Actions Change Things

Conferences are a hallmark of the summer season. Thousands of educators attend events around the United States to connect, learn, and grow.  For the past three years I have had the honor of attending and participating in the Model Schools Conference.  You can check out a video of my opening mini-keynote HERE. The goal of this event is to set the stage with the latest innovative practices improving school and to begin to lay the foundation for districts and schools to begin planning long-term, job-embedded professional growth opportunities that are anything but the drive-by variety.  

What separates this conference from all others is the fact that the program is built around district and school teams who have closed achievement gaps, bridged the digital divide, and implemented innovative practices aligned to research. The model schools and districts put on a display of evidence focusing on what works to create a learning experience driven by practitioner success in the field.  It doesn’t get much better than that. 

Regardless of the conference you attend, what you do afterwards is what truly matters.  Hopefully you are exposed to new ideas, evidence-based strategies, research, and tools that will push your thinking while motivating you to move outside your comfort zone. The experience should result in the construction of new knowledge that can be used as a catalyst for change.  Reflecting on what was learned typically comes next.  This is something that I see happening at every Model Schools Conference.  As the sessions end, you can walk around the conference center and always see district and school teams gathered in rooms or common spaces reflecting on their learning while mapping out a plan for action.

What must happen next is the most critical aspect of any conference or professional growth experience – you must ACT!  It is our individual, and most importantly our collective, actions that will help us to move from an old status quo to creating a new status quo.  As you begin to develop action plans that tackle both large and small changes pause to think deeply on the process involved.  The process of change results in action, but there are many key elements that must be considered if success is the goal. Consider current obstacles and challenges as you navigate the process that culminates with action to transform learning for all students.

Talk, opinions, and assumptions might be catchy and motivating, but quickly lose their luster not if, but when a lack of substance surfaces (which it always does eventually). The same could be said about presentations that just focus on tools.  Take a critical lens to the ideas and strategies that you are exposed to. Then ask a few questions to help establish a plan for action:

• Why will this help transform practice and improve teaching, learning, and/or leadership?
• Is the idea or strategy scalable? 
• How will we sustain the effort and show efficacy?
• What research and evidence can be aligned to support the actions to be taken?

Don’t get sucked into the rabbit hole of fluff.  Always pause to reflect on anything you are exposed to whether it is from a conference, workshop, keynote, presentation, book, article, video, blog, tweet, etc.  This definitely applies to anything you read or hear from me! We have isolated pockets of excellence in schools across the world, but every kid deserves excellence. More collective, meaningful action will help to scale effective practices while preparing students for the new world of work. Let’s get to work!

Change Needed Today to Prepare for Tomorrow

There is always a great deal of talk about what schools need to do now. The problem though is that most of the talk is not followed with action. Then there are those who want to act, but do not have the adequate support to do so. Herein lies the issue with all the change talk, rhetoric, and opinions.  Very few people reading this post will deny that the education system has to change now or we run the risk of preparing students for a world that no longer exists. 

Change is needed today to ensure learner success in the modern era, but just as importantly to prepare them for the unique challenges of tomorrow.  The reality though is that change in education becomes a balancing act with pressure from stakeholders on one side demanding increases in achievement as measured by standard metrics such as test scores. On the other side is the need to innovate in order to successfully cultivate the next generation of thinkers, doers, inventors, and creators who will be able to solve some pretty serious global problems in the not so distant future.  We have to stop looking at each side of the balance here and begin to focus on disrupting the system with bold ideas that blend results with meaningful learning.

Hence, I come back to the need to support schools and educators in this endeavor. For over 20 years the Model Schools Conference has provided educators with a learning experience driven by the districts, schools, and educators who have closed the achievement gap.  There is no better way to learn what works in a seemingly endless debate about the needed change in schools than from those who have successfully done it.  As a Senior Fellow with the International Center for Leadership in Education, one of my responsibilities is to help provide practical strategies for accomplishing change in the digital age. As many readers of this blog know, I am a huge proponent of innovative change that leads to actual results in teaching, learning, and leadership.  This has resulted in innovative changes to the Model Schools Conference to provide attendees with the skills, tools, strategies, and mindset to initiate sustainable change. 

