Being Future-Focused in the Age of Innovation

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“Steve taught us all not to focus on the past — to be future-focused. If you’ve done something great or done something terrible in the past, don’t focus on it.”

via Steve Jobs Was an Awesome Flip-Flopper, Says Tim Cook – Peter Kafka – D10 – AllThingsD.

This idea of being future-focused is extremely interesting to me as an educator. What does it mean to be future-focused? With volumes of books, articles, and blogs published recently on defining innovation, this one phrase from Tim Cook captures the concept more succinctly than any publication!

Schools by definition are focused on the future (as in, developing healthy bodies and minds for the future), and yet in their slavish devotion to tradition, are actually more attuned to their past. If we as school leaders use our past successes to build the road ahead, then we must do better to strike a balance and realign our focus. Traditionally, a strategic plan will attempt to show the school as future-focused, but few strategic plans build in accountability and empower the community to move the school forward as one engine.

The notion of a three or five-year strategic plan, however, seems oh-so-twentieth century! Back in 2007, Rob Evans, the noted psychologist and school consultant, wrote “The Case Against Strategic Planning” in Independent School Magazine. Evans writes of a head of school struggling to explain to his Board the case against adopting another strategic plan:

“I’ve been here nine years,” he said, “and we’ve already done two plans. My predecessor was here for 10 years, and he also did two. Each one is thicker than the last. They look terrific; very comprehensive. But we haven’t finished a quarter of the steps spelled out in the last plan.” Nonetheless, the school was doing well. There were “things to tweak,” but even if major change were needed, he no longer saw strategic planning as a valuable tool.

Evans notes that this Head of School is by no means alone in his struggle.

Every year, I have similar conversations with heads across the county. When I press them, they acknowledge advantages to strategic planning. One typical response is: “Most folks like the process of thinking about the school. Discussing the school’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, makes them feel as if they’re contributing to our future direction.”

Strategic plans have, in the words of Kaufmann and Hermann, noted authors of the 1990s book Strategic Planning in Education, become an “educational fad.” School leaders and Boards clearly like the idea (and should) of being future-focused and contributing to the future direction of the school, but perhaps there are better ways to address it. Evans argues for strategic thinking rather than strategic planning:

True strategic thinking favors pragmatic, flexible approaches to key challenges, approaches that acknowledge the nonrational and unplannable aspects of the world and of organizational life and the importance of being ready to respond to rapid change in both, and that rely on the judgment of leaders much more than the spelling out of action steps and the measurement of benchmarks. It favors plans that are simple and that concentrate on a very few targets over a relatively short period of time. It anticipates the likelihood that changing conditions may call for changing targets.11

The 21st Century has made the school world more “nonrational” and “unplannable” than ever before. School leaders are faced with changing targets and need to respond rapidly to changing conditions. We have entered the Age of Innovation where past-focused schools will die out from intellectual and financial starvation, and future-focused schools will become paragons for their peers. It’s time to ask which path you’ll choose.

Rethinking Professional Development in the 21st Century

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I have been contemplating recently about the state of professional development in schools. The term “professional development” generally evokes a conference or a workshop/institute held outside of the school’s facilities and run by an external organization and attended by educators from several other schools, locally, regionally, or nationally. In the 21st century, I wonder if we need to broaden our horizons beyond this model and consider on-demand, realtime professional development. I’ve written previously about using Twitter as professional development; there have also been several newspaper articles and blog entries on the subject too. But Twitter still resides externally and is primarily about engaging educators working outside your immediate school facility.

How can we provide professional development in-house and one that’s on-demand and in realtime?

If I have a question as a Language Arts teacher about accommodating a student who has been recently diagnosed with expressive and receptive language disorder, then who, where, and how could I access the training I would clearly need immediately to work most effectively with that student? What are the different possibilities to structure that training? How about ongoing support? Frequently, teachers in such situations would turn to their Learning Center (if they have one) and ask for resources and tips on any accommodations/modifications to structure in the classroom and on homework for that student. However, is that enough, and what has the teacher absorbed about how that student best learns if they have simply been given a list of reading materials and strategies to use?

We have been experimenting this year at ACDS with providing such on-demand and realtime professional development to our 1:1 iPad Pilot teachers. It has been relatively easy to schedule trainings given that the pilot has only covered one grade level. However, as we expand the 1:1 iPad initiative to the rest of our middle school next year, scheduling ongoing trainings and providing realtime support could prove to be more difficult. I hope to share more about our approach this year in future posts, and what benefits have accrued as a result of keeping the iPad and curriculum training in-house, versus sending our teachers to workshops and conferences.

Does your school do something unique or innovative with professional development? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The Dilemma of Innovation

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I wrote this article to address some of the questions surrounding innovation that are rarely asked or addressed concretely in the literature on 21st Century Schools. Innovation is necessary and essential, but it also comes at a cost to the school culture.

Hope you enjoy reading this piece as much as I did writing it on Saturday night at 2AM! Please leave your feedback in the comments section.

