Leadership+Design
"We design experiences for the people who create the future of teaching and learning."
In our work, we build capacity, create conversations, and make connections.
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Plan your professional learning adventures with L+D in 2018.
Wonder Women!
Only a few spots remain!
June 25-28, 2018
Moses Brown School, RI
Uncover and develop your signature leadership presence.
Santa Fe Seminar
November 4-7, 2018
Santa Fe, NM
Reflect. Renew. Reconnect.
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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
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
University of Chicago Lab Schools, IL
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| The Right Problem to Solve |
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Carla Silver, Head L+Doer
Leadership+Design
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Anyone who has ever dealt with a sports injury has a fundamental understanding of systems thinking. Right now, I'm dealing with a nagging case of plantar fasciitis, a common running injury that manifests as heel pain, especially after I have been sitting for long periods of time. Stepping out of bed in the morning is agonizing. I'm hobbling around, sentenced to New Balance shoes with heel supports designed for plantar fasciitis. But the thing about plantar fasciitis is that it really has nothing to do with the heel at all. It is really an inflammation of the tendons in the bottom of the foot. So I also spend a lot of time rolling my foot on a golf ball and frozen water bottles. Of course my foot tendon inflammation is rooted in the fact that I have incredibly
tight hamstrings, thanks to decades of distance running and not enough stretching. And if I want to be completely honest with myself, the real source of the problem - and it's one I want to ignore but can't - is my weak core. In short, running with a weak core leads to horrible hamstring problems that become fo
ot problems that make my heel hurt like hell. So, If I really want to do something about my plantar fasciitis, the best course of action would be getting disciplined about planks and sit-ups. While it may seem completely pointless and irrelevant to treat my heel pain with an abdominal workout, it is exactly what I need to do for the long term - and much more effective than the heel supports in my shoes.
My foot challenge mirrors the main point of "Systems over Objects," the final chapter of Whiplash: How to Survive our Faster Future. Being able to understand the whole system and not just one part allows us to work smarter. Successfully diagnosing the right problem will lead to better solutions. And rarely, if ever, are problems grounded in one discipline, meaning we need hybrid thinkers who take "antidisciplinary" approaches to solving them. In schools, we are pretty good at creating objects and artifacts to solve problems - a statement on diversity and inclusion, a new block schedule, a marketing brochure, a learning management system. Sometimes these objects address a systems challenge and other times they only scrape the surface of a symptom. Sometimes we bring together a group of "experts" to solve the problem and it works. Sometimes we hire a scheduling consultant and they create an object that looks great until it is put into practice, when we discover it doesn't really solve the problem - because we never really identified what we were trying to solve in the first place. A better approach might be to put together a team of diverse stakeholders of parents, students, and teachers and spend half a year really studying the system, identifying the root problem and only then trying to solve it.
More and more often, we at L+D are being asked by independent schools to help them think through solutions to enrollment challenges. Schools are eager to find ways to better articulate their brand and to clarify how they differentiate themselves from other schools. "We just need to package our program better." "We need to clarify our value proposition." Rarely do these schools want to stop and really question whether or not they are providing a service or product that is desirable and viable - one that meets the evolving needs of the market and that people will pay for. So they create objects - websites, videos, brochures - that package and display their product. But in the end, the product still isn't selling. It may be that they are selling a fax machine in an age of email and text. And it isn't that a fax machine doesn't serve the same basic function as email, but nobody wants a fax machine anymore. In fact, my 16-year-old daughter doesn't even know what a fax machine is. And if she saw a really awesome, well-produced video advertising a fax machine, she still wouldn't want one. It's just an obsolete object - and so is the video.
The schools we work with are not fax machines. Most are doing good work - some of it is very relevant and student-centered - but they might be hanging on to aspects of their programs that are as obsolete as fax machines. Others are simply not finding the right problem to solve and addressing the symptom instead. Or, even more common, is that a group of really talented and well-intentioned colleagues think they are addressing one problem, but they haven't actually defined it which is why they can't agree on the solution. Three members of a team might be redesigning classroom spaces and one is talking about the how to configure the classroom seating while another colleague wants to discuss the furniture and the third wants to discuss what goes on the walls - smart boards, whiteboards or chalkboards, but nobody is actually talking about pedagogy - teaching and learning - which, of course, is really what space design is all about.
Summer is imminent and it is the perfect time to step back and get the bird's-eye view (the big picture) as well as lean in for the worm's-eye view (the anthropologist's lens), all the while asking the questions and doing the research that might help you identify the right problem to solve. This work takes time and intentional practice, but might help you produce systems-oriented solutions and not objects.