Here are some highlights and areas of focus for this year’s event:

• Closing the achievement gap and digital divide – Teams from model districts and schools will present proven pedagogical and leadership strategies on how they accomplished this in challenging times. There will even be a special Future Ready Schools strand.
• Innovative spaces for attendees to learn in – Design empowers learning, which is why we want attendees to experience this firsthand. Connections will then be made to how we can begin to transform spaces in our schools to improve student-learning outcomes. LEGO will also be on hand to lead immersion sessions on the importance of creativity in learning. 
• Making to learn – For the second year straight there will be a working makerspace staffed by local students and outfitted by Table Top Inventing. What better why to see how making impacts learning than through our own students?
• The power of virtual reality – As a result of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s strategic partnership with Google, there will be an immersion experience for attendees using Google Cardboard and Expeditions. Attendees will also be exposed to emerging ways on how virtual reality can support rigorous learning.
• Return on Instruction – A hallmark of the conference will be a focus on the Collaborative Instructional Review (CIR) process, which will be on full display.  This process can help transform every administrator into an instructional leader, capable of unlocking the instructional power of every teacher and, in turn, the learning potential of every student.

In addition to the awesomeness listed above, numerous sessions will be led by some of the most prominent thought leaders and practitioners in education today.  Join us to get the support to initiate the change needed today to prepare for tomorrow. For the latest updates follow along on Twitter using #ModelSchools.

Rigor, Relevance and Transformation at the Ground Level

The following is a guest post by Jill M. Hackett Ed.D. - Assistant Superintendent, Academic Services/School Accountability, North Kansas City Schools, Kansas City, MO.

Rigor and Relevance can seem like abstract terms until you start to understand how schools and districts apply them in specific ways. Over the past five years, we North Kansas City School District restructured our purpose so that student-centered learning was the ultimate objective. We put Rigor and Relevance in the foreground, along with several other initiatives. By committing to systematic integration of the model, we transformed the culture, the conversation, as well as the results in our district. Making our classrooms truly student-centered and relevant – thereby making real rigor possible – has allowed us to shape common beliefs for student success. 

Here’s a little more about several key elements of our restructuring and their application of the Framework.

“Is this in the best interest of students?”

NKCSD positioned this powerful and grounding guiding mindset as the backdrop for all of our strategies and decisions. This principle helped continually focus our attention on initiatives that would successfully improve our district. We wanted a viable, research-based tool that would allow for collaboration regardless of hierarchy or prior knowledge. We found it in the Rigor/ Relevance Framework. To implement its use, administrators learned how to coach teachers in using it to design learning opportunities as well as how to gauge teacher impact on student achievement. We spent a year training teams of eight teachers from each school to become resident Framework experts who were responsible for replicating professional learning modules on their campuses. Using an early release schedule once a week allowed teachers to meet in teams to further their exposure and understanding of the Framework.

Spotting a Quadrant D Lesson from a Mile Away

As the entire district really became familiar with the Framework, its four quadrants became part of our everyday thinking around instruction and planning. We also developed an awareness of what constituted all of the quadrants and could identify how various lessons were targeted to address learning in each distinct quadrant. Teachers realized that they needed to apply qualities of each quadrant – and know why and when to do so – in order to create relevant and authentic tasks. 

A Hidden Power of the Framework

Every teacher and administrator needs a simple, accessible, and readily-applicable way to talk about how learning can, and needs to, prepare students for life beyond the classroom. With just four quadrants, the Framework is a straightforward tool to consider and discuss student work and achievement. For teachers and administrators in the NKCSD, the Framework began to serve as the common language to describe exactly what it meant to ensure their students were college and career ready. 

