This blog post is a summary (not a verbatim transcript) of a conversation I recently had with three influential school leaders in the state of Michigan. The topic of the conversation was “resetting” teaching and learning beyond the pandemic. The conversation was recorded for the Leaderful Schools Podcast, produced by Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. A link to the recording will be available within about two weeks of this publication. Check my Twitter feed, @GMcKinney2 for updates.
You have earned a reputation as one of the most influential teacher leaders in your school district. What experiences have shaped your development as a teacher leader?
A number of years ago, my superintendent, Dr. Richard Machesky, welcomed our district back in August with a keynote address. He challenged our staff to be willing to take risks in our educational decision-making. He asked us to consider what were able to let go of in order to make room for something more meaningful and impactful for our students. I took that challenge as permission to step outside of my comfort zone. When I look back at the type of teacher I was before that shift, I shudder to think on everything that my students missed out on. Of course, when you know better, you need to do better. In the years since, I’ve been able to create learning experiences for my students that I feel like have been inspirational to others, and that’s way one of the ways I consider myself to be a teacher leader.
One of the most influential experiences that shaped my development as a teacher leader has been the professional learning that I’ve been a part of since graduating. It’s been the learning that I’ve done outside of the places you typically think of when it comes to education, like a classroom or a university lecture hall. It’s been connecting with people around the world through Twitter chats and Facebook groups and Clubhouse discussions. It’s been through meeting educational influencers at conferences and attending virtual webinars hosted by experts.
One of those game-changing experiences occurred while learning from Ron Ritchhart, who is a global thought-leader when it comes to pinpointing what it actually looks like when students are learning. He’s the author of several books, including his latest, The Power of Making Thinking Visible. Hearing him speak about the way in which students learn most effectively was hugely eye-opening. He describes what it means to learn through inquiry, and he’s created a whole arsenal of tools in the form of thinking routines to shape that inquiry. It was by learning from him that it finally clicked with me that projects are not just something that teachers can tack on at the end of a unit, or something that is given in the hopes of allowing students to earn extra credit—sustained inquiry projects are the vehicle through which learning becomes relevant and long-lasting.
A friend and mentor of mine, Trevor Muir, describes this idea in a very tangible way. He calls these kinds of last-minute add-ons “dessert projects”—meaning they’re not necessary to the actual learning and sometimes better if left on the plate. Project Based Learning shouldn’t be something to only come at the end of a unit—it should be the main course. In order for students to truly learn through the process of the project, I believe that students need the chance to play the role of the professional, working on an authentic task that could be taken on by the true expert throughout their unit of study.
So another facet of my teacher leadership has been that. I’m an evangelist for getting teachers to give their students the opportunity to show what they know in ways other than on test and quizzes. Other than on worksheets and workbooks. We need to be on the lookout for Deep Learning opportunities that are meaningful and stick with them for long after they’ve left their classrooms.
The theme of this podcast series is “resetting” education after the pandemic. This is really important now that schools are returning to in-person learning. Some feel that the pandemic has revealed education issues and problems that were previously hidden or overlooked. What do you hope has been learned during this time?
This pandemic has done exactly that. It has revealed education issues that weren’t necessarily hidden —because the people who have been living through those circumstances have been saying these things about educational inequity for a long time. But it certainly was overlooked by most people. The pandemic and other events of the last year have also highlighted the fact that it’s the most vulnerable people being impacted to the greatest extent possible. When schools buildings were closed, and all of a sudden, every parent was a crisis-learning homeschool teacher, the topic of education came to the forefront of everyone’s mind. The setup of learning pods, and procurement of private tutors highlighted the differences between communities where that was an option, and communities where there isn’t even access to high-speed internet in most homes.
You know, images started circulating of students learning in cars parked in front of McDonald’s and doing their homework inside of Apple Stores to use the free Wifi. And students that had previously been receiving breakfasts and lunches from school became even more food insecure. Big issues like housing insecurity and food insecurity became glaringly apparent…students who may not have conditions at home where they can focus on remote learning or even have adequate internet coverage to learn on their own. This should be important to us because as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
So one of the positive shifts as a result of this was for people everywhere shifting to the mindset of “Maslow’s Before Bloom’s,” referring to making sure that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are being seen to before teachers try to implement Bloom’s taxonomy of higher order thinking skills. A global colleague of my mine, Dr. Ilene Winokur, just wrote a fascinating blog post about this.
There was a lot of good to this way of thinking, making sure that our students’ most basic needs are being met—that of safety…food…shelter…love and belonging…all of these need to be in place before teachers even think about delivering content, and that’s one thing that I hope sticks around after all of this…wrap-around services in schools, with special attention being paid to the social emotional learning and mental health services for students.
