Food for Thought: Who are we?

Dear all,

Hope you all had a fun night at the end of year social. After all the work we have done this year you certainly deserved to have a fun evening.

The last week passed very quickly since the Class of 2016's Graduation. In my closing remarks last weekend I talked about the Cornell University Legacy Project in which older people shared their wisdom about living a happy life. I shared an anonymous quote which linked perfectly to the projects findings. 

Dying To Live

At first I was dying to grow up and go to high school

Then I was dying to finish high school and go to college
Then I was dying to finish college and start working
Then I was dying to get married and have children
Then I was dying for my children to grow old enough so I can go back to work
Then I was dying to retire
And now I am dying
And I suddenly realised 
I forgot to live…


For this weeks Food for Thought I want to build upon this and turn to a book I read a few years ago called "Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch, who when diagnosed with pancreatic cancer gave a lecture called, The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams 

This video clip is much shorter than the 'last lecture' and was his last Graduation speech. His comments hold true for all of us and might be worth remember as we inquire into who we are next year.

Last weeks Food for Thought was intended to make you think about your role in the innovation that is taking place in education in general. I believe that some of you saw it as this but others interpreted it as self aggrandizement on my behalf, as the crazy dancer leading from the front and getting others to follow. This was never my intent, because neither the article or the video are about the leader, they are about personal growth and willingness to be part of a movement. Deliberately embedded in the post was the article, 'Poking Holes in Innovation'. My intent was to start you thinking about where do you fit in the changing world of education and what are you doing to change yourself?  Do you want to be part of the ISHCMC movement that creates learning environments based around our achievement culture, positive education and innovative teaching; energizing, engaging and empowering stakeholders?

Randy Pausch in his book, Last Lecture, suggests; 

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” 

I would like to believe that ISHCMC is ready to scale the brick walls of traditional educational thinking and go beyond where we are today. Of course we will have to make adjustments to our ways of thinking and working with each other but this is necessary for any change and move forward. Poking holes in innovation ends with this question to administrators followed by four suggestions: How are you supporting inquiring and curious minds in your school or organization?

Here are some of the things that we will be encouraging next year to support this movement:

1. Sharing is Not the Same as Highlighting What Works and Fails:

• Celebrations of classroom Innovation will return to the meeting schedule next year where departments Grade Levels and individual teachers will have the opportunity to share what they have tried in their classrooms, what worked and importantly what didn't. 
• With our new communication teams of Rebecca and Signe and each section having an IT integrationist we will create more time to capture classroom pedagogy so that we can share more of the things that are happening around school everyday and learn from each other

2. Reassurance of What Will Be Measured vs What Used to Be Measured

• We will be continuing to do MAP testing and other forms of data collection but as you should have realized by now this is predominantly for us to see if our students are growing as learners and how effective our teaching is across certain subjects. This testing should not be seen as the 'be all and end all' of what we are doing because this is not the case. Thus, data collection and analysis is for us to determine the development of our students. That is why we have added PASS testing to our data collection so we know more about the social and emotional side of our students
• With changes in advisory time for Secondary school and the embedding of personal health and social education programmes in the Primary school  it should be clear that we are taking seriously Marc Prensky's challenge that schools should no longer be about just what students are learning but should move their focus to be about what students are becoming. This of course fits perfectly with the I.B. programmes, the I.B. Learner Profile and ATL skills.

3. Empower With Opportunities (Even for Those Struggling)

• As I said at the recent Tuesday briefing we will be changing the calendar next year to allow more of you to attend the Learning 2.0 PD at SSIS in October. We can send up to 40 of you to this session.

4. A Framework for Creative Teaching and Learning

• My feeling is that this will have to be developed deliberately. The word framework could be substituted by the word culture........so next year as we look at who we are, I will be working with a small committee investigating how we can maximize the potential of each and every member of our teaching community, ensuring they are all part of our movement and that we are a deliberately developing organization. We will be using the book, "An Everyone Culture' that was  introduced to me last week by one of our teachers, to analyse our own institution and see how we can create an innovative culture for everyone. 
• The authors, "Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey (and their collaborators) have found and studied companies—Deliberately Developmental Organizations. A DDO is organized around the simple but radical conviction that organizations will best prosper when they are more deeply aligned with people’s strongest motive, which is to grow. This means going beyond consigning “people development” to high-potential programs, executive coaching, or once-a-year off-sites. It means fashioning an organizational culture in which support of people’s development is woven into the daily fabric of working life and the company’s regular operations, daily routines, and conversations."

