I came across this video of teachers providing their vision of 21st century teachers. Eighteen classroom teachers speak out on technology integration in response to two videos that have been around for a while A vision for students of today and more particularly A Vision of K-12 students today. I have several quick comments:
There are teachers who understand that technology is a tool to do things in more powerful ways; that the technology really can be used to collaborate, connect, challenge, and engage.
There are other teachers who have a fixed mindset and are not yet open to possibilities.
Leadership of schools has an important role to play in developing a growth mindset amongst staff. Principals and other leaders must continually focus on a co-created vision for the future and relentlessly pursue it. See principal Carolyn Stuart’s guest blogpost providing an example of how this is done – on purpose.
Unless we do something to improve the quality of teacher training things will change slowly. Old models exist of patch protection, overblown bureaucracy slowing pace of change and lecturers modelling what not to do. In some cases training institutions have limited technological resources and staff are still using overhead projectors to deliver courses. How will this prepare teachers for the future? Yes, I know there are places that are doing some good things, but I see limited future-focused teacher training here in New Zealand, or further afield. If it happens it is through good luck rather than good planning and vision across the whole organisation.
If you have any models of teacher training that are really pushing forward I want to know!! Am I missing something? Join the conversation at ALPinE Leadership if you have ideas and visit our Answergarden on Teacher Training.
So watch the video. It is worth thinking about what you are doing to lead future focused change in education.
And here is my final comment:
We need to get over the talk about 21st century…
We are over a decade into it. Aren’t we there yet?
A month ago Christchurch was decimated by yet another earthquake. Since then many new online initiatives, discussions and reports have appeared using a range of social networking and web 2.0 tools. The power of social networking has driven some interesting dialogue! Over the next few months this will continue, morph and intensify as we rebuild Christchurch City.
So in the Storify below I have taken snippets of the journey to date. Social networks enable more power to our people than ever before. As a company that focuses on leadership for the future, we understand that leadership is not about power but about influence. In today’s world we all have the opportunity to influence the future as never before.
This archive of social networking conversations takes snippets from a variety of social networks and Storify helps bring these together easily. The snippets include information about the earthquake, its effect on education, its effect on businesses, and on the lives of us all. They are stories of corage, hope and possibilities.
You will see a “load more” message at the bottom – click it! There are several pages of enlightening material, resources and links. It’s worth it….
The partner site for Think Beyond has now been launched. It provides an opportunity to interact with other future focused leaders globally. Each week features a guest blogger, starting this week with Walter McKenzie, Director of Constituent Services at ASCD. There are also webinars and programs on offer. There are opportunities for leaders to form their own action learning groups to work on projects of interest over set periods of time. The ALPinE Leadership site is a ‘we’ site – it will be co-constructed over time based on feedback and ideas that come from the users. Please join the group at www.alpineleadership.com and help us grow leaders for the future.
In two day’s time I head of to India. There are six of us travelling together, as volunteers for the Rata Teachers’ Support group. As well as being tourists, we will be supporting untrained teachers to grow their teaching skills. I will have the wonderful opportunity to develop leadership skills with a group of seven principals and to explore how they will continue to grow capabilities in years to come. As time permits I will update my thoughts via posterous, to my Think Beyond blog and my other social networking sites. This is my first experience using posterous so it will also be an experiment to see how useful I think it is and whether I want to add it to my ongoing suite of social networking tools.
When I return to Christchurch, just before Christmas, I know I will be a completely different person. It’s not just that the cells in my body will have been replaced! More that there will be new experiences, connections and friendships that will influence my thinking. The continual search to grow, I believe, is an important part of being a leader. I know I will learn so much from the team that is travelling with me, and from the many people I will get to meet during my travels.
I am over the time wasted each year by schools ‘doing Christmas’ for the last two weeks of the school year. Yes, it’s that time of year again. A note comes home asking for some extra money for the craft activities needed for the Christmas theme. Now there may be a wonderful reason for this….it just takes a bit to convince me. I would want to ask the teacher:
What is the purpose? The response will determine whether this is a teacher who really knows his/her stuff, or just another teacher trapped in the past of nice activities to finish the year with.
How will this drive my child’s learning in ways that are powerful and future focused? Yes, I know it’s nice to do some really cool stuff just for fun too…
What will they be doing/making? Is this something that reinforces our throw away society? Is it a nice paper Christmas tree with some glittery lights; maybe a fairy to put at the top of the tree; or some loops we can colour in then staple together to hang in the classroom…
Will they be considering Christmas from multiple perspectives – different cultures, religions, and ways of celebrating? Giving instead of getting? Does that mean when other religious festivals are on the calendar they’ll do the same? As well as the Easter theme that is?
