Skip Olsen

ReImagining Learning: It Won’t be Easy!

 “Perhaps for the first time in history, human-kind has the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb; to foster far greater interdependency than anyone can manage, and to accelerate change far faster than anyone’s ability to keep pace. ”   ~ Peter Senge

I read a story way back in my youth from a book (The Establishment and All That, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, year) that was powerfully instructive to me at the time and still is today. It went something like this. A couple of college professors from California decided to take their sons on a road trip. As was the custom in the 60’s (yes, last century) for many, the professors sported shoulder length hair and their sons, too, had long hair. As the professors and their sons entered a restaurant for noon lunch, they overheard an older, local couple who were exiting say, “I bet those two hippies kidnapped those little girls”. The professor who heard the remark stopped dead in his tracks and thought, “There is so much here to explain that is wrong I don’t know where to begin.” After a lifetime in the school/learning game, I feel the same way—it’s hard to know where to begin. And I realize I’m not excused from the responsibility of trying to explain.

If Senge is right, and many people from all walks of life believe he is (and I do too), it stands to reason that schools must change or like the familiar stories of bank tellers, parking lot attendants, and buggy-whip makers, we will disappear. After all, change isn’t mandatory so survival is optional. (W. Edwards Deming)  Right or wrong, a growing number of students are going to charters, “parochial” schools, language/cultural schools and more to have their learning needs met.

Our collective response as educational professionals to our growing challenge has been dreadful, incompetent and unimaginative! I’m not blaming ALL educators so don’t even go there! Nor am I wanting so spend time Blaming or Shaming. I am puzzled, however, by our collective lack of thought, imagination, rigor and courage brought to bear on what appears to be the developing demise of public education.

Living at a time of fundamental, profound, historical disruption is not easy, but human beings have the capacity to change, adjust, acclimate, deal with new and unexpected change. Some industries and individuals have. TESLA, Toyota, Big Picture Schools, High Tech Hi, Avalon School (St. Paul), and the Coalition of Essential Schools (as well as many other schools/organizations too numerous to mention here) come easily to mind.

Yet, for the most part, many schools (dare I say most!) remain very similar to what my father and mother experienced in their lives. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), as of 2014, there were 131,890 public and private k-12 schools in the U.S. (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 ) Yet, the school organization, schedules and scheduling of schools, the language around school (“classrooms”, “homework”, grade levels, curriculum, pupil, tardy, answers, cover material, for example) and the content “taught” remains virtually the same.

Now I could go on. But what’s the point. Many, many scholars, journalists, business people, parents, teachers, students and civic organizations have lectured and written persuasively about this narrative from many angles. Frankly, I’m sick of hearing the indictment and tired of our milquetoast response. I’m also weary of hearing about “wonderful”, silver bullet changes that simply don’t change fundamentals, power relationships, and continue the “tyranny of dead ideas” (a book well worth reading). Rather like putting “lipstick on a pig” as one “noted” American said! Happy talk about wonderful schools or education simply doesn’t cut it anymore. We need to get about the business of walking with young people along the road to the future that is impossible to discern to make them (and us) as capable as possible to deal the potholes and blind spots ahead.

I believe the situation is dire, but not hopeless. We can’t stay here and must shake ourselves from sleep to respond actively and with knowledge. In the next few blogs I’ll outline what I think is necessary for us (educators) to answer our critics and build a robust public education.

When I got home, as is my wont, I eagerly reached for the newspapers that had piled up on the steps. I wanted to find out what happened the past 3 days while I was away at a conference.

Staring me in the face was the headline pictured here. My questions are: So what? Are you kidding me? In the oppressive “education system” we inhabit across the country, where the professionals have little to say about their working conditions and students have less to say about curriculum, it’s somewhat easy to “produce” more “graduates”— simply arrange “circumstances” to produce the actuality of more graduates.

Think about it! If educators are the “gatekeepers” of who gets credit toward graduation for “educational experience” (worksheets or packets completed?) and schools are being pressured to “increase graduation rates”, it’s a somewhat easy thing to “comply” with the mandate behind the headline. And you can always play the “numbers game” by not counting “students” who have dropped out, disappeared.

An organization can always get the numbers if you don’t care how you get them.  Reduce suspension rates? Simply don’t suspend. Increase graduation rates? No problem — make some classes easier.  Increase profits, ask Wells Fargo, Enron, Tyco, etc.

The headline is an example of a “comfort story” — words to cover-up a more serious or deeper story. The “comfort story” eases the mind by reducing anxiety about a serious, complex problem that deserves thinking time. Many people seem to prefer comfort stories to hard facts, evading bad news in favor of fantasy. (see Paul Gee, The Anti-Education Era (2013))

The problem is that this sort of stupidity makes life more difficult for all of us. While “comfort” stories are convenient and distracting, they ignore reality in favor of make-believe.

