reinforce the skill of idea testing with immediate feedback. It is our responsibility to deliver the opportunity for a whole experience.
We need to help students "walk away" from unsuccessful prototypes at the right time.
I tell my seniors that a common interview question they may hear as they work on landing an externship is, "tell me about a time that you failed at something, and how did you deal with it?" This question unlocks a mindset that sees opportunity in failure. A good relationship with risk will support students in their goal of setting up a great externship. Telling a future employer about a failure also shows that a candidate has a humble and "beginner's mind" approach. Connecting students with the experiential opportunity of real world experience builds the important skill of knowing when to pivot from a failed attempt.
We need to teach an understanding of the value of innovation and flexibility of mindset.
Many business journals and organizations are calling for the "agile" employee who can roll with challenges, take on new experiences positively, and solve problems creatively. When my students depart for work daily in the month of May using public transportation, they face a complex system that may, or may not deliver them to the workplace on time. In a microcosm, this is what students need, a daily test of their navigation skills. The education buzzword of "grit" can truly find its nature in a student's creativity and agility when faced with risk.
We need to learn the value of building networks responsibly and strategically in lieu of a traditional competition model.
Jeff Howe and Joi Ito emphasize that the manufacturing and innovation power of Shenzhen, China, has created an unprecedented entity that is a great challenge to compete with. It is a place of risk taking, innovation, and most importantly, rapid networking. What does this mean for education? In the experiential education programming that we provide at EHS, we often say that that all interactions with the world outside of the campus are learning opportunities. With the added value of a new hub of your network, even a brief meeting with a person or organization can lead to future opportunity. Through a class visit to a small analytics startup, we later have students more interested in working with them in their senior year. My work in directing the Washington Program includes meeting as many potential strategic partners as possible. This is the work of "social capital," that one of our young working alumni reminded us of during an on campus career day. It is not taught as a course, rather students can build networks through practice facilitated by their school's experiential education programs. The risk taking is in the courage to reach out to people and groups that they only know by name.
One final thought: the convergence of "thinking" and "doing" can be found in connecting our students to experiential education. The more controlled risk and risk taking modeling they see in reality, the more prepared they are for their post-school lives. Jeff Howe and Joi Ito's discussion of "risk over safety" provides some inspiration for educators striving to prepare and support their student's launch into the working world.
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| The Innovation Imperative: Embracing Risk over Safety in Our Schools |
| Eric V. Chandler, Ph.D., Upper School Division Head, Kent Denver School |
When we talk about learning-as opposed to education-we're really talking about replacing the traditional, one-way, top-down model of knowledge transmission with an active, connected system that teaches people how to learn. Education is what other people do to you. Learning is what you do to yourself.
A learning-oriented system values students interests, and gives them the tools they need to discover and pursue them.
- Joi Ito and Jeff Howe,
Whiplash (167)
"Traditional, one-way, top-down model of knowledge transmission"- the "sage on the stage" approach to teaching - is essentially the lecture. It can take many forms: for example, a monologue in the front of the room; a "socratic" presentation with questions from the teacher periodically lobbed out to the students, the answers to which propel the presentation forward through the content; or the teacher-against-the-class in a kind of content knowledge ping pong game. Teachers in this model can be charismatic, funny, engaging, knowledgeable, insightful, enthusiastic and provocative. They can have many personas: the entertainer, the comic, the coach, scholar, philosopher, or thinker to name some. They can use technology (PowerPoints, Google Slides, and Smart Boards, for example) or not. And their students often sit in rows, sometimes U's, oriented to the front of the room. The well-heeled, compliant class will know to come in, dutifully sit down, open a notebook (or laptop), and prepare to take notes-that is, record content.
As I reflect on this method of "transmission," it strikes me as having more to do with coverage - covering a curriculum or a body of content - than learning. What's transmitted are notes, not learning. It is on the students to learn by studying their notes-typically for the quiz or test that is coming up. And then soon after the assessment, their "learning" is forgotten, partially or wholly.
In my career, I have heard, and even been a part of, conversations with exasperated colleagues when one complains that the students have arrived in his upper-level class without the knowledge of something apparently significant, something that should have been dealt with in the previous grade, and the other colleague asserts with some frustration, "Well, we do cover that." Indeed, it was covered, but not learned. And this should be expected in a coverage system in which it is not the students but the curriculum that is "taught." It is about efficiency-getting through everything by the end of the semester or the year. This method is reproduced from one generation to the next-teachers tend to reproduce the way that they were "taught."
The coverage model works well in the "cells-and-bells" factory system of traditional public education. As Todd Rose notes in
The End of Average
, for "American schools...curriculum and classrooms [were] designed to serve the Average Student and create Average Workers" (52). So content must be covered, or administered, in the constraints of a school period, day, week, and year-in tight doses with little time for...actual thought. Part of the content is telling students what to think rather than giving them the opportunity to think.
Good news: no doubt eschewing the lecture has become de rigueur. One indicator of this is at education conferences. For example, it is now commonplace for speakers to apologize for the lecture they are about to deliver with assurances that they ordinarily teach in a more interactive way. Caught in old (conference) structures, they present in old ways, but now with some self-consciousness, even some guilt.