If a teacher focuses on a Christmas theme for two weeks it could look like this:
-’making and doing’, singing, dancing etc on a Christmas theme – 8 hours
-working out the item for the Christmas concert so it looks like the kids have come up with the idea – 2 hours
-the class relentlessly practising for the concert - 3 hours
-liaising with the parents re costumes and props – 1 hour
-team or schoolwide practices for the concert – 2 hours
That’s 16 hours for Christmas each year, and I think that is a conservative estimate. This is just on the ‘celebrating’ aspect of Christmas.
Let’s just pretend that a classroom was ‘doing Christmas’ like it’s been done for generations. By the time a student finishes their first six years of schooling they could have had nearly 100 hours of ‘doing Christmas’.
Sorry, in most cases I don’t consider this deep and meaningful learning. It’s simply repeating education as we know it. I know there are some teachers and some schools that have moved beyond this. And I can also tell you that an awful lot haven’t. And that has got to change or schools will become irrelevant. Actually when I think about it ‘doing Christmas’ is just one symptom of the root cause. Too many teachers teach for the past not the future.
I’m part of a team working on a two day workshop called Building Future Focussed Schools. It’s a pretty challenging topic and it has me thinking about the whole notion of how leaders can grow the conditions for change to occur. We seem to be so focused on conformity that we are in danger of choking in blah. So how can we move beyond this? Four ideas came to mind as a starting point.
Team work is not enough. We must question and challenge our own thinking and that of others. When ‘group think’ occurs there will be no forward momentum – “We’re okay as we are! In fact we’re really good so why change?” While organisational coherence is necessary, so is creative tension and challenge. “Challenge is the crucible for greatness” – Kouzes & Posner. Over-consultation stymies creation. I’m a fan of involving people to gain deep commitment, and of listening to people’s needs. At the same time I worry that ideas generated from consultation sometimes focus only on the past and present; without building in ways to explore possibilities and to ask “What if…?”. There is the famous quote from Henry Ford “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” If we spend too much time in consultation we slow things down, reduce clarity and conform to the average. Courage is needed.We live in times where we are pulled back to standards, quality assurance and risk aversiveness. Moving beyond this takes leaders who are strong in their beliefs about learning, have a dream of what could be and can intelligently advocate their position. Courageous leadership is not about the position we hold in the organisation and doesn’t make excuses that those ‘above’ require conformity. “The greater the darkness, the more brightly the candle glows.” Learning will happen if we get out of the way. Most schools of today are over-structured and over controlled. What would happen if educators stepped back and let students do more for themselves? Allow them to be expert learners and teach the adults – it’s a reciprocal arrangement that acknowledges the expert knowledge of the teacher. It also acknowledges that students can create their own learning when they engage, collaborate and choose.
I was reflecting on this as I watched one of the latest TEDTalks from Sugata Mitra, on The Child-driven Education. His work in putting computers into holes in the walls of buildings in Indian villages has had profound results. His latest work goes well beyond this. He has come to understand that children will learn to do what they want to learn to do. Sugata talks about the way in which the learning happened without intervention from the outside. When the students asked him “How do we do that?” his answer was ” I don’t know that actually…” and he left them to it. They worked together to move their learning forward.
Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education
While I’m not yet convinced of the depth of the learning shown in the TEDTalk what I am sure of is that a new idea was tried and has had amazing results. Sugata Mitra didn’t conform to the tried and true. He had an idea and went with it. If we are aiming for future focussed schools perhaps one of the key understandings is to look outside the current realities and explore the possibilities, generate some creative tension and take a giant leap.
I have just finished reading a fantastic book – Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I was particularly interested in this biography because of my connection with the Rata Teachers’ Support Trust and the fact that I will be volunteering in India later this year. The book describes Greg’s journey to help build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He provides a real example of courageous leadership with a commitment to educating children, especially girls. His clear focus and passion are exhibited in his treatment of obstacles. Failure was something to learn from; obstacles an opportunity to think differently. This is the type of leadership we need for the future – adaptive, reflective and resilient.
The greatest lesson Greg learnt was to “share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects (p.150).” This may have seemed more time consuming to start with but in the long run it produced more sustainable results. Too often leaders are focused on doing things rather than creating connections. They become driven by improving the external environment of their organisations without considering the foundational relationships that underpin the organisation’s success.
In their work based in Chicago schools, researchers Bryk and Schneider came to the conclusion that relational trust was foundational for school improvement. They suggested four vital signs for identifying and assessing trust:
Respect – genuinely talking and listening to each other in ways that acknowledge and accept the views, ideas and beliefs of others.
Competence – the ability and willingness to fulfill responsibilities and believe others to be competent.
Personal regard – caring for each other personally and professionally. Going that extra mile.
Integrity – keeping ones word. Putting the needs of children first, even when tough decisions need to be made.
These points were all exhibited by Greg Mortenson. He did not try to impose his views on those he was working with and he was prepared to do what was needed, at times with great personal sacrifice. The building of trust allowed him to work in areas that few could access and to provide education to many.