A Common Language = A Connected Culture

An additional benefit of deep integration of the Framework into common language was the elevated levels of effectiveness of the PLTs (Professional Learning Teams). Together they shared experiences and observations of the most and least effective instructional approaches and were able to collaboratively determine what kinds of tasks would lead to increased student learning. 

As teachers began speaking the common language of the Framework, true, productive collaboration started to unfold. Numerous teachers grew more confident in their abilities, and mutually supportive relationships blossomed, which had a direct and noticeable impact on the quality of instruction and, hence, the student work emerging from the PLTs.

We also wanted pertinent stakeholders, including students and families, to know that the Framework was the linchpin to instructional decisions and goals. Teachers explained the Framework to students and families, making it known that students were expected to, with time, develop complex, Quadrant D thinking skills and the ability to apply high-level thinking to real-world scenarios. All students and their families were able to see how the district believed in their capability and potential, in specific and identifiable terms. 

Students Truly Owning Their Work

One of the most significant impacts from implementing the Framework came with how teachers provided feedback and built collective ownership of learning. Sharing the Framework with students helped demystify learning goals, giving students powerful ways to self-evaluate, contextualize progress, and articulate goals. 

One representation of the Framework in which a third grader analyzes how he spent his time as part of a writing block demonstrates real ownership of his learning.

The Framework naturally led to conversations in which students and teachers could both analyze and discuss work produced relative to the four quadrants. Instead of the “right or wrong” paradigm, the conversation shifted to the merits of student work and how it could stretch to other quadrants. Students and teachers were able to think about student achievement as a ladder accessible to everyone.

A Story of Improvement and Enrichment

In 2011, North Kansas City Schools had an Annual Performance Report in which the district earned only 78.9% of total points possible, the equivalent of a C in anyone’s grade book. By the 2013-14 school year, and after three years of total district adoption of the Framework, the significant improvements in collegial conversation and student work were reflected in a rating which had jumped to 92.1%. In the 2014-15 school year, we earned a 97.9% rating.

A highlight of the 2016 Model Schools Conference will be welcoming the North Kansas City School District leadership and hearing more about their implementation of the Rigor/Relevance Framework. Be sure to check them out on Twitter.

Future-Focused Leadership

In my last guest post, I outlined the ways in which the Every Student Succeeds Act, recently signed into law, gives us a unique chance to create the indicators of achievement that will mean and matter to us—indicators catered to the unique DNA of our states, districts, and schools. In my post, I called members of school boards and instructional and school leaders to action: we have the chance—the obligation—to voice our own frustrations and actually have them heard, respected, and applied to the process of overhauling the system and focusing on what matters most: the students. 

What does it mean to overhaul the system in this way? The work of Superintendent Guy Sconzo of Humble Independent School District in Humble, Texas, is a powerful example of creating a future-focused system. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Sconzo has developed and implemented strategies that fulfill the district’s mission of teaching well-rounded students—not to the standardized test. These are his six guiding principles:

