Transforming Education - 2009 Syfr Retreat Notes October 2009

Notes, Reflections, and Small Essences from the 2009 LACOE/Syfr Retreat, Pasadena CA, Oct. 2009 – Using Innovation and Creativity to Shape Transformational Change

Framing: Are you looking at things in the “same, old way?” -
We must begin to FRAME our thinking to see a new and more global picture for the future. There is a great need for transformational thinking and change in education. But why now? We live in a world that is being transformed into a Conceptual Age. Have our schools transformed as well? The leaders who respond to the globalization of our world with innovative and transformative public education learning environments, not only our children, but also our entire communities, will evolve into the only viable solutions in the 21st Century. It is essential that we create new standards for our thinking and ourselves…

Those that implement Organizational Change and become the Leaders for that change in Teaching and Learning will be required to use Creativity and Neuroscience.

It is critical to examine what is happening in the world and to note the impact and relation to education.

Transformative education leaders should be feeling a Pressure to Change: Let’s face it. The world around us has changed, however, schools have not.
Daniel Pink’s (A Whole New Mind) six New Senses are important, no critical, in the 21st Century.
Story, Design, Empathy, Symphony, Meaning, and Play (Daniel Pink,)
· Design - Moving beyond function to engage the sense.
· Story - Narrative added to products and services - not just argument.
· Symphony - Adding invention and big picture thinking (not just detail focus). Symphony is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new. It's a signature ability that is a great predictor of star performance in the workplace. Visual artists in particular are good at seeing how the pieces come together.
· Empathy - Going beyond logic and engaging emotion and intuition.
· Play - Bringing humor and light-heartedness to business and products.
· Meaning - the purpose is the journey; give meaning to life from inside yourself.


What Issues/Challenges Must Education Respond To in the New Conceptual Age:

1. Globalization and Immigration Issues:
Did You Know? The 10 Largest Economies by Population:
1. China – Largest now, but they are on a no-growth curve – *India will be #1 soon
2. India – 1,100 Million
3. European Union – 500,000,000 Million
4. US – 300 Million
5. Indonesia – 222 Million
6. Pakistan – 186Million
7. Brazil – 157 Million
8. Nigeria – 143 Million
9. Bangladesh – 141 Million
10. Russia – 131Million

The world our students will work in is totally different from the world we work in. We have the pressure to educate our children for this difference.
We will increasingly see the globalization of ideas and the immigration of people and products (out-sourcing, etc). This has to become a national issue that we consider and respond to as public education administrators.

We are receiving record numbers of non-English speaking students, which is not unnatural in a globalization era. There has been a 50% increase in immigration in the United Stated in last 10 years. We must respond to this.


2. Religions of the World:
This has a lot to do with how we frame the rest of the world. However, the rest of the world’s religion is not the same as “ours” (Christian).

Therefore…Empathy… This is the survival application of the 21st Century. Having a worldview, seeing the world through other’s eyes, will be extremely important.

3. Technology -
· Technology skills do affect personal income. People with technical skills earn 15% more than someone who does not have them.
· Technology does not always mean simply “the computer.”
· Technology is now defining the workplace.
· Technology is emphasizing the value of education.
· Technology involves expertise in judgment and complex communication. These are the combination skills of the 21st century that will be a must. Additionally, communication in the future will be much more visual.
How will our schools use technology for disruptive innovation?
(Disrupting Class)
One way – we will begin to use visual media in every aspect of instruction. This is how our students learn – visually. We don’t, so we discount the importance of visual media in education. If we want our students to succeed, we will discover a way to incorporate visual media into our schools and education.

4. Aging -
This is the increasing percent of the population.
We Must Have An Educated Population… our younger population is not as educated as the generation before us – our nation’s graduation rates are going down. We cannot support an increasingly aging population with a decreasingly uneducated population.
There is and will continue to be an increased demand on healthcare and education because our young people will have to make money to support an aged population.

5. The Environment -
To respond to environmental issues that are and will be facing us, education will have to focus on Science and Personal Responsibility.

