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 2019.
Wonder Women
June 24-27, 2019
Oakland, CA
Uncovering your Superpowers and Leadership Presence
Sold out. But please come next year!
UnMastered
July 15-August 1, 2019
The last deadline for application is approaching on June 15.
Because the game has changed.
The Santa Fe Seminar
November 13-16
Santa Fe, NM
Reconnect. Reflect. Renew.
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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
Brooklyn, NY
Jeanette Moore
CFO
The San Francisco 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
2018-19
RIPL Designer
McGillis School, UT
Michael Ecker
Principal
Calavera Hills Middle School, CA
Kristen Erickson
History Department Chair and Art Gallery Director
Greenwich Academy, CT
Jon Freer
Director of Technology and Innovative Teaching
Solebury School, PA
Rhonda Hewer
Learning Services Consultant
Waterloo Region District School Board, Ontario, Canada
Louise Lindsay
Innovation Coach
Knoxville Jewish Day School, TN
Sonja McKay
Teacher
Exploris School, NC
Stephanie Mendrala
Director of Professional Development
STEM School Highlands Ranch, CO
Ingrid Moore
Director of Lower School
The Steward School, VA
Brian Mull
Innovation and Learning Design Coordinator
Trinity Episcopal School, NOLA
Hannah Nelson
Science Teacher and Academic Dean
Watershed School, CO
Gwenyth Nicholson
8th Grade Humanities Teacher
Saco Middle School, ME
Bobby Pollicino
Upper School Principal
Bullis School, MD
Sara Slogesky
K-12 Social Studies Curriculum Specialist
Capital Region Education Council Magnet Schools, CT
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Carla Silver, Head L+Doer,
Leadership+Design
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Happy June!
Here we are again. We've reached the end of another school year and are now making our way into the longer, slower days of summer. Even if you are traveling with family or have a full itinerary of adventures ahead of you, time does slow down for those of us in schools. All professions have cycles and busy seasons, but school leaders know that summer brings with it opportunities to reflect, renew and longer periods of time to think. For many of us, this is also a time to read all those books that have been piling up on your bedside table since last summer. Our June newsletter, for that reason, is devoted to book suggestions that contribute to your list.
But when I sat down to write my article this month, I came up empty. I realized that I've hardly read anything this year. How did that happen? Was it my hectic travel schedule? New hobbies? Weekend family activities? Not really. And then it hit me. This was the year I became a podcast junkie.
And what a time it is to read with your ears! Over the last year,  dozens of podcasts kept me entertained and engaged while standing in long lines at airports and on cross country fights from SFO to BOS. Navigating Bay Area traffic is a soul sucking experience, but made somewhat more tolerable by a good podcast. Long runs and walking the dogs - both podcast worthy for sure. It actually become a family joke. When I'd casually say, "I was listening to a podcast yesterday . . ." I could feel the eye rolls and hear the sighs from my husband and kids.
So what have I listened to all year? Here are six of my favorite podcasts that have delivered some amazing learnings. I've also suggested a few episodes that were particularly compelling (and in some cases produced a much needed laugh.) Some of these might be familiar to you, especially if you too are a podcast connoisseur and others might be a little more obscure. Of course, I'd love to hear what you are listening to and add to my list. I have another year of travel coming my way in just a few short months.
Here are my top six - in no particular order.
Freakonomics - The Podcast that started it all for me. I learned the joy of podcasts by tuning into economist Steven Dubner, and now my obsession with Behavioral Economics is fueled weekly by this podcast about "the hidden side of everything." The series about The Secret Life of CEOs last year was a fascinating look inside the lives of some of the most successful leaders and those who may not survive the role. And my favorite episode this year - Should America (and dare I say, schools) be run by Trader Joes?
The Daily - It's safe to say most mornings begin with The Daily. This podcast from the New York Times brilliantly offers one richly told story each day, usually by fast-talking host Michael Barbaro. The stories range from the political news of the day to stories about immigration, solved cold cases, health care, the economy, and foreign affairs. This type of in-depth journalism is refreshing in a time of twitter, soundbites, and blogs. I always finish the podcast feeling "more curious than certain" and questioning assumptions I might have previously held. Also, not only do I start the day feeling smarter, I can hold an informed conversation about the most pressing issues of the day (although I do find myself talking about them at lightning speed).
