Things You MUST Think About: Being Green

This is the final gloss on the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in an earlier post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#11. Being Green

Most schools have gotten this message and are beginning to live it. But in a world whose greatest single challenge is arguably environmental change, schools—especially if we are to really train our graduates to understand the dimensions of this challenge—will have to consider making environmental sustainability and what we used to call “eco-consciousness” the touchstone of every aspect of their work.

There’s not much point in belaboring this too-obvious issue--even in our economically straitened times schools that "sat out" the first wave of Green design are now finding that environmentally responsible operation ways pays off financially and pedagogically as well as ethically. Seldom has there been a more "right" thing to do that aligned so well with the exigencies of the times with regard to the current educational emphasis on design, global interconnectedness, and STEM subjects.

Schools that need to jumpstart their thinking in this area can easily find all kinds of guidance relating to Green operation, Green building, and environmentally focused curricula and assessments. The National Association of Independent Schools “Sustainable Schools” pages are a treasure trove—just this single page offers nearly two dozen administrative resources on environmental sustainability. If you don’t know where to start, try the NAIS Principles of Good Practice for Environmental Sustainability.

So, who is thinking about being Green at your school?

* * * * * * * *

So ends this series. I want to emphasize here that the 11 Things Your School MUST Be Thinking About are just that: things you need to be have on your institutional agenda. Every school will have its own take on these subjects and its own response. Some schools will be comfortable rejecting a few of the 11 out of hand, while others have no doubt already incorporated many into top priorities.

What I can say with some confidence is that these 11 Things represent a wave of change that has been sweeping in upon our schools for a while. The gift of independence, the freedom from annual mandated bubble tests and the freedom to be ourselves, obligates us, I believe, to engage in many kinds of forward thinking to make our schools more effective, and more wonderful, places for kids to learn. In a changing world we can be, and I think we should be, the kinds of think tanks or test beds—incubators, anyhow—both of innovation when we can make it happen and of continuous improvement when we find things that work.

In his 1970 study of the changes being experienced at a New England boarding school, A World of Our Own, author Peter S. Prescott repeatedly quotes independent school leaders of the day as speaking of freedom independent schools to innovate, experiment, and thus lead the American conversation about education. I'm not sure that we can make that claim as confidently as we did in those days, but we still have the freedom, the resources, and the energy to be part of this conversation. I believe, above all, that we still have the ideas to make an impact.

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE HERE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE HERE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE HERE
4. Smart assessment of student learning DONE HERE
5. Social media—for advancement DONE HERE
6. Social media—in the classroom DONE HERE
7. New directions for your library DONE HERE
8. Online learning DONE HERE
9. Strategic professional development learning DONE HERE
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking DONE HERE
11. Being Green DONE

Things You MUST Think About: Shortening Your Horizon on Strategic Thinking

This is the tenth (and penultimate) in a promised gloss on each of the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in an earlier post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#10. Shortening your horizon on strategic thinking

In the past couple of weeks I have looked at several school websites that showcase 10-year strategic plans. Now, I’m a guy who has seen more than a few decades come and go, but planning for a ten-year window just seems a little long. So, in our rapidly changing world, does five years.

Perhaps a shorter window—three or maybe four years seems about right—will encourage some behaviors that can convert strategic thinking processes (and their results) from being monstrosities of over-ambition likely to be crushed under their own weight into tightly focused, action-oriented institutional agendas based on current conditions and more immediate needs in the fluid educational and technological world in which we live. Program and advancement goals, for example, need to be designed for contexts that can be at least generally forecast, and even facilities master planning can staged to at least begin with near(er)-term goals. (Note also: A building program, a strategic plan, and a capital campaign do not have to be of equal length—especially in a time where capital fundraising is becoming a kind of regular cycle in many schools, even when the school is not promoting specific goals.)

One reason that so many strategic plans crawl into file cabinets to die is that the cast of characters involved in their creation has changed by the time of their scheduled end; awareness and investment—the edge of excitement needed to keep any kind of plan vital—dissipate. Try this rule of thumb: no plan should be made with an operational life longer than one board term.

UPDATE, December 9, 2011: Our school has just released our "Strategic Priorities, 2011-2014," which is the product of an amazingly inclusive, visionary, and efficient process--and an example of the 3-year model I heartily endorse. The document can be found here.

So, who is thinking about shortening the horizon on strategic thinking at your school?