6. Health and Wellness –
Why should Education be very focused on Health and Wellness? Exercise, Wellness, and Intellectual Intelligence…neuroscience promotes the relationship between exercise and mental ability.
Obesity – this is a huge problem for our society and we must be part of the solution.

Are we looking at these Globalization issues, or are we ignoring them. Ignore them and we will likely go the way of the Sears and Roebuck catalog sales.



Inability to Change – We must be very careful. We must be open to change and innovation. We MUST collaborate with one another to imagine solutions to problems that others have not even begun to think about.




To Learn How We Might Respond During this Transformational and Conceptual Age of Education, we can look at the: Story of Painting in France 1850 – 1910

The Most Important Things That We Can Learn:
· Painters responded to Change Going on around them
· Painters Collaborated in Truly unusual ways
· They embraced their Diversity
· They used Prior Knowledge, Practice, Repetition and Improvisation to learn

The Painters during this time used the collaboration method of “Pairing.”
Monet and Pissarro (a pair learning together): In 1872, they come back from seeing Constable and Turner’s work and begin to paint differently (industrial revolution, atmospheric things, factories).
These painters responded to change. Therefore they left a legacy. We have to do the same in Education. These painters are known because they responded to the Industrial Revolution. Now we have respond to the Conceptual Age.


Culture of Change in Organizations: Transforming Leadership
1. So let’s change our organizations. We need to improvise on what we know and improve it.

But, how? Relationships will be key. What kinds of interactions in relationships are important to know? What kind of relationships will be critical for Transformational Change?

Teachers to Teachers: Professional Learning Networks: Teachers working together and problem solving play a huge role in futures of students of the 21st Century.
Mentors/Coaches: These people show passion. If you have passion, it probably came from a mentor.
Groups: Problem solving together because this is best method for discovering solutions to major problems. Another positive aspect of Groups is “Group Genius,” groups work best with common goals and with Cognitive Diversity. That means a group is most effective when there is a very diverse group, working together to solve a problem.
Pairs – Two people learning, collaborating, and experimenting together. Pairs are the most comfortable way to share and learn; therefore pairs are where most learning takes place. Pairs establish relationships of trust.


Learning Like the Artists:
Practice – Repetition – Improvisation
They learned in Pairs. They Practiced because it was meaningful to them (Practice – doing something over and over to try and get it correct/perfect). During their Practice, they used Repetition (doing it over and over again), but each time improvising (making it a little different each time) until it evolved and transformed.





Educating for Creativity:
Michelle and Robert Root – Bernstein, Michigan State
Sparks of Genius
How do we reinvent classroom pedagogy in keeping with the transformational change in an increasingly global world?

Teach creative imagination – help children continually come up with creative solutions, to think and act creatively.
Stop cramming our kids full of facts. Focus on teaching students to learn for themselves. Don’t teach to the test. This is killing our kids. This does not mean, “teach no facts” – teach the facts in processes of solving problems.
How do we educate for creativity? There are 13 ways of thinking that everyone uses everyday.
Creative thinking is different from our normal modes of thinking.
Content (facts) must become subservient to creative processes of thought. Rethink what thinking is and rethink what education is.

Process should be the center of education, not facts.
Not just imagining new ideas, it also involves bringing them into the form of words, numbers, etc. Not an easy task. Creativity is a difficult process.

We must create novel, creative communities in our classrooms and schools.
Educating for Creativity and Novelty:
You never know who will be creative. It can be learned, it needs practice, it needs support, and it is TRANSFORMATIVE.
Enhancing creativity in the classroom:
Value Creative Effort, Design open-ended tasks which can have many right answers, encourage transformational thinking, do not rush, be a creative model.