In short, the convenient “comfort story”: “…is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5).

So what’s the reality behind the headline? The more disturbing truth is found in an NPR piece (October 17, 2016) that probes the headline more deeply (not long: about 3 minutes). Graduating seniors that on average score lower in reading than in 1992 on a test known as the Nation’s Report Card? Wide evidence of “low expectations”? “All students ought to be thinking about college?”

I’ve often thought that people in this democracy are dangerously separated from history and civics. Tony Wagner cites the following in Chapter 1 of Most Likely to Succeed (2015):

• Of twenty questions (involving things like government spending, income distribution, and climate change), the majority of people who actually vote most of the time correctly answered 20 percent of the questions.
• Most recent Civics Assessment conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress: that twelfth graders’ civics knowledge and skills actually declined between 1998 and 2010.

I now also believe that we are perilously thoughtless about our future. The blunt question is this: what skills, knowledge, or intellectual/social dispositions do graduates of this “game” have to live successfully in the future? My answer, given the decrepit nature of our educational institutions, is not many and not much! But, as Deming said some time ago, we really don’t have to change. Survival, after all, is optional.

Perhaps we can change to begin looking more deeply at our own “comfort stories” and start the thoughtful and hard work in service of our students and a democratic future. We need to design learning experiences that engage and stimulate young people while teaching necessary content, helping them make sense of an often crazy world.

I was reminded lately of Bob Dylan’s song for his son, Forever Young. I think his beautiful words have the seeds for our direction:

“May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

And may your song always be sung

May you stay forever young.”

How do we design our schools (nay, learning experiences) so hands are always meaningfully busy; strong foundations are reliable when the unimaginable changes ahead occur; and joy enables all of us to see the world with artists’ senses?

 “The more things change the more they stay the same” — Bon Jovi

Been thinkin’ a lot lately about education and schools and learning. That’s what happens when Bill calls, asking if I have a couple of minutes. He’s discovered some of the great quotes in whatever books he’s reading. And he wants to share their insight. Less frequently, thoughts ricochet in my head when I come across quotes. In both cases, the quotes connect thoughts, weaving a pattern. Quotes are so amazing—so much said in so few words is nothing short of stunning.

Perhaps I betray my age by admitting that the conversation called to mind Seymour Sarason’s The Inevitable Failure of School Reform, published in 1990. As I read notes from the book, I began to feel really sad and somewhat angry.

And you have to understand. I write and speak passionately about schools, education, and learning. Learning, reflection, intellectual growth are essential to a good life and a healthy democratic society. Sometimes the passion is angry and anger should be allowed because it is a valid response to laziness and the collective lack of courage and creativity in response to the attacks on public education. I’m not angry at you as an individual, but at a system that creates quiet, unresponsive sheep. (Thanks to John Metta in a blog “It’s Not About Race” at https://thsppl.com/its-not-about-race-fb140bac8f1#.al2gajvax for the thought.)

Back to Bill’s quotes and Sarason. I’m flummoxed by our willful neglect of what we all know to be true: school is boring for a lot of kids. It also is and has been for a long time a time-waster of fact memorization stuffed into short-term memory, details forgotten as soon as the test is over. We deny what has been an incredibe wasteful of time and life. And it all happens in the name of thoughtless lies like, “You must take this course because it is ‘good’ for you”, or “it enables you to ‘think’ better, or “you’ll need it to make a success in life.” Whose life is it, anyway? How many of you have used the quadractic formula lately? Calculus anyone? Who won the Battle of Hastings?

I’m amazed that adults in our society, concerned with the responsibility of preparing our young people to succeed in our culture and in the world, aren’t more “with it”. They continue to run an authoritarian, undemocratic institution called school with “standards” developed by “others”. Schools have little or no relation to a youngster’s interests or passions. While the professionals who work in school have little to say about what happens 8 hours a day, students have even less to say about “schooliness”.

Some Wizard (s) of Oz, behind the curtains of law, determine what occurs daily in schools and they (lawmakers, policy wonks, business interests, and politicians) have lost touch with the reality. Perhaps they simply don’t care about school life as it relates to our life on the planet. While they pontificate and legislate about what ought to be, my bet is that they’ve not read a critical book or article on “schooliness”, talked with people in the field, or experienced first-hand the grinding, pointless reality of school days for many students and staff alike.

The testing culture and the profitable testing companies continue to hobble our ability to create delightful learning spaces. More distressingly, we permit the slow undoing of creative, interesting, and exciting learning spaces we desperately need for our collective survival.