Akimbo - For the disruptors out there who want to "level up," "make a ruckus," and "do work that matters," Seth Godin's podcast is a terrific compliment to his daily blog. Seth Godin is a serial entrepreneur and a marketing guru who has found his calling in inspiring disruption. A couple of our favorite episodes include, Stop Stealing Dreams, Getting into a Famous College and Shun the Nonbelievers. These are all great entrees to Akimbo. If you can get acclimated to Seth's voice, you'll be hooked!
Mind in Pieces - Unless you live in Los Gatos, CA, you probably have never heard of this podcast, but Los Gatos High School student Casey Kamali tells it like it is. As educators we often wish we could get into the minds of our students and hear what they are actually thinking about school and their social lives. Here is your chance. This podcast is open, honest, and raw. Kamali is a mature host who asks straightforward questions that produce thoughtful responses and surface some compelling challenges about navigating high school in the digital age. She talks with her peers about depression, anxiety, academic pressure, family, and life in an affluent suburban town. I find myself trying to suppress my parent and educator side and just be an empathetic ear and listen without judgment. There is very likely a podcast just like this one coming from a student in your town or school. Find it and just listen.
Hidden Brain - I love listening to soothing voice of Shankar Vedantam as he explores the world of the unconscious brain. The podcast is grounded in neuroscience, but he is really talking about how we live in relationship with others. I may love the stories from this podcast above all others and the range of topics keeps me fully engaged from week to week. As few favorites from this year: Bullshit Jobs, Creative Differences, and Close Enough.
The Knowledge Project Shane Parrish's long form interviews are some of the best around. Parrish runs the Farnum Street Blog which is a treasure trove of Mental Models. If you want to become a "world class thinker" listen to this podcast and check out the website. At first blush it may seem like a podcast about business, but I really do believe it is about solving big problems. I particularly loved his interview with Poker Player Annie Duke and his episode with Atul Gawande.
Against The Rules - Michael Lewis author of The Big Short, The Undoing Project and Moneyball (just to name a few) has launched this podcast this year on what happens to fairness in a world where "everyone hates the referee." He starts with the NBA where the literal referees exist. But we need referees everywhere - on our courts of law, in the art world and in technology, but it is an increasingly thankless and under-appreciated role. Michael Lewis is always well-researched, informative and quite funny.
But wait, there's more. Here are a few others that didn't make the short list but definitely worth a listen - in case you find yourself in traffic, standing in line at the grocery store or the dog needs an extra long walk.
Should This Exist - For the futurists out there. What are the inevitable consequences of inventions that already exist? Host Caterina Fake looks at technologies on the fringe and how they might change our world, for better or for worse. Thanks to Christian Talbot for this rec!
Slow Burn- Both the seasons on Watergate and the Clinton/Lewinsky Scandal were addictive. I couldn't stop listening to Leon Neyfakh, and had to put my life on hold until I finished both.
Radical Candor - From Kim Scott, based on her book of the same name, this podcast helps us to have those hard conversations we need to have.
The Daily Show Ears Edition- Trevor Noah continues to impress and with the elections of 2020 approaching, this one is just going to get better.
Invisibliia The hosts of Invisibilia, Alix Spiegel and Hanna Rosin, are amazing storytellers. I particularly liked the episode this spring on The End of Empathy.
Of course there is still nothing better than sitting quietly with a good book, so I'm starting this summer by reading Daniel Kahneman's masterpiece, Thinking Fast and Slow. Many of my favorite podcasts were inspired by his work so it's great fun to go back to the source. My year of listening and reading with my ears might be coming to a close, but I have no doubt I'll be tuning in again when the travel season heats up.
Luckily, we have a few additional suggestions about actual books from our writers this month. Crystal Land and Jeremy Goldstein and I've already downloaded Deep Work!) We always love to hear from the readers about what is on your list!
