A New Mission

A little while back I wrote about my frustrations with my school's mission and vision statements. As I said then, I doubted that very many (if any) of our students - or our staff - could tell you what our mission statement said, much less our vision statement.

That doesn't mean I don't generally like what's in our mission statement (and, for that matter, our longer vision statement). You can read them here (pdf). I do want students to achieve their potential, collaborate and be life-long learners, and contribute to society. The problem is that when you have a mission statement that no one knows, and that has generic statements like that, it ends up being pretty meaningless.

In other words, it's mission impossible.

On our in-service day on Thursday we broke up into small groups to discuss our mission and vision statement, with the purpose of identifying things we wanted to keep, things we wanted to get rid of, or things we wanted to add/modify. Each group worked on that for a while and then submitted a summary of their thinking to administration, who will review it and then . . . well, I'm not sure what exactly the next step is, but I think the intent is to come up with a new (well, modified) mission and vision statement that would be applicable in 2020 (our current one was created in 2007).

In my small group we had a great discussion and we all generally agreed with the sentiments I expressed in my previous post, that while there isn't really anything we disagreed with in our current mission and vision, it was pretty meaningless because it was way too wordy and tried to be all things to all people. We reached consensus that our mission needs to be something that is succinct and meaningful, and that all students and staff should not only know, but should refer to it often.

I shared Science Leadership Academy's mission and vision as an example of the direction I would like to see us head. I suggested that framing our mission and vision around a few (maybe 2-5) essential questions and a few (maybe 3-6) core values was a good way to really hone in on what it is we're about at Arapahoe High School. What we're trying to achieve, what we value, what's important enough to put up on the walls of every single classroom and refer to every single day.

We had a great discussion around that, and my group was generally receptive, although I'm not sure they are necessarily as enamored of this approach as I am. The summary we turned in (on paper . . . sigh) included these ideas (although not the hyperlink to SLA's mission and vision). We'll see where it goes, and it will be interesting to see what other groups come up with (although I'm not sure we will see that, just the "results").

I think it's sometimes tough for folks to get their minds around a mission and vision that is not exhaustive like our current one is. Because we think lots of things are important (and they are), we want to make sure they are all represented in the mission and vision so that nothing (and no one) gets "left out." But I think that really misses the mark on what a mission and vision should be. Our mission should really be our core purpose and our core values, and to be "core" they can't include everything. And our vision, while it should be aspirational and can certainly be a bit longer, still needs to be at a relatively "high" conceptual level.

As in my "big ideas" series of posts last summer, I thought I would take a stab at writing a mission statement for AHS. To be clear, I am not suggesting that this should be the mission statement for AHS (although I think it would be a good one :-), but I think it's helpful for folks to see one particular example of how it could look in order to help foster discussion. So here we go.

Essential Questions (PPSL)

1. What does it mean to be literate?
2. How do you define "success"?
3. What is your passion and what is your purpose?

What does it mean to be literate?
This is a question that I have frequently asked during my speaking engagements. I talk about it a bit here, but I want to be clear that I'm not referring to "literate" in the traditional sense of "just" reading and writing (although even in those areas I think this is vastly more complicated than we assumed it was when I was growing up and going through K-12). This includes mathematical literacy (sometimes referred to as numeracy), scientific literacy, artistic literacy, emotional literacy, and a whole bunch of other literacies (as NCTE says, "many literacies" that are "dynamic and malleable.")

At its heart, this is really a question about what it means to be competent, capable and empowered in a certain area. I also think a key component of this is how do you know that something you've created is good, not just by some external measure (although that can be informative), but how do you yourself know that it's a quality product? Some folks might prefer to reword this as "what does it mean to be educated?", and I think that would be okay, but I decided to stay away from that phrasing because I think it has too much baggage. By focusing on a new way of looking at the word "literate," I think it frees us up to really consider a broader array of skills and habits of mind.

How do you define "success"?
We talk a lot about helping students be "successful," both in school and then in their lives after they leave school. Every school, every government official, every education reform group, every parent, and even every student will talk about needing to prepare students so that they can be successful, and who can argue with that? Well, I can. Because we never take the time to define "success." And if we don't agree on an operational definition of "success," then all those statements about preparing students to be successful are essentially meaningless.

We just assume we all know and agree on what "success" is. I think that's not only incorrect, I think it's dangerous. First, it assumes that success looks the same for every single student, that each and every individual student should have the same goals and same metrics to measure what they accomplish. I think that's ludicrous, and I think that anyone who stops to think for even a minute about this would agree, yet that's the assumption baked in to so many of our statements about what students should be learning in order to "prepare" them for their future.

Second, it assumes that success is defined by society, or at the very least by some combination of government, business, family and educators. Shouldn't success be defined by each student, for themselves? Certainly government, business and educators, as well as friends and family, will help shape and form each student's ideas around what success is but, ultimately, isn't that up to each student to decide? How often in K-12 do we allow students to define their own success? How much opportunity do we provide them to think about this ultimate issue of their lives? People scoff at "what's the meaning of life" discussions, often ridiculing it as idealistic and naive, something that only happens in late-night discussions during college. I think this is exactly wrong. I think this is the most important discussion our students could be having.

Finally, I think this is really dangerous. When we assume we all know and agree what success it, we then start making a series of decisions around students' educations that might be completely and utterly wrong if our first principle of what success is is incorrect. It's like chaos theory, where small changes in initial conditions can have drastic changes in end results. What if our initial condition assumptions about success, which are really also assumptions about the purpose of education, are slightly (or not so slightly) off? Then all those subsequent dependent decisions we've made around education are a giant house of cards, propped up on a faulty foundation. We can do better.

What is your passion and what is your purpose?
This one relates closely to the previous one about success. I think there's a fundamental decision we have to make about school - is it designed to meet the needs of our students, or is it designed to meet the needs of adult society? I would agree with those that say this isn't necessarily an either/or question, but I still think it's important for us to decide which takes precedence. It probably won't surprise regular readers that I fall on the side that school should be to meet the needs of students. I feel if we truly meet the needs of each student, then ultimately we will also meet the needs of society. (I strongly believe that the inverse, however, is not true.)

If we can agree (which is a big if) that we should meet the needs of students, then I think the issues of passion and purpose are critical. What is each student's passion in life? What do they want their purpose to be? How do we help them pursue those passions and achieve that purpose? Can they have more than one and/or can they change throughout their lives? I think so, but I think that's also part of the education of each student, helping them decide that for themselves.

As a parent, I think I feel the conflict that most parents feel, that we want our child to make their own way in the world, yet we really, really, really want our child to also conform to our morals, principles, and ideas of success. I think school is that conflict writ large; that we say we want our students to become independent and critical thinkers, yet we really, really, really want them to independently come to the same conclusions we have. If we truly want them to be independent and critical thinkers, we have to give up some control.

Core Values (C3P3)

1. Curiosity
2. Compassion
3. Community
4. Perseverance
5. Passion
6. Purpose

Curiosity
I think curiosity is the touchstone of learning, and therefore should be perhaps the principal core value of our school.

Compassion
The unifying phrase of my school is "Warriors, Always Take Care of One Another." If we believe that, we need to live that, and that is going to involve intentionally focusing on both compassion and empathy.

Community
While I emphasize the individual a lot in this post, I think that meeting each student's need ultimately includes helping them form and build community. The reason we come together as a society, as communities, is to make life better for all of us, so this must be included in our core values.

Perseverance
I want to be clear that I'm not jumping on the "grit" bandwagon here. Like many, I have concerns with some of the assumptions and implications that some folks include in their grit narrative. Having said that, I think the idea of perseverance is still a fundamental one. I think where I differ from some of the thinking around grit is the idea that I value perseverance toward achieving one's own goals, not someone else's perhaps arbitrary ones. I want our students to pursue their passion and their purpose with perseverance, so it's a core value I think we need to explore with our students.

Passion
Passion gets a bad name. Critics make fun of passion by either linking it with romantic passion or with students being passionate about something the critics feel is meaningless while living in their parent's basement. I think that there are some "puritan ethics" lurking in this conversation (at least in the U.S.), and I think this goes back to our societely-assumed definitions of success. Perhaps I'm too idealistic, but I think a life driven by passion is likely to be a key part of most people's ultimate definition of success. If we pursue something we feel is passionately worth pursuing, then it's a life well-lived.

Purpose
I go back and forth on whether passion and purpose are two items or two sides of the same item. At the moment, I'm keeping them separate, because I do believe you can have some passions that perhaps do not rise to the level of purpose. Much has been written about living with purpose, so I don't have a lot to add here, other than the observation that we again tend to shy away from helping our students discover and determine their own purpose. A core value, a core purpose, of our school should be to help students do this.