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE HERE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE HERE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE HERE
4. Smart assessment of student learning DONE HERE
5. Social media—for advancement DONE HERE
6. Social media—in the classroom DONE HERE
7. New directions for your library DONE HERE
8. Online learning DONE HERE
9. Strategic professional development learning DONE HERE
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking DONE
11. Being Green

Things You MUST Think About: Strategic Professional Learning

This is the ninth in a promised gloss on each of the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in an earlier post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#9. Strategic professional development learning

If you are planning to move your academic program in a particular direction, you’re going to need teachers who are equipped to go there. A professional development program that lacks coherence or that is unrelated in its purposes and resource allocation to the specific goals of the institution may help teachers grow, but not as intentionally as you may need it to.

Try tying the goals of every professional learning initiative, individual or collective, to the identified needs of the school. This may mean shrinking an on-demand or stipend-based system that rewards practically anything or even reeling in “we’ll pay for your master’s degree” programs; big things, strategic things, that the school must work on to ensure its own vibrancy and sustainability have to take precedence sometimes. A “laptop school” in which even a few teachers are permitted to opt out of understanding the potential of the tool is not completely a laptop school. This may not be easy to do, but it will be the fastest way to reach those strategic ends that will strengthen the institution and make learning better for all kids.

As a corollary, build into your annual evaluation program a component that relates each teacher’s learning to things the school is trying to achieve. Working on some aspect of technology or project-based learning? Ask each teacher to set a personal goal that involves the application of the skills the school wants them to learn and is supporting them in acquiring. In turn, be sure that the school really is providing the teachers with the learning resources, including of course time, that they will need to be successful. This may mean more school-wide training sessions and fewer individual excursions to narrowly content-specific workshops far away.

Remember that the goal of program and professional growth initiatives is to provide students with a better, more intentional learning experience. Professional learning, in other words, is ultimately for the kids. If a program or initiative doesn’t serve their needs, as determined by the school’s mission, leadership, and strategic priorities, it has little real value.

So, who is thinking about strategic professional learning at your school?

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE HERE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE HERE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE HERE
4. Smart assessment of student learning DONE HERE
5. Social media—for advancement DONE HERE
6. Social media—in the classroom DONE HERE
7. New directions for your library DONE HERE
8. Online learning DONE HERE
9. Strategic professional development learning DONE
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking
11. Being Green

Things You MUST Think About: Online Learning

This is the eighth in a promised gloss on each of the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in an earlier post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#8. Online learning

You don’t have to be creating your own online learning department, but you need to think about how online learning fits into your school’s, and your students’, program. Classes on line have advantages and disadvantages, and the so-called blended and “flipped classroom” models—in which students experience instruction out of class in a virtual environment and then use classroom time to rehearse, troubleshoot, or apply their learning—are going to become more and more the model for many types of courses in many schools.

Independent schools should be alert to the trend in public school systems to require set numbers of online courses for high school graduation. Whether this is about cost-saving or preparing students for further 21st-century learning may be a matter for debate, but the time may be coming when experiences in online classes will regarded as a positive and even necessary good by those who evaluate schools and kids—like prospective parents and college admission offices.

Even if you decide not to jump on the online learning bandwagon through school-created courses or as part of a consortium of schools or teachers—like the Online School for Girls, the Global Online Academy or even the Online Progressive unSchool—you are probably going to have to decide how and whether online courses taken by individual student initiative are going to figure in relation to your school programs, requirements, and credit structures.

The Online School for Girls, incidentally, also offers a range of professional development courses geared toward independent schools and independent school teachers interested in developing online-learning expertise or simply in expanding professional capacity.

So, who is thinking about online learning at your school?

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE HERE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE HERE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE HERE
4. Smart assessment of student learning DONE HERE
5. Social media—for advancement DONE HERE
6. Social media—in the classroom DONE HERE
7. New directions for your library DONE HERE
8. Online learning DONE
9. Strategic professional development learning
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking
11. Being Green

Things You MUST Think About: New Directions for Your Library

This is the seventh in a promised gloss on each of the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in an earlier post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#7. New directions for your library

I don’t think physical books are going anywhere, and I don’t want them to. Schools must always be places where the printed word, ink-on-paper, holds a venerated position.

But schools, and in particular their libraries, must also be places where kids can find the information and explore the questions that matter to their learning and where they can quickly put their fingers on resources that will enable them to explore Keats’s “realms of gold” in forms both traditional and novel (pun intended). Assuming that space and cost issues aren’t go to become any less pressing for schools, e-books and other kinds of digital resources will have to live side by side in the information centers that school libraries have always been and will continue to be.