Future leadership is very much about collaboration, building professional learning networks and growing capabilities in others. It builds on trust and integrity and comes from the heart as well as the head. Future leadership requires leaders who listen and who constantly reflect on their own behaviour.
Last week our local paper included an advertisement for school open evenings. It is getting to that time of year when schools are vying for new students for 2011. In preparation for these open nights each school listed their contact details, including their website addresses, the idea being that you can find out more about the schools you are interested in. It’s all about marketing.
I was interested in finding out what was happening in all these schools. One process I use to do this is the web walk, a type of learning walk which involves looking through a site looking for key statements and ideas that provide information about the school:
What does it stand for?
What does it focus on?
Is it an ongoing ‘story’ or just updated for marketing?
What does it tell you about the benefits of attending the school?
Does it mention learning (you’d be surprised the number of schools that don’t)?
Is there any evidence of student voice?
My passion is leadership for the future so I was particularly interested to see whether there was any collaboration between staff, students, school and wider networks and whether the learning seemed to be future focused. So here is what I found…
Out of the 11 school sites I looked through 9 had up to date newsletters and term calendars. The sites had information about the structures of schooling – the buildings, the curriculum learning areas, the rules, the board of trustees… I was hoping for more. I wanted to see the visiosn connect with ideas around key competencies, rich tasks and global projects. I wanted to see the odd glimmer of teachers being active inquirers. I wanted to see a glimpse into what might come next…
I see the challenge of schools for the future as articulating the processes of learning and collaborating with the world. While this may be happening in some of these schools, no evidence presented itself during my web walk. There is still a focus on students being involved as house leaders and school councillors. Nothing wrong with that (depending what the role involves and what is being achieved)….I just want the and… how have we moved on to really engage students in meaningful learning? Are they participants or observers? Give me examples of students having input into their learning and giving feedback to the school. 21st century learning was supposed to start 10 years ago. Have I missed it?
Integrity is about consistency and congruence between our values and beliefs and our actions. It also implies a high level of honesty and truthfulness in these actions. Leading with integrity requires ethical behaviour, where a leader is committed to upholding the culturally accepted values of society and is prepared to defend them.
In an online environment our integrity can be compromised if we do not think carefully about what we make public. In Joe McCarthy’s blogpost on The Dark Side of Digital Backchannels in Shared Physical Spaces there are examples of backchannel behaviour that has had dramatic effects on people’s lives.
Our actions are amplified because so many people have access to our thoughts and behaviours. This amplification can help our message reach a wider group of followers. It can also amplify decisions that, in retrospect, we wish we had not made. Online integrity is connected to our moral beliefs yet the day to day living of these beliefs can easily be eroded by quick, irreversible online decisions. The establishment of online behaviours, etiquette and cultural norms can be developed by:
parents understanding and modelling sound online behaviours so that their children can follow by example;
schools recognising that social networking is here to stay and that we will get feedback from students through backchannels whether we like it or not. You can bury your head in the sand and ban social media or use it as a way to deepen online integrity and build student awareness and skills;
constantly checking your own personal behaviours to see if your offline and online behaviours are congruent – and ethically sound; and
not responding unethically in response to inappropriate online behaviour.
Let’s face it. None of us are perfect. Yet if we have well defined values and beliefs we may be less likely to cause offense or put ourselves in situations where we wish we could turn back time, erase 140 characters, remove a photo before a job interview or get back our privacy.
I heard this from a student last year, following conference discussions about 21st century learners. His comment, “Don’t you realise that we are here now?” This reminded me that the changes needed in education are urgent, yet ongoing. We need to look to the future and get on with making changes.
This comment led to me facilitating two World Cafe events at the learning@school conference. The people who came to these sessions were ones who had been listening to the hype of 21st century learning, teaching and leading for some time and who wanted to challenge themselves and others to move forward. The World Cafe format allowed time to slow down, engage in dialogue and leave with some personal and professional ideas for the future.
Some of the overheard discussions during these sessions included:
Where is the expectation that things will change?
Just because we can’t do it doesn’t mean we should stop others from doing it.
I’m looking forward to being made redundant as a teacher.
If you believe in it you prioritize time.
I don’t think it’s written anywhere “Thou must do it alone.”
Schools should be laboratories for life.
Many of the comments focused around the need for changes in teacher practice and increasing the role of students in their own learning. If we really want to transform education we need to start with teacher change, otherwise students will not have a greater say. For teacher practcie to transform across an organisation school leaders must be committed to the transformation and lead by example.
One World Cafe participant jotted his thoughts clearly on a post-it, as shown below. I liked the quirky idea of a post-it on an iphone and also the call to personal action. I don’t think it is suggesting we will get change by riding over top of people. We know we need to build trust and gain commitment. We also know we can’t go at the pace of the slowest. The time for educational leaders to step up is now. We need to move beyond the rhetoric and start taking action. We could even involve students in the plan…