Some teachers and schools have seen around the corner to a view of student learning that is compelling, authentic, and deep. They may not always know how to achieve it. But they want to figure it out, or at least experiment with it. And maybe in this, there is never figuring it out; it's always experimentation.
The learning classroom is active, collaborative, and full of real, thoughtful, academic-discipline-informed discussion with students working together to solve challenging problems often around clusters of desks or tables. Teachers who initially pursue this kind of learning environment are often struck by how it requires more time (some inefficiency-apparently, students need time...to think) and the coverage of less content. This is the risk. Or one of the risks. Can content really be forfeited? Can I really give my students more precious time (an all too limited resource in schools) to think, really think, about an idea. And how do I structure learning experiences, inquiry, projects, discussion, and collaboration so that my students are deeply learning?
But when the teachers see it, really get it, there is no going back. It is what they are after for their students and classes: problem-based, project-based, inquiry-based, discussion-based-all student-centered
deep
learning.
And to pursue learning for their students, teachers must be pedagogical scientists. Every day, in every class, teachers must conduct research and experiments into the most compelling learning experiences for their students. In these experiments is unavoidably innovation. Yes, teachers must innovate: every day. Perhaps great teaching has always been about this. But it is a lesson from today's business world, too. Sami Inkinen, the CEO and Founder of Virta Health, extolls greater experimentation (and failure) for his employees. The more experimentation, the more iteration: "
The most reliable path to success is through experimentation and applied learning."
To articulate this as the school's approach to the classroom does have risk and can cause parental anxiety. Parents can wonder why their kids should be guinea pigs in some kind of Frankenstein classroom laboratory. They can wonder, too, about the inevitable experimental failures. "Why can't my kid be taught the way I was taught?" "Why can't we just do what has always been done?" "Why can't my kid receive direct instruction. Be told what to memorize. Simply regurgitate it on the test and receive the A that will get her into college?"
But when it comes to learning, this kind of classroom with this kind of teacher is always a benefit to learning. Ideally, we want our kids to take risks, try new things, consider new ideas, learn, experiment, and deal resiliently with failure as learning opportunity. Our teachers and their classrooms must model this. Students appreciate, too, when they see their teachers trying to do something interesting and different, especially when the teachers both ask for their students input and even work with the students in the design.
In their "Risk over Safety" chapter of
Whiplash
, Ito and Howe note that in the software business, "individuals and small companies have generally provided an endless font of innovation." For schools, the innovative "individuals" are or should be our teachers. And the innovative "small companies" are their classrooms. We can provide additional infrastructure for innovation by establishing it as something we value in our schools and something that is central to what we expect from educators-continued growth and learning (their own and their students) through experimentation and innovation. And we accept that there is risk in this because it is different.
We can support teacherly innovation/experimentation a host of ways:
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Establish it as an expectation in posts for jobs and at the time of hiring new teachers.
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Discuss it in teacher evaluations and self-assessments.
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Feature examples of it in faculty meetings.
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Provide innovation grants for summer design work.
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Give time to teachers (through course loads, class enrollments, course reductions, and even sabbaticals) for innovation work.
We know more about student learning than ever before. We know more about the learning brain. Education is undergoing a revolution, and it is a great time to be an educator. And yes, our world is intensely changing, and more quickly than ever before. And we must prepare our students for thinking and doing in their world. There is risk, for sure, in learning innovation. But there is greater risk in the playing it safe and doing what has always been done classroom. It risks a kind of failure-failing our students.
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| Annie Makela, Founding Director, Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship, Hillbrook School |
Last Spring, I applied, interviewed and was ultimately offered the job as the Founding Director of the Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Hillbrook School. I remember sitting in my sister's apartment in Jackson, WY, while the rest of our family was out cross country skiing, writing the cover letter. The reality was I was committed to the work we were doing at the Center for Social Impact Learning at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. I cared deeply about the work we were doing, had a visionary team that made working crazy hours not just bearable, but invigorating and meaningful. Every day I worked with graduate students who were dedicating their life to fight for a better world. And y
et, every day, I met with students who were struggling to make sense of how and where they fit into the workforce. Multiple times a day I would walk into my colleagues' office to tell them that we should be teaching social entrepreneurship earlier, starting in elementary school. This became my rant and ramble to pretty anyone that would listen.
So when my parents returned from the mountain, and I was staring at a blank screen, they weren't having it. "Stop overthinking it. Tell them the truth, tell them it's your dream job, and then just send it," said my entrepreneur of a father. (I later came to know this through Leadership+Design as embracing my
authentic leadership style.)
"You also need to tell them
why
it's your dream job
,
" chimed in my educator of a mother. So that's what I did. In a matter of 15 minutes I wrote it and hit send. I lived what I would soon come to learn was one of the Hillbrook core values: I took a risk...and it was a moment that had been building for three years.
One of my favorite things to do in my new role is spend time in the pockets of the day - during carpool, recess and lunch - with our students asking them questions. My favorite question: what risk did you take today?