1. Commit to the Whole Child: Understand why your priority is the whole child. Communicate this commitment calmly, clearly, and continually to all of your audiences.
2. Create a Culture of Trust: Start with a conversation. Invite ideas and insights from the school board, district, and community members. Remind your teachers that you believe they are far more capable than teaching to a test. Encourage them to find creative ways to teach students to be successful in life. Craft a plan, test out multiple ideas, and be willing to throw out ideas that don’t work and adapt those that do. Overhaul your evaluation system and push it to apply new indicators that measure the development of the whole child.
3. Win Over the Skeptics by Personalizing the Conversation: A test score says very little about a person’s talents and capabilities. Where generalized conversations fail, personal ones can often prevail. Ask the doubters, “Can your own children, nieces and nephews, or other children you know be accurately summed up in a standardized test score?”
4. Be Flexible and Embrace Trial and Error in the Effort to Find New Metrics: How do we measure a student’s interpersonal skills? How do we measure their ability to think creatively? Many fundamental skills are difficult but essential to quantify. But we must also accept—and communicate—that there are characteristics of a person that simply cannot be quantified—and honest messaging on this topic is critical. Where you cannot quantify output, find ways to quantify input. The goal is exposure to creative thinking and its process and fostering a well-rounded child who can connect the dots from one discipline to another. Creative confidence and experience is necessary for success in whatever career or interest a student pursues, whether it be science, business, a technical vocation, or another field.  
5. Stay Calm During Testing Time: Pressure is contagious. Districts and communities can generate a rush of anxiety at testing time. Model a calm demeanor and resolve in keeping testing in perspective. Remind teachers and students that you are evaluating them on much more than a test. Reiterate your belief that everyone—teachers and students alike—is much more dynamic, interesting, intelligent, and capable than what bubbles on a paper might attempt to suggest.
6. Accept Challenges: Creating a new paradigm of instruction and learning is a massive undertaking. Innovating within the confines of the testing system is one thing; this is entirely different. This is breaking out of a narrow system and building something new. Dramatic change elicits fear in many. Acknowledge and respect people’s fears, and continually communicate why such change is needed. In order for this effort to gain traction—in your classrooms, schools, districts, states and throughout the country—laser focus, deliberate effort, and enormous patience must precede it.

(For more on Humble ISD’s approach to 21st-century teaching and learning, read Success Beyond the Test: Preparing Students for Success in Real Life.) 

Disrupting Education in Bold Ways: The Time is Right

For following is a guest post authored by Dr. Bill Daggett, Founder and Chairman of the
International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE).

I believe that this a time when education can change in fundamental ways. The recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) will reverse the decades’ long trend of centralizing decisions about what students need to learn and how they must be assessed and put them back in the hands of local school districts as well as state education departments’ hands. The increase in federal regulations supported with financial incentives we have seen over the past several years will be lessened. Most notable are the provisions around Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) moving back to the state and local districts. Now we will be able to act on our priorities, not simply driven by federal priorities that may not have been a good fit for our districts and schools. 

Of course, any piece of legislation has its merits and its drawbacks, but one hugely positive aspect of the ESSA is that it puts the onus back on the states and local districts to determine how they will monitor and evaluate student learning and progress. I believe that it is our obligation to make the most of the opportunity we have before us. This is our chance to collaboratively create indicators of achievement catered to the unique DNA of our state, district, and school. We have the chance to voice our own opinions and actually have them heard, respected, and applied to the process of overhauling the system and focusing on what matters most: students.

Educators at the local and state levels are now in critical positions of responsibility.  To state education officials:

• Will you seek out the opinion of local school officials and will you empower them to make decisions based upon the community’s needs?

Or

• Will you fall prey to the same strategic errors the feds made and believe you know best and shut out local community’s opinions and authority?

To members of school boards:

• Will you involve your community in the process? 
• Will you include educators and parents—those on the ground—who possess the valuable insights that can inform wise choices? 
• Will you compile and analyze local data to drive evidence-based decisions? Engage your local communities in respectful, honest dialogue to hear concerns, gather knowledge and ideas, and synthesize insights into your vision?

To all of you in leadership and instructional positions:

• Will you focus on students’ specific needs and your school’s unique DNA when making plans? 
• Will you use current data to drive decisions that fit future-focused goals?  
• Will you determine new metrics necessary to monitor successful realization and impact of your fresh and systematic strategies and initiatives? 
• Will you identify multiple new and cutting-edge indicators of student learning and growth that speak to the development of the whole child, not just a test-taker? 

Let’s toss out the existing rules and write new ones.  Let’s tear down the outdated system and rebuild on a foundation that looks to the future— not the past— for ideas and inspiration. The 2016 Model Schools Conference is the place for exploring ways to innovate out of the old model and construct a system that’s set up strategically to prepare our students with the skills they need to excel in a complex world. We will share inspiring stories from disruptors in our own field who have reclaimed the mantle of student-centered learning and are building a progressive system around it. Using the experience of those who have had success creating new structures as well as the inspiration and motivation of those who are just beginning, we will provide practical, exciting tools to create a culture of innovation.

