Action Plans Overdue

I like to end my meetings with action planning — creating a firm plan for taking action on the issues discussed or decisions that were made. So when I opened up my Bloglines account today and read three new posts by Sheryl, Miguel, and Will, I’m left with the desire to demand that we start developing action plans and that we start implementing them immediately.

There are a number of “road bumps” in our way, of course. But, as Karl Fisch recently wrote in a comment on one of my posts:

As I say somewhat frequently to anyone who will listen, for the freshmen who started at my high school this past fall, this is the only four years of high school they’ll get. I don’t want to talk to them at graduation and say, “Yeah, we knew what you needed and how to help you get that, but it would’ve been really hard to do and very controversial, so we decided to wait a few more years.” We owe it to them to get this going now.

I relate to that sentiment very strongly. If we know what we need to do, and we aren’t doing it, then we will have to answer to these students some day…

Technorati Tags: change, education, innovation, Karl Fisch, learning, Miguel Guhlin, School Improvement, School2.0, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Will Richardson

First, let me review the portions of Sheryl’s, Miguel’s, and Will’s posts that really hit home with me…

Miguel pointed me in the direction of Sheryl’s post. He expanded on his thoughts with this:

Schools want people who are malleable, controllable, and do what they are told (3 ways of saying the same thing, sigh). It’s in the best interests of the status quo, the way schools are NOW organized. In our efforts to improve education, to systematize it, to regulate it, we’ve killed the spirit of democracy that should encourage informed citizenry, not controlled citizenry. Fortunately, the choice remains in our hands to change the institution…

…but given that many of our children have already failed as citizens, who lack motivation to participate in current elections, all of which highlight school’s failures to live up to the dream of those who came before, the only hope is a radical departure from the way we’ve done things in the past…for democracy in America, like our schools, has become a question of “So what? Who cares?”

He ends his post with…

How do we accomplish these fantastic changes in our schools? The answer remains the same. It is the same one Wes Fryer and I discussed so long ago, the same answer that Socrates once beheld…let their voices, that of the learners, ring throughout our schools, voices that speak of relevance, authenticity, and human connections…in ways that cannot be denied.

I’ve always been a huge proponent of “student voice” — and I believe that our students must be much more engaged in significant decision-making on our campuses. Unfortunately, in too many of our schools, we don’t listen to our students. We don’t listen to our customers — we just test them. We use standardized tests to drive curriculum decisions, scheduling decisions, course enrollment decisions, staffing, etc. We hardly ever use the voice of the customer — our students — in significant decision-making. Sorry, Homecoming and Prom committees do not count as significant decision-making activities.

So — lesson #1? Include the students in developing the action plan. Include them in conducting research and in developing your vision, mission, values, and goals. Include them in professional development along with teachers. Include them in the design of the school learning environment.

Sheryl wrote a very inspiring post where she discussed the original purpose of the “common school” in America and then explored what school learning environments would be like if we used Web 2.0 to facilitate learning in the spirit of Socrates:

What if School 2.0 is much like school was with Socrates? Making connections with expert learners. Asking more questions than giving answers. Spending part of our day in deep reflection, collaboration, self directed exploration, and conversations with “just in time” mentors. I see the read write Web providing the infrastructure to support taking us back to our rich educational heritage…

…Socrates knew that learning has never been linear. “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel” We simply all bought into it out of convenience.

He was quoted as saying I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.” Oh if only schools felt that way. We would give up the culture of control and get on with the facilitation of learning.

At the beginning of the television show “The Six MIllion Dollar Man”, the narrator says:

“Steve Austin, astronaut, a man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first Bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster.”

I can’t help but think of that intro narration when I think of our current education system and the vision that many of us have for a new and improved learning environment for students.

“American Education, a system barely alive. LADIES and Gentlemen, we can rebuild it, we have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first 21st Century public education system. Better than it was before. Better. Stronger. Faster. More Relevant, Flexible, and Responsive to the needs of its learners.”