Again, I'm not suggesting this should be "the" mission for AHS - this needs to be a school-wide (and community-wide) discussion, but I thought laying our one possible vision of what it could look like might be helpful. So this would be what we put on posters all around AHS, to be referred to daily and for students and teachers to hold themselves accountable to (the only form of accountability I think really matters.)

Arapahoe High School Mission

Essential Questions:

• What does it mean to be literate?
• How do you define "success"?
• What is your passion and what is your purpose?

Core Values:

• Curiosity
• Compassion
• Community
• Perseverance
• Passion
• Purpose

Idea #9: Lead

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the ninth - and last for now - blog post that will explore some of those ideas.

1. Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank
2. Eliminate Curriculum (As We Know It)
3. Think Differently About Time
4. Think Differently About Classes
5. At Least They've Still Got Their Health
6. Cultivate Curiosity
7. The Meaning of Life
8. Community Service

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Name of Administrator,

When you and I were growing up there was an expression that went something like, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." The gist of it was that - in the corporate world - IBM was the status quo, the safe choice for your IT needs. They were a good, solid company, with tried and true solutions to your problems, and if you were tasked with purchasing something for your company nobody would ever criticize you if you chose IBM.

The downside of this philosophy, of course, is that it stifled innovation. IBM often was the best choice for a particular problem, but not always. Folks started trying to fit their problems into IBM's solutions, as opposed to IBM creating new solutions for evolving problems. Eventually IBM fell on hard times, and those that had relied on IBM often followed suit, and IBM had to reinvent itself a couple of times (to their credit, they did that really well).

What does this have to do with AHS? I think the essence of what you asked me to think about, the "big ideas" that you'd like to consider to make substantive changes to our school, is really looking at the question of how can we go from good to great. Arapahoe, by all traditional measures, is a good school. It has been for a long time, and likely will continue to be for a while, even if we don't make any substantive changes. But I think what we'd like to do, what we really need to do, is make that leap from good to great, and that requires us to move away from the status quo, move away from the safe choices that no one ever got fired for. I think we have to be willing to be fired; willing to make the choices that aren't easy or safe, but that we think are truly in the best interests of our students, that will take us from good to great.

In some ways, it's actually more difficult for a school like AHS because we are considered a good school. If we were a "failing" school (whatever that means), then people are willing to tear it all apart and start fresh, to try "radical" new approaches because it doesn't seem like it can get any worse. But when you are a "good" school, people are afraid. They are afraid to try anything new, they are afraid to innovate, they are afraid to do something that everyone else (or at least a lot of other "good" schools) isn't already doing.

Schools like AHS tend to talk about "incremental changes," let's just tweak something here and there to get a little bit better. We're already good, let's just keep making small improvements, fine tune around the edges and we'll maintain the status we've achieved over the last 50 years and everyone will stay happy. But here's the problem, you can't go from good to great by making incremental changes. You can't leap a 20-foot chasm in two 10-foot jumps.

We talk a lot with our students about taking risks, and we encourage them to take more risks. Not risks that are a threat to their well-being, but risks that take them out of their comfort zone. We tell them that unless they are willing to risk something, really risk something, to put themselves out there, they are limiting their chances to learn and grow. Yet we seem unwilling to model that for our students, unwilling to actually risk something in order to learn and grow ourselves, in order to make that leap from good to great.

Leadership is hard. It's hard to lead if you're not out in front.

• It's hard to lead if you're not willing to risk something.
• It's hard to lead if you're not willing to make some folks uncomfortable.
• It's hard to lead if you're not willing to risk failing.
• It's hard to lead if you're not willing to sometimes say "I don't know" or "I'm not sure."
• It's hard to lead if you're not willing to try something no one has tried before.

When I get asked to speak to educators I frequently ask them if they were creating schools today, for the first time, given everything we know about learning, given modern technology, and given the modern world, would it look like how our schools look today. No one has ever said yes. No one.
I then ask them why we don't change what we're doing, why we don't make the changes necessary to create the school we would invent if we were inventing schools today. And there's usually silence.

We need to ask ourselves if AHS looks how we would want it to look if we were creating it for the first time today. We need to ask ourselves if are willing to reinvent ourselves, if we really want to go from good to great. If we are, and if we do, then we must be willing to step up and lead. I believe our administration is willing. I believe our staff is willing. I believe our students and our community are willing. Leadership is a choice, not a rank. Are we willing to make that choice? Are we willing to lead?

I look forward to finding out if we are.

Karl

Update 7-15-15: Sorry, I meant to include one more link in this. So imagine I had typed some profound sentence and linked to the Do Better Things post.

Idea #8: Community Service

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the eighth of an undetermined number of blog posts that will explore some of those ideas.

1. Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank
2. Eliminate Curriculum (As We Know It)
3. Think Differently About Time
4. Think Differently About Classes
5. At Least They've Still Got Their Health
6. Cultivate Curiosity
7. The Meaning of Life

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Name of Administrator,

When I started at Arapahoe in 1991, community service was a graduation requirement. That was quickly abolished by the newly elected "Back-to-Basics" School Board, but it's a component that I think is essential to our high school. But I think it needs to be more substantial and more meaningful than simply a "submit a certain number of hours of community service" type requirement.

As with all these ideas I've been writing about, there are many different ways we could implement something like this, but I'll again share one vision of what it could look like. I really see two main parts of community service at AHS, and they both need to focus on both "community" and "service." I see one part focusing on serving the community of AHS, and a second part focusing on serving the wider community outside of AHS.

For serving the community of AHS, I think back to an experience shared after visiting schools in Japan. He talked about one school in Japan where the Seniors were responsible for cleaning the school each day. Not a hired custodial staff, not the faculty, but the Seniors themselves. talked about the sense of pride and ownership those students had about their school, and also how the younger students took great care not to mess up the place or they would face rebuke from the Seniors. 

I envision doing something similar at AHS, although modeled a bit more on Link Crew. My thought was to have all AHS students on the "community crew," but with Senior leadership. We would pair up two (or perhaps three) Seniors with a crew of 6-8 underclassmen who would work together, along with other teams, to keep Arapahoe clean and in good shape. This wouldn't negate the need for a custodial staff, there would still be some things that we wouldn't have students do for safety or other reasons, but I also envision the custodial staff using some of the time freed up by the community crews to serve as mentors to the crews, helping teach the students proper technique as well as problem solving.

At the size I'm suggesting (which is just a suggestion), we would have around 200 crews, with perhaps 2-3 seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen on each crew (that way, by the time they are seniors, students would have had lots of experience to help them as leaders). I foresee developing a rotating schedule where a certain number of crews are on a week at a time (probably five or six crews each week) and they divide up (and rotate through) different parts of the building during that week. Throughout the course of the school year, all crews would serve for a week.

When crews aren't on duty for taking care of AHS, they would instead be serving the wider community. That wider community could be somewhat local (near to AHS), somewhat broader (say, within Colorado), or as broad as they'd like (anywhere in the world). Similar to "curiosity conversations", crews (along with faculty support - perhaps tied into the advisories that the Senior leaders are part of, or perhaps not) would identify needs in their various communities and develop ways to help meet those needs. Sometimes crews might work as a single crew, other times they might team up with other crews for a larger project. Sometimes the project might be of a relatively short duration (perhaps a day or a week), but sometimes they might be extended projects that could take several weeks or months (or even years). In all cases they would be focusing on both serving and on building community, both community within their crew and within the wider community they are serving.

Our mission statement says that we will "encourage students to participate actively in their local and global societies," and our vision statement goes on to reinforce that by saying we will "produce responsible and empowered participants who make meaningful contributions in the greater society." If we truly believe this, shouldn't we be actively doing this during our students' four years at AHS? It's not enough to say that we are laying the foundation for some future participation, our students are responsible enough, capable enough, and I believe willing enough to contribute now. What are we waiting for?

I look forward to "participating" in this discussion with the entire staff.

Karl

Idea #7: The Meaning of Life

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the seventh of an undetermined number of blog posts that will explore some of those ideas. (Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank; Eliminate Curriculum (As We Know It); Think Differently About Time; Think Differently About Classes; At Least They've Still Got Their Health; Cultivate Curiosity)

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Name of Administrator,

Despite not wanting a long list of requirements for our students, I'm kind of on a roll with suggesting things we should perhaps require in some shape or form for all students, so I'm going to stick with it for a little bit longer. I've previously written about Health and Curiosity as being ideas I'd consider "core," today I'm going to add The Meaning of Life.

