Liberated

Working in a school is truly a magical experience.  Every day we come to a building where hundreds of children come to actively engage. The energy within a school is truly infectious. With over 1200 students and over 80 staff, there is no end to the connectivity that takes place every day. What makes it even more significant and special these days is the incredible journey we are on to define our piece of the 21^st century educational model of education. We are actually living in a revolution. I am sure that years from now they will write about this period of time as being the tipping point of educational change.  If you take time to really look around, you can actually see the paradigm shift evolving in our halls. The collective energy and group think is shifting right in front of our eyes. It is actually quite a liberating feeling watching the many students and staff let go of old ways of thinking.

We know that change is always difficult.  As creatures of habit and comfort, we settle into familiar ways of thinking and being. The irony with this is that the 21^st century model of education actually offers more freedom and liberty to both the learners and teachers.  Once you move past your fears and let go, you will find the new model has fewer restrictions on assessment and evaluation, and at the same time empowers students to be the architects of their own learning. As a student, what is more liberating than knowing you can show you have met learning outcomes through a variety of media. The letting go of the belief that the teacher is the primary keeper of knowledge should be liberating for everyone. With the ability to find answers at your fingertips, the answers themselves don’t really have the same relevance they use to. What matters more today is how you arrive at the answer and what you do with the answers once we get them. And further to this, is the reality that it is not about one person knowing how to arrive at the answer; the real power is actually found in the collective almost global response to seeking answers.

The conundrum for many teachers is rooted in the fear of not knowing how to engage students using these new paradigms. If I let go, will they respond? For many teachers, the locus of classroom management is rooted in control and positional power. What we need now is more research and practical examples on how to support the delivery of wholesale change in education. The researchers have and are proclaiming that change is needed and that we must do it now; we get it and we hear you. Now that we have heard your message, we politely ask that the ivory tower researchers return to their labs and work to develop practical methodologies and structures that can be implemented in our classrooms. Proven strategies and methodologies used to support 21^st century education will help reduce the stress and anxiety and make the change more manageable for everyone.

  

Identify the stakeholders…       Trust the process…      Trust the people…

Aiming Higher

In February, we held assemblies with all of our students – a “mid-year check-up”. We introduced them to Maslowe’s Hierarchy of Needs and challenged them to recognize that (for many of them) the lower layers of the model were already in place: personal safety, security of food/shelter, security of resources etc. We challenged them to take on more complex ideas like creativity, morality, and self-actualization. What we didn’t realize was that the students would turn this challenge back on us: we have been addressing the “lower layers” through the basic mission in our school, but what have we been doing to address Maslow’s more complex needs?

As part of last week’s blog, we discussed empathy and compassion as key tools underscoring our vision of connectivity at Sullivan Heights. This belief came into place as a product of lengthy, sometimes difficult conversations about our school’s Supporting Student Success model. Part of the development of this vision involved conducting a series of focus groups with a variety of students in our school.  The goal is to revise our school code of conduct by linking empathy and compassion to other values that emerge from the focus groups. It was at this phase of the process where the students surprised us with their challenge: “Aim Higher” they said!

The first of the three major themes was student perception of safety. We could have predicted this because we are constantly putting mechanisms in place to ensure safety. What we didn’t predict was the students higher-level interpretation of what it means to feel safe. Their concerns had little to do with the physical realm; instead, they argued that they did not always feel safe enough to take academic and social risks. Our students used terms like “persecution” and “harassment” in their definition of safety. Of the students involved in our focus groups, most reported they wanted to make it clear that they did not always feel safe from [over] criticism of their ideas.

The second theme to emerge from the focus groups was the feeling of worth. Part of our challenge from February was to encourage students to engage more in the school, to contribute, to make a difference. Since then, our groups argued that they are trying to do so, but we are not doing enough to give them those opportunities. The message we got was that the students “want to belong in their own way” but the school’s emphasis on more concrete, less intrinsic factors like grades, graduation, and requirements is making it difficult for them to be part of the community.  

The idea of “success” was the third of the three major themes. Once again, the students challenged us to rise past the concrete idea of graduation as the ultimate marker of success. They felt that systematically targeting an outcome (recognizing students for getting a good mark, giving an award) missed the point of success. It was loud and clear that we needed to make the act of recognition, itself, the goal. They told us there are many ways we could be celebrating student success, but we have been hyper-focused on celebrating the same traditional indicators: grades, clubs, teams – organized structures that, coincidentally, they perceived as being led by the adults in the building.