Becoming a 21st Century Schools: Presentation to the ACDS Board of Trustees

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I gave this presentation last Wednesday to the ACDS Board of Trustees on the changing educational landscape, and how independent schools must innovate more to best prepare their students for the 21st century. NAIS and Pat Bassett’s presentation at the 2012 Annual Conference provides the basis for much of the content surrounding 21st century schools, and I have added my own thoughts and tried to give context to his ideas.

The world has changed, and schools must now match their rhetoric and understanding of this with action. We must, as I say in one of the slides, redefine what learning is in the 21st century, what we value, and how we assess. We must also address the most important question of all: Why should families continue paying $20,000 plus per year for an education that is increasingly moving online and much of it for free?!

The Connected Teacher, Part 2 (Presentation at the Beginning Teachers Institute)

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Green Acres’ David Darefsky and I gave this presentation today as part of Independent Education’s Beginning Teachers Institute. Our foundation rests on the premise that teachers and administrators need to embrace technology and social networking sites like Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools in order to advance their own professional growth, and to enhance their curriculum. As one participant mentioned during the session, the lack of an online presence dooms one to irrelevance in today’s world. Virtual identities are now just as real as the identity you wear in your physical space every day. In my last post, I wrote about this same topic of the connected teacher, and how I came to the realization late last year that any conversation around 21st century skills must first begin with getting teachers connected to and using 21st century tools. This is a key criterion to becoming an effective educator today (a “bold” teacher).

In essence, the world isn’t simply changing; it has changed.

Beginning the Conversation Around 21st Century Skills With the Connected Teacher

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As the Assistant Head of School, I consider myself to be in the enviable position of working on a variety of strategic curricular initiatives simultaneously with a variety of people connected to our school. This also requires that I keep up with educational trends, journals, and any other literature published on the web, Twitter, or the blogosphere on an almost daily basis. It is difficult to parse through all of this information at once, much less make sense of how it might apply to my school and existing projects here. Yet, leadership requires the ability to both look ahead to the horizon while keeping one’s hands firmly on the wheel and feet planted on the deck, and thus steer through calm and stormy weather with the same even-handed and predictable approach.

This time I have spent since last December on developing my personal/professional learning network (PLN) has been tremendous and served to further my growth as an educator and as an administrator in ways that no conference or workshop could have. Indeed, I have shared and even led a Twitter How-to Session for Administrators at my school, and plan to offer one for the teachers soon. This PLN has also helped me unify my vision of the various strategic initiatives we have undertaken at Alexandria Country Day School since the 2010-2011 school year under the 21st Century Skills umbrella. However, this topic is almost too broad, and I have been thinking off and on about where to now take this conversation and plant it firmly in the ground with our teachers, parents, and the Board. The recent NAIS Annual Conference was helpful in establishing some next steps, and in a previous post, I shared the ten items Pat Bassett, President of NAIS, shared in his opening remarks.

The way I see it now, this same approach that has helped me professionally is where we begin the conversation around 21st Century Skills for all of our teachers – help them develop their own PLNs first so they can see and learn firsthand from the human and electronic resources available instantly at their desks, or for those with a web-enabled phone, in their pockets!

If we wish our students to be connected learners, it behooves us then that we model the same outcome by first becoming connected ourselves! This realization came as an epiphany to me, although it may seem obvious to many of you. Please contact me if you or your school has developed a professional growth plan to help your teachers develop a PLN.

The Bobcat Globe: 8th Grade Students Cover the Festival of Learning

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A cartoon from The Bobcat Globe

Click here to check out the student newspaper, The Bobcat Globe, written and published by our 8th grade students this week, covering the 2012 Festival of Learning theme of Endangered Species. Thanks to faculty editors, Todd Gilbert and David Carpenter, for leading and guiding the students in their writing and the newspaper layout!

The newspaper articles cover a range of reports from interviews with students, faculty to pictures of the various speakers and events we have hosted this week. In the words of the editors, The Bobcat Globe is “ACDS’s first-ever Festival of Learning Online Newspaper. In conjunction with the iPad Pilot Program and ICL (Information Communication Literacy), The Bobcat Globe focused on providing students with the skills necessary to feel comfortable in a paper-less world, whether reading, writing, or sharing information.”

I could not be more proud of our students today!

A cartoon from The Bobcat Globe

Think Different: Beyond the Three R’s in the 21st Century

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At the recent NAIS Annual Conference in Seattle, Pat Bassett, the President of NAIS, shared the following ten trends for schools to remain competitive and fulfill their mission promise in the 21st century:

  1. Adopting backward design and mapping of curriculum around skills rather than subjects
  2. Documenting student outcomes via formative assessments and “demonstrations of learning”
  3. Connecting AI, the strengths approach, and growth mindsets – all subsets of the positivist psychology movement
  4. Globalizing independent schools
  5. Stage II greening of independent schools
  6. STEM and beyond signature programming
  7. Professionalizing the profession
  8. Public purpose of private education
  9. Online learning consortia for independent school-branded courses
  10. Design thinking- incorporating MIT and Stanford Design Labs
Bassett ended with a quotation from Bill Gates’ annual letter for his foundation: ”Innovation is the means, and equity is the end goal.”