We currently spend a lot of our time with curriculum that we claim is preparing our students to live well, but we don't devote much time to helping them figure out how they want to live or how they define living "well." It seems like we believe that students will just automatically figure out what's important to them, what they value in life, how they will define "success," and how they want to live in order to achieve those things. Now, I'm not suggesting that we should tell them those things, or that their family doesn't have a big role to play here as well, but as they are creating their identities as teenagers I think we should devote some time where they intentionally think about these things and purposefully start developing their own philosophy of life.

As with everything I've been writing about, there are a variety of ways this could be done; I'm going to suggest one way it might look. First, as students enter AHS I think we need to do a better job of bringing them into the culture of AHS (especially if the culture is going to include some of the new things I've suggested, which are likely very different than what they are used to). Our LINK Crew does a nice job with an initial orientation for incoming freshmen, but after that it seems like we think students will just pick up various aspects of our culture by osmosis. I think we need to be more intentional and purposeful with this, which is why I would suggest an advisory class for each student for all four years at AHS.

Ideally these advisories would be 25 students or less with two staff members for each advisory. That would take about 170 staff members, which we don't quite have, but perhaps we could borrow a few from ESC to help with advisory time. These 25 students would stay together for all four years, with the same two faculty advisors. As they enter Arapahoe as freshmen, I would envision this class as partly an "Orientation to AHS" class, helping students figure out where things are, how things work, who to ask for what, and how to be successful at AHS. More importantly, however, it would begin the acculturation to our community of learners and begin the process of figuring out their own personal philosophies of life.

As the students get older, these advisories would continue operating in an advisory capacity, but would also spend time helping students begin to figure out some of the big questions of each student's life: how do they want to live, what does it mean to be successful, what's most important to them. This would include some exploration of some of the world's philosophical traditions, including the ancient Greek philosophies (my personal favorite: stoicism) and more modern ideas including rationalism, idealism and existentialism (among others). But perhaps unlike a traditional philosophy class that just explores others' philosophies and that we might offer as an elective, this would be offered to every student and be a chance for students to actively piece together their personal philosophy.

While they wouldn't "finish" this process by the time they graduate, they would be approaching adulthood with a much more informed perspective on how they want to proceed with their lives. Instead of the default being defining success as a college degree, a high-paying job, and a family with 2.4 kids, we would help students decide what is important to them and how to pursue their own definition of success. Many of us learn in school that Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living," and Thoreau said "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." If those are true, then shouldn't we help our students examine their life more closely, create and follow their dreams, and then help them live the life they've imagined?

The meaning of life is, quite literally, the meaning of our existence. Our students deserve the opportunity to explore their own meaning of life in a genuine, thoughtful, and thorough way as they are going through the identity-creation years of their lives. Shouldn't we help them do this in an intentional and purposeful way, instead of just "hope" they figure it out?

I look forward to having this discussion with the entire staff and am "curious" to see what results.

Karl

Idea #6: Cultivate Curiosity

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the sixth of an undetermined number of blog posts that will explore some of those ideas. (Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank; Eliminate Curriculum (As We Know It); Think Differently About Time; Think Differently About Classes; At Least They've Still Got Their Health)

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Name of Administrator,

I'm currently reading A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life by Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman. It's an interested read, as it details the "curiosity conversations" that Grazer has scheduled weekly for the past few decades with interesting people. It also reminds me of one of the biggest concerns I hear when I've discussed eliminating curriculum with both teachers and students: students don't know what they don't know.

The concern is that if students aren't exposed to many different curricular areas they may not know that they might be passionate about one of them. Many folks report that they didn't think they'd be interested in course until they had to take it, then discovered that they actually liked it (and there's almost always a nod to the passionate teacher of that course). This is a legitimate concern, and one I agree with, although I would question whether our current system really does such a good job of achieving this objective.

I think there are probably many ways to address this concern in a more open-ended learning experience like I'm suggesting, but let me share just one to give you an idea of how it could look. In my last post I suggested that one core "class" that I would keep is one built around physical fitness and health. I would also suggest a second "core" experience for all students, one built around curiosity and current events, maybe even call it "Cultivating Curiosity" or "Curiosity Conversations" or something.

Arapahoe, like many schools, has a current events class, but it is an elective, so not all students take it, and it only meets two days a week for one semester, so students only get a small slice of current events. I would propose that all students take "Cultivating Curiosity" or "Curiosity Conversations" throughout their four years at Arapahoe. With the guidance of several teachers, students would be exposed each week to what's going on in the world at a fairly shallow level, but at a deeper level than you might get by watching the evening news (think NPR/Atlantic length of story, with follow-up, as opposed to Nightly News/Denver Post length of story.) Then perhaps every two weeks or so, each student (or a small group of students) would choose one (or more) events that particularly piqued their curiosity and delve into them more deeply. They would continue to get the "shallow" current events discussion each week, so they'd still get exposed to what's going on in the world, but they would also take time to dive deeper into an issue for a couple of weeks, then dive deeper into another issue for a couple of weeks, and so on.

Then, perhaps at the end of the first semester, after they've dived deep into 6-9 topics, they might choose one of those to focus on during second semester and do a really deep dive, spending a significant amount of time learning everything they can about it, immersing themselves in the issue and perhaps delving into ways they could get involved. (Or, if nothing has really jumped out at them, they could continue doing the two-week dives on new topics.) If done well, this gives students exposure to many different areas, and in a fashion that is both timely and much more likely to be relevant to their lives that a pre-digested curriculum.

I think this has great potential, although I think we would perhaps expand the definition of "current events" a bit from the way we currently define them. We would certainly still incorporate the "hot topics" in the news, but my vision of current events would also include many areas that might not be on the front page, but are still current. Here's a (non-comprehensive) list of some current events that I think would be likely candidates if I was teaching this class this week:

• Economic Crisis in Greece (economics, politics, government, history, mathematics, geography)
• Confederate Flag and #BlackLivesMatter (history, politics, philosophy, sociology, media)
• Climate Change/Energy (science, mathematics, politics, government, history)
• Retirement Security (government, economics, mathematics, politics)
• Education Reform (government, economics, politics, science, philosophy)
• Space/Rocket Launches (science, mathematics, government, economics, sociology)
• Gender/USWNT (sports, politics, economics)
• Iran Nuclear Deal (science, politics, government, geography)
• 2016 Election (politics, government, philosophy, media)
• Driverless Cars (economics, politics, government, science)
• Mental Health (science, medicine, government)
• Marriage (sociology, politics, government, science)

And many, many, many more. Teachers and students would have equal responsibility to suggest topics each week, and to search and research to find reliable information. Students would get an opportunity to present on their deeper dive topics, and these topics could lead to internships, mentorships, or job placements. Note that this "class" doesn't preclude or supersede the "pursuing your passions" piece from my earlier post, but just provides an additional opportunity for exposure to new topics and possible passions.

I think curiosity is "core" to learning, and should be front-and-center at Arapahoe. I look forward to having this discussion with the entire staff and am "curious" to see what results.

Karl

Idea #5: At Least They've Still Got Their Health

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the fifth of an undetermined number of blog posts that will explore some of those ideas. (Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank; Eliminate Curriculum (As We Know It); Think Differently About Time; Think Differently About Classes)

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Name of Administrator,

When I was younger I didn't really get the phrase, "at least you've still got your health." But as I've gotten older, and as I see folks deal with everything from relatively minor colds, to more chronic conditions, to serious illnesses, I get what a huge impact health has on everyone's lives. Our health not only impacts how we feel, but our ability to do what we want to do and, crucially, our ability to learn. That's why it's so curious to me that "physical" education seems to be such an afterthought in our school.

I don't mean to imply that our physical education teachers aren't thoughtful or don't do a great job, they are and they do. But physical education is clearly not an emphasis or a priority at AHS. We require 12 hours of physical education to graduate at AHS, including a required swimming class and 2 credits of health. That works out to an average of only 1.5 class periods per week over the course of our students' high school careers.

Yet what is more important to our students' present and future than health and physical education? This is one area where we can clearly answer the question of, "When are we ever going to have to use this?" Unlike, say, the quadratic formula or the periodic table, the first bank of the United States or Macbeth, the ability to conjugate aprender or to make a table in Microsoft Word 2013, we can guarantee that health will be important to each and every one of our students for the rest of their lives.

The healthcare system in the United States has lots of problems, but some of our biggest problems are self-induced. So-called "lifestyle diseases," such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease are threatening to actually lower the quality (and perhaps duration) of our students' lives. So why wouldn't wellness education be just as high a priority as subjects we deem as "core"?

In some of my previous posts I've questioned whether "classes" are the best way to approach learning, and whether a "one-size-fits-all" approach makes any sense. I still believe that, but this is one area which I think all students should learn every day, and perhaps in a form that looks somewhat like a traditional class with a regularly scheduled time. I still don't think it needs to be one-size-fits-all, it can be customized to meet the needs and interests of each student, but I do think that every student needs to participate in physical activity and health education every day.