Where do we go from here? We will continue to engage our students in these discussions and use these findings to engage other members of our school community in discussion. Although the initial impetus for the process was to revise our school’s code of conduct, we recognize that it indicates that we are ready to review our mission, vision, and goals. The mandate from the students is clear: listen to your own challenge and aim higher.

Identify the stakeholders…       Trust the process…      Trust the people…

Connectivity in the School Context

Connectivity in our context is defined as the synergy created through interconnected relationships. In the school context, through the learning process, the goal is to ensure students have compassion and empathy as tools in their decision-making toolbox.  The goal of creating, fostering and nurturing connectivity is grounded in the belief that relationships serve as one of the corner stones to success. You can master the use of a tool, you can master a skill, you can even master rote detail, but all this mastery is nothing is you don’t have the connectivity of relationships. The current state of technology in education provides a great example. A child’s mastery of a computer is only as great as the depth of the programs learned. As Alec Couros (2012) would support, opening the doors to world wide connectivity and open learning, leaves no stone unturned in terms of what can be learned. The synergistic connectivity created through relationships and an open learning environment is the goal.

So where do we start? We know that somewhere along the line, children lose what adults often call naivety. They go from trusting everyone to being more closed and guarded. Yes, of course this is a self-preservation mechanism at work, but can it be taken too far? Very young children foster relationships void of cultural, gender or socioeconomic bias. At what point do they begin to avoid relationships because of learned bias? As we stated in a previous blog, is this just another example of an ingrained CODE in action. If we’re going to promote connectivity we need to get to the root of relationships and build trust within our system and building.  

“Trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It undergirds and affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture, and every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality of every present moment and alters the trajectory and outcome of every future moment of our lives -- both personally and professionally. I am convinced that in every situation, nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.”

(Covey, LeadershipNow.com, 2009)

Once trust is established, connectivity can take over. What we aim to achieve through connectivity is the development of emotional connections for our students to provide them with empathic self-regulation and understanding when they make decisions.  It seems easy to rest on the rhetoric mission statement of “creating the 21^st century citizen that is capable of functioning in this new world”; but what does it really mean? We have written about the need to develop “educational” skills and mastery, but as we previously stated, mastery of skill or concept falls short if not connected through relationships and emotional learning. 

If you ask an adult what they value, what would the answer be?  Most typical answers might include family, friends, other relationships, jobs and probably money.  If you ask children or teenagers what they value, they might have similar answers albeit with different emphasis.  The child might see the family as very important whereas the teenager might see personal items as more “valuable”.  We are asking our students the question: "What do you value at our school?".  

This question directly ties into last week’s blog entry and the work we are doing in supporting student success. This conversation began with some key focus groups within our student body.  For several lunch hours, we have been interviewing students in relation to the development of a new code for our school.  The existing "Code of Conduct" at our school is respect yourself and others, respect the environment and respect learning.  We believe this falls short of what we’re trying to achieve. Where is the buy in from students and staff?

When we asked our students the question “As a student, what do you value?”, the answers for most students were related to them feeling safe, having a sense of worth and knowing that they will get acknowledgment for success.  Herein lies the reason why we want to venture down this path. In fostering trust, we will promote connectivity and look forward to providing an environment that is valued by all our students.

Stay tuned for next week’s blog when we define the narrative of our journey.

Identify the stakeholders…       Trust the process…      Trust the people…

Moving in Formation

The Sullivan Heights vision of a model for student success is centered on building community, connectivity and capacity within our school. This Venn diagram illustrates that we believe these core missions will support student success. We further believe that targeted assessment mechanisms used to support student learning and evaluate systemic purpose will govern our mission.  The encompassing circle labeled Innovative Learning Design refers to our school wide initiative that supports our growth towards more effective, interactive, integration and use of technology.

Like many high schools, Sullivan Heights is a busy place full of many activities, projects and initiatives. Finding cohesion among the myriad activities and curricula is key to providing alignment of mission and goals. As Covey would support, a synergistic approach where we agree to fly in the same direction, in formation and share the lead in our efforts to support student success.

“Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo. ” ― Peter Senge

We’re looking forward to the many discussions and collaborative time that will be needed to define how we support our students as we navigate educational change. 

Identify the stakeholders…       Trust the process…      Trust the people…