How well does your school meet student expectations? Take this quiz to find out.

The Leaving to Learn movement, started by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski is built on the idea that a great way to learn to find success in the world is to be in the world. The first step is taking down the barriers between school and the outside world and letting students leave, to learn. Washor and Mojokowski recently published a book on the topic. In it they bring the philosophy to life via real examples from schools following the Big Picture Learning model. If you're unfamiliar, students in these schools usually spend a couple days each week in the world pursuing their passions. What sets these students apart from those in traditional schools is that upon graduation, not only are these students deeply connected to that which they are passionate about and others who share and can help them pursue these passions, but they also graduate with authentic, real-world experience and expertise.


At the heart of this philosophy is the idea that learning should be student centered. To do that we need to be clear on the expectations students have our their schools. The following diagram outlines the ten expectations which young people want from their schools.

Read more about these expectations and watch videos of this in action here.

The packet-driven classroom

Jeff Bliss got our attention when he shared his frustration with his teacher, classmates, and the world about his learning environment.

The now viral video captures a room of passionless students, some with their heads down, some with a facepalm, some staring into space, all silently sitting at their empty desks seemingly disconnected not only from each other, but also from their behind-a-desk-fortress teacher.

That is until Jeff Bliss got up and spoke:

Jeff Bliss: [I’m tired of] hearing this freakin’ lady go off on kids because they don’t get this crap. If you can just get up and teach them instead of handing them a freakin’ packet, yo. There are kids in here who don’t learn like that, they need to learn face-to-face. You’re just getting mad because I’m pointing out the obvious.

What breaks your heart? Tackle that with Quest2Matter

Quest2Matter is a youth-focused effort that encourages young people to tackle problems that break their heart. The Quest seeks to unlock the potential of young people to think entrepreneurially and innovatively and use modern tools to change our world.

What is The Quest?
The Quest is a catalyst that challenges students:

Students who accept this challenge will know that they matter and that they can make a difference in our world.

What makes a good quest?

Ask yourself three questions.

1) Does your quest change the world for the better?

• Great ideas dare to question the normal ways of doing things.
• They also dare us to do things that many others may disagree with.
• We're looking for rule breakers who are working hard to bring their big idea to light.

2) What have you done in the real world with your idea?

• We're looking for stories about things that have actually happened (as opposed to things you want to have happen).
• Stories of failing are welcome too - especially if you picked yourself up and kept on going.
• That's because true innovation comes from trying things all the time, and most of us can't make our big ideas real without making mistakes along the way.

3) Can you get personal and tell a great story?

• Great social change begins with something personal.
• We'll be looking for students who can share a first-hand story (preferably through video) and inspire others to make their own impact.

Why College Kids Shouldn’t Act Like College Kids

Guest post by Dale Stephens, Author Hacking Your Education

If a prophet came and told me that dropping out would be the best decision I ever made, I wouldn't have believed him. In fact, at the age of 15, it seemed like I had more chances of committing a Ghirardelli chocolate robbery then I did of dropping out of college.

But, looking back, it might not seem that way. I’ve been out of school since I was 12 - looks like I was setting myself up to fail, right?

To put it delicately, I’ve realized that not going to school was exactly what set me free. You don’t need physical chains to tell you that you’re being subjugated. But what many don’t realize, is that it wasn’t blindly dropping out that saved me. Instead, it was refusing to throw myself away, that did.

College kids act like college kids because they go to college - you don’t need a forensics team to figure that out. It’s the societal structure that dictates their own behavior, and we can’t blame them. But, within the thousands that go to college, there are many that are hacking their own education, as we speak.

Mainstream television features kids growing up without school

Dayna Martin is a mother of four who is raising her children without school, textbooks, standards, or a curriculum. Instead her children's passions, talents, and interests drive their learning.

Check out Dayna's interview below on the Jeff Probst Show as she explains why she's unschooling her kids, and what her role is in their development and education. 

For more information about Dayna, visit her website. To connect with other parents who are raising their children without school join this group. To connect with schoolfree teens join this group.

Start the New Year with a new way to look at students who don't seem to care

There is more than one way to look at someone.

"My students don't know how to learn.  They don't know how to succeed.  And, it doesn't seem like they care to change any of that. " -Crystal Kirch, My biggest struggle this year High school math teacher Crystal Kirch’s biggest struggle of 2012 was met with both cheers from those who could commiserate as well as jeers from those who were concerned that students were not the culprit, but rather the victims of a system that set them up for failure.  Earlier this year, Kirch found it so difficult to consider feedback from those who saw things differently that she censored comments calling them "intense attacks" and blocked those who made them on Twitter. Kirch isn't the only one who refuses to learn from those outside the echo chamber. Ira Socol recently had a similar experience when offering an alternate perspective to a teacher about a student and parent that opposed forced classroom testing.