I think every student (and staff member - we should do this together) should have at least 30 minutes of physical activity scheduled into each school day. We should also have regular, on-going education around wellness, including nutrition, exercise, sleep, emotional health, and brain and learning science. Our students cannot reach their potential, cannot learn and grow and contribute their best to society, if they aren't as healthy as they can be. This is truly a "core" subject and we should give it the emphasis it deserves.

I look forward to having this "healthy" discussion with the entire staff.

Karl

Idea #4: Think Differently About Classes

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the fourth of an undetermined number of blog posts that will explore some of those ideas. (The first was Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank; the second was Eliminate Curriculum (As We Know It); the third was Think Differently About Time.)

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Name of Administrator,

In my last post I suggested we think differently about time, and I touched on the idea that the idea of "classes" was something we should think more deeply about. In this post I just want to briefly (really, it's going to be brief this time) explore that a bit more.

Modern humans have existed for about 200,000 years. Our current conception of education in the U.S., with comprehensive K-12 education for all students, with the goal of preparing them for at least four years of higher education, is really a post-World-War-II phenomenon, so has existed for about 60 years. That works out to 0.03% of the time that modern humans have been learning. To put that in perhaps a more understandable context, if we think of modern human history being a calendar year, January 1st through December 31st, the school system as we know it began at 9:22 pm on December 31st.

Here's the problem: we think it has to look this way. Because humans have evolved to view the world in a linear fashion, and because we have short lifespans, the perspective that you, I and all of our colleagues share is completely encompassed by the 60 years of our current system. So when we have conversations about what we might do differently, the anchor point for our discussion is the current system. And, because we are products of the system working in the system, our perspective is also the perspective of the system.

I'm suggesting that these perspectives are misguided. We should use those big brains that ushered in the era of the modern human to realize that just because a school system has existed for the last two hours and thirty-eight minutes of the calendar year, that's not the only way the system learning can look.

We currently view the concept of a "class" much the way that scientists used to view the concept of the atom. 'Atom" literally comes from the Greek word "atomos", which means  "that which cannot be split." Some scientists initially thought that atoms were the fundamental unit of the universe, that you couldn't get any smaller or more basic. We now know that isn't true, there are subatomic particles such as quarks, leptons and bosons. In schools, we often behave as though "classes" are the fundamental unit of learning, that they can't be split and that, in fact, they are the building blocks of learning. But that's making the fundamental mistake of viewing learning from the perspective of the system instead of the perspective of the learner. We can do better.

I'm not suggesting there is no place for the concept of classes, I still see some value in classes for certain needs and in certain situations. But they shouldn't be the default assumption, the fundamental building block of learning. While we don't typically think of it this way, our current goal for our students is to be successful in completing our classes. The class is the fundamental unit of our system, so we design and define everything in terms of the class. We can do better.

Instead of thinking in terms of learners completing classes, let's just think of learners. What do we want for our learners? Most importantly, what do they want for themselves? What is the best way to help our learners figure out what they want and then pursue that? We need to think differently about classes. If we focus on the learners, and not the system, we will do better. I look forward to having this discussion with the entire staff.

Karl

Idea #3: Think Differently About Time

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the third of an undetermined number of blog posts that will explore some of those ideas. (The first was Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank; the second was Eliminate Curriculum (As We Know It).) Warning - this will be extremely long, somewhat rambly, and very narrative/descriptive.

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Name of Administrator,

In my previous two big ideas I suggested that there were three major areas that needed to be explored: our system/schedule, our curriculum, and our assessment/reporting system. I argued that assessment/reporting and curriculum were fundamental to everything we do, and drive so many of the decisions (and assumptions), and that both needed to be radically rethought. In this post I want to examine the schedule and, more specifically, how we think about time.

As we look at a school day at AHS, here is the typical way we think about time. Formal academic time starts at 7:21 am and lasts until 2:16 pm, with six class periods of 59 minutes each, passing periods of 5 minutes, and 30 minutes for lunch. Beginning at 2:16 pm and lasting until 5:00 pm or so is time for sports practices (and sometimes games) and other after school activities and clubs. Starting around 6:00 pm and lasting until about 10:00 pm is a combination of sporting activities (games), activities (concerts, performances, dances), personal time for students, and some informal academic time (homework, we expect two hours a night Sunday through Thursday). This is for Monday through Friday. On Saturday and Sunday we don't expect any learning to occur, although we have lots of sports and activities on Saturday, and there are those two hours of homework they're supposed to do on Sunday night.

I think there's a huge problem with this view, and it all stems from a simple matter of perspective: we're viewing time from the perspective of the school, of the system, and not from the perspective of the learner. Even the basic concepts of the "school day, " the "school week" and the "school year" are so ingrained in our thinking that we can't see all the assumptions that are baked into those phrases. We are making an implicit assumption that the vast majority of learning happens (and should happen) when kids are at school in a formal academic setting (class), with some additional preparation and reinforcement that can happen in the evening (homework).

But students' lives - and their bodies and brains - are not limited to the artificial constraints of a system designed to mass educate a population to be successful in a factory-dominated society. There are twenty-four hours in a day for a student to learn, why do we keep insisting that the important learning can only happen between 7:21 and 2:16, and can only happen in formal classes? From simply a mathematical perspective, we've consciously decided to limit learning to less than 30% of the day. It gets even worse when you think about the "school week." This learning is expected to happen during just five of the seven days of the calendar week, so from a mathematical perspective we've now limited learning to less than 21% of the hours in a week. And, of course, there's the "school year" - we only expect students to learn during 180 days of the year - so about 14% of the time available to them in a year.

So what if we stopped looking at learning as being defined by the "school" anything? What if instead we looked at - and consciously designed - learning from the perspective of the learner? Each and every learner has twenty-four hours each day, 365 days a year. Why limit learning to 7:21 to 2:16, Monday through Friday, for about 36 weeks each year, and dividing up that time into formal classes where we have predetermined what those learners should learn? What if we designed learning around the needs of the learner instead of around the needs of the system?

Right about now you may be thinking that this all sounds great philosophically (or perhaps not so great), but the reason we have a system is because there's simply no way to efficiently accomplish what I've suggested. While I'll admit that's it's a complicated and most likely messy task, I'm not willing to concede that it's impossible. After all, if we'd been having this conversation a couple of hundred years ago and suggesting the school system we have today, most people would've said that was impossible as well.

And I would also strongly argue that our goal is not necessarily "efficiency", that's a word that only makes sense from a factory-model, system-oriented framework. Our goal is to help our students learn. Our goal is to help our students discover and pursue their passions. Our goal is to meet the needs of our students. If we truly do those three things, we will more "efficiently" meet the needs of society than any one-size-fits-all, standardization system designed to create identical widgets. After all, society only makes sense as a concept if it improves the lives of all the individuals that make up that society. We talk a lot in education about having high expectations for our students, isn't it about time we have some higher expectations for ourselves?

In my last post I talked about one possible vision of what transitioning toward such a viewpoint might look like. Clearly that post still approached the problem from mostly the system's perspective of time, not the learner's, although I think it at least took baby steps in the right direction. Let's try to take more of a birds-eye perspective (or perhaps satellites-camera perspective) of time, learning and scheduling and see what we can come up with.

Each learner has twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 days in a year (and an increasing number of years - our current system presumes that learning "stops" at age 18 or perhaps 22). That's a blank canvas on which we can co-create a learning experience with our learners, without per-determining the dimensions of the canvas or whether we're using oils or watercolors. There's no reason that it has to start at 7:21 and end at 2:16, Monday through Friday only, for each learner. Let's design it with the goal of creating learners, of helping our students achieve their goals, not the system's goals. Instead of designing it with "the end in mind", with that standardized "end" defined by the system, let's design it with the journey in mind, and the journey is defined by the student (with the help of the community around her).

By this point I've either completely lost you, or you're still hanging in there but are thinking, "Okay, but give me some specifics. What does this look like?" I don't know what it looks like. There is no one way that it looks like, or even one hundred ways it looks like. That's what scares us so much. We think we have to have a detailed schedule planned out, that takes us from point A to point B, from start to finish. But we don't, and we have plenty of precedence to base this on. You're a parent - when your kids were born did you have a detailed plan of what their lives were going to look like, from Point A to Point B, from start to finish? Of course not, nor would we want their lives to be like that. So why should their learning look like that?

Now, there are a few semi-specifics that I could suggest as starting points for discussion.