At the end of our conversation, Bill and I chuckled when Bill realized that the expression “Same Stuff, Different Day” (SSDD in the title of this post) could also mean “Same Stuff, Different Decade” or even “Seymour Sarason, Different Decade”. It’s irritating as hell the waste we’ve perpetrated. I’m just sayin’ …  More next time!

“There I said it again,” is a song lyric that some of us mature (ok old) people know. That lyric resonated with me as I read Jon Saphier’s article, “Growing Lilies in the Desert”. In two previous posts Saphier is explicit and committed to a vision of what is possible. I hope some politicians and the public listen, understand and take action.

Over 20 years ago I heard Jon say he doesn’t work with schools/districts that won’t commit to the long term. I thought he was being mean. He was being honest, as most of us know from the money and time spent on staff development that have yielded minimal results. John’s comment about getting the culture right is important because leaders leave organizations and new ones come aboard. The schools and districts still have to produce for the community. If good processes aren’t embedded in the culture of the school, the tendency is to wait for the next messiah, wasting valuable time and accomplishing nothing.

This reminds me of Pfeffer and Sutton’s work, (2000) The Knowing-Doing Gap. We know lots of stuff about how to teach and the fact is we are not doing it. Saphier asserts (and I absolutely agree) we need processes in place which he believes can lead to learning, not credentialing.

Teacher and administrator preparation is one of the eight elements that sustains learning in schools. There are several critics out there about our preparation, induction, and development processes that lead to the skills necessary to promote staff and student learning. Yet, we tend to check off the list of courses needed to get the credential.   How about actual skill development and feedback from direct reports. (See Marshall Goldsmith’s work at http://sccoaching.com for a process that works.)

A theme that is evident in Jon’s piece is culture. His previous piece here on “Good Seeds Grow in Strong Cultures” is excellent. There are many sources out there and learning doesn’t grow in toxic cultures. My friend and mentor Art Costa asked me 30 years ago, after we conducted a training, “Bill, as a principal, how are you creating a mentally stimulating environment for your teachers?” I responded, “I have to do that too?” Art went on to say, if you don’t create it for the staff, why do you think they will create it for the students. He was right. Enough said.

Enjoy this post:  http://www.saphier.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/JonSaphierLilies.pdf

It seems to me that our growth as a profession in education  has been “delayed”, stunted, if you will. We’ve spent the last 10 years or so on the defensive, trying with everything we had,  to deal forthrightly with the bureaucrats and idiots who have controlled education policy. With the passage of ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) (I really hate what politicians do to sully the language), we now have the opportunity to get back to creating a useful educational experience and infrastructure. Hence this post.

For educators, a funny thing happened on our way to the 21 century — the profession was duped, swindled, defrauded, and hoodwinked by an onslaught of money-hungry grubbers not at all interested in learning. As an older adult, having witnessed these shenanigans, I fondly recall one Jon Saphier who wrote scholarly, hopeful, and penetrating pieces important to our daily work and our profession before the vicious onslaught against educators. I post here a short summary of one of Dr. Saphier’s important papers.

Below is the ERIC summary of his important and perceptive paper and included a link to the complete work, Bonfires and Magic Bullets. And I’ve also included a link to one of my all-time favorite articles as food for thought, “Good Seeds Grow Strong Cultures“. You’ll find several useful themes throughout — the importance of thoughtful perseverance, the necessity of continued learning, the indispensability of professional conversations and coaching, and the focus on constant development of highly skilled educators. In particular, taking steps to develop an authentic profession is seen as the principal key to success of so many of our diverse attempts at “reform”.

I’m just sayin’…

“This paper proposes a way to professionalize teaching based on internal change and six knowledge bases of professional teaching. Key features of this approach are: (1) it proposes professionalization from within through active involvement from schools and districts; (2) it includes the knowledge base in generic pedagogy (composed of communication of expectations, class climate, personal relationship building, clarity, principles of learning, models of teaching, curriculum planning and lesson design, attention, and momentum) as a vital ingredient; (3) it proposes a new way of thinking about the nature of professional knowledge as built around areas of performance, repertoire, and matching (the ability to draw from a repertoire the best response to match a given situation); (4) it outlines a campaign for changing public attitudes that is necessary for generating the national support required to fund professionalization; (5) it takes a systems approach to professionalization; and (6) it proposes a functional model for integrating the elements of this system and for beginning right away. The proposal covers the following topics: why professionalization is important, obstacles, changes in teacher education, effecting change, and creating a national professional organization. Appendixes contain information on six knowledge bases of professional teaching, teacher beliefs, and teacher competencies in the six knowledge bases. (Contains 38 references.) (JB)—ERIC”