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Race to the Finish

5/30/2016

As a kid growing up in Indiana, my family looked to Memorial Day weekend as the start of summer. Our family, immediate and extended, traveled 45 minutes from Fort Wayne to Crooked Lake in Columbia City, IN, where two sets of grandparents owned small lakefront cottages. We went up several times a year “to the lake,” but Memorial Day weekend was special. This was the weekend we spent three days with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. This was where I learned the joy of Euchre, water skiing and pontoon boats. But I also learned that Memorial Day isn’t complete without car racing -- the Indy 500 to be exact. It was Indiana after all.

Therefore, this past weekend with my own immediate family, we sat down and watched a little car racing in the name of nostalgia. We landed on the Monaco Grand Prix. The race was actually pretty exciting, full of inclement weather and plenty of crashes. However, what stood out most to me was the phrase the commentators repeated multiple times as the drivers were crossing the finish line: “Race to the finish.” In context, the commentators were discussing an exciting moment in the last few minutes of the race when one driver passed a car on the last lap and only seconds before the finish line.

Their discussions about this last-minute surge and advice to “race to the finish” reminded me of my own daughter’s participation in the Los Alamitos All-District Track Meet this last week. My daughter represented Oak in the sixth grade 200m sprint. She does what many kids and even professional athletes do at a finish line -- she eased up. We’ve all seen those highlights programs where athletes start celebrating a little too early and end up losing the win. My daughter maintained her third place finish through the finish line, but had she “raced to the finish,” pushing at the end with just a momentary burst of everything she had left, she could have potentially overtaken the first and second place finishers.

In both cases, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Los Al Track Meet, I was left thinking about that “race to the finish” and what it means for education as we round that final turn before the end of the school year. For some, the end of this school year means just promotion to another grade level. For others, it means a promotion to another school. For others still, it means actual graduation from K-12 education.

Regardless the next step for each student, they all need to remember to “race to the finish.”

These end-of-the-school-year races aren’t for first place. They, rather, are races to finish strong. For your elementary kids, this might mean mastering their Special Person’s Day song and dance. For your middle school kids, this might mean finishing end-of-year culminating projects. For your high school kids, this probably means finals. We need to be sure to remind our kids that this is no time to ease up on the gas. They need to continue to work hard, fight to achieve, and remain diligent.

Because the end is where character is built.

When we’re tired, worn out, discouraged, or unmotivated, it’s those who persevere that shine. And those who shine feel accomplished. And through that accomplishment, character, self worth and confidence grows.

The finish isn’t an end, then. Rather, it’s a building block, and the stronger the block the more solid the foundation on which a life can be built.

Is the entire race important? Absolutely.

But it’s the “race to the finish” that builds futures.

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Use maxims to drive instruction

5/23/2016

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Nike lives by 11 guiding principles, their maxims: “It is our nature to innovate,” “The consumer decides,” “Evolve immediately,” and “Do the right thing” are just four of them. You can Google the rest; that’s how I found them all. Not only are they interesting, but they inspired me to take action.

I led a professional development meeting with my English department this week at school. The meeting was to refine our curriculum and embed more 21st century learning. We realized we couldn’t start this discussion until we’d decided on our English department’s maxims first.

So we set out to do just that. And we got to them by asking two guiding questions: “What are the fundamental principles that drive our instruction?” and “What type of English student do we want graduating from our department?” Honestly, how can a department of any discipline make decisions about end goals, assessments, mastery, homework, summer assignments, or even daily lessons without knowing what they stand for.

Philosophically who they are as teachers. And, most importantly, who they want the kids to become as learners and citizens of the world when the graduate.

As our brainstorming and planning day came to an end, I began to reflect on the experiences of my own children. I wonder if their teachers are clear on their purpose. If their teachers know the type of student they are trying to create. If their teachers talk about the driving principles of their discipline. Sometimes I wonder. When my kids come home with worksheets, packets, rote memorization tasks, and mindless regurgitation, I wonder if they feel as disengaged from the content as the work feels from real life.

I challenge you to ask, “What type of adult do your kids’s teachers’ activities intend to create?”

As a district, Los Alamitos is very clear about its brand. We ignite unlimited possibilities for students. We embrace the whole child. We build well-rounded students with a focus on activities, arts, athletics and academics. But how does this trickle down to each school and then, most importantly, into the classroom -- where the real work happens. It’s not enough to stand for the “what” without also building the “how.”

As a parent, I want us all to start asking the questions that get our district teachers to start asking questions of their practice. Why this assignment? Why this task? What’s the purpose? What type of adult is this activity building?
I also realized during my meeting this week that I want to more clearly identify the maxims for my family. What do we stand for? How do we make the tough decisions? How do we stay focused on what matters? As I type, I think about phrases I say over-and-over to my kids: “Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” “Effort unlocks your potential,” “Your level of success is completely up to you,” and “Find your own purpose.” I’m sure all of you have phrases that bounce off your walls on a regular basis, because as parents these are the principles we use to build our little adults. The same needs to apply in the classroom.

If every teacher worked to build little scientists or thinkers or innovators or independent learners -- whatever the courses’ maxims -- our kids would be engaged. They would be excited about their learning. They would be inspired to find their path.