Thanks to our writers this month, Joe Romano (Annie Wright School) Tom Taylor (Breck School) and Christian Long (The Wonder Project) for sharing their enlightening words on how systems over objects play out in their work. Thanks also to Joi Ito and Jeffrey Howe who provided us with Whiplash which has given us so much to write about all year. You can check out all of our back issues of newsletters here for some great summer reading. And speaking of summer reading, next month our newsletter will be filled with compelling summer reads, so if you have one you'd like us to include, email me! We would love suggestions both from and for our readers.
Warmly,
Carla
P.S. We have about four more spots for some incredible Wonder Women this summer at Moses Brown. If you've been thinking about joining us, register now!
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| The Omnidisciplinary Approach |
| Joseph Romano, Library Media Specialist, Annie Wright Schools |
I can teach you how to pick a lock. We would practice in three phases. First, on a padlock encased in transparent plastic, so you can watch as the pick lifts each pin to the shear line. Second, with a lock affixed to a door so you might learn by feel to orchestrate the pick alongside the tension wrench. Third, while blindfolded because, well, if you can pick a lock while wearing a blindfold, you must really know how to pick a lock.
From there, we might talk about "perfect security," how
the team at 99% Invisible
remind us that locks are meaningless--so easily pickable--without the social contract we've built with one another in order to feel secure with our belongings "locked" behind a door. The door itself on hinges mounted to a frame shimmed and caulked to a rough opening on a wall whose studs might be placed 16 or 24 inches on center, and, if built with 2x6s, filled with more insulation for enhanced energy efficiency, all guided by the International Building Code, itself a social contract of best practices for safe, secure structures.
When Jeff Howe writes about systems in Chapter 10 of
Whiplash
, he wonders whether the challenges we face require "the creation of entirely new disciplines, or even pioneering an approach that eschews disciplines altogether." Through this, he asks innovators to take responsibility for more than just speed and efficiency by developing "an understanding of the connections between people, their communities, and their environments." Howe suggests we might consider these approaches as antidisciplinary, or even omnidisciplinary.
I like to teach lock picking because locks are curious, futile objects, and broader
systems of social trust might be revealed once we realize how easily we can break open a lock. The act can stoke antidisciplinary thinking as we wonder about the mechanisms, their histories and potential futures, as well as trust and the ethical implications of how easily we might access the picks and wrenches, and whether educators should even introduce the acts to students.
Lock picking might even create an entry point into even wider antidisciplinary discussions of the safety, security, and belonging we associate with our homes.
Since January, I have been considering homes with a group of 9th Graders in Annie Wright's Upper School for Boys. We have been learning how houses are designed and constructed, and, most importantly, what they provide for people and their communities. Our charge is to form a series of objects--lumber, hardware, sheathing, house wrap, windows, and door locks--into a system of shelter. We are nearing completion.
By the last day of school, the home will be delivered to a community of people experiencing homelessness. At the outset of the process, we dove into the economic, legal, justice, health care, and transportation systems that are intertwining to create a housing crisis in almost every major city along the West Coast. In 2017,
Seattle's Point-In-Time Count of Homelessness
tallied 12,000 individuals experiencing homelessness in a single night. Even with the amazing network of social services and support systems in our cities, homelessness has reached a crisis state around the Puget Sound.
Homelessness is not the only challenge facing our regional community, and carpentry is far from the only skill set that might help this pervasive problem. In a four month horizon, though, my students and I can build enough of a skill set in carpentry to make a lasting, tangible impact on a person's life. Even though our project's horizon demands a disciplinary approach, we are continually reminded of the antidisciplinary demands of this crisis. Throughout the experience, we have formed relationships with the people who so greatly need housing, along with architects, builders, and
a network of organizations and businesses who have offering support for the project
. The 9' x 13' house can host a small family. We have positioned the windows to provide daylight but also maintain privacy. We have areas of open space that occupants might choose to shape. We have provided enough storage for a life's many belongings, so that the residents might leave items behind as they seek opportunities and education, feeling secure that their things are locked behind a door.
At the close of Chapter 10, Joi Ito asks that we "perceive, understand, and take responsibility for our intervention in each of [the] systems" our work encounters, even when we cannot completely control the outcomes of these systems. This resonates with us educators as we remain eternally optimistic that the systems we shape will have an impact on learners who, we know, will have an impact on the world. Yet we are acutely aware that systems overlap and integrate in ways that feel, at times, disorienting. Our schools sit within systems of economy, law, justice, health care, and transportation, among others. It's not uncommon for us to find ourselves at the terminus of several systems as we cultivate colleagues, students, families, and communities. In doing so, many of us must transcend the disciplines in which we were trained.
Joi Ito and Jeff Howe suggest that we might unlock new plans and perspectives if we interrogate our surroundings from new perspectives, from the microbial to the astrophysical. I hope
Whiplash
provides new ways for us to see our schools. These perspectives might be the scale of our doorways, and how our students are received into our spaces each day, or these perspectives might be at the scale of how our students engage in the wider community and beyond.