The 13 Types of Creative Thinking (Creativity is not something you either have or you don’t, it can be taught and learned):
1. Observing – honing ALL of the senses to perceive acutely and accurately. Very important to go beyond simply looking. This has to be intentional. When you observe something, you must ask yourself, “did I use all of my senses?”
2. Imaging – creating mental images of things observed or imagined, using any or all of the senses.
3. Abstracting – a process of discovering simplicity in complexity by eliminating all but one essential characteristic. This is essential to clear writing, reading comprehension, clear problem definition, experimentation, and modeling. Abstracting always begins with something real. It is a process. Students need to see others’ process (Picasso’s process of sketching something real, differently many times, until he creates his abstract). Every poem is an abstraction. Next time you read a poem, think about how hard it was for the author to express those feelings and images in so few words. Kids need to see all of the bad poems that were written before the author had a finished poem.
4. Pattern Recognition – perceiving similarities in structure or property among various things.
5. Forming Patterns – creating or discovering new ways to organize or arrange things to reveal novel patterns.
6. Analogizing - discovering or creating functional similarities between structurally different things or processes.
7. Body Thinking – using muscle memory, physical feelings, gut reactions and emotional states to recognize, organize, and address problems.
8. Empathizing/Playacting – becoming the thing you want to understand, or recreate, be it animate or inanimate.
9. Dimensional Thinking – translating between dimensions (e.g. between a blue-print and an invention); shrinking or expanding within a dimension (such as size, or duration, or time).
10. Modeling – Creating a simple analog of complex object or process in order to test, modify, or play with its properties.
11. Playing – goal-less performed for fun or enjoyment that incidentally develops skill, intuition, and knowledge.
12. Transforming – using the previous eleven imaginative tools to think and make in a serial, integrated manner.
13. Synthesizing – knowing things in multiple ways simultaneously…bodily, mentally, intuitively, explicitly, sensually, intellectually, subjectively, objectively.

What Works in the Classroom – Marzano, Habits of Mind, Blooms, 21st Century Skills…
Why are these learning tools ignored in classrooms?
Before the innovative scientist expresses himself in numbers, words, diagrams, etc., they think in terms of models, images, and emotions.
Therefore the Scientific Method does not teach the actual creative thinking processes of true scientists and technologists.
The creative skills that students need are now only formally taught and expected in the Arts classes and curriculums. The most successful scientists have been found to engage in Creative activities (photography, music, art, craft, writing, performing)
Examples:
Robert Fulton (steam engine) was a professional painter
Samuel Morse (telegraph) – painter
Einstein – was taught to imagine, visualize, draw, and create models
Santiago Ramon Y Cajal (neuroscientist) drawing
George W. Carver – painter
Luis Alverez (nobel prize physics) – craftsmanship
Dorothy Hodgkin – Mosaics
Alexis Carrel (inventing novel ways to stitch blood vessels together)
Mae Jamison – astronaut – dancer, choreographer, and art collector

SAT scores are higher for kids who have had 4 years of arts classes.
Creativity Requires Integrated Networks of Enterprise: Transfer of Creative Skills and Knowledge from Art and Science. Creative skills in the arts will help students build bridges of knowledge that can be applied to academic/core subjects.

How Do We Put Creativity into our Schools:
Create a Trans-Disciplinary Education
1. Teach the creative process
2. Teach imaginative tools for thinking – be sure that the 13 thinking tools are in all curriculum
3. Place arts on a par with sciences – require arts for all students
4. Integrate the curriculum with a common, cross-disciplinary language – help students make connections for the skills they learn in arts and how they can be applied to core subjects
5. Emphasize trans-disciplinary lessons
6. Teach using exemplary people
7. Present ideas in all disciplinary ideas in many forms.
8. Specialize in breadth, rather on minutiae – concentrate on learning how to learn and synthesis of learning




Robert J. Sternberg
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences
Tufts University

WICS: A Model for Teaching and Learning

You need different skills to be successful.
1. Creative Skills– everyday creative skills to come up with ideas and solve everyday problems (manage relationships, finances, etc)
2. Analytical Skills – to decide whether ideas are good ideas (to analyze your own ideas and other people’s ideas).
3. Practical Skills – skills and attitudes to make your ideas functional and to convince others of the value of your ideas. Example: Common Sense
4. Wisdom – to use your ideas to affect the common good and to balance the effects of ideas on yourself, others, and institutions in both the short and long terms.