It’s time for teaching and learning to be purposeful and meaningful every day with every assignment -- because the world can be changed one maxim at a time.

Just do it.

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Summer Homework Blues

5/9/2016

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A group of families, including my own, spent this past weekend in Santa Ynez camping, barbequing, golfing, enjoying each other’s company, wine tasting and running a half marathon. The weekend couldn’t have been better. The parents found time to relax, and the kids spent time being kids: catching snakes, walking to the alpaca farm, playing bocce ball, and roasting s’mores.

The weekend reminded me that summer is coming. The lazy days of summer wherein our engines are recharged doing those things that inspire us and give us purpose. This may include traveling, hanging by the pool, hiking with the family, or even engaging in new hobbies. What it shouldn’t include is pressure from our schools to complete summer homework.

Summer homework is like requiring an adult taking a two week vacation to spend some time every day of that vacation reading and writing reports for a client who expects a full proposal or accounting the first morning they arrive back at work. Has this ever happened to an adult? Absolutely. Once in a blue moon. But it doesn’t happen at every vacation, and I can’t imagine an entire career rests on this first morning back. So why do we expect this of our kids?

Summer needs to be a time for our children to follow a passion, get an internship, create a business, play a sport, develop new skills, volunteer or pick up a book for pleasure and enjoyment. I know that’s what I do, and I know that’s what most teachers do.

But this doesn’t mean our minds are inactive.

Active minds are important in the summer to prevent the “summer slide,” but that activity doesn’t need to be studying environmental science, world history or even the “The Odyssey.” Activity comes in the form of creativity, engagement, creation and innovation. Activity comes from team building, group play and problem solving. Activity comes from participating in the local library’s summer reading program, setting goals and discovering new authors.

What activities hamper real growth and stall passion? Rote memorization and pages of outlines. The exact kinds of activities the summer homework requires. Rather than read chapters in a science book, our kids need to go out and plant a straw bale garden. Rather than complete history outlines, what if they instead traveled to an historic city or museum. Rather than read literature written in 700 B.C., how about they try to write their own short stories or rediscover a love of reading -- actually find a genre that gets them excited about reading again.

Summer should be a time to refuel for the upcoming race. Adults who work year-round jobs would kill for the concept of the old-fashioned summer. So why are we stripping our kids of those carefree days that build the foundation for nostalgia? Let’s allow our children the benefit of stepping out of the rat race for just a few months, in order for them to be able to tackle it head on with a full tank of gas come September. They’ll all be better for it.

And isn’t that the point?

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The Future of Education

5/2/2016

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If I were to ask you to list the conditions for powerful learning, I’ll bet you would come away with a list very similar to mine, including: safe environment, personal investment, real world application, fun, relevance to students’ lives, social, interesting questions, positive environment, real audience, passion, autonomy, challenging, not time constrained.

I’ll also bet that in a room of 100 adults, not one of them would say that powerful learning comes with sitting in rows, one-sized curriculum, teacher controlled, standardized tests, emphasis on grades, no choice, lack of relevance, no real world application.

So why do we continue to run our schools the same way they’ve been run for over 100 years? Why do we continue to test, emphasize grades, restrict learning to the textbook, expect all kids to learn at the same rate and ability, and isolate content in 50-minute blocks?

I read an article this week published in the summer of 2014 by the Hawken Review written by the Head of Hawken School, D. Scott Looney. He spoke of the future of education -- the scary, daunting, exciting time in education where “we are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools for what no one knows yet.”

We live in an extraordinary time in human history. We are witness to unprecedented economic, environmental, and political instability. At the same time, we are witness to incredible advances in technology, medicine, and communication. This paradox of fear and excitement poses a challenge to us all, young and old. And yet we continue to teach our children in an antiquated system of sameness, as if we need all our children learning ubiquitous content, at the same time, at the same rate, in isolation. Where is the power in this model?

I was thinking this week about the interviews we see on TV every year wherein some host stops random people on the street to ask them questions about some factoid we all “learned” in elementary, middle or high school. We laugh collectively as we watch the interviewee hem and haw before answering incorrectly. Do we laugh because we know, or do we laugh because we, ourselves, would answer incorrectly, as well?

These interviews simply reflect the truth that we forget most of what we “learn” in school. So why do we continue to teach and test content knowledge like this?

Powerful learning, the knowledge we remember, comes from moments in which we were completely immersed and engaged. True learning requires a personal interest in what’s being learned. The process of learning for the sake of a test just isn’t effective or purposeful. In fact, I argue that kids with access to the internet and technology are “learning” more outside of school than they are inside of school.

So what should schools be doing?

We need to be teaching kids how to USE content. Teaching kids how to think, collaborate, wonder. Teaching kids how to navigate ambiguity, complexity and interconnectedness.

Our kids need to find a passion that pushes them to “learn” what matters to them, so their learning can solve problems and impact the world -- or at least their own small corner of the world.

It’s time to rethink what we do on a school’s campus and why we do it.

The future of education? It’s going to require we ignite students’ curiosity and interests -- or we aren’t going to have much of a future at all.

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Race to the Finish

Use maxims to drive instruction

Summer Homework Blues

T﻿he Future of Education

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