It's likely your May is as full as mine: we have homes to finish, assessments to score, courses to see to completion, commencement speeches to script, strategic plans to shape and tend, so many students and colleagues to celebrate, and the coming year to design as we seek to close the gaps between who we are and who we might become.
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Tom Taylor, Upper School Director, Breck School, Leadership+Design Fellow, 2017-18
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"Is this going to be on the test?"
"When am I ever going to need this in real life?"
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Why
are we learning this?"
I used to hate hearing phrases like these in the classroom. In my earlier days of teaching, I was frustrated that students couldn't see, despite my best efforts, that what we were doing in AP Physics was relevant to their lives. How could they possibly struggle to find the relevance in the process of finding the electric field that arises when you arrange four charged particles in a square? Ok, well maybe I can understand that one . . . Nonetheless, I wanted them to see the inherent beauty that I see in physics for themselves . . . to regard the pure form of the study of our physical world with the same awe and wonder that drew me to the subject. And some did, but most memorized what they had to just to get through.
And why shouldn't they? I hadn't given them any real reason to care, any way for them to feel that this mattered beyond my classroom. And that's what they were asking for. Though phrased in a manner and tone that would drive most teachers batty, when students ask why they are learning something, that's what they're requesting . . . relevance; some connection to their lives outside the classroom. To put it in the terms that Ito and Howe use, I admire physics as an object to be valued in its own right, but my students were asking for an understanding of its place in the larger system of their lives.
This notion, the idea that academic disciplines are just that - academic - is central to the final chapter of
Whiplash
, "Systems over Objects." The authors assert that the sorts of complex questions and problems that our students are going to be asked to solve (global warming, income inequality, political and economic strife, questions of equitable justice) are not the sort that live in tidy disciplinary "boxes." Rather, these sorts of challenges will be solved by those individuals who are able to transcend disciplinary thinking, and even interdisciplinary thinking, in favor of what Ed Boyden, one of the subjects of the chapter, calls "omnidisciplinary thinking."
In her amazingly funny and beautifully-written post-Brexit novel,
Autumn,
author Ali Smith stages a conversation between Elisabeth, a young girl, and Daniel, an 80-year-old man.
I want to go to college, Elisabeth said, to get an education and qualifications so I'll be able to get a good job and make good money.
In response, Daniel suggests a number of academic disciplines that she might study, asking her to choose from among them.
All of the above, Elisabeth said.
That's why you need to go to collage, Daniel said.
You're using the wrong word, Mr Gluck, Elisabeth said. The word you're using is for when you cut out pictures of things or coloured shapes and stick them on paper.
I disagree, Daniel said. Collage is an institute of education where all the rules can be thrown into the air, and size and space and time and foreground and background all become relative, and because of these skills everything you think you know gets made into something new and strange.
Isn't this a beautiful idea? When I think about how our schools might promote the notion of "omnidisciplinary thinking," I wonder if we shouldn't aim to be more collage-prep than college-prep. What if our schools actively taught students to take all that they've amassed as learning, rip it up, rearrange it, and build something new? What if, instead of ever-narrowing disciplinary study, our worlds opened up in with increasing breadth as we progressed through our educational journeys?
But what would such a ripping up, rearranging, and broadening of our learning look like? In attempting to answer this question, I often think of my school's Community Based Research in Mathematics course. While this course is one of the most selective, high-level offerings at Breck, it is not the esoteric advanced math class that one might imagine. Rather than heading down the rabbit-hole of complex mathematics, the mission of this course is "to incorporate mathematics into a broader community by partnering with organizations to explore real-life problems with an emphasis on service-learning and social justice."
More than most courses, our Math Research course asks students to examine the systems at play in the world around them, to examine complex challenges, and to see how math might be leveraged to explore potential solutions. Rather than studying math for its own sake, our students use it as a pathway towards broader, system-level learning that forces them to think in precisely the omnidisciplinary manner described in
Whiplash
. Recent projects have included: Examining the role of mobile technology in Sudanese healthcare; Exploring the intersection between LGBTQ and faith-based communities; and Studying the impact of anti-sex-trafficking social media campaigns during the Superbowl. While an object focused math class will produce questions whose answers are numbers, or perhaps letters, this system focused course raises questions whose answers don't immediately look as though they've been produced in a math class; answers that take the form of new apps, statements of inclusivity, and viral social media campaigns. Students in this class are doing the real work of solving complex problems that require collage thinking. Why can't we have more of this? We can . . . we just need to look for the fertile ground.
"Is this going to be on the test?"
"When am I ever going to need this in real life?"
"
Why
are we learning this?"
I used to hate hearing phrases like these in the classroom, but now I look for them. I keep my ear to the ground, listening for phrases such as these because rather than frustrate me, I now know that this is how our students ask for what they need if they're going to do what we expect of them . . . change the world.