First, and most obviously, is the start time for our "school" day. While I don't think there should be one time for all students, and I don't think formal classes are the only - or even the best - way to learn, I still see a role for some time-bound, scheduled learning activities (and some folks would clearly prefer this). If we are going to have something like this then we should start no earlier than 9 am. I imagine you're as familiar with the research as I am; starting at 7:21 for students aged 14 through 18 makes no sense at all. Starting later will not only improve "academic" performance, but will also cut down on car accidents, reduce suicides and other mental-health issues, and generally improve the well-being of our students. All the reasons that are typically given for why we can't change the start time are either bogus or can easily be addressed (I won't take the time in this post, but would be happy to discuss).

Second, don't think of the "school" day in terms of schedules and classes, but in terms of learning. And that learning shouldn't be divided up into artificial subject areas, with a bell ringing every 59 minutes so we can respond like Pavlov's dogs, conditioned to move to our next "feeding" when we hear the tone. In fact, it doesn't have to be "divided up" at all (although it could be if that made sense for some learners). Instead, we should design each learner's school day to meet their needs. For years we've been required by law to create IEP's for our Special Education students. I'm suggesting we create them for each and every student. Not IEP's as we typically know them, which are too often hoop-jumping paperwork nightmares, but true IEP's, focused on personal learning. I'm not sure how important the name is, but I'd perhaps suggest PLP's - Personal Learning Plans - although I'm still not completely convinced "plan" is the right word either, as that almost presumes a fixed, defined starting point and end goal, a Point A and Point B, but it's a place to start the discussion.

Third, we need to radically redefine the role of "teacher". Our current model presumes subject-matter experts who deliver a pre-defined curriculum to students. Instead, we need master learners, who still probably have some subject-area expertise, but whose focus is on helping learners achieve their goals, not master our subjects. If we redefine this role, it then allows us the freedom to think about "time" and "schedules' very differently.

Fourth, we need to discard the idea that "school" or "learning" only happens when students are at school, in formal learning activities, directed by adults, and only up to the age of 18 or 22. If we truly believe in "lifelong learners," then we need to design our learning experiences with that in mind. It's a continuum of learning, both in terms of what those learning experiences look like, and in terms of when they happen. With extended lifespans (serious researchers have suggested that the first person who will live to 150 has already been born, and that most newborns have a decent chance of living a healthy life to 120), shifting population demographics (by 2060 children will be barely more numerous than any other age group up to 65), and rapidly advancing technology that is changing the face of employment (automation has already dramatically altered the face of employment and is only going to increase in our students' lives), our students are going to have both an extended lifespan to learn and much more "free" time (not spent working for a paycheck) to do it in. We need to discard the idea that time is a scarce quantity - for our students over the evolving course of their lives, it's going to be abundant. What should "high school" look like if many of our students are going to live to 120 and work fewer hours each week?

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to include our students when deciding when, how and where their time is spent. We need to fully educate them about what their lives are likely to look like (see the links in the previous paragraph), and have them help design their own path through life. It is no longer good enough (if it ever was), for the time we call "high school" to "prepare" students for the rest of their lives. It needs to be a time for helping students design how they are going to lead their lives. Shouldn't it be focused on helping them decide how they want to live, on defining what a "good life" is? Isn't that so much more important than all the requirements we think are so important in our current high school experience?

We need to think differently about time. We need to view time from the perspective of the learner, not the system, and from the perspective of a life-time of learning, not a school-time of learning. I look forward to having this discussion with the entire staff.

Karl

Idea #2: Eliminate Curriculum (As We Know It)

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the second of hopefully several blog posts that will explore some of those ideas. (The first was Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank.) Warning - this will be extremely long, somewhat rambly, and very narrative/descriptive.

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Name of Administrator,

In my previous big idea I suggested that there were three major areas that needed to be explored: our system/schedule, our curriculum, and our assessment/reporting system. While I felt that assessment/reporting was fundamental to everything we do, and drives so many of the decisions (and assumptions) we make regarding what we do, curriculum is a close second.

For me, talking about curriculum with educators is analogous to trying to talk to a fish about water. If you ask a fish how the water is today (go with me on this), she's likely to say, "What water?" Water is so omnipresent for fish, such a "given", that it almost doesn't even register as a variable in their environment: it is their environment. Curriculum is the same for educators. We have spent a large majority of our lives immersed in school that has been defined by the curriculum.

First we attended 12 or 13 years of K-12 schools, then typically four years of college, and - for many of us - a year or two or three of grad school (not to mention numerous professional development opportunities that operated similarly). And as educators (particularly if you are a career educator) we have spent our adult lives in schools that have been defined by the curriculum. As a very specific example, I have spent 45 of my 51 years (not counting those professional development opportunities as additional time) in formal, traditional (for lack of a better word) educational settings. What water? What curriculum?

Over all those years in formal, traditional educational settings, we have lost track of some of the basic assumptions we have made (and continue to make) about what school is. One of the most basic assumptions we make is that a pre-defined, standardized curriculum is not only necessary, but is central to the basic idea of what school is. In many ways, it has become the de facto purpose of school. So, for this post, here is my basic assertion: When we create and "deliver" a pre-defined curriculum to our students, we are robbing them of the essence of what it means to learn.

Because we have been so immersed in "school" as we know it, because curriculum has both visibly and invisibly shaped most of our lives, we have trouble seeing the pitfalls inherent in a curriculum. Here's a basic truth about curriculum that I would hazard to say we rarely share with our students: it's a guess. Some folks would argue that it's a well-informed, educated guess, but it's a guess nonetheless, and it's a guess that's made using some very faulty assumptions.

• The first assumption is that we know what is essential to be "educated." We don't.
• The second assumption is that we know what is essential to be "successful" (which we really need to define) in the future. We don't.
• The third assumption is that the future is going to be very similar to the past and present. It won't be.
• The fourth assumption is that the only way to prepare students for their future is to have them learn a pre-determined, fixed set of knowledge and skills, in a certain order, at the same time, and within a certain time frame. I remember Will Richardson referring to in a presentation a long time ago as "just in case" education. But today's world - and so much of what we know about learning - requires a more "just in time" approach.
• The fifth assumption is that all students need to know the same things, at the same level, and at the same age. They don't.
  
• The sixth assumption is that, even if you agree with the previous five assumptions, our system as it is currently constructed is well-designed to accomplish those things. It isn't, and it doesn't.

What does it mean to be educated? I don't think we really know. If you ask most people this question, the response will typically include some or all of the following:

• literate
• numerate
• critical thinker
• knowledgeable
• lifelong learner
• problem solver

There are many more, of course, but those tend to be the top responses. I don't necessarily disagree with these, by the way, but I disagree with how people are typically defining them. Let's take "literate" as an example. What does it mean to be literate?

When I was growing up, being literate basically meant being able to read, at about the 8th or 9th grade level. Now we've done a ton of work in the last 40 years or so and have improved the definition of literacy tremendously. It's not "just" being able to read, but to be able to think critically about what we read, and write, and communicate, and it includes numeracy, and scientific literacy, and artistic literacy, and a long, long list of other "literacies", skills, and habits of mind. Even the National Council of Teachers of English has laid out a much broader and more nuanced definition of literacy:

Literacy has always been a collection of cultural and communicative practices shared among members of particular groups. As society and technology change, so does literacy. Because technology has increased the intensity and complexity of literate environments, the 21st century demands that a literate person possess a wide range of abilities and competencies, many literacies. These literacies are multiple, dynamic, and malleable. As in the past, they are inextricably linked with particular histories, life possibilities, and social trajectories of individuals and groups. Active, successful participants in this 21st century global society must be able to

• Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology; 

• Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought;

• Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes; Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information; 

• Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts; 

• Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.

Notice that it's not a single "literacy," literacy with a capital L; but multiple literacies. And those literacies are "dynamic and malleable." That means they are constantly changing, shifting, adapting, and are shaped by the learners themselves. What percentage of our staff do you think meets the above definition of literacy?

As another example, let's look briefly at "knowledgeable." What does it mean to be knowledgeable in 2015 (and beyond)? When nearly the sum total of humankind's knowledge is a click (or a voice request, or an automated computer request) away, what does it truly mean to be "knowledgeable"? How valuable is it to have a built-in, random-access storehouse of "knowledge" in a local repository we call our brain so that we can recall individual factoids on demand? To be clear, I'm not suggesting knowledge isn't important, it is. It's necessary, but not sufficient. But how important, and how much knowledge, and what kind of knowledge? I'm suggesting that our current emphasis on knowledge acquisition and retrieval is misguided. It's not (just) how much you know, but it's what can you do with it? Knowing isn't enough, being able to do something with that knowledge is what we want for our students. And, increasingly, it's not (just) what you know, it's who you know.