These trends (and that quote) have remained with me over the last several weeks since the conference ended, and at a faculty meeting last Wednesday, I shared them with my teachers. One of the central themes and messages from Bassett’s trends reflect the ubiquity of technology in our lives and need to integrate tech-literacy into our curricula in authentic, real-world ways. 1:1 laptop or iPad initiatives that simply replace the paper planner or similar physical tool are failing our children and the skills they will need both today and tomorrow.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently on “Open Computer” or “Open Network” testing – a concept pioneered by St. Gregory’s Prep in Tucson, AZ where Jonathan Martin is the head of school. The skills of gather, evaluate, and analyze information are authentically tested when students are given access to the internet and any other resource at their disposal. Martin notes that teachers have to think differently about the questions they ask and the preparation and review for the test. Yes/No, True/False answers are no longer acceptable as evidence of mastery.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic – the traditional three R’s – have occupied a central perch in educational literature and curriculum development, however, the 21st century demands that schools go beyond these three R’s to include an Information Communication Literacy (ICL) program. The ICL team at our school currently consists of the director of technology, technology integration specialist, and our library media specialist. Together, they are promoting and integrating 21st century skills into our existing curricula. My message to the teachers last Wednesday was short and simple: technology is no longer a secondary consideration or simply meant as a support to enhance curriculum, but is as necessary a skill as the three R’s. Students are going to use the technologies at their fingertips with or without our support, and yet the conservative streak that pervades many institutions shun its use beyond simple internet research on Google or Wikipedia. It’s no longer considered innovative for schools to use the internet, but how it’s used to analyze information and assess students on their application can be considered innovative.**

I look forward to continuing this conversation with my faculty at future meetings. Please use the comments section to add your own two cents on this topic!

 

**Check out my school’s own initial foray into innovative practices at http://acdsipad.blogspot.com; we now need to push the assessment piece. Also check out these authentic assessment ideas from Steve Taffee that are just as exciting and inspiring for the creative educator:

  • “include the perspective from two personal contacts living in other countries (or representing different age groups, ethnicities, different schools, et al.)
  • include links to primary documents to support your argument.
  • create a multimedia mashup of text, video, sound and animation to prove your thesis.
  • summarize your argument in several different media: a 140 character Twitter post, a Wordle page, a one stanza original music composition, or a ten second animation.
  • post your idea to three selected blogs or web sites and summarize and critique the response you receive.”

Nishant N. Mehta is Leading Teachers To Use Web 2.0 tools | Powerful Learning Practice

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http://plpnetwork.com/2012/03/05/nishant-n-mehta-is-leading-teachers-to-use-web-2-0-tools/

Nishant N. Mehta is Leading Teachers To Use Web 2.0 tools

Posted by christen on Mar 5, 2012 in PD, Powerful Learning Practice | 0 comments

Nishant N. Mehta

Nishant N. Mehta Assistant Head of School

PLP eCourses attract participants from across the globe to learn and grow with one another. Over the next few weeks, we will feature interviews with current and past PLP eCourse participants. We’ll ask participants to share information about themselves, why they chose PLP eCourses and what they are up to professionally.

Nishant N. Mehta is a current eCourse participant from Alexandria, VA. He is the Assistant Head of School for a K-8 coed independent day school.

1. Which PLP eCourse are you currently taking?

Leading Edge Boot Camp eCourse

2. Have you ever taken an online course?

This is my first one!

3. Why did you decide to take this eCourse?

Because of Sheryl and Will’s reputation in the field of advancing teaching and learning in the 21st century, and because of the course’s focus on other 21st century leaders and developing leadership in the participants! My school is currently undergoing this transformation and I would like to be in the best position to lead that transformation.

4. Prior to taking this course, would you describe your knowledge on 21st century education as basic, intermediate or advanced?

Intermediate

5. What has been your favorite thing about this eCourse and/or instructor?

Collaborative thought and discussion each week amongst various participants from the US and Canada. Also, I appreciate the opportunity to take a few minutes each week and devote it to learning and reflecting about leadership.

6. What is your personal philosophy/belief on learning in the 21st century?

Schools have been talking about whole child education, differentiation and authentic assessments, flow theory, multiple intelligences, and the like for several years now, but what’s changed with the advance of technology, specifically Web 2.0 tools and AppPhones or the iPad, is the access to information and ability to collaborate with others across time and space in a way not easily facilitated before. Human communication occurs daily via such technologies and schools must leverage the creative and problem- solving capabilities inherent in them; Schools and its students and teachers are no longer restricted by the four walls of a classroom.

7. Any other information you would like to share about yourself personally or professionally?

I am passionate about learning and leadership, and try to read widely beyond educational journals and blogs to include current corporate thinking as well as it might apply to schools.

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