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Christian Long, Founding Partner, The WONDER Project
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A decade ago, four Stanford graduate students participating in the "Design for Extreme Affordability" course hosted at the famed d.school were challenged to explore ways to protect premature babies born in developing countries. It was a stunning problem to attempt to make a legitimate impact. On average, 20 million babies are born prematurely around the world every year. In developing nations, babies are particularly at risk due to the unavailability of costly incubators, often the only chance that a premature baby might actually survive.
Logically, the team began exploring ways to build a better incubator. It was an ideal 'object' to design, both a literal application of common sense and a time-tested solution with the potential to be improved based on price and features. If they could accomplish this goal, it was reasonable to assume they could lower the death rate of babies born early. And they would be deemed successful as a student team.
As the team began their field research in Katmandu, Nepal, however, they learned that the majority of premature babies were born in rural communities. To make matters worse, it was highly unlikely that such a baby would ever make it to a hospital. So, even if they designed a better 'object' the impact on most babies (and their families) would be nearly non-existent. It became clear that the issue was more complicated than what they assumed at first blush. It was about creating an incubator to be used outside of hospitals. It was about challenging all assumptions about what an incubator actually was, especially if it had to work without electricity and be culturally relevant in rural settings. It also had to take into account transportation. And maybe most of all, it had to be intuitive for mothers, both in its usage and also in a way that honored what it meant for a mother to both embrace and let go of her premature baby.
In other words, it was no longer an 'object' design challenge, merely leading to a better, cheaper incubator. Instead, it was a 'systemic' design challenge, one that demanded that a true multi-disciplinary team shift their thinking away from traditional logic and efficiency to something fully acknowledging a more complex ecology of needs and opportunities. It needed to simultaneously save the baby, empower the parent(s), and create lasting cultural change as well.
Through a human-centered 'systems' design process, the d.school students' insights eventually led them to develop the transformative Embrace Infant Warmer - a tiny sleeping bag with a paraffin-based pouch that could be kept warm for hours.
As an object, it was incredibly successful. Each one could be priced at $25 versus an average price of $20,000 for a hospital grade incubator. Better, each one could easily get to rural villages, while also allowing for a child to be transported to a hospital if possible. More importantly, as a true 'systems' response, the Embrace empowers the mother by encouraging her to use of her own body heat and 'embrace' instinct, rather than focusing on an object built for the medical team in a hospital. Going even further, the researchers realized that the bag itself could actually provide instructions to 'assist' the mother about ways to care for the baby over time, both solving the short term medical problem but also attending to the more complex nature of a mother's long-term relationship with her child.
Within a year, the students transformed their class project into a global not-for-profit seeking to provide as many radically inexpensive Embrace Infant Warmers to rural communities as possible. But taking it ever further, the team realized that the object itself wasn't the point. Instead, they realized that they were actually building an organization that sought to make a radically positive impact on a spectrum of complex 'systems' challenges in developing nations world-wide.
As an educator and an education-focused designer, this case study certainly validates the power of 'design thinking'. But more importantly, it reminds me that so much of our educational curriculum and pedagogical strategies are based on 'objects' thinking. In essence, we are trained and rewarded for helping our students develop 'object' based views of the world. This reinforces literal and linear thinking, as if every academic problem comes down to a predictable outcome that can be easily evaluated.
One supposes that if the Stanford d.school students had in fact designed a better hospital incubator, they would have reasonably received an 'A', regardless of its usage by real patients. But when looking at the more complex 'systems' challenge at hand, the same successful answer would have been an absolute failure in real time. Only by designing for a complex inter-related set of human factors - and challenging their own 'object-based view' of the world and problem -- could the students actually design something that was both applicable and genuinely transformative.
It is tempting to argue that the reason for doing so - as educators and as students - is simply as a reactive response to the complex future we all predict is coming, or perhaps is already here. The future is different, so therefore we must start teaching and learning differently. I won't argue with that. By every measure and instinct, we are being challenged to think differently as we take our students, colleagues, and schools into the future. Despite generations of 'object' thinking - focusing on literal and linear outcomes to predictable problems, with an added focus on the ease of evaluation - we must begin to think in terms of 'systems' if we're truly committed to making authentic, real-world change. And this appears even more true if we want our kids to be competitive in a post-disciplinary world coming quickly our way.
But, I also think its just logical to do so, especially if we are unapologetically empathetic and curious as human beings who happen to be called educators.
As Joi Ito writes in his "PS: Working in the White Space" at the end of Chapter 9: Systems over Objects,
"[W]e [must] focus on changing ourselves and the way we do things in order to change the world. With this new perspective, we will be able to more effectively tackle extremely important problems that don't fit neatly into the current academic systems: in essence, we are seeking to redesign our very way of thinking to impact the world by impacting ourselves."
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