For information on the Model Schools Conference and to register click HERE.

The Need For Digital Literacy

With 1:1 technology initiatives and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) programs increasingly being implemented in schools across the globe, the need for digital literacy education has become more important than ever. Although technology enables students to access more information in much less time, it does not always foster learning. Teaching digital literacy helps to manage all of the benefits of technology while helping students understand how to safely weed through the vast amounts of information online.

Technology in the classroom has the following advantages:

• Allows students to manipulate information and media to construct their own meanings
• Enables students to share their ideas quickly and easily
• Engages students of all cognitive levels and abilities
• Prepares students to be college and career ready

These benefits, among others, are why technology has become a major part of the global curriculum. However, teaching digital literacy has its challenges. The aspects of e-safety, critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and finding and evaluating information must all be addressed. Many teachers lose sight of creativity and collaboration because Common Core and other initiatives focus on gathering and evaluating information with very little emphasis on creativity.

Educators need to embrace the creative and collaborative aspects of digital literacy. So much great learning happens through creative and collaborative processes. Bridget Burns, Michael Crow and Mark Becker noted the benefits of collaboration in their article Innovating Together: Collaboration as a Driving Force to Improve Student Success, March 2, 2015. They state that collaboration spurs innovation because bringing together groups of people who have different ideas, approaches, experiences, and areas of expertise creates a fertile environment for generating new concepts and methods. Sharing insights allows ideas to be refined and improved. Charging a group with developing a promising idea incentivizes the group—not just a single individual—to commit to its success and paves the way for trusted collaboration.

Giving students the opportunity to broaden their ideas and experiences opens up pathways of learning that can be extremely beneficial.

Brianna Crowley, an educator in Hershey, PA, successfully teaches her students digital literacy while infusing creativity throughout. She says it took a series of small steps to begin the process. One thing in particular she does is refrain from introducing any new tools into her classroom unless she knows they are going to enhance learning. Often she utilizes tools to engage her students, such as A Google a Day which is teaching her students to search for information in a safe yet creative way.

Another challenge teachers face while teaching digital literacy is the differing views on social media in education. Many schools have strict policies in place to avoid educational use of social media, while others feel that these restrictions are stifling the creativity and collaboration capabilities of today’s students. Dan Haesler, a teacher and educational consultant, believes in proactive social media education, and allowing students to make use of all that it has to offer.

When asked by Common Sense Media about social media bans in schools Haesler replied, “What if we approached driver’s education in the same way?” He concluded: Driving lessons would be taught by adults with little or no driving experience, they would only focus on what not to do, and they would never take place in an actual car. Both driving a vehicle, and navigating the internet require experience and knowledge of safety precautions so as to avoid any major incidents.

The students at Maker’s Place in Homewood, Philadelphia, PA, are a prime example of digital literacy at its finest. Children from the inner city get together to work on their digital literacy through creative and collaborative projects. Instructor Jomari Peterson teaches the students to “take control of your destiny and change the world.” Her students work together to utilize different apps and programs that help them first build a business idea and then use collaborative tools to bring that idea to life.

Although there is no “secret sauce” to effectively help educators teach their students digital literacy, there are some key points to focus on:

• Allow students to maintain blogs or webpages that enable them to track their own learning. Google Drive easily allows students to create blogs and sites that they can share and collaborate on with their peers.
• Have students create digital stories that they can share and publish. Edu.buncee.com is a site where students can utilize hundreds of custom stickers, animations, multimedia and even record their voice into their project so they can make it “their” own, both figuratively and literally. For example, “My Day at the Beach” a student tells her story with stickers and animations and her voice recording. “Come to Istanbul” describes the city and all it has to offer.  Getting creative with Buncee is a breeze.