Another thing that I’ve noticed is that school districts are finally paying attention to the accumulation of unfairness as well as the lack of diversity of our ranks. My district, for one has hired a diversity, equity, and inclusion supervisor for community relations. And one of the first things he did, along with our teaching and learning department, was to establish a “Leading for Equity” team of teachers from across the district who are able and willing to do this work. I think this is a great step for districts to take, and one that is frankly long overdue.
And finally, I think that this pandemic has highlighted another, somewhat unrelated fact. But the pandemic we have been living through has been one manifestation of the relentless march towards an interconnected world…one in which people, ideas, and cultures can’t help but collide in our world of global supply chains, social media, climate change, mass migration…just an ever-increasing network of complexity. But this isn’t all bad. Being interconnected with people around the world can also help contribute to new coalitions, new resources, new ideas, and greater impacts.
They say it’s always darkest before the dawn, meaning things always seem to get worse before they get better. And while this pandemic has certainly created one of the worst of circumstances, I believe there is hope. I think this is a big next step for people in education. There is a big world just waiting to be explored. If educators don’t innovate the curriculum and integrate the world into their classrooms, some children will never ever know there is actually a world out there that they can be part of.
What happens in Michigan can have an effect on people living in Japan. What happens in Syria can have an effect on people living in Germany. We need to learn to think globally and act locally to make changes to improve the world. Barack Obama says in his recent book, The Promised Land, “We will learn to live together…cooperate with one another and recognize the dignity of others…or we will perish.”
Recently you were the keynote presenter at the multi-session series on teaching and learning after the pandemic. Please share some of the points you made with the participants.
That was a huge honor for me, and what an amazing concept…getting together superintendents, principals, central leadership teams, and teacher leaders together with ISD and RESA leadership across the three biggest counties in Michigan to find out what’s working and what needs to change…
I was able to talk about the difference between schooling and learning, and how to create more opportunities for the latter (learning) that have the potential to work for ALL students. If we were to define much of the schooling that’s happened in the last couple of decades, we might use words like compliance, rigid systems and schedules, rote memorization, and narrow focused & isolated topics.
In my presentation, I had the liberty of urging leaders in our region to consider the potential pitfalls of “getting back to normal” if this is what normal looks like. The main point I was trying to make is that we are at the precipice of an educational revolution, and that things should not simply get “back to normal” at our earliest convenience.
Our profession is facing not only the challenges of a pandemic, but a more existential crisis as well, that of preparing our students for an unknown future…one in which we are not even aware of the jobs that may exist by the time they get there. The assumptions we make about what students need to learn are no longer valid (if they ever were).
For instance, if one of the purposes of higher education is to prepare students for A career, we certainly face a challenging situation: “The top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38. If anything, we need to find ways to teach flexibility, adaptability, and resilience. David Warlick puts it this way: “For the first time in history, we are preparing students for a world we cannot clearly define.”
I believe that a big disconnect happens when school is run in the way it was run for us. The people who have become teachers and leaders, in great part, were the ones for whom that model worked. And through a combination of nostalgia and lack of imagination, school has continued in great part in the same way it has for generations with only minor changes.
Basically the same way it was run in the industrial age and in the information age…But educators need to realize that we are on the brink of moving beyond these outdated models of society…and therefore of education, too. Now that we are able to take all this knowledge that we have at our fingertips, the question we need to be asking is: ”What will you now DO with the information that you have?” This new paradigm will bring a change to our global culture and economy, and we’re calling it the Imagination Age, which I love!
In other words, the Information Age is almost over and we aren’t ready for the changes coming our way. Imagination, entrepreneurship, and creativity will be the most valuable assets—the things that can’t be easily be automated and turned over to artificial intelligence. Seth Godin, this brilliant guy, says, “Never again is someone going to pay you to give them answers they can look up online…They will only pay you to solve problems that don’t yet have answers.”
Larry Thomas shared with me a great article from the Harvard Business Review which gives a great summary of where we’re at so far: We are currently trying to prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist and jobs that they will be acquiring, learning from, and then moving on from…using technologies that haven’t been invented…in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet. If we hope just to tell students what we know in order for them to be able to do what we do, we have seriously misunderstood the task required of education at this point in time.
So…one of the answers that I tried to put forward to deal with this situation is the necessity for opportunities for deeper learning. Deep learning experiences are achieved not through pace and breadth, but relevance and depth. The key is to make learning rigorous, yet relevant to the students you have. Their hope, their dreams, and their needs.
Basically, an easy way to remember this is that it’s better to be the one who poses new questions than the one who memorizes old answers. Deep learning gives students the chance to have their authentic questions answered in a way that’s meaningful to them.
One of the things we have heard from superintendents during the past year is their appreciation and respect for the vital role that teacher leaders have played in meeting the unprecedented challenges presented by the pandemic. How do we sustain that going forward?
