Reflection and leadership - #SAVMP

This week as a part of our SAVMP (School Admin Virtual Mentor Program) we have been asked to consider the role of reflection. I have written in other posts about my own need to think before I act and take time to listen without distraction to the person in my office. I have also written about the role of reflection in my student's self-assessments of minor and major projects/papers/presentations in my classes. I know that at the beginning of the year, most students write cursory reflections and only when asked to re-write and consider specific questions they have actually posed do they come to see the value of self-reflection.

I ask my faculty to write reflections after they have completed any major professional development activity whether its attending a conference or workshop, completing summer curriculum development, or participating in a fellowship or sabbatical opportunity. I want them to think about what they have learned in terms of what it will mean for their students. I also want to build us as a community of people who think about their own learning and share it with others.

This week I want to reflect on an experience sharing a concept for a new program with our high school faculty. This is a faculty that has had to absorb an extraordinary amount of change in the past two years -- after years of incremental, barely noticeable change. Some have become weary of change and understandably want time to become expert at what is new -- and not take on any new initiatives. On Wednesday I went before them with an idea that was disruptive in how we think about that most precious of commodities -- time (I am asking them to innovate and change again) -- giving over regular course/class time for two weeks of problem based learning.I worked with a great partner on the presentation (our faculty clerk) and began by reminding the faculty of how I had come to be standing in front of them -- I provided context.

This is what I want to think about some more, the importance of providing context. I hadn't arrived at this proposal on my own or gotten the idea from some alien visiting from Mars, instead this was an idea that had its roots in several years of self-studies and side conversations around other related projects and discussions. Furthermore, the concept was developed by other teachers working with me. While it had the backing of administrators, the leading committee bringing the idea forward was made up of teachers and administrators. One of my teacher partners in this work helped with the presentation and finished by tying the concept to our school's mission.

Once the context was established, I sat down and our faculty clerk asked the teachers to turn to a partner and consider the wonderful possibilities arising from this concept. What followed was 5 minutes of creative, open, positive imaging and brainstorming. We then shared out with the entire group.

What I have learned from this is to remember that in all change, at any given moment I need to remember that leadership includes building consensus through reminding folks of how we got to where we are, how it fits with our vision and at least initially focus on what is possible. (Later of course, we will have time for others to voice their concerns and help us find solutions to challenges). But context and focus on creative possibility (rather than allowing a single grumpy voice to shut everyone down), opens up space for the creativity that is at the core of my faculty; it makes space for us to collectively imagine the ends we wanted all along. It helps us realize our mission in this century.

Reflections on this online learning experiment

First, would I teach US History in this online format again??  YES
Second, did this consume too much of the time I would have otherwise spent reading for pleasure or sitting on my mother's dock starring off at the lake?? YES
So why, given how much I value summer for the time to read would I do this again?

The paradox in the above statement is emblematic of so much of teaching 10 students US History in an online course. There are real trade offs that have to be made.

Face to face versus virtual: I believe absolutely in the teacher student relationship that happens within a bricks and mortar classroom and the peer relationships that develop around those tables. The online experiences is different. You have to work with great intentionality to make it personal, to make it human. It helped that we began with two days in a real classroom. Assignments were created in such a way as to "force" conversations between peers in the discussion forum and the class wiki. And early projects were designed to be collaborations. Regular SKYPE check ins between myself and the students, even for just a five minute discussion of an assignment idea were a necessity. But the upside of this individualized approach to building class cohesion and student support is that the learning is individualized. Rather than spending time preparing for four classes a week, I prepared for one class and focused on individual student thinking and learning the rest of the time.