Have a good Sunday,

Yours
Adrian

Food for Thought: Being brave enough to lead

Dear all,

This will be a short Food for Thought because I know many of you are so busy. Lats night's Graduation ceremony was definitely one for all of us to be proud about. It was a quality event and one that our community and VIP's certainly appreciated. It reflective the incredible talent that we have in our students body with excellent speeches and musical performances. Michael, Emma and the rest of the secondary team put in hours of work behind the scenes to ensure everything was organized and under control down to the finest minutia. This attention to detail created a very smooth and slick ceremony that flowed perfectly. Everyone involved deserves huge congratulations.

This weeks Food for Thought comes from a combination of an blog post, 'Poking Holes in Innovation,' that I follow by A.J.Juliani and from looking through old youtube videos that I copied because I thought that they might be useful in the future. Combined they raise similar questions that relate to leadership and the spread of ideas and change. Since joining ISHCMC in 2013 it has been wonderful to see how open minded and risk taking many of you have become and how willing you are to move teaching and learning forward, not only in our own school, but also beyond. I suppose the question is where do you think we are today in this progression and how far can we go in influencing a revolution in education.

I realize that the camera is a bit shaky and in no way wish to liken you to the 'happy campers' who are enjoying a beautiful day on the hillside, but rather the commentary about the chain of events that occur.

Enjoy,

Yours
Adrian

Food for Thought: The Cognita Way

Dear all,

Another incredibly busy weekend at ISHCMC with us hosting the awesome Stingrays Invitational event. ISHCMC won very convincingly with an outstanding team effort. It was a wonderful two days of swimming involving 450 swimmers that tested our excellent administration and organization of such large events; our community spirit; and the growing competitiveness and desire of our students. Congratulations to Heather and her parents committee lead by Kellie Wheeler. Huge thanks to all of you who helped as scorers, time keepers, marshals and announcers; without such an efficient team the meet would not run so effectively. Please talk to the students in your homeroom tomorrow and congratulate the swimmers for their effort and achievement.

On Thursday and Friday last week, I attended the Regional Heads Conference in Singapore. The first day focused on the Cognita Way, which focuses on pedagogy, learning and growth. The key substance for the Cognita Way links very nicely with our mission and values. The reason for developing the Cognita Way is to create a common understanding of what a Cognita School offers educationally. The new CEO, Chris Jansen is totally committed to the idea that within a safe learning environment our priority is education and when we get that right everything else follows naturally. He sees the Cognita Way as the important "why" of what we are doing as a Cogniat School. He is very committed to changing education so it prepares students for the challenges of the 21st century.

Below is the model that has been created across all of the Cognita regions and now SLTA's will be populating through their Strategic Development Plans. But what is really missing is moving the model away from being 6 square boxes. This might be useful for collecting information but gives the wrong impression, as Chris Jansen wants this model to encourage schools to move forward and provide a 21st century education for their students.

Below is the model that has been created across all of the Cognita regions. SLTA will be populating through their Strategic Development Plan and Goals. What is really missing is moving the model away from being 6 square boxes. This might be useful for collecting information but gives the wrong impression, as Chris Jansen wants this model to encourage schools to move forward and provide a 21st century education for their students.

Purpose

Inspiring and empowering children within a safe environment to achieve more than they believed possible

The ingredients of a Cognita education

Character

Academic

Global

Enrichment

Below is the model that has been created across all of the Cognita regions. SLTA will be populating through their Strategic Development Plan and Goals. What is really missing is moving the model away from being 6 square boxes. This might be useful for collecting information but gives the wrong impression, as Chris Jansen wants this model to encourage schools to move forward and provide a 21st century education for their students. The best that has created so far is below, but I know that many of you are very creative thinkers and could design something better yourselves or with your students. Any ideas or designs very welcome as I'd hate to have 6 square boxes represent our way of educating.

Have a good evening,

Yours

Adrian

Extra Food for Thought article

“There is a momentous, broad-based cultural shift underway that has struck at the roots of every industrialized system of education. The result is a demand for more personalized learning, brain-friendly environments, less recall and more thoughtful application of knowledge, optimal conditions for eliciting intelligent behaviors, constructivist tools, and respectful, caring relationships that honor the learner.” — Thom Markham

The impetus for the cultural shift that Markham describes in Redefining Smart: Awakening Students’ Power to Reimagine Their World is well-documented. The wide-ranging dialogue concerning this new reality — a radically different conception of learning — is no longer a debate. Part of the complexity for schools seeking to address this challenge includes the obligation to make the transition without unduly alarming those who assess the quality of schooling through a lens traditionally known as rigor.