Lifelong learner. This is a buzzword that educators have been using my entire career. We love to give lip-service to it, but do we actually believe it? The irony is that the assumption of a fixed curriculum is antithetical to the concept of being a lifelong learner. Why do I have to know Algebra by the end of 9th grade if I'm a lifelong learner? Does everyone have to know Chemistry and, if so, do they have to know it by age 17? If I'm a lifelong learner, shouldn't I be continuously learning, and if I need to learn Algebra or Chemistry or whatever at the age of 24 (or 44, or 64), can't I do that? (And, by the way, while Algebra may not be changing so much, Chemistry certainly is, so a decent portion of the Chemistry they are "learning' in 2015 will be outdated when they are 44 or 64). If our goal is to create lifelong learners, why are we so fixated on making sure they are "learned"?

Okay, so I could go on about this for a long time (you probably think I already have), but I'll stop with this part for now and address the next logical question: so what should we do instead? Again, as I said in the previous post, this is something that needs to be a school-wide discussion and, to be perfectly clear, I do not think there is one right way to do this. But I have learned previously that sometimes it's helpful for folks to have at least one possible vision of what it could look like in order to get the conversation started. So here's my conversation starter.

While I personally think we should throw out the curriculum (as we know it) for all four years at AHS, I think that is probably too radical of a step to take all at once (and very unlikely to happen). So my suggestion is a bit of compromise, but one that I think still holds reasonably true to what our students need while simultaneously having at least a small chance of being adopted and being much easier to practically implement as we transition from our current system. I would propose a hybrid solution, with freshmen and sophomore years staying somewhat traditional, and junior and senior years being radically different.

I'll delve into the details a bit to sketch out the idea, but will try not to delve too deeply since this is just one possible vision of what it could look like. The basic idea is that freshmen and sophomore years would still look fairly "traditional," and by traditional I mean that students would have a schedule of classes with somewhat similar requirements (core, elective, hours, etc.) as we do now. This would help address concerns that ninth and tenth graders aren't ready for the radical changes I'm going to suggest for juniors and seniors, that they will need to transition from the schooling they've known to this new approach, and then we need a couple of years to bring them into this new culture of learning at AHS that we are trying to develop. It would also address some of the practical matters regarding graduation, state, and college requirements, as well as provide a place for existing staff that might not be quite as ready to jump into the radical innovation portion.

While this would resemble what AHS looks like currently for ninth and tenth graders, it would not exactly duplicate it. All of our "courses" would undergo some changes, some more subtle and some more radical, all designed to begin to transition and transform our students to be prepared to be successful, more independent learners in their junior and senior years. This would have to be part of a coherent vision of the four years at Arapahoe, and a coherent vision of what it means to be a learner today (and in the future). There would be a lot of heavy lifting involved in making these changes and I could foresee some significant changes in required courses in ninth and tenth grade given the radical changes I'm suggesting for 11th and 12th.

So what then does 11th and 12th grade look like? There are lots of possibilities here, and I think it's important to realize up front that it will not be one-size-fits-all. It will - and should - look different for different students. But I envision much more personal learning (not "individualized" or even "personalized", although I think personalized can be interpreted similarly to personal). In brief, "individualized" learning is something we do to kids; we try to deliver the existing curriculum in individualized ways to be more successful with each student. While I prefer that as compared to non-individualized learning, that's not what we're going for. We're going for "personal" learning, which is learning that kids do for themselves.

We want students to become (with our help) master learners. We want them to pursue their passions, to engage in relevant, meaningful and deep learning that matters both to them and to the world around them. We want them to have the ability to spend two months (or two years) pursuing an idea deeply if they so choose, and our job is to help them do that as successfully as possible. This could take many forms, from internships, to apprenticeships, to independent or small group studies. Or it could even look somewhat like traditional courses for those students who feel like that will best meet their needs at this time. The power of the approach, however, is there is no one fixed path, and - for most students - it's likely to include all of the above approaches (and more) put together in unique combinations.

If our goal is to help students become lifelong learners, who are literate, numerate, and knowledgeable critical thinkers and problems solvers, then we need to give students the opportunity to do those things right now, in high school (not at some unspecified "later" in the "real world"). We underestimate the ability and the passion of our students. To paraphrase Marianne Williamson,

Our greatest fear is not that our students are incapable, it's that they are capable beyond our expectations. It is the fear of what might go right, not the fear of what might go wrong, that most frightens us.

At this point you may be thinking that this sounds interesting (perhaps even "great"), but what about having students "college and career ready?" I would take issue with that phrase. Over the last few years this phrase has been developed with good intentions, but I think with three underlying, and faulty, assumptions.

The first faulty assumption is that we truly know, starting in Kindergarten - at least 13 years before students will enter college or a career - what they will need 13 years (or 17, or 37, or 57) years in the future. Even if you shift the start to ninth grade, it's the height of hubris to assume that we know what our students are really going to need in their career in 2050.

The second assumption I think is really a slightly disguised bias toward college. At least in my recollection and personal experience, the phrase "college and career ready" started out as "college ready," and then the "career" part was added on later when folks figured out both the elitist and impractical implications of saying all kids should be college ready. The bias, I believe, is that while they say "college and career ready", the strong belief is that college is better and, well, if you can't be college ready, then okay, you can be career ready. I also think the assumption is that if we design our schools to produce students who are college ready, they will also be career ready. I'm not sure I completely follow the logic of that.

The final assumption this phrase makes is that "college and career ready" should be our goal. I would strongly argue that, while I believe the approach I'm describing will actually make our students more "college and career ready" than our current approach, that really shouldn't be our goal. Again, I would reference the saying we have prominently displayed in our cafeteria, "Not for school, but for life, we learn." If we are "preparing" our students for anything, it's for life (although I'm not a huge fan of focusing too much on "preparing" vs. actually living). While "college" and/or "career" will likely be a sizable portion of many of our students' lives, it is not their entire life, and we should be "preparing" them for all of it. (And since "college" is really just "pre-career", this phrase really implies that we are preparing them solely for careers; for jobs, to be workers, which I also think is problematic.) If we believe that education is about more than simply preparing students to be good employees, than "college and career ready" cannot be our goal.

Again, I could go on for a long time, but let me close with one more issue that is likely to be prominent in any discussion regarding a plan that looks anything similar to what I've proposed. What will teachers do with those juniors and seniors? This is more than just a practical question, I think it actually is a fundamentally philosophical question about what it means to be a "teacher" in 2015.

If this idea were presented to staff I think it would engender many reactions, but I could perhaps envision dividing teacher reactions into four groups. A small, but not insignificant, number of our teachers would be ready to jump in with both feet. A small, but larger number of our teachers would be intrigued and ready to jump in with one foot, but would need some time to think through this and adapt. A similar-sized group of our teachers would be willing to dip a toe in. Finally, a small, but not insignificant group of our teachers would not want to even get near the water. I think all four groups, but especially the last two, would express something similar to, "But I"m a (fill in the blank) teacher. What would I teach?"

This reminds me of something I've heard Chris Lehmann say many times, "I don't teach "English" or "Math", I teach students English or I teach students Math.) I think another obvious, but perhaps unintended, consequence of defining school as delivering curriculum is forgetting the fact that we aren't here to teach subjects, we are here to teach students. I think I might even go a bit further than Chris's statement and suggest that even the phrasing "I teach students (fill in the blank)" is perhaps still not quite what we're going for at AHS in 2015 (and beyond). If our goal is to help them become lifelong learners, then even saying "I teach students mathematics" is too limiting.

I just finished reading Will Richardson's From Master Teacher to Master Learner, and I think Will does a much better job than I would in describing this shift. (I highly recommend you read it, in fact, I think it would make a great follow-up book study for the staff after Mindset.) But, briefly, let me try to convey my interpretation. The role of the teacher is no longer (and perhaps never should have been) to deliver a fixed body of knowledge to a student; rather, the role of the teacher is to be a master learner and to help students become master learners. We need to model learning for and alongside our students and, in the process, help them become the best learners they can be.

So instead of Chris's phrasing (which I still like), I would initially change it to "I help students learn (fill in the blank subject area)" and, then, one step further, "I help students learn," and, even further, "I help people learn." Limiting it to just "students" ignores the very concept of lifelong learners - we are all students, if we needlessly delineate students as a separate, and often by implication inferior, category, then we are limiting ourselves and everyone around us. This touches on my personal mission statement that I tried to compose a while back,

To help myself and those around me become better learners and discover and pursue their passions.

Maybe a little better, but it's awkward with the multiple 'ands', and I still don't quite like the phrase 'better learners.' So then I'm reminded of another post where I reference something David Jakes wrote talking about culture, and I wonder if somehow my mission statement should try to talk about a culture of learning.

To help myself and those around me develop a culture of learning; one where we help each other discover and then pursue our passions.