But here's what these closed-minded educators are missing.

An important benefit of the read / write web is the ability to hear and potentially gain another way of seeing things.

Gary Stager explains what those offering an alternate perspective to these student-blaming teachers were doing: 

"Those of us who know better, need to do better and stand between the defenseless children we serve and the madness around us. If a destructive idea needs to be challenged or a right defended, I’ll speak up." (Au Contraire, Nov 2012)

When I initially wrote the post explaining that a personal learning network was not an echo chamber, readers questioned my assessment of the comments that Kirch censored. Some thought, maybe Kirch was being honest and they were attacks. Maybe the comments on Kirch's blog from others who blamed students weren't that troublesome. 

As requested in the comments, I'll let readers decide for themselves. If you were one of those teachers that think students don't know how to learn and don't care, perhaps you'll think again about how you look at these students after reading some alternate perspectives.

To follow are reactions from teachers who shared frustration over the struggle of kids who they felt don't want to learn followed by insights Kirch called "intense attacks" from those who defended children and challenged this point of view.

Baby You Can Drive My Data

The Key to Making Every Child’s Dreams Come True – Found at SAR Academy

~Guest post by Sharon Marson

Schoolwide Enrichment Program Coordinator, SAR Academy, Riverdale, New York

A teary-eyed parent says, "Now my child feels really successful. Thank you for what you are doing.” Another shared that Tuesday (the day our new program is scheduled) is “a day my child refuses to be absent. I'm not allowed to pull him out of school for a doctor's appointment and he has even tried pretending he is well when clearly he has fever, in order to not miss an E-slot." The children themselves ask, "How many days until next Tuesday?" and stop me in school regularly to thank me for "making" this program.  

 

What has brought such joy and excitement to parents and children? The Schoolwide Enrichment program. This has enabled me to bring to fruition the dream of providing every early elementary child with the opportunity to participate in an Enrichment slot (E-slot) during the course of their week. It has been an incredibly fulfilling journey. No longer are only a select few of those who are high performing in reading or math given the opportunity to participate in Enrichment. Now, more than 450 children are able to choose among seventy offerings that are aligned with their passions, strengths, and/or interests. The offerings, primarily facilitated by a talented faculty and parent-body, correspond with multiple-intelligence theory, engage children in project-based learning, and are built on the pedagogy of Dr. Joseph Renzulli, seminal thinker, innovator, and researcher in the field of Gifted Education.  

The program is based on the idea that we should apply the pedagogy of gifted education to enrichment opportunities for all students. The broadened conception of giftedness, allows children to explore an area of interest, talent, or passion in depth, while in a small multi-age group with other students and a facilitator who also shares this interest. Enrichment Clusters are a delivery vehicle for disseminating enrichment pedagogy to every student and is founded on the belief that everyone has the potential to demonstrate gifted behavior. They are organized around interdisciplinary themes and are built on inquiry and advanced content and methodology, which allow students to secure and then apply new skills to real-world issues that are personally meaningful. The challenging learning pursued is grounded in the production of a product, performance, or service for an authentic audience. Our ultimate goal with this broad enrichment initiative is to help children discover and take pride in the diverse gifts and talents with which he or she is endowed, develop their interests and strengths, and understand how they can share their gifts with the world.

What is success? 

Just ask the kids and you’ll find there isn't a child who can't tell you when he or she feels successful or which activity engenders a sense of accomplishment. That is what our program is doing for children. We are giving students the equal-opportunity to succeed. They are happy. They are defining themselves as gifted in multitudinous ways. They feel accomplished. That is why they can't miss a moment of it.

 

See what this looks like in action at the video below. You can help the school raise money to grow their endeavor to create life-long, impassioned learners with a vote for the video at this link.

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Want to connect with others who are discussing the Schoolwide Enrichment Model?  Join us on Facebook here.

A Simple Ed Reform Solution - Connect School Life to Real Life

"Dennis Littky provides a setting where young people and adults can explore the world together, discover their passions and apply themselves to solving their own and the world's problems!"
- Deborah Meir

Big Picture Schools help
ignite student's passions

Many high school students complain they don’t like school for some very good reasons. They report it is boring, irrelevant, and disconnected from real life. They have a passion for life, but not for school. But it doesn’t have to be this way and there’s a place where it isn’t. It's called The MET and it is one of dozens of schools around the world that make up the Big Picture Company.

These schools are havens for public school students who have struggled in conventional classrooms. There is a waiting list to get in and once they do, not only do they have one of the highest attendance rates, but there is also a 98% college acceptance rate. What’s more, unlike many graduates of traditional schools, Big Picture graduates say they feel prepared for college and career success.

What’s their secret?
Connect school life to real life by doing things differently.

Here’s how

What can we learn from Caine's Arcade?