Time is an all too precious commodity in a 6.5 week summer school course: Over the course of 9 months, teachers feel pressed to cover all the content. 6.5 weeks raises that pressure at least five fold. I had to stay focused on the themes I wanted my students to have ingrained in their brains: the evolution of the meaning of freedom (and who it includes) over three hundred years, the development of a market economy, the rise of American imperialism/exceptionalism,  the Constitution as a living document with meaning for their lives, and the agency of ordinary citizens for creating change in their communities and nations. Over these themes, stood my own working assumption about history--that history is created by the actions of ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary people). Within these themes, I had to let go of insisting every student learn every detail of the battles of the War of 1812 or the Civil War, the many treaties signed by the US over the course of the 19th century, or even all the places the CIA fomented rebellion during the Cold War. Did I make the right choices for my students? Should we have spent more time on Reconstruction or the Taft Presidency and how it compares to Roosevelt's or Wilson's (something I do when I teach US History over the course of the school year)? I have colleagues who believe this is the only chance many of our students will ever have to learn the details of our history. In 6.5 weeks, either the details come fast and furious -- in a blur-- or the focus is on the big picture with details helping to ground those themes in time and place.

Students still need to communicate: Thursday evening class was a rich experience (even when the technology wasn't perfect). The short class time worked because students had already been "talking" in the forum. The discussion forum worked because the students came to trust each other to read carefully and respond honestly-even when they didn't agree.

There is a place for this sort of learning within the continuum of bricks and mortar to large scale MOOCs. Done well, student's learn content and skills--skills they will encounter in their life. This sort of learning helps to break down that artificial wall between what you learn at school and the rest of your life. The students learned at a time they were ready and in a manner that served their very different learning needs.

Sunflowers

Every spring my youngest daughter and I plant sunflower seeds in the garden by our deck. Sarah loves that these tiny seeds will grow into 12-14 foot plants with bright yellow petals and hundreds of new seeds for next year. Normally, sunflowers track the sun. If planted in an unobstructed field the yellow flowers will point towards the east in the morning and by late afternoon they will face west.  Our sunflowers are planted on the side of our house that faces west. They get no morning light. They face the house in a generally southern direction. Even as the sun comes over the house and heads west through the afternoon, our sunflowers refuse to turn. And yet they grow and thrive and I get to look right at the flowers, covered with bumble bees from the kitchen window while I do the dishes. Sarah says the sunflowers are confused and think the bright light reflecting off our house and deck is the sun. I would say, the seed planters have set the sunflower up to point in the wrong direction.

I have been thinking about our sunflowers as I do the dishes and contemplate structures that will support the direction and vision we have for Westtown School. One of my projects this summer has been to develop structures that will continue the process of preK-12 curricular cohesion and integration—work we have been involved in for a decade.  I have been talking with peers at other independent schools about their structures and processes for curricular review, program innovation and implementation, and faculty development and evaluation. Each school has different structures and like us many are in the process of making adjustments or complete over halls of existing systems. There are intriguing and impressive elements in each school’s effort to insure their program makes sense as children progress through the grades and that the program supports the school’s mission.

Each school began with questions to answer and in some cases problems to address. I have come to believe we have three questions. One of the questions we want to answer grows out of our current curricular review process. Faculty engage with the process and finish the year long review asking for a regular means of supporting ongoing cross divisional discussions. Faculty members within the review process have gotten to know and appreciate their colleagues in other divisions. Valuable conversations were begun and promising directions for program were identified. Ten years ago teachers in different divisions would not have said that meeting across divisions was of any value. Indeed, one of the goals of the program area curricular review process was that faculty would come to know and learn from colleagues in other divisions.

Another question has to do with the vision we have articulated for our students to be engaged in collaborative learning and ethical leadership in a connected world: Quaker Education at Westtown School. This vision—the actualization of our school’s mission—requires a highly motivated faculty actively engaged with each other across divisions and across disciplines. How do we break down program area silos and enable creative collaboration among faculty and students?

The third question has to do with professional development. How do we empower faculty to innovate, to experiment, to learn, even to fail from time to time in order to realize our vision within their classes and interactions with our students? 

As I think about these questions, our answers will not come from replicating the system of one of our peer schools. Indeed, we need to start with our three questions, turn them into statements and design backwards from there. Our own school culture and context will require its own system, something different from what we have now. To get there we will have to be willing to ask additional and divergent questions (what ifs and why nots) and be willing to explore unsettling answers to those questions. In the end we want our systems to point us in the direction we have chosen for ourselves.