As many of you have probably experienced at the end of your year, June is a time of transition. And we are both saying goodbye to a beloved member of our team and welcoming a new team-mate. A huge THANK YOU to Erin Cohn who is "taking a break" from L+D to go run the Wurtele Center for Leadership at Smith College. We are so excited for her to go and do this amazing work at a place that is very near and dear to her heart. At the same time, we are going to miss the heck out of her. Erin has contributed so much to L+D since she started with us three years ago, including launching the L+D Fellowship. We wish Erin well and we fully expect some "reunion tour" moments in the future. L+D is a little bit like the Hotel California - "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave."
We are so pleased to welcome Tara Jahn as our new  Associate. Tara is an experienced human-centered design facilitator and coach, strategic partner, and experience designer. She holds a Master's degree in Public Administration (MPA) from the University of Colorado and a bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Vermont. She has been formally trained in design thinking at the Stanford's d.school (School Retool), The Design Gym, and the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME- creator of Action Collab). Tara partners with schools, districts, and organizations to think creatively and systematically to become more user-centered and strategic in teacher and leadership development, resource allocation (time, money, people), and the student experience. She lives in Denver, CO with her wife and son. We are thrilled to have her join us!
Finally, You can still apply for our online class - UnMastered (It's going to be a true learning adventure), and registrations for the Santa Fe Seminar are coming in fast, so get your spot reserved!
That's all from me until the fall. Enjoy your summer and all of the learning and growing you get to do in this slower time!
Warmly,
Carla
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| Becoming A Morning Reader |
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Crystal Land, Head of School, Head-Royce School
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"To build your working life around the experience of flow produced by deep work is a proven path to deep satisfaction." (Cal Newport, Deep Work)
Last summer I made a strategic decision to read differently. As a child and young adult I read constantly and late into the night. I was one of those children who always had a book close by. Books served as my form of escape, pleasure, and even meditation: they were the perfect window into other worlds, cultures and possibilities. Then, as an English teacher and young mom with two kids, my evening reading focused primarily on the text I was teaching the next day; I saved the invigorating pleasure reading for summer, when I had longer stretches to dive into new or beloved works.
Dear Reader, I then became an administrator and, well, that's where this leg of the journey begins. Over the past 15 or so years, my school-year evenings are often filled with emails, writing for school publications, planning for meetings, or navigating a crisis or problem; inevitably reading for pleasure and depth has often been relegated to plane trips and vacations. Even though I considered myself a reader at heart, I was squeezing in this important, dare I say crucial, part of my identity and life in available nooks and crannies of time instead of giving it the time and place in my attentional life it deserved.
So back to my "return to reading" journey. Last summer, along  with my husband and two adult children, I hiked to a Canadian backcountry lodge with no wifi, no internet connectivity, no electricity, no weather reports, even no overhead noise. Time was slow as we hiked during the days, napped and read in the afternoons, and figured out crossword puzzles in the evenings. It was transformational: I was able to tackle a very difficult Sunday crossword puzzle, read a challenging novel and stare at the lake and allow my mind to wander. During that stretch, I also read Deep Work by Cal Newport which reinforced that what I was doing over that vacation--giving myself more mental space --was sorely needed in my daily life.
Newport's basic thesis is that we need to intentionally create time for "deep work" as a way to build our creativity, increase our focus and improve our work satisfaction. He quotes: "A 2012 McKinnsey report found that the average knowledge worker spends more than 60% of the work week engaged in electronic communication and internet searching, with close to 30% of a worker's time dedicated to reading and answering email alone." Yikes. He notes that many of us run our day out of our inbox instead of scheduling time for the challenging and focused work that needs our full attention. Additionally, I'm sure you've heard various versions of a saying: "you are what you pay attention to"--so I decided to pay more attention to my reading habits.
So I actively chose to change the order of my summer days to
begin
, not end, with reading. My routine was relatively simple: I woke up early, made my coffee, retired to my living room and cracked a book (ignoring the pleading eyes of my dog, the allure of the NYT Daily Briefing and email that came in overnight). I chose just a couple of books, created a "reading basket" of options to explore, and spent 45 minutes "just" reading each morning. I selected non-fiction works that connected to leadership, current trends, politics and the larger world; in other words, texts I might not pick up in the 30 minutes of fiction reading right before bed. I added a couple of volumes of poetry and a meditation book. I read, annotated, took notes, reflected on them in my journal in an uninterrupted chunk of time before I started my formal work day. I found it to be deeply satisfying--I retained the ideas, found connections to my school's and my work plan, refocused on ideas about leadership that are important to me and had time to well, think.