Hmmm… a Bionic Learning Environment? Okay, I’m just having fun here… it was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. I even had the Six MIllion Dollar Man and Bionic Woman dolls.

Sheryl’s post is one of several that I have read in the past couple of months that provides part of a very intriguing vision for our schools. We do have the vision — and the technology… now we just need the action… (That, by the way, was Lesson #2 — we have the vision, the knowledge, and the technology… now — Just Do It.)

Will Richardson’s post hit home in a very different way for me this morning — but his message is closely related to Sheryl’s and Miguel’s. Will expresses the concerns about “school 2.0″ that have him currently “blog stuck”:

…because I’m butting up against some real questions, and the answers I’m finding in the reading and conversations out there aren’t as satisfying as in the past. This whole School 2.0 thing is the crux of it. There’s this niggling feeling in my brain somewhere that at the end of the day, I’m totally missing the point. That for the most part, we’re all missing the point. That we have to look further outside of our current frames. That much of the structure we are building those frames on is flimsy at best, that I’m too willing to pull pieces of the experience in because they fit and not willing enough to grapple with those that don’t fit…

I mean, what if we just stop focusing so much on school and just focus on learning?
What if the mere term “school” limits our thinking as to what’s best for learning?
What if School 2.0 whatever that is is nothing more than a short term transition to a better system for learning that has nothing to do with physical space it the ways we are familiar with it?

I can feel his pain in this post because I am also feeling a great deal of frustration with what appears to be a focus on “tweaking” the current system rather than “re-envisioning” what needs to happen. I think he’s right about the term “school” being a limitation on our thought process. There are some very interesting comments on his post and I encourage you to go read his post and the comments.

Clarence Fisher commented:

The learning is what is important. Classrooms are of course all about physical space and control. So the question becomes: how does one “break out” of that space? Where do you break out to? How do you create (find) a critical mass of people willing to work outside of the current system if the system will not change?

Indeed — how do we create or find that critical mass of people who are willing to work outside of the current system? Who is willing to “drop out” and explore new possibilities? Who is willing to step out of the “status quo” and do things in a very different way? Not many people. Not yet.

In one of the next comments, Harold Jarche says:

The problem is the system and the vested interests that profit from the system – teachers (and their pensions), architects, contractors, publishers, busing companies, etc… School is a multi-billion dollar industry and it’s okay to tweak it, but don’t question anyone’s right to profit from it, or you will suffer the consequences.

He is so right about this and it’s probably one of our biggest “road bumps.” There are a whole bunch of people and organizations that are too heavily invested in our current education system and this prevents a complete overhaul of the system. Just take a look at the testing industry. Look at the companies making profits off of publishing and scoring standardized tests across the country. Testing won’t go away because now there is a very profitable industry around it. It’s the same with textbook publishing. There is a culture of “here’s our product… use it and your test scores will go up… your students will learn more…”

There is also the issue of income. If we decide to step outside of the system — to “drop out” — how are we going to pay the bills? I’ve had numerous conversations with several people in my area who are so willing to work together to open a charter school — but none of us can afford to quit our current full-time jobs so that we have the time to do all of the planning and preparation for creating and opening an innovative school outside of the system. The will is there — but financially the hands are tied.

It is going to take a critical mass of people who are willing to “drop out” of the current system — and be willing to accept the consequences of doing so — in order to re-envision and reinvent education from the ground up.

Finally — I also believe that our Action Plans are long overdue. It is way past time for us to address the following questions…

• What are we going to do?
• How are we going to do it?
• Who needs to be involved and who is responsible for what?
• What resources do we need?
• What is our timeline for implementation?
• What evidence will we have that we have succeeded?

There is so much more that can be added to this conversation and I’m probably not done exploring this myself. I have only synthesized a few of the voices who are involved in this dialogue. What are your thoughts on this? Do you have your Action Plan ready to go?

Change Agency by Stephanie Sandifer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. You may copy, distribute, transmit and/or remix this content for noncommercial uses as long as you attribute the work to Stephanie Sandifer (with link back to the original post) and agree to license the work under the same or similar license.