I think that after the last 18 months, ALL teachers have earned the right to call themselves teacher leaders. We have collectively moved mountains to try and maintain the highest quality of education for our students despite the circumstances. Teachers are heroes and I hope that that recognition is something that we are able to sustain going forward.
Now, I will share what I know is an unpopular opinion. Unlike many people, I love reinventing the wheel. I think that, “There’s no point reinventing the wheel” is one of the most dangerous phrases in education, along with “Well, we’ve always done it this way.” And to me, leaning on your teacher leaders is the perfect way to reinvent the wheel. Teachers are experts. They have the schooling, they have the experience, they have the passion, and they have the willingness to share that with their students. Teacher spend so much of their own time preparing lessons, giving feedback, taking part in professional learning, and making connections for their students.
They are a well-spring of creativity and problem-solving that has not been tapped into as much as it could. If decisions are being made at the top or an organizational pyramid, you’re only tapping into 5% of the knowledge and creativity that it takes to remake the system. Most people agree that there need to be changes in the system. But the system is people. So we need to invert that pyramid, and tap into the power of the people. We need to change the mindsets, skills, training, of people and policies made by people.
We need to redefine what teaching and learning looks like in order to save public schooling. And it isn’t going to come from some outside hire or someone you pay thousands of dollars to to spend a day lecturing in your district. The answers to most of the problems we face can be found right here in house, we just need to pass the microphone and let them share their voices.
What else would you like our listeners to know about you and your important work as a teacher leaders?
I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to lift up the voices of my own students. I told my 5th-graders that I would be talking with you today for the Leaderful Schools Podcast and they were very excited. So I’d like to share that through the years, one of my proudest achievements as a classroom teacher has been the production of our own student podcast. But before I can tell you that story, I have to tell you this story…
My class’ thematic nicknames used to be cutesy things, like the McKinney Monsters or the 4th-Grade Fishies…that kind of thing. But then, one year I had the opportunity to learn from George Couros, who’s the author of the Innovator’s Mindset, and I was so inspired by this man that right then and there, in the middle of his breakout session, I decided our class needed to be rebranded as the 4th-Grade Innovators. So, everything we would do as a class would be framed around the goal of inventing new solutions to problems we identified, innovating and finding a better way to do things in the classroom, or campaigning to raise awareness by using our learning to make the world a better place. The neat thing is that the 4th-grade sections at our school are still known as the Innovators, and I’m very proud of that legacy.
But when I moved up to teach 5th-grade, I had to find a new nickname for my classroom. Over the course of the summer, I read an amazing book by David Guerin, called Future Driven: Will Your Students Thrive in an Unpredictable World? And so, in this book, he lays out the argument that while we are preparing our students for a world which we cannot clearly define, there are some essential goalposts that we can aim for in order to help students be prepared, no matter what. I wanted to help students develop transferable skills that would help them be happy and successful no matter what their own future looked like…ready to empathize, be engaged citizens, seek justice, and to be upstanders, not bystanders. And so, we became the 5th-grade Futurists!
So, with that in mind, we created a mission statement for our classroom. We pledged that we would use our learning to improve our own lives, improve the lives of others, and improve the environment around us. One way we found to do this was to create a podcast called the 5th-Grade Futurists Podcast. We’re in our 3rd season now, and we would be honored if you listened by downloading an episode on any major podcast platform!
So if you remember, in the beginning, I shared with your audience that while I’ve been an educational blogger for a number of years at innovation4education.wordpress.com, I’m in the process of writing a book with my teaching partner, Zach Rondot, who, by the way, was the 2019 Oakland County Elementary Teacher of the Year and also a recent graduate of the Galileo Teacher Leadership Academy.
The book is called The Expert Effect with EduMatch Publishing. To give you an idea as to what it’s about, I’ll share the subtitle: The Expert Effect is “A Three-Part System to Break Down the Walls of Your Classroom and Connect Your Students to the World.” It’s a book for teachers in which we share helpful tips, preferred tools, and plenty of anecdotes of how we’ve been able to transform our curriculum by empowering our students to learn from experts outside of the classroom, become experts in their own right through project-based learning, and in turn, teach others as experts by connecting them with authentic audiences for their learning.
This is something that I’m very passionate about, and something I try to give my class the chance to do on a weekly basis, because the notion that learning is only most exciting when the teacher has a significant knowledge of the content is misguided. The most dynamic examples of learning happen when the teachers are learning something alongside their students. It breathes a new dimension of life and vitality into the content when both the students and adults are mesmerized by what they are finding out.
Special thanks to Bob Maxfield, Suzanne Klein, and Elaine Middlekauf for the opportunity to speak on these issues that are so near and dear to my heart!
Innovation 4 Education 