Relax, Read, Renew

Most educators are winding down the year and heading into summer.  Winding down is such a misnomer because there is so much going on at the end of the year.  However, soon we will look around, it will be June, and we will wonder what to do with all the time we now have on our hands.  Besides taking some well deserved time to relax, I would like to suggest a few good books, some older some newer, to read that will help to re-energize you over the summer.  In no particular order, here are a few suggestions with why I think they are great choices.

• A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger

Is there a more powerful skill in an educator’s “repertoire” than being able to ask meaningful questions in order to make a young person’s thinking visible?  Berger does a great job of describing the value of questioning as well as providing suggestions on how to hone this skill.

• Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges Are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them by Ross W. Greene

Empathy is one of the best ways to make a connection with any person, but especially so with the young people in our schools.  If a young person senses you care, they will be willing to take risks because they trust you. Lost at School helps adults to empathize with those young people who struggle in school due to behavioral concerns.  No young person wants to misbehave and Greene provides powerful suggestions on how to reach these struggling learners.

• A Teacher’s Handbook: Building Communities of Self-Directed Learners by Larry Geni

This is a free on-line book that addresses building a classroom culture focused on a young person’s needs.  The powerful philosophy as well as practical applications shared in this resource can not be overstated if your goal is to create an environment that nurtures a young person’s ability to learn.

• The Art of Changing the Brain the by James Zull

Although this is not an “education” focused book it is very applicable because it explains how the human brain learns best.  “There are two fundamental things that brains want: to be safe and happy” (Zull, 2002, p.49).  Often it is the feeling of loss of control that provides the fear for our brains to not feel safe.  So, whether it is our young people in the classroom or ourselves in the schools, it is important to feel in control.  “The brain evolved to detect and resist exactly this type of thing (loss of control) for over five million years. It is not going to give in now” (Zull, 2002, p. 53), so it is best to take this into account when supporting a culture of learning.  It is amazing how much learning and brain function parallel each other.

• Innovator's Mindset by George Couros

Zull’s book does a great job of explaining how the brain/mind works, Couros does a great job of getting down to why it is important to nurture that particular mindset.  He points out, “to truly be empowered, people need both ownership and autonomy” (Couros, 2015, p.108). I believe this is true for both young people and adults, so instructional leaders (school administrators) must promote and support environments in the school that will lead to empowerment.  Couros suggests eight things to look for in the classroom which will promote empowerment.

Bonus-  The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

I had to included this book in the list if you have not yet read it.  This is a quick read that can make a powerful impact on how to approach life.  I can’t tell you the number of times I have referenced or have “seen” clear connections to what is in the book to what is taking place around me on a daily basis.

I could, and should, read each of these books again.  So, if you haven’t read them and are looking for a great book this summer,  I couldn’t encourage you more to check out these great reads. As for me, Ted Dintersmith’s “What Schools Could Be” just arrived as I head into the summer. I'll be sure to let you know what I think. :)

References

Couros, George (2015).  The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent,

    and Lead a Culture of Creativity.  San Diego, CA. Dave Bugess Consulting Inc.

Zull, James (2002). The Art of Changing the Brain.  Sterling VA: Solution Tree Press.

    Stylus Publishing.

Promoting a Proliferation of Options via the 3Bs

Many of us are now familiar with the concept behind Carol Dweck’s growth mindset

and the power of “yet.”  We have repeatedly preached to the young people in our classes that they shouldn’t be afraid to fail or to make mistakes and that the value is in the process and not the product.  These are all important concepts for our young people to understand if they are to grow as learners. However, I believe we are leaving out another important and very powerful piece of a growth mindset if we do not also include the proliferation of options in the conversation.  

The rapid increase (proliferation of options) to which I am referring is the ability to

come up with a number of different alternatives for a given situation or problem.  Too often in schools we inadvertently cull a young person’s thinking when we accept the first idea they provide and we do not encourage them to provide an alternative. By not encouraging young people to think deeper and come up with multiple options we send the message that it is about the product rather than the process.  Leonardo da Vinci would persistently distrust his first solution to any problem-suspicious that it was the result of overlearned routine- and dig around for something better.  (Gelb, 2000) We should encourage this same approach in our own classrooms. “It’s a good habit not to commit to the first solution” (Brandt & Eagleman, 2017,p.184) and important to remember that “innovation requires a number of dead ends” (Brandt et.al., 2017, p.160).   It is the thought of these dead ends that often paralyze some of our young people when trying to get started on a problem. In order to help our young people to get past this road block and to nurture their ability to promote a proliferation of options or ideas, we need to help them to bend, break, or blend what they already know.