There are many misconceptions that govern the worldview of rigor in education. At its most fundamental level, advocates of rigor believe that school should be “hard”. Rigor is most frequently characterised by an abundance of homework, tests, grading, and compliance. In a school that is “hard” some students will be successful, while others will not. The notion of a learner-centred school context might be new to many of us educated in the 20th century. For parents, there are only the familiar elements of their own school experiences to relate to. The paradigm shift that can be dramatic for professional educators must be incredibly daunting for parents who note a fundamental shift in the way we think about learning. According to Markham: “Instead of measuring difficulty in terms of information retrieval, or amount of homework, the new standard of personal rigor puts thinking and intelligent behaviors at the forefront. How a student expresses those personal qualities become the standard for capability and performance. In effect, we’re starting to redefine what is ‘hard’ in school.”

So what happens when a school takes the shifting digital landscape seriously, acknowledging how the brain works, the essential need for intrinsic motivation, the reality of the declining value of fixed knowledge, the importance of social and emotional learning, and the critical need to focus on learning how to learn in new and dynamic ways? What must proponents of traditional rigor think when their child attends a school that:

Does not grade homework or believe in assigning it unless it serves a clear learning purpose.

Believes that averaging grades is illogical and allows students to negotiate assignment deadlines.

Eliminates streaming to increase challenge while believing that every student can succeed.

Regards the development of a digital presence and personal learning as educational priorities.

Is committed to the arts, design, creative expression and physical education as core curriculum.

“The chief barrier to moving forward is an outdated definition of rigor. The core task of the modern world is not to prep students for standardized tests by delivering content, or even to make them “college ready,” but to prepare them to judge the quality of information, generate new ideas, filter them through a net of critical analysis and reflection, and share and move the ideas through a design process to create a quality product, either as an idea or a material object.

Much of the above, for some, represents a lowering of standards, a dilution of rigor. The reality of where we have come from and where we need to go is clear, but the pursuit of this direction is not without its challenges. “It is indisputable that a set of industrial beliefs are ingrained in the mental model we call education… Moving from the quantifiable apparatus of schooling to the qualitative expressions of deeper intelligence — and to more personal, individual standards for thinking and accomplishment — is a huge thought barrier to cross. Welcome to 21st century life.”

Of course, it is not acceptable for schools to declare that rigor is a thing of the past, that new approaches to learning should not be open to scrutiny or that a commitment to excellence has become less important than in the past. What is required is a new definition of rigor and a commitment to educating all stakeholders in understanding why learning has changed and how schools need to change accordingly. This process will take time, patience, strong leadership and an acknowledgment that not everyone will accept the need for change or applaud the implementation of transformations that unsettle the core of traditional certainty. But continuing to do what we have always done does not honour our obligation to students and the realities of our interconnected, digital world. As Markham points out:

The task of redefining rigor is an important one. I like the new definition that Brian Sztabnik has set forth: “Rigor is the result of work that challenges students’ thinking in new and interesting ways. It occurs when they are encouraged toward a sophisticated understanding of fundamental ideas and are driven by curiosity to discover what they don’t know.” This definition is notable in that it makes no reference to getting into the “best” college.

I was fortunate to enjoy a screening of the film “Most Likely to Succeed” at theCoSN Conference in Washington DC recently and to hear the perspective of executive producer, Ted Dintersmith. I highly recommend that schools make arrangements for a screening of this important film. There is one scene in the film that especially resonated with me. In this scene, a teacher at High School Tech in San Diego, (who is using modern learning strategies with his students), holds a meeting with some of his “stronger” students who appear disgruntled with these methods. To paraphrase the exchange, he asks these students whether they would like to be equipped to lead meaningful lives or to ace the test. The shared perspective that the test results were more crucial than learning how to live meaningfully — that the development of personal interests and passions could wait — speaks volumes about the cultural expectations around schooling these days.

The real essence of rigor is doing the right thing for students and ensuring they have the most dedicated, personally invested teachers to guide, mentor, coach and support them. We must have rigor in schools, but in a new context. Modern learning needs to be productive and have purpose. That purpose is related to the real world, not the game of school, long the domain of traditional rigor. While learning will inevitably look different in this new context, the core essence of the relationship between engaged students and caring teachers has never been more important.

Eric Sheninger, in his new book, deals with the issue of rigor in some practical ways that are the hallmark of his writing. He suggests that teachers in the contemporary digital landscape need to take care to consider whether modern methodologies are still as structured, rigorous, and relevant as before. For Sheninger, the critical instructional design questions modern teachers need to ask include: “What capabilities do I want my students to develop? In what specific ways is my instructional design rigorous, relevant, and goal oriented? What are my benchmarks for rigor? Relevance? Relationships? Clear objectives?”

