Adapt

 From the Visual Thesaurus:  Accommodate.  Conform.  Adjust.  Make fit for, or change to suit a new purpose.  Adapt or conform oneself to new or different conditions. 

Know, understand, and connect to purpose, first.  Context shifts so it is important to be clear about one's sense of purpose.  Purpose relates to one's values.

As Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky put it: Clarifying the values that orient your life and work and identifying larger purposes to which you might commit are courageous acts.  You have to choose among competing, legitimate purposes, sacrificing many in the service of one or a few.  In doing so, you make a statement about what you are willing to die for, and, therefore, what you are willing to live for.  ~  from The Practice of Adaptive Leadership

Top 10 Ideas for a 21st Century Classroom * Experience

1. Pull, don't push.  Draw out questions and help students translate that into insight and understanding.  Education is not about the transmission of knowledge, it's about empowering each student to reconcile a question he or she is facing--and can't help but seek out an answer.
2. Create from relevance.  This has always been the case -- capture their attention and imagination.  Engage kids in ways that have relevance to them and discuss them, or, better yet, work to address them, instead of relying on explanation alone.
3. Stop calling them "soft" skills.  Talents such as creativity, collaboration, communication, empathy, and adaptability are not just nice to have; they're the core capabilities of a 21st-century global economy facing complex challenges.
4. Allow for variation.  Permit mass customization, both in the system and the classroom.  Too often, equality in education is treated as sameness; the truth is that everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place.
5. No more sage on stage.  Engaged learning can't always happen in neat rows and so must engage the learner using multiple modes.  Everyone needs to feel, experience, and build.  In this interactive environment, the role of the teacher is transformed from the expert to a kind of enabling coach.  Teachers step away from the front of the room and find a place to engage with their learners as a "guide on the side".
6. Teachers are designers.  Let them create.  Build an environment where teachers are actively engaged in learning by doing.  Shift the conversation from prescriptive rules to permissive guidance.
7. Build a learning community.  Learning doesn't happen in the child's mind alone.  It happens through the social interactions with other kids and teachers, parents, the community, and the world at large.  Schools must find new ways to engage parents and build local and national partnerships.  This doesn't just benefit the child--it brings new resources and knowledge to the entire enterprise.
8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.  An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was.  An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires.  In order to design new solutions for the future, we must understand what people care about and design for that.
9. Incubate the future.  What if our K-12 schools took on the big challenges that we're facing today?  Through topics like global warming, transportation, waste management, health care, poverty, and even education, children may see their role in creating this world through examination and creating solutions.  It's not about finding the right answer, it's about being in a place where we learn ambition, involvement, responsibility, not to mention science, math, and literature.
10. Change the discourse.  If you want to drive new behavior, you have to measure new things.  Skills such as creativity and collaboration can't be measured on a bubble chart.  We need to create new assessments that help us understand and talk about the developmental progress of 21st century skills.  This is not just about measuring outcomes, but also measuring process.  We need formative assessments that are just as important as numeric ones.  And here's the trick:  we can't just have the measures - - we actually have to value them.

 * From IDEO's Top 10 Ideas for a 21st Century Classroom

Education

Education is essentially progressive:  we are making our way forward into a vision of excellence and equity for all.  The educational enterprise is not about the business of preserving antiques in some kind of museum.  We are grounded in the past, to be sure; we owe a great debt to those who have gone before us, to be sure, but we don't live in their world.

Shift happens

In education policy, though, wherever you mark the start, the shift is non-linear and not without challenges.  The new educational emphasis is on collaboration, accountability, teamwork.  Does it require trust?  Definitely.  Trust takes support, experience, and time.  The shift is from teaching to learning.  Gone are the quaint days of the one-room school house.  That is different than today.  Different does not mean deficient.  The shift requires using multiple strategies, sourcing media, creating original work developed in collaboration with others sharing the same goals for all students to learn and grow. 

Ultimately, everything about the system must support all students well.  Feedback is continuous even as the rapid pace of change continues.  Students today need to be prepared for college, career, and life beyond.  The shift is beyond what teachers want students to know and about focusing students on the complex application of knowledge to solve problems.  As has been noted elsewhere, we are preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist using technologies that haven't been invented in order to solve problems we do not know are problems yet.  Teaching not only requires a strong foundation from teacher preparation programs, it requires an attitude for continuous learning that is supported by professional development in a culture fostering collaborative work with colleagues to build trust and develop confidence. 

Some characterize our schools as becoming more standardized at the expense of meaningful and enjoyable learning.  It's true that state and federal governments (vis-à-vis MERA and ESEA/NCLB, respectively) require greater accountability from the educational enterprise.  And while we may all like to see fewer bubble tests, assessments from multiple measures developed by teachers identify individual students' needs better.  I believe our schools are well run and, further, continue to move toward greater responsiveness, flexibility, creativity, and student-centered learning.  Our schools are better than they were last week and even better than we thought six years ago.  And, they continue to improve.

With Thanks and Gratitude

Tomb of the Unknown

Memorial Day 2011

In memory of all service men and women killed in all American wars.

Parent Advisory Councils (PACs)

For over two decades, parents of children with disabilities in Massachusetts have made significant contributions to improving the education of their children through PACs.  Since 1986, Massachusetts state law has required all public school districts to maintain a Parent Advisory Council open to all parents of students identified as eligible for special education, as well as other interested parties. 

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education provides guidance to PACs so that each and every PAC will have access to knowledge of what the law allows them to do.  The guidance document updated in March of 2010 provides:

• A clear, concise description of the basic requirements that apply to PACs;
• the key components to address in meeting those requirements;
• and some options for practices, activities, and resources that might assist a PAC in making positive contributions to special education in their community.

Interested persons may view and download a copy of the guidance document here.

Response to the Extended Day RFP

Harrington Extended Day is a great program and Rose Culkins a cherished program director, as all three of my children thrived in the program and have memorable experiences.

School facilities fall under the care of the School Committee and our stated goal is to support quality afterschool programs at an affordable cost to all families.  The extended day programs are leased at cost by LPS and not for a profit.  Because of the stability a multi-year lease provides, an RFP must be issued every three to five years to ensure our stated goals continue to be met.

I understand the anxiety the RFP process caused due to the two outside bids and the fact that parents were not permitted on the RFP Review Committee as it is a conflict of interest.  Two weeks before the RFP deadline, the School Committee received many emails from Board members and parents of extended day programs across Town; the emails expressed strong support for maintaining local control and urged not to go out of district for a provider.  After all extended day Board members were apprised that the Superintendent would be recommending that the contract go to Lextended Day, some Board members and parents continued to lobby for a separate program at Harrington, which wasn't possible under the provisions of the RFP.

With its majority vote Tuesday April 26, 2011, the School Committee instructed Dr. Ash to award a five-year contract to Lextended Day.  This action expands Lextended Day's program from Hastings, Estabrook, and Bridge Elementary Schools to Bowman, Fiske, and Harrington Schools.  

And now, we are in the time of transition.  

Lextended Day's transition plan is thoughtful and comprehensive, including many opportunities for parent and staff input, as well as in-service days to foster the care and conditions supporting as smooth a transition as possible.  I believe all afterschool programs will be strengthened as a result and that Harrington's program will continue to flourish.