In my suggestion for how we transform AHS (particularly junior and senior year, but also transitioning to and developing the culture for it in freshmen and sophomore years), the role of the teacher really does shift from "teaching" in the traditional way we've defined that to "learning, helping others learn and become better learners, and developing a culture of learning." Some teachers (perhaps many) will not initially (or perhaps ever) be comfortable with that definition or role but, in the end, it is the role that our students need us to fill. We need to make a decision, are schools designed to meet the needs of our students? Or not?

Clearly, there are many more details I could go into, including a suggested timeline for this transition (initial thinking, between two and five years), but I think this is probably enough to lay out the general idea and to get the conversation started. I look forward to having this discussion with the entire staff.

Karl

Idea #1: Eliminate Letter Grades, GPA and Class Rank

At the end of the school year I met with the administrator who does my evaluation and he/she asked me to think over the summer about some "big ideas" that would be worth discussing that could improve our school. This is the first of hopefully several blog posts that will explore some of those ideas. Warning - this will be extremely long, somewhat rambly, and very narrative/descriptive.

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Name of Administrator,

You asked me to think of some "big ideas" that could help Arapahoe improve and meet the needs of our students even more effectively than we currently do. A former administrator of ours used to refer to this as "taking it to the next level" (and the gaming culture refers to this as "leveling up"). While well intentioned, I grew to dislike that phrase over time because I felt like it was too ambiguous and was too often for "show" and not for "substance." It also implies that there is a "level" we are at that applies equally to all students, a one-size-fits-all approach that suggests there is one right way to meet the needs of all of our students. I, of course, disagree with that, both in theory and in practice. So as I began to think about your request I decided to frame it more in the context of educational "first principles" instead of "levels"or even "improvements."

As I began sketching out a few of those big ideas, I quickly realized that some ideas were bigger than others, which meant I had to make a decision: do I start with the smaller big ideas or the really big big ideas? Many folks would suggest that we should start with the smaller ones, because - while big - they are still much less threatening to the existing structure and therefore more likely to be adopted or at least partially adopted. But as I thought about first principles, I decided to take the alternate approach. We should start with some of the biggest ideas first, because so much of our system (both current and hopefully future) flows from some basic decisions (assumptions) that we've made and often don't even go back and question. That doesn't mean that any of the ideas that follow can't stand on their own or aren't worthwhile even if we don't adopt the biggest ideas, it just means we should do the hard work of tackling the biggest ideas first because they will not only have the biggest impact, but will shape all the other ideas to come.

I've written previously about mission statements and how I don't think ours is a very good one. I think the problem boils down to first principles, and that we haven't truly identified what our core values and goals are for our students (or even for ourselves as educators). Clearly it wouldn't make much sense for me to to try to identify those core values for our school by myself, so I'm not going to try to do that here. But as I thought about what I could suggest that might be one level of abstraction removed from those core values, I thought of three majors areas: our system/schedule, our curriculum, and our assessment/reporting system. All three of those are worth discussing in depth, but for this first idea at least I've decided to focus on the last one: our assessment/reporting system.

Here is my basic assertion, which I would suggest is a basic truth about our current system: When we have an assessment and reporting system for learning that undermines the learning, the reporting system is fatally flawed and needs to change. To me, so many of the "problems" I see with our current system, and probably the single biggest impediment to meaningful change, is grades. Specifically, letter grades, and especially because those letter grades are typically assigned by averaging percents across multiple discrete assignments over an arbitrary amount of time (a semester). We then compound that huge mistake by translating those letter grades into GPA (more averaging of discrete and unrelated items), and then use that GPA to establish a Class Rank for each and every one of our students. In my view, this is both morally and pedagogically indefensible and needs to stop. Which is why it's the first of the "big ideas" I think we should discuss as a school.

There are a myriad of different ways that grades (along with GPA and Class Rank) undermine the learning; I will mention just a few (although I'd be happy to go more in-depth on any of them if you'd like).

Ask any teacher at AHS in the last two weeks of the semester what is frustrating them the most, and one of the first things out of their mouth will be students asking what they can do to improve their grade. (We even have a name for this, "grade grubbing.") It's frustrating because the students are basically asking what they can do to get more "points" - the conversation is not at all about learning. As educators, we complain endlessly about this, but fail to acknowledge that we have created it. If we want the conversation to be about learning, we need to remove the whole idea of "points" and "letter grades."

The idea of assigning a percent to what a student knows on a particular assignment, and then averaging those percents over an arbitrary amount of time to come up with an overall grade, is indefensible mathematically, pedagogically, practically, and based on what we know about human development. If we value learning, if we value growth, if we value effort, then letter grades must go.

Our staff has been asked to read Dweck's Mindset this summer so we can discuss in the fall. The central tenet of the book is that by focusing on a growth mindset, you will maximize potential, growth and achievement. Our current system undermines that every chance it gets. As an example, take two hypothetical freshmen starting at AHS in English 9. The first student has struggled previously and starts the year unable to write a complete and coherent sentence. By the end of the semester, that student has made great strides and can now write a pretty good paragraph, but still hasn't managed to put four or five of those paragraphs together to write a good essay.

The second student has had many advantages over the years, including an affinity for reading and writing, a supportive home life that has provided not only the encouragement but the background knowledge necessary to be a successful reader and writer, the fine motor skills that allows the student to physically write fairly effortlessly, has had excellent teachers over the previous nine years of schooling, and has the "slack" in their life to be able to recover from any minor setbacks they may encounter. They begin the year already being able to write a terrific five-paragraph essay and, by the end of the semester, can still do that.

In our current system, the first student is likely to get a 'C' or a 'D', and the second student will get an 'A'. If we believe that all students can learn, if we believe that our role is to help students improve and get better, if we believe that a "growth mindset" is key to helping all students achieve their potential, then letter grades must go.

GPA and Class Rank have never made much sense to me, even when I was in high school and an active participant in the "race." I still remember my counselor, one of my teachers, and several of my friends who all strenuously argued with me about a couple of my class choices. We had a weighted GPA system, where courses that were designated "college prep" received extra points toward your GPA (5, 4, 3, 1) vs. "regular" courses (4, 3, 2, 1). (At AHS, of course, we do the same thing with AP Courses.)

The classes I chose to take were a Typing class and some Accounting classes. Because I chose to take these instead of "college prep" courses, it "lowered" my GPA relative to other high-achieving students and dropped my class rank. Those classes, of course, turned out to be some of the most useful classes for my adult life. Being able to "type" quickly and accurately has completely altered both my level of productivity and what I've been able to achieve as an adult. Those accounting classes allowed me to get a job in high school and college working at a credit union, which not only helped me pay for college but spurred a lifelong interest in financial matters. As I've pursued that interest, it has allowed me to be very successful financially compared to my earnings "peers", has allowed me to serve on district committees to help negotiate salary and benefits for all employees, and has allowed me to be elected a Trustee of PERA, helping oversee the accounts of more than 500,000 members and more than $44 Billion dollars in assets. Yet our system values those classes "less."

This hasn't changed. When I was a full-time math teacher and taught Honors Trig/Pre-Calc, I often had students in class who didn't seem to be very interested in mathematics or even to like it very much. When I asked them why they were taking an Honors Math class if they weren't interested in the field, the response was always the same: I need to take this so that I can take AP Calculus so that I can keep my GPA and Class Rank. When I asked if there were other classes they would rather be taking, they could easily name 5 or 6 without even thinking about it. Even though I'm not a full-time math teacher at present, I still hear student conversations every year around scheduling time talking about the classes they "have to take" in order to eventually get the weighed GPA that AP classes give them.

We need to ask ourselves what the purpose of GPA and Class Rank is. I really, truly don't see any valid purpose, but here's my understanding of what advocates say is the purpose. We need an easy way to rank and sort our students, to determine who is "better" and "worse" than other students. Because that's the way to identify who is "successful" and who is "not," the way to provide "feedback" and to hold teachers and students "accountable" and to "motivate" students to do their best, and, of course, to make it easier for college admissions officers. I would suggest that only that last one is actually true, and I don't think that should be one of our core values and goals. (Since I know college admissions will be a sticking point for some, I will point out that some of the most elite schools in the U.S. don't give letter grades and their students get into college just fine, and so do home school students. And, of course, I think college should be the goal of only some of our students, and probably a lot fewer than most people expect.)

One last example. The students who just finished their Freshmen year at Arapahoe are the Class of 2018. As you would expect, there were a wide variety of GPA's among our freshmen class, but I think most observers at a distance would consider a 3.5 GPA for a freshman to indicate a fairly decent outcome (our freshmen don't take AP classes, so this is out of a straight 4 point scale). The interesting thing, however, is that a student who just completed their freshmen year at AHS with a 3.5 would currently be ranked 230th in the class, with little or no hope of having that be significantly higher by the time they graduate.