Engagement and personal meaning are the new rigor. Digital learning, balanced with traditional, challenging expectations deepen, rather than dilute rigor. Parents and educators are right when they suggest school needs to be rigorous. But if we accept — as we must — that the needs of the first half of the 21st century are inevitably and distinctly different from the second half of the 20th century, what this rigor looks like needs to be reconsidered and embraced with the modern mindset required. Nothing less than a rigorous commitment to this paradigm shift will prepare our young people for the futures they deserve.

https://medium.com/synapse/reconsidering-rigor-in-schools-72264586838b#.j2mh25sby

References

Thom Markham. Redefining Smart: Awakening Students’ Power to Reimagine Their World.

Brian Sztabnik. A New Definition of Rigor.

Ted Dintersmith. Most Likely to Succeed.

Eric C. Sheninger. UnCommon Learning: Creating Schools That Work for Kids.

Food for thought: Thinking about technology

Dear all,

Brian Rogove, the Cognita CEO for South East Asia was in school on Thursday and was incredibly impressed by what he saw and heard from both teachers and students. A special moment was when Grade 10 students presented their Minecraft rendition of the new school which lead to a very lucrative business proposition being sent their way. He will back at ISHCMC for the PYP Exhibition to speak to our students and find out more about their learning experience at ISHCMC. He assured us that building is definitely about to start on the new campus following regulatory delays. Very excitingly he would like to start refurbishing the existing campus which will be converted into the ISHCMC Primary school. Hence, next week we will be working hard on firming up plans for the building using the work of the Primary School Refurbishment Committee that has been working throughout the year on this project.

The next few years could be even more exciting than the past,  as we transform our learning environments to match our vision for 21st century education.

The Food for Thought this week focuses on technology. The first part illustrates how schools and teaching can potentially be changed and how quickly this transformation could occur. This sort of tech will be here much sooner than one might imagine. It could replace science labs with ordinary classrooms, at least for the older students, and could provide the most incredible and creative individual learning pathways for students in the future. This video builds on one of the Speed Geeking concepts shared by student "Titans of Tech" to secondary teachers last Thursday morning.

Also the educational theory about technology is very sound and comes from the SAMR model for use of technology which encourages us to use technology to transform the learning experience rather than just replicate it by using tech. The link takes you to a commonsense media video that explains the SAMR model.

The second part of this weeks Food for Thought comes from the perpetual fear that many parents have about student addiction to technology. This fear leads to you being asked by parents about technology use, screen time etc etc. Obviously the appropriate use and balance for technology has to be an important part of our thinking regarding our homeroom and advisory programmes as they are reviewed. Our main source of information regarding managing the tech world for our students comes from commonsense media and so does this article, What Educators Need to Know about Technology Addiction.

Have a good weekend,

Yours,

Adrian

Food for Thought: Marc Prensky's latest thinking about education

Dear all,

I hope you have a relaxing weekend planned for yourselves. It is another much deserved energy replenishing few days break.

Marc Prensky is very well known for introducing the terms digital natives and digital immigrant to educational communities. recently his thoughts have moved to the bigger picture of education and the what and how of creating a Plan B for schools.

Prensky believes that we must teach the world’s youth to become good, capable and world improving people by mastering effective thinking, effective action, effective relationships and effect accomplishment while finding and following their passion in symbiosis with evolving technology. 

Prensky explains this here  As you will note having watched the video and read the article many of the things that you are doing in your classrooms match Prensky's ideas.

Wishing you a good Liberation and Labour Day weekend,

Stay safe and relax,

Yours

Adrian

Food for Thought: How we address bullying in school

Dear all,

Decided to give you all a rest from Food for Thought as it was a long weekend last weekend. Wow, the school has been so busy these last two weeks with some great events, assemblies and sports performances. The school really is buzzing and looks great at the moment in all areas. The new Primary Apple lab looks fantastic and the decorations for 100 books/ 100 years have transformed floor 4.  As always thanks to everyone for your contributions to MUN, MRISA football, literacy month, PTO events, swimming, assemblies, exam invigilation and last but not least innovative teaching. Every day there seems to be something new to be celebrating which makes it exciting to come to school every day.



Complementing some of the work done by Robyn Trevyaud, through Commonsense media, with our students and as we start to plan for our advisory and homeroom programmes for next year, this post about bullying might provide food for thought for all of us in how we approach this particular topic. Bullying is something that we all hope doesn't take place in our school but know it does. Yes, we have policies in place but despite these research shows that bullying is as prevalent as it always has been and may in many areas appears to be increasing. Hence reading this post from Mindshift might help us all understanding some of the underlying features about bullying that we need to address in our programmes and classrooms.

I know for some of us keeping mindfulness practices going can be hard because we are often doing them on our own. This link is to a commercial mindfulness tool that could help you feel less alone, more supported and definitely more informed. Even if you don't want to join HeadSpace the website is worth a browse because it provides lots of information about mindfulness that could be shared with students.

Have a good Sunday,

Yours
Adrian