Editor’s note: In yesterday’s post about Caine’s Arcade I shared several questions to ponder when watching the video.  Here is one reader’s insightful responses.

By Jo-Anne Tracy

Great post, (to both Lisa Cooley & Lisa Nielsen). It is very inspiring to come back from a week long internet hiatus and see this post. I will take a stab at answering some of the questions.

What subjects did Caine learn?
When looking at the 3Rs...

• Caine has mastered measurement, and spatial reasoning (math). I am certain he learned some basic physics in designing his games. (science).

I not only look at traditional 3R subjects but also look at the Seven Cs of 21st century learning as defined by Bernie Trilling of the Oracle Foundation.

• Critical thinking - Caine has shown abilities in critical thinking as he worked out problems to create a claw machine and to make the soccer game more challenging creativity and innovation. Caine has mastered this one!!!
• Collaboration - Perhaps, there was some collaboration shown, when Caine discussed his project with his dad and Nirvan.
• Cross-cultural understanding - not demonstrated
• Communication - Caine learned the power of this when Nirvan mustered a flash mob
• Computing technology - Caine learned the power of this when Nirvan mustered a flash mob. He also worked out an algorithm to verify authentic passes.
• Career learning - Spending time with his dad at work and developing his own brand show that Caine is well on his way to mastering this one.

What is the role of adults?

5 Questions Every Parent and Teacher Must Be Able to Answer

While test-prep mania, quality reviews, and data driven assessments rule the roost in schools today,  what's most important is often overlooked.  If you're not able to answer these five questions for every child in your care at school or at home, than you need to re-focus on what is most important. 

1. What are your child's passions, talents, and interests? 
2. Is your child's talent/passion portfolio documented and used to drive learning?
3. Does your child have a personal success plan aligned to those passions with measurable goals?
4. How are you supporting your child in displaying evidence of learning in meaningful ways that will lead to academic, career and life success?
5. Is your child provided with opportunities to learn with those who share his passions and interests rather than just grouped with others by date of manufacture?

So, how many of these were you able to answer?  If it's not all five, what is your plan to refocus and place your child(ren) in the center of their learning?

Why I Agree That Our School System Results in Teachers Hurting Children

Most high school students find school boring and irrelevant

In her popular post, What Parents Really Want to Tell Teachers: What You Do Hurts Our Children, parenting expert Laurie A. Couture compiled a list of concerns for teachers to consider in the context of their own education. I shared her post here on The Innovative Educator blog and while it was met with some support, in many cases it was met with hostile criticism from teachers who felt attacked.

Couture’s post was in response to Ron Clark’s article What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents. While she was criticized for using generalities, her post was directed toward those teachers who believe parents need to head Clark's advice. There were teachers who were upset that I would publish a piece like this on my blog. Unfortunately, some followers even unsubscribed. Despite this, I shared Laurie’s concerns for two reasons.

1. Laurie is connected with many parents whose children have been hurt by what teachers are compelled to do in our educational system. She does a good job representing why parents have issues with teachers such as these. Her son, who was one such child, does a good job as well. You can read his response to Ron Clark here.
2. I agree with Laurie’s concerns, her advice, as well as the observation she shares with John Taylor Gatto: Most teachers are working in a system that is forcing them to hurt children. I have worked in the public school system for many years and have found that every school has teachers and/or administrators that could benefit from her advice because much of what they are being told to do in the name of kids is detrimental.

The 12 Most Important Things to Know About 21st Century Learners

The 12 Most blog is pretty cool.  It asks writers to contribute the 12 most of anything.  This could be a great authentic opportunity in a writing class.  Angela Maiers put together a post identifying the 12 Most Important Things to Know About Kids Today.  In her post it becomes clear that when it comes to “kids today” (Gen Y or The Millennials) those who label them as entitled, directionless, having twitter-sized attention spans— are the ones with the problems.  


Below are the five ideas that resonated most with me because these are ideas that are often left behind in classrooms driven by outdated data and instruction.  

Nine Tenets of Passion-Based Learning

The Schoolwide Enrichment Model is Alive at The Island School

MindShift, a site that explores the future of learning, recently provided an overview of the passion-driven learning talk I gave with other esteemed panelists (Angela Maiers, Amy Sandvold, and George Couros) on the Future of Education. Steve Hargadon moderated the conversation during which we discussed “passion-based” learning. 

Mindshift pulled together nine key points we discussed during the talk along with some additional thoughts from John Seely Brown, co-author of A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, and educator Jackie Gerstein.

Here are the nine tenants of passion-based learning

Connecting School Life to Real Life

My 140 Character Conference talk on August 2nd focuses on connecting school life to real life.  In the talk I ask the question, "If school should be preparing young people for the world, why does the world behind school doors look so different from the world outside those doors?" I explain that if we want students to be successful in the real world, schools need to get better at connecting school life to real life and give students the freedom to learn.