It should not be seen as a matter of books versus electronic media, or encyclopedias and periodicals versus coffee machines and iPad carts. It’s a matter of balancing curricular needs, budgets, digital resources, and the need to maintain a robust and useful collection of physical books to support students and teachers in their work by providing access to what they need. There is new, ever-evolving, and highly mixed terrain in research and reading that school libraries—whatever they may come to call themselves; at my school The Facility Formerly Called The Library is now the “BiblioTech”—will have to prepare students to navigate.

It should actually be kind of fun, once we get used to the idea—a richer, more varied experience; at its best a visit to a New Library could be like surfing the web, only in physical space, with resources that tantalize the user into further exploration, in multiple media.

And you will still be able to enjoy the heft, look, and smell of a good book when you need to.

So, who is thinking about new directions for your school's library?

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE HERE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE HERE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE HERE
4. Smart assessment of student learning DONE HERE
5. Social media—for advancement DONE HERE
6. Social media—in the classroom DONE HERE
7. New directions for your library DONE
8. Online learning
9. Strategic professional development learning
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking
11. Being Green

Things You MUST Think About: Social Media—in the Classroom

This is the sixth in a promised gloss on each of the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in an earlier post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#6. Social media—in the classroom

If you are still blocking such things or are otherwise convinced that short form blogs (like Twitter and Tumblr), long-form blogs, and even such universal communication platforms as Facebook and Flickr are either dangerous, inherently evil, pointless, or just too advanced for your classrooms or your faculty—think again.

None of this is new, and schools are finding zillions of free or low-cost, often cloud-based (and thus not hardware-specific) applications that extend well beyond the old definitions of “social media” and enable kids to do powerful research as well as explore, analyze, create, design, collaborate, communicate, problem-solve, react, reflect, and every other kind of cognitive and social behavior that we should be standing behind as educators. And take a look around—a whole lot of colleges are talking about these same skills and beginning to harness these same media. College—it’s not just about lectures and old-school seminars any more.

Another powerful use of social media as an educational tool involves teachers’ “personal learning communities” or networks (PLCs or PLNs). Social media allow teachers to find one another and connect to share questions, ideas, quandaries, and resources—for many tech-savvy educators, Twitter alone provides a whole universe of valuable professional connection.

This is really, of course, about technology as an amazing tool for learning, and explorations of current and emerging technologies will continue to lead to surprising, and surprisingly fertile, fields of thought related to the nature of learning and teaching—and to the organization of these—at your school. Go forth; be courageous, digital, and free!

So, who is thinking about social media in the classroom at your school?

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE HERE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE HERE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE HERE
4. Smart assessment of student learning DONE HERE
5. Social media—for advancement DONE HERE
6. Social media—in the classroom DONE
7. New directions for your library
8. Online learning
9. Strategic professional development learning
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking
11. Being Green

Things You MUST Think About: Social Media—for Advancement

This is the fifth in a promised gloss on each of the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in an earlier post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#5. Social media—for advancement

You may disapprove of Twitter, or as an old curmudgeon from the Class of 1981 you may not care about being your high school’s BFF on Facebook. But parents and alums today—along with a small host of other interested parties—expect your school to have entered the Digital Age with a regular and lively presence on social media venues. Twitter and Facebook are the industry standards for the moment, but there will be new ones.

Don’t forget the potential of apps for users of multiple phone and tablet platforms that make staying informed about events at the school simple—apps (and content) that need to be written, curated, and updated just as often as your website.

And about that website: Take a good look at it, and scan a few of your neighbors’ and competitors’. If you can’t tell the difference except by the school colors and the fact that you recognize your own students, it’s time for a major overhaul. Don’t let your vendors and their "industry standards" override the real messages that you need to convey. If you aren’t sure what those messages should be, it’s time for an overhaul in the communication and marketing programs.

And—who is blogging or otherwise telling the story of your school? It’s great when it’s the leaders, but don’t forget the power of some INTERACTIVE communication involving students, faculty, parents, and alums. Colleges do it (check out the pioneering M.I.T. admissions blog and the student-created Johns Hopkins Interactive site), and so can you.

If you think this world is passing you by, it probably is. There are some great communities to help you find your way in, though; start with the blogs at edSocialMedia.

So, who is thinking about social media for advancement at your school?

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE HERE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE HERE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE HERE
4. Smart assessment of student learning DONE HERE
5. Social media—for advancement DONE
6. Social media—in the classroom
7. New directions for your library
8. Online learning
9. Strategic professional development learning
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking
11. Being Green

Things You MUST Think About: Smart Assessment of Student Learning

This is the fourth in a promised gloss on each of the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in my previous post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#4. Smart assessment of student learning

Each student is different, and differentiation is the Word of the Day at many schools. Good differentiation, like many other aspects of good learning, begins with good assessment.