Exactly how many of our students is class rank actually helping? I would argue that, at most, it's helping the top 10 to 20 students; and even for those students, given all the other pieces of their admissions portfolio, I would question whether the class rank is much of a factor at all. For the other 500 students in the class the class rank is either useless, or actually hurts their college admissions process. Which is why many high achieving high schools - even ones who would disagree with the rest of this big idea - have eliminated class rank. They've figured out that it actually does a disservice to their students (and that's not even including the philosophical reasons not to do it).

All of these problems exist, of course, even if we assume that our grading process is fair and accurate. As I've written before, it's not. So the obvious next question is, what should we do instead? How should we assess and report student learning? (Note that I chose student "learning" very carefully as opposed to student "achievement", I think they are two different things and our focus on "achievement" has been a big part of our problem.)

Again, this is something that needs to be a school-wide discussion and, to be perfectly clear, I do not think there is one right way to do this. But I have learned previously that sometimes it's helpful for folks to have at least one possible vision of what it could look like in order to get the conversation started. So here's my conversation starter.

I think we should radically alter our current assessment and reporting system. I think we should eliminate letter grades, GPA and Class Rank and replace them with assessment and reporting that is not only much more accurate, but much more meaningful to students, parents, employers and colleges. I don't want to wade too far into the details, but I will get into the weeds just a little bit to give you an idea.

I think we should focus on providing on-going, meaningful feedback for students first, and then reports to document that feedback second. Feedback for students is only meaningful if it's actionable; if students actually act on that feedback and use it to help them learn. Our current system of feedback is typically very poor at accomplishing this. Again, ask just about any teacher at AHS about what happens when they return a graded assignment, and most of them will bemoan the fact that students just look at the grade, ignore the feedback, and then throw the assignment away. Instead of bemoaning this fact, we should change the system that has created this behavior. Since research indicates that providing feedback to students without a grade attached is the most successful at accomplishing this (as compared to only letter grade, or even to letter grade and feedback), we should focus our efforts on providing accurate, timely and effective feedback. (As an aside, I think that would be an excellent focus for our staff development efforts over the next year or two.)

Once we have dedicated ourselves to providing accurate, timely and effective feedback to our students, how then do we "report" out student learning to students, parents and the community? I would suggest one of the best ways to do that is with narrative reports. Instead of the false sense of precision that a "78%" in the grade book seems to give us, let's provide thoughtful, meaningful reporting tailored to each student. At this point many teachers are immediately objecting about the amount of time this would take and, for some of them, how hard this would be to do for each student. So let's address both of those.

First, the time it takes to do this. I would suggest that providing meaningful feedback throughout the school year is something that is essential to what we do and something that we claim to do already. So while shifting away from "points" and "percents" to something more in-depth might take more time throughout the semester, it will increase student learning and isn't that our goal? I also think that at least some of that time will be recouped by the time saved not figuring out points and entering assignments in the grade book. Since we presumably want something in the grade book throughout the semester, to indicate progress and for things like eligibility, I would propose a system that looks something like this.

While grades could be (and should be) adjusted more frequently as teachers gather more information, teachers would be asked to, at a minimum, have updated grades in the grade book at 6, 12 and 18 weeks. (As another aside, and to forestall some objections, I would point out that this is how we used to do it, so it can certainly be done that way if we choose.) The "grades" we enter in the grade book would not be letter grades, but our professional judgement as to how the student is currently progressing. Again, the details would have to be discussed and decided on as a staff, but as a starting point I would suggest three designations (if you wanted it slightly more granular, you could divide it into four categories, but I would definitely not go any further than four):

• Progressing
• Partially Progressing
• Not Adequately Progressing (yet)

There are at least three ways these grades could be reported. The simplest would be just one grade in the grade book that is the teacher's overall assessment of the student at that point in time. Many folks might be concerned about the potential complications of this, but I think we need to step up and own our assessment and reporting. Most educators have been complaining that we wished the public and our elected representatives would trust us more, would trust our professional judgement. Well, here is an opportunity to walk that walk. Instead of relying on the false precision of meaningless points and percentages, we need to know our students well enough to accurately assess their progress.

As an alternative, we could get a bit more granular with the reporting. I see two ways of breaking it down further, either into major themes of the course (what we used to refer to as "essential learnings") or even further into specific standards. If we decided on essential learnings, then each course would have between 2 and 5 categories in the grade book, one for each essential learning, and at the 6, 12 and 18-week mark would be responsible for updating those 2 to 5 "assignments" with the student's current progress (again, could be updated more frequently, but at a minimum).

If you wanted to get more granular still, you could break it down to the standards level, and assign the Progressing/Partially Progressing/Not Adequately Progressing (yet) grade to each standard. Personally, I think this is too far, not as helpful as the first two options, and is in danger of replicating many of the problems of our current system, but I wanted to include it because I think an argument can be made for it.

At the end of each semester teacher and students would jointly develop a narrative report to document their progress. This would replace the less-than-meaningful "report cards" we currently generate with something that is both more accurate and more useful. This would take a significant amount of time and effort, but I think it is both doable and worth doing. My suggestion for how to find the time to do this is simple: eliminate final exam week and parent/teacher conferences.

Final exam week seems to be in direct contradiction to what we say we believe in. If we believe all students can learn, that learning is a process that is never finished, and that our goal is to create lifelong learners, why would we pick an arbitrary time to give a "summative" assessment? The idea of giving a "final" exam to a teenager is ludicrous. (In fact, it's ludicrous no matter one's age, but especially so for a teenager.) We even have a saying prominently displayed in our cafeteria, "Not for school, but for life, we learn." If we believe that, then final exams must go. (Note that if teachers are doing on-going assessment really well, we are constantly giving assessments that are both formative and "summative" - in the sense that they are summative up to that point. Teachers can still choose to give a somewhat summative "exam" at the end of the semester if they wish, we just wouldn't dedicate four entire days to it.)

In addition to eliminating final exams, I would propose we eliminate (at least in our current form) parent/teacher conferences. In the fall we currently spend two nights and two school days (one in-service, one "comp" day) on this, and I think most folks would agree that the actual results are not worth the time. In this day and age, we can easily communicate with students and parents whenever we need to, not at some arbitrary time partway through the semester that fits well in our calendar. This includes meeting face-to-face if necessary, and without the artificial constraints of parent/teacher conferences (meeting in the gym with hundreds of other people, with a five-minute limit, and usually without the student present).

When you combine the four days sacrificed for final exams and the two days for parent/teacher conferences, that frees up six days for end of the semester assessment for conferencing without cutting instructional time. (Second semester is slightly more complicated because we do scheduling after final exams three of those days, but that can be addressed.) My initial proposal is that we designate each of those 6 days for one of our six periods. So the first day would be to meet with students in period 1, the second day in period 2, etc. (There are obviously some teachers that have MWF and a TR class the same period, but those details can be worked out, including the fact that most teachers have a period completely off - which translates to a conferencing day that is freed up. Lots of details, but all doable.)

Teachers would meet with each student for roughly 10 minutes and have individual conferences with them. This could be done in a variety of ways, but I think the two most likely approaches would be teachers and students jointly developing something written ahead of time and then discussing and finalizing, or simply writing up (or audio recording) the 10 minute conversation (or a combination of these two approaches, depending on teacher preference and what works best for the particular course). With the technology we have available (Google Docs and Drive for writing and/or storing of the audio, cell phones or computers to record and easily upload the audio to Drive and share), this process is very doable. (Since one-size does not fit all, there might be several variations on this based on what teachers think would work best in their course.)

Given our class sizes and the nature of these conversations, these would be long, intense days, and I think teachers would be both exhausted and not at their best if these were 6 back-to-back days. So my suggestion would be to use the Monday and Friday of the last three weeks of the semester for this. (Using this fall's schedule as just an example, that would mean conferencing days on November 30th, December 4th, 7th, 11th, 14th and 18th). That would spread out the days, allowing three school days or two weekend days in between the intense days. The schedule for the three school days in the middle of each week could be adjusted to provide equity between classes that meet on different days. (Again, details, but very doable. And, again, this is just one possible way to give folks an idea of how it could be done.)

That addresses the time to do it; the second concern I expect to hear is how hard this would be to do for each student. I agree, this would be difficult, but I think it's what we signed up to do. To paraphrase President Kennedy,

We choose to do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Because it is what's necessary to truly meet the needs of our students, to provide them the education they deserve and that we have promised them. It is a challenge we are no longer willing to postpone, but one that we willingly accept.

If we truly believe that meaningful feedback for our students is the only way to help them learn, to grow, to achieve their potential, to fulfill our mission, we will accept this challenge. I look forward to having this discussion with the entire staff.

Karl