Here is the presentation I used as I spoke.  It was created so others can download, copy/edit and share.  I invite others to take and share these ideas. 

Click on the picture and the presentation will open in a new window.

Here is the talk.


I was thrilled to be joined by some of the most influential members of my PLN on this day including Chris Lehmann, Tom Whitby, Steve Anderson, Christian Long, Adam Bellow, Shelley Krause, Dale J. Stephens and others!!!!
_________________________
If you are a 21st educator, this is one event you should attend.  There is a special rate of only $1.40 for educators.  Shhh...don't tell.  Regular folk have to pay like $140 bucks.  You can find the educator application here.  I hope you'll be able to attend.  If you have any presentation feedback, please share.  

Join The Innovative Educator in a Passion Driven Summer Book Club

I bought The Passion-Driven Classroom last month and regrettably I didn't finish reading it. Here's why.  For me, with the internet, reading has become a conversation.  I love to read, discuss, and write. Lately, I have found I'm less likely to finish books when I can't discuss it with others like I can online.  It's just not as much fun as the conversation that can happen when reading on the web.

Well, I'm soooo excited to share that Heidi Hayes Jacobs and her leadership team at The Curriculum 21 Ning have selected the The Passion-Driven Classroom for their summer book club study.  How awesome is that???!!!  I'll be able to read the book and have conversations with amazing educators like Heidi as well as the authors of the book.  I'm so excited.

It is free to participate in the book club.  It begins on June 14th, with a discussion about the Preface and Chapter One. I hope readers of this blog will join me in what promises to be a powerful conversation about the role passion plays in teaching, learning, and student achievement.

What we need is not evolution, but a revolution in education

Sir Ken Robinson followed up his 2006 TED talk with another genius speech that captures so much of my thinking and writing here on The Innovative Educator blog.  Not much has changed for the better in schools since Sir Ken Robinson convinced us that schools do indeed kill creativity.  In this speech he makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning. This does not mean everyone achieves the same personal mastery for the same standard tests and outcomes. Instead it means creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish.

Robinson explains that education dislocates many people from their natural talents. He goes on to say, what many of us working in schools already know. Reform is of no use anymore, because that’s simply improving a broken model. What we need is not evolution, but a revolution in education. It has to be transformed into something else.

Why I will no longer work to differentiate instruction!

I used to be a big fan of differentiated instruction.  It all came together for me when I learned about the Schoolwide Enrichment Model at ConFratute and then helped schools use Renzulli Learning which is a terrific differentiation machine.  A couple years later Marc Prensky’s book Teaching Digital Natives---Partnering for Real Learning was released and he even acknowledged me in it!!  This also became part of the differentiation game to me.  I began speaking and writing about differentiated instruction more and more and explaining to teachers that this really wasn’t that hard.  Especially if we focused on student centered learning like the teachers I wrote about in my post, Student Driven Learning = Passion-Based Classrooms.


I realized that when teachers gave up control an empowered students to use the tools they want and meet learning goals in the way they choose, then true differentiation could begin and it wasn’t all on the shoulders of the teacher to figure out how to do this.  So you might be wondering why, if I’m such a big fan of differentiated instruction, I have decided it’s not something I am willing to do any longer. 

It was Tom Welch who reached out and asked me to join him in abandoning the term differentiating "instruction". He explained, it this way:

Grad School May Be A Waste of Time

I’ve written articles on why high school may be a waste (see this one and this one) and why college may be a waste (see this).  Now it’s time to take on grad school and to do that is my great friend and provocative inspiration Penelope Trunk who has been writing about how graduate school may be a waste of time and money (yes, business school and law school too).  When radio and TV producers need someone to bitch about graduate school, they call Penelope.  


I just loved her interview on NPR last week. It’s a great interview in part because of how quick she is at supporting facts and backing them up with research, but also because she completely lost patience for people still defending grad school. She explains in her wildly popular career advice blog that even to defenders of grad school it is clearly a bad financial decision. The guy she is bantering with int the interview actually resorted to saying that you need to go to grad school to be a good person. That’s where Penelope went nuts on him.

Hear The Innovative Educator on Passion Driven Learning Panel with Angela Maiers, Amy Sandvold, and George Couros

I'm excited to join some of the most passionate educators in the world for a second time in a panel moderated by Steve Hargadon as part of the Future of Education Series tonight (Tuesday) to discuss next steps for those who believe passion should drive learning. Passion driven learning is a topic I write about often and it's the topic of co-panelists Angela Maiers and Amy Sandvold's fantastic book, "The Passion-Driven Classroom." Rounding out the panel is the creator of Connected Principals, The Principal of Change (as his blog is called) George Couros.

No one disagrees with the premise or that passion is a factor in both individual and organizational success. We just have a lot of questions about it and this panel has the answers!