• Offer students the ability to email and video chat with students in other countries. Skype Translate allows students to have a real time conversation with immediate translation.
• Don’t get caught up in the need for strictly finding information and evaluating it. Always allow for creative ways to learn and produce.

With the help of great Ed Tech tools and dedicated educators, students can gain digital literacy and become fluent in safely finding and evaluating information, creating, and collaborating.

Inspired Learning to Get Results Now at #ModelSchools

Rigorous and Relevant Adult Learning Fuels Rigorous and Relevant Schools

Solving ill-structured problems. Collaborating with peers. Integrating concepts across disciplines. Adapting to unpredictable scenarios. These experiences are hallmarks of what Willard R. Daggett calls “Quadrant D” learning – learning experiences that are both rigorous and relevant. Quadrant D tasks push students to their intellectual edges while engaging them in authentic and meaningful work.

Image credit: https://khspd12.wikispaces.com/

Most teachers and education leaders today agree that our schools need a nudge in the direction of rigor and relevance. However, even as they talk about the need for a shift in teaching and learning, educational conferences often model a very familiar learning experience—what Daggett refers to as “Quadrant A” (or what many teachers call less kindly: “sit n’ git”). It can be easy to leave a conference with a tote bag full of materials and new jargon, but very little else.

This year’s Model Schools Conference is going to be worlds apart from the traditional education conference. The organizers understand that in order to support students in engaging and challenging learning experiences, teachers and leaders need to be engaged and challenged. Rather than just listening to people talk about Quadrant D, participants will have the opportunity to engage in a range of Quadrant D learning experiences from the student perspective. Quadrant D opportunities at the Model Schools Conference include:

• A focus on “makerspaces,” including a real makerspace provided as part of a conference partnership with Table Top Inventions. Makerspaces—collaborative, creative spaces chock full of tools and materials for informal creation, invention, and learning—are becoming increasingly popular at forward-thinking schools and libraries. Students are using the Model Schools Conference Makerspace as its venue to engage in a shared design challenge, working together to invent solutions to complex tasks. Participants will also have the opportunity to attend a variety of makerspace-focused sessions, and learn from colleagues at schools that have successfully implemented makerspaces on their campuses, including Clark Burnett, a 4th grade teacher from Lang Ranch Elementary School in Thousand Oaks, CA.
• An opportunity for all participants to share, collaborate, teach, and learn in unpredictable ways through the DIY Design-Your-Own-Session strand of the program. Inspired by the popular EdCamp movement, and facilitated by Jimmy Casas, Principal of Bettendorf High School in Iowa and Jim Warford, of the International Center for Leadership in Education, this strand makes it possible for any participant to take the stage and present on an education-related passion.
• Proven effective for the past three years, these sessions provide teachers and instructional leaders with two options for immersing themselves into practical strategies ready to be implemented including:
• Engaging in simulated classrooms that allow conference participants to experience Quadrant D learning. Instead of just hearing about Quadrant D work, teachers and leaders will be able to see, hear, feel, and learn from real Quadrant D activities and lessons.
• Realizing that decision-making goes way beyond just giving a “yes” or “no” answer; for each decision made, factors must be weighed and looked at from every angle and a game plan for dealing with pushback must be devised. Ideal for both current and aspiring leaders, this high-energy, interactive session will challenge and inspire you with thought-provoking, real-life leadership dilemmas and real-time feedback and discussion among peers.

This type of professional learning—immersive, creative, engaging, and challenging—is focused more on transformation than information. Providing teachers and leaders with Quadrant D experiences for their own learning is one of the most critical ways to shift the learning we ultimately provide to students. I’m excited to see the paradigm of professional conferences changing, and look forward to more rigorous and relevant learning for all members of our school communities. Register now to attend this years Model Schools Conference.

P.S. I will be there as well leading sessions on digital leadership and learning. Hope to see you there!