Closed Systems: (This is how society socially stratifies people)
· Ability & Achievement Tests and High Grades = Successful Students and Adults - get into better schools, get better jobs, etc.
· Socioeconomic Class
· Gender
· Religious Group
· Caste at Birth

With these systems in Traditional Education, we are using Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. It is the Vicious Cycle. In each of the Closed systems above, there are low expectations for some. These people know this and therefore perform low. The expectations are reinforced because there is a reward to everyone - what is expected becomes reality. How we are treated is due to our own perception of ourselves.

Teachers have to look for strengths in students and capitalize on them.
So it involves Creative, Analytical, Practical skills, but it must also include Wisdom.
Analytical – critical thinking. Kids need these skills for analyzing the structure of arguments in things like essays, debates, etc.
Creative – skill in generating ideas that are novel, good, task-appropriate. People who are creative are willing to “defy the crowd” and willing to take risks. People are afraid to defy the crowd because of external pressure (peer pressure, pressure to conform to the norm). Example: pressure to teach to the test.
You eventually will begin to question whether the external pressures might be right.


Wisdom is:
· The use of one’s successful intelligence toward a common good,
· Through a balance among your interests, other’s interests, and community/global interests
· Over the long and short terms
· Through the use of good ethical values

Wisdom is difficult to teach, there are not a great number of wise people.

We must use Balance Instruction:
1. Memory-based – basic knowledge, facts.
Analytically-Based – Use these words as templates for work you design for students: analyze (ex. analyze a photo for bias), compare and contrast, evaluate, explain, judge, critique
Analytical Attitudes – teach students to recognize the existence of problem and then define the problem. Decide on a solution. Then, monitor the results and evaluate (is the product/result informed, logical, organized?).

Creative-based – create, design, invent, imagine, suppose (examples: create a poem, design a new…, imagine what life would be like in a different country, suppose the worldwide temperature increased 5 degrees on average). Create an advertising campaign. Ask students “What if?” questions (ex. What if Rosa Parks had given up her spot on the bus, what if Germany had won World War II).
Creative Attitudes: Redefine problems, Analyze solutions, Sell Solutions (the art of persuading), Recognize strengths and limits of knowledge, Persevere in the face of obstacles, take sensible risks, attain self-efficacy, find what you love to do, and tolerate ambiguity, continue to grow, have a sense of humor, allow time. Don’t ever feel that you know so much that you create a focused thought process, attitude, etc. You will forget to consider new ideas and to learn from others.


Wisdom-based.
You have to teach all of these because remember, we have to capitalize on students’ individual strengths and also work to remediate our weaker skill sets. If I have good creative skills and weaker skills, I still need to continue to hone my creative skills, however I also need to build/improve the skills will I am not as strong.
Wisdom Skills –
Dialogical thinking – understanding others’ viewpoints
Dialectical thinking – recognize that truth can change over time.
Balanced thinking – thinking about a variety of things.
It is best to put kids in active learning situations to teach wisdom.
Research shows that when you teach kids in this way, achievement on even standardized tests increases.
High-stakes testing: we have focused on the content, but not the processes or the creative, practical, and analytical verbs. We have to teach for understanding, depth vs. breadth.
Teach this way because this is way students think… When you begin teaching this way, some things won’t work, but don’t give up. Additionally, kids may not respond immediately because they are so used to Memory-based learning only.

Teachers are accustomed to teaching to their own strengths and kids who have the same strengths will do well, but the others will not. When teachers have students who do not learn the way that they do, they may actually believe that those students are ‘dumb’ and cannot learn. Teachers must believe that all kids can learn.


Reframe our Thinking…Elements of Change…we have to be willing to look outside of education and notice that there are great elements and examples of change there. We must reframe our thinking and know that we can learn from other ideas and examples and bring those types of innovation and transformation into education.