Exhortations to up the quality and diversity of classroom assessment strategies have been around since at least the 1990s, when Project Zero and Grant Wiggins first got us talking about understanding-based learning, essential questions, and authentic assessments. It’s taken fifteen years or so, but many classrooms are now characterized by multiple types of assessments and units of study that are at least to some extent designed “backwards,” starting with the teacher’s learning goals.

It’s a pretty good way to start: figure out what you really want students to know, to understand, and to be able to do, and then figure out what the evidence of such learning would be. Then construct learning experiences that lead to the learning and incorporate assessments—tests, quizzes, projects, performances, exhibitions, examinations, papers, presentations, multigenre and multimedia extravaganzas—that will allow students to demonstrate the learning.

It’s not rocket science, but doing it well isn’t always easy, and teachers need support and sometimes institutional encouragement to develop their skills at designing good curriculum and devising well-focused assessments of multiple varieties. As with collaborative work and project design, professional development—what my colleagues in the blogosphere now like to call professional learning—lies at the heart of doing it well.

On an institutional level, it’s worth considering becoming involved with some of the new initiatives designed to assess student learning in contemporary skill areas and the student experience in broad contexts. The CWRA, mentioned in #2 of this series, is one such program, and the developers also offer great professional development around things like project and assessment design. PISA (the Programme for International Student Assessment of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) is also preparing to launch a school-centric version of its truly global (and based on global standards) assessment. Then there are instruments like the High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), which will soon have a middle-school sibling ready for school use. Not only do “assessments” like these give you an idea of how your students are doing on particular and increasingly valued skills and dispositions, but they also provide comparative data that allows you to see how your students—and by implication your school—do relative to peers.

If you are interested in getting into this more deeply in a collaborative sort of way, the Independent Curriculum Group, a consortium of independent and public schools, is launching a National Assessment Project this year to explore new and better ways to assess student learning in ways that are consonant with individual school missions and aims. Contact the ICG and join the fun!

So, who is thinking about smart assessment of student learning at your school?

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE HERE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE HERE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE HERE
4. Smart assessment of student learning DONE
5. Social media—for advancement
6. Social media—in the classroom
7. New directions for your library
8. Online learning
9. Strategic professional development learning
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking
11. Being Green

Things You MUST Think About: Collaborative Learning and (related issue) Project Design

This is the third in a promised gloss on each of the 11 THINGS INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS MUST BE THINKING ABOUT featured in my previous post. (I recap the entire list below the body of this post.)

#3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design

Kids work in groups in schools all the time—on fields, stages, courts, and in clubs like Mock Trial, Math Team, and Model U.N. At most schools they collaborate far less often in their classrooms, and a few schools actually go out of their way to discourage the kind of collaborative learning that might harness the power of stronger students to help less strong ones or might reveal multiple paths to understanding—the enormous power of peer learning. Group tasks like debates, presentations, and simulations can be extremely effective as learning tools. Social beings, we humans tend to learn well in contexts that engage the emotional faculties—like collaboration of all sorts.

One reason that educators shy away from collaborative work is the challenge of managing it. You can see it on the lacrosse field, but it’s much harder to gauge the level of contribution from each member of a project group, especially if work is done outside the classroom. But it’s not impossible, and some easily adaptable tools from the business world can help (for example, make a chart that breaks down each task, in detail, and have group members distribute these and set interim deadlines—and then make it easy for the teacher to monitor the segments); and look around, because there’s even been some work done on this topic by educators.

Of course the key to excellent project-based learning and excellent collaboration is to present students with worthy, engaging problems—rich in content and context. Two kids collaborating on a sugar-cube pyramid to complete their Egypt unit doesn’t cut it—unless the problem has real meaning: exploring and replicating ancient Egyptian mathematics and cosmology, perhaps, or creating an accompanying story that connects the pyramid concept to its deep cultural significance. Don't expect much learning from just a sticky glue-and-paint job.

The key here, of course, is both a coherent institutional strategy and some excellent training for teachers—along with a real desire to incorporate collaboration in the service of raising student capacities to a true “21st-century” level.

So, who is thinking about collaborative learning and project design at your school?

The 11 Things:

1. Design Thinking. What-ing? DONE
2. Data-informed decision-making DONE
3. Collaborative learning and (related issue) project design DONE
4. Smart assessment of student learning
5. Social media—for advancement
6. Social media—in the classroom
7. New directions for your library
8. Online learning
9. Strategic professional development learning
10. Shorter horizons for strategic thinking
11. Being Green