In their book titled The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the

World, Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman explain,  “Human creativity does not emerge from a vacuum.  We draw on our experience and the raw materials around us to refashion the world” (Brandt et.al., 2017, p.38).  We can refashion what we know by

Bending

This is taking what you know and changing it in one way or another to see it in a different

light.  A caricature is one simple way of explaining how bending might look. For example, President Obama’s caricature has big ears while President Trump’s has big hair.  The artists take something we know and exaggerate or bend it to provide a different perspective. However, bending is not limited to art. It can be applied to math, science, writing, or any idea in general.

Breaking

This concept is taking something whole, breaking it apart, and then putting it together in a different way.  Art, again, would be a good way to “see” breaking take place (think Picasso). However, this can be applied to anything including technology.  Modern cell phone communication was developed from trying to overcome the challenges of transmitting multiple calls. Early on, mobile communication worked like radio in which one frequency was produced from a single tower over a wide area.  As you might guess, this limited the number of frequencies and therefore the number of cell phones that could be used at once. The solution was to break apart the large area that one tower provided and instead use many towers with smaller areas.  “The great advantage of this system was that it enabled the same broadcast frequency to be reused in different neighborhoods, so more people could be on their phones at the same time” (Brandt et.al., 2017, p.77). They literally broke the whole and put it together differently to create something new.  In this case, it was our modern cell phone communication system..

Blending

“In blending, the brain combines two or more sources in novel ways” (Brandt et.al., 2017, p.91).  Genetically modified foods come to mind here with DNA from various organisms being blended to create a new organism.  We often are also entertained by blending ideas such as the past and present blending together in the movie Back to the Future.  Some of the more creative or thought provoking ideas come from just  thinking how two or more ideas could be combined in a new way. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was developed in such a manner.

The point here is that we, as educators, have the opportunity to nurture our young people’s creative roots through bending, breaking, and blending.  However, if we are not careful we can stifle that same creativity by insisting on one solution or not insisting on a proliferation of options from our young people.  If we want to continue to promote a growth mindset in our young people, we must remember it goes deeper than not being afraid to fail. It is promoting the expectation to fail through a proliferation of options, many of which will fail, but some of which will be creative, innovative, and perhaps even profound.  

References

Brandt, Anthony & Eagleman, David.  (2017). The Runaway Species: How Human

      Creativity Remakes the World.  New York, NY. Catapult

    

Gelb, Michael J. (2000). How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci. New York, NY. Dell

Back and Looking for Feedback

It is good to be back to setting time aside for reflection on learning through this blog. I feel as if I have plateaued over the last four weeks, mostly due to running the annual state testing gauntlet.  However, during that time I also was attempting to finalize a project on which I have been working. As I was working on the project, it hit me that I am potentially missing out on a great resource and opportunity.

I want to be able to clearly articulate a vision for improving school culture when

working with colleagues or even when speaking with others outside of the schools.  That articulation started with me just getting my thoughts down on “paper,” but it has grown to a point that I began to organize it based on some common themes. What I ended up with is a small manuscript which is included, via a link, in the preview listed below.

The Handbook for Building a Greenhouse Culture in Schools provides a philosophical as well as practical approach to shifting the focus of our schools from an accountability based testing culture to one focused on our responsibility to prepare young people for life.  It is written for any educator who is seeking to contribute to building a Greenhouse Culture in Schools and can be impactful for an individual dispositional or positional leader, professional learning community, school, or school district.  Schools that function as a greenhouse are committed to focusing on nurturing the “roots” of their young people and when these qualitative (soft) skills are nurtured a natural byproduct will be strong quantitative outputs (data) for all. Ultimately the success of any school, like a greenhouse, will be measured by how healthy, how strong, and how “deeply rooted” the individuals are that leave the school.

The great resource to which I am referring is the folks who read this blog.  I would be grateful for any constructive feedback you could give me concerning the “vision” and “message” I am attempting to articulate. The link is set up for you to make comments directly on the document, but you could also use the comment section on this blog.   As an example, some questions I am curious about include:

• Is there a clear vision and message?
• If you were to read this as a staff member, would you be excited or concerned about the message?
• What is missing from the vision that should be there and what is there that maybe should not be included?
• Does the message flow smoothly and make sense or is there better way to organize it?
• After reading this “manuscript,” what are your overall thoughts and feedback?

The goal  is to get as much feedback as possible in order to refine this message, so that I

(or anyone who agrees with me for that matter) would be able to share a clear vision with a staff, school district, or community should the opportunity arise.

Thanks for any help you can give me.  :)