So back to the L+D prompt: while there are dozens, even hundreds of books that have influenced and shaped me, it's changing my reading habits to better remember, integrate and explore ideas. And it has made reading more fun--something I look forward to each morning. This was, inevitably, a much easier habit to maintain during the quieter summer months. I can't say I've been entirely successful during the busier schedule of the school year, but I've kept up the habit in some small way whether it's 15 minutes of reading, a short meditation or a few fleeting moments to write in my journal. If all else fails, I always have time for a poem.
As Mary Oliver says,
"Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it."
I've just compiled my reading basket for this summer. It's filled with books like Wisdom at Work by Chip Conley, The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker and The Art of Coaching Teams by Elena Aguilar. Mary Oliver's collection, Devotion, is standing by as well. Most importantly, I will be reading them in the mornings.
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Teacher as Artist: Embracing the Beautiful Messiness of School
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Jeremy Goldstein, L+D Fellow, 2017-18, Director of Experiential Learning, Episcopal High School
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I read
Steal Like an Artist
by Austin Kleon and it changed the way I think about the profession of teaching.
When I enrolled in
Seth Godin's altMBA
course last year, a set of books arrived in my office. I looked at the stack of volumes that spanned current business and creativity "lit." I will be honest, I picked the easiest path at a very busy time of the year- what appeared to be the shortest book with the most visual appeal.
To preface how this book has impacted my mindset in my work  as a teacher and administrator, I need to explain that I have landed in the role of disruptor at this point in my career. I work hard daily at nurturing "
radical collaboration
" and creativity in my approach to educating students. My greater goal is to help educators think empathetically, and most importantly, creatively about their work. Sometimes this is a lonely gig, often with the need for mindful check-ins with my own bias and compassion.
Austin Kleon's book is simple. It's a list of ten lessons from an artist about creativity that can apply anywhere, any time. Four lessons that impacted me the most were:
#1.Steal like an artist.
It would be dismissive to say that nothing is original, but I have received the gift of great ideas from my colleagues and fellow educators every time I work with students. In my earlier years, so much of the material I used came from other places. Kleon goes on to declare that "an artist is a collector." As we develop and become more comfortable in our teaching, we start to become more discerning with the "stealing" we do. We become better artists.
#4. Use your hands
Kleon describes his creative set up with two separate desks; digital and analog. The digital is a great space for refining his ideas, and it seems that the "magic" can happen within the analog space. Whenever I settle into a classroom or office, my brain requires a whiteboard space that allows me to move away from a laptop and go much bigger with my thinking in analog mode. This brings up a question: shouldn't we all keep a little "analog" in our lives to stay sharp and creative?
#8. Be nice (the world is a small town)
In my first year of teaching, I took myself way too seriously. My approach to teaching and learning was rigid, fixed, and highly intolerant of the issues commonly known as classroom management. I thought that I had all of the answers based my own education. In short, I was not nice. My eyes were opened by a brief conversation with a veteran teacher (an art teacher). I was complaining, we've all heard it before "These kids just don't try hard enough to earn an A." His response was as simple as Kleon's message: "Maybe they don't want an A, have you ever thought of that?" Point taken, I could go no further without empathy for my students, colleagues, and myself. As a student who classified as "learning disabled" I had forgotten that all students learn differently. Not everyone wants an A, and I am not in the business of doling out judgment for those who don't learn my way.
#10. Creativity is subtraction
Every time I lead a new initiative and work to foster collaboration around innovation, two responses cross my path. The first is, "Why are we doing this? We keep adding more things to our plate! Why can't we just do school like we used to?" The second response is "You know we might have to get rid of some things to make this happen - is it really worth it?" As a disruptor, I need to be aware of limitations and boundaries as part of the creative challenge. I sincerely mean this in a positive way - the limits are where the design can thrive, where art happens.
This is what I have learned, and I am humbled by this lesson:
All teachers are artists...
Art is personal, emotional, and most importantly, unpredictable at times. My wife, who is also a teacher/administrator, describes this as the "beautiful messiness of school." What better time to try out creative approaches to your life as an educator than today. Now go make art!
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