I ate a little bit of that white broccoli.
I played with Avery in the blocks, and we built a huge tower!
I played ping pong with the big kids.
I had lunch with Mr. Silver and shared an idea.
I went on the WeWork field trip.
Well, I didn't really take a risk today. Maybe tomorrow? Yeah, maybe tomorrow.
Walk around Hillbrook's campus and students will talk freely about the risks they have taken. It's a phrase that has been demystified on our campus. It took me a bit of time to adjust to  these "risky" moments, quite different than the work I was previously doing in Jordan, Rwanda, Peru and Salinas. I had to catch myself from laughing at one point. Is eating white broccoli really taking a risk? Surely we can do better than that! And then I re-read this chapter in
Whiplash
and remembered a conversation I heard between Walter Isaacson and Joi Ito at the Aspen Ideas Festival in which Isaacson shared why he took a risk and moved outside of his biographical comfort zone and wrote
The Innovators
. He reminded us that we often get history wrong when it comes to innovation. Real innovation it turns out, comes not from the "lone genius of an individual, but rather the collaboration of minds from the arts and the sciences working together to solve a problem."
The urgency I had felt to do social entrepreneurship right away, to send our students into the world, to turn them into change-makers overnight, to make them understand the privilege that going to a school like Hillbrook provided them, this frenetic urge to teach them
all the things
was calmed. In the Silicon Valley world we often credit the "
heropreneur
" as the risk taker. Whereas the example Ito and Howe give us in Shenzhen credits the system of entrepreneurship, one that was built collectively and over time. They both have validity and my guess is as educators we love the tension between the two spaces. We need new ideas, we need people to own those ideas; we also need to help create and support the ecosystem that will turn those ideas into impact, that will support our students as they learn the craft and art of entrepreneurial thinking.
In the world of entrepreneurship I have come to terms with the fact that technology will play a key role in the future of world. Thanks to a mind-shift talk by Reid Hoffman, I now can comfortably consider myself a "techno-optimist"... well maybe better framed an edupreneur/techno-optimist. I love the tension that exists between the technology world and the current education world. Ito and Howe helped turn me from a healthy skeptic to a skeptical optimist. My skepticism comes through in various ways: I never buy internet on flights; I read
Deep Work
every couple months to remind myself of routines; and I unapologetically do my best to always prioritize face-to-face time with people and children in every aspect of my life. "The power of the Shenzen
ecosystem," the authors write, is based in "experimentation, work ethic, and a willingness to fail and start again from scratch." I will continue to re-read this chapter to build our equivalent of Shenzhen
at the Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship
.
This chapter reminds us that the leap to embrace risk is more often than not, lots of small bites of white broccoli.
As I munch on my white broccoli this week, I was reminded of how important it is to share early and often the food we are trying to digest. The L+D Wonder Women conference allowed me to do that last summer. Once again I would like to rely on this community to test some early "truths and lies" I am trying to swallow. I am on what is step two of the Hillbrook Way (Start, Ask, Collaborate, Show). So I ask you: did I get this techno/edupreneur- optimist thing right? What am I missing? Do you want to come hang out with us
before NAIS
to test your own truths and lies?
Truths:
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Artificial Intelligence will be a part of our future classroom.
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Innovation requires collaboration between visionaries and executors. Entrepreneurship requires us to pull that innovation to the center of ecosystems.
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The best way to predict the future of learning is to be part of shaping it. Roll, leap, shuffle, clunk forward always.
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If you are successful, someone along the way supported you. Support someone else. Believe in their idea before it makes sense to you. Stand on the sidelines of the marathon runner as a cheerleader.
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Listening (really listening!) to what matters to children is the epitome of insider trading. In the case of educators, it's legal...and free.
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Subjects that we can teach through an interdisciplinary lens will spur educational innovation. The future lies at the intersection of the arts and sciences.
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Money is no longer the only important currency. Time and attention is perhaps just as valuable as a dollar.
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Teachers' voices need to be heard in spaces and sectors outside of schools. Join a board, volunteer with a non-profit, go to events, launch a company, attend conferences without education in the title.
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Edupreneurs will shape the future of education. We must continue to adapt and talk about the things we know are important to learning, and sometimes, especially when it comes to our friends at GAFA, we might need to yell. Loudly. Over and over again.
Lies:
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Wealth and power will shape the future of business.
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I knew what GAFA (Google Apple Facebook Amazon) was before I wrote this article.
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You don't need to understand finance to understand entrepreneurship.
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We do a good job of teaching financial literacy in schools.
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Money is something only to be discussed with family and banks.
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Design Thinking, Google Docs, and Zoom are the answer to all of our future collaborations and innovative efforts.
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Using fancy language like "edupreneur" or "techno-optimist" makes us innovative.
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College is going to continue to look like what it looks like today.
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Bay Area schools are naturally innovative, entrepreneurial and tech literate because we are close to Silicon Valley.
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Kids can't start a business.
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I understand what a Bitcoin is and how I might mine for it one day.
Happy Holidays to this tribe. I'm honored to be back in the K-12 ecosystem with all of you!
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