Educating for Innovation: the essential elements

The panel of experts we assembled in April from RPI, SUNY College of Engineering, Regeneron, Ohio State and Tech Valley High agreed on certain elements of education that promote innovation.  See what you think!   https://haikudeck.com/p/cQ6T0IwPud

Teaching for creativity

Wharton professor Adam Grant talks and writes about creativity and how to nurture it.  In the short video at the end of this post he talks specifically about how to nurture creativity in students.

His three main points are that values should take president over rules; that character is more important than behavior; and that giving kids examples from the books they read  - of kids doing creative things that haven't been done before, are ways to develop creativity.

This is interesting to me.  It speaks to the way we construct the school experience for our students and what we intend for them to gain from it.  It is a question the Parker faculty is always trying to get to the root of - How do we develop creativity, empathy, and purpose in our students - skills that will serve them well for their entire lives?

We strive to inspire curiosity by posing interesting questions and by giving students the ways and means to explore the world around them and topics they become interested in.  We set high expectations and let the children help develop rules, giving them the real responsibility (with adult support) to construct a kind and supportive community.  We set up many experiences where learning has a purpose beyond the immediate classroom, by doing projects that have an impact on others: citizen science, teaching others, coming up with solutions to real world problems, community service.  And everyone is immersed in the arts -  music, dance, instruments, painting, dramatics, public speaking, design and many, many other creative practices.

We also give them time to play and to contemplate.

I like Grant's ideas and hope to expand even further on the question of developing creativity and innovators.  On the evening of April 5 we are having a panel discussion, open to the public, about just this topic.  We have some amazing thinkers lined up - Stay tuned - more information is coming!

Developing STEMpathy

Disruptive technology surrounds us: self-driving cars, software that writes poetry, drones delivering packages...When machines are competing with people for thinking, what's a human to do?!

Thomas Freidman has been thinking about this, and in his recent article From hands to heads to the hearts he answers that humans have what computers don't - a heart.  He writes that everyone needs STEMpathy to succeed in this new age.

The attributes that can't be programmed are the ones we must develop in school, like passion, character and a collaborative spirit.  It is crucial to combine knowledge with heart to if we want students to thrive in the technical age we live in.

It's a reminder of the importance of Parker's core values and mission, the right ones for our age, or any age.

This morning five alumni from 2008 and 2013 visited for a panel discussion.  Represented were an art teacher and a novelist, a future biochemist, a future biomedical engineer, and a budding labor relations specialist.   Their empathy was evident and the values and advice they espoused were about the importance of being friends with people who want to make you better, building relationships with teachers, and finding activities, clubs and subjects that you feel passionate about.  They are all serious about ideas and value learning over grades.

They loved the fun they had at Parker - playing in the stream and being outdoors.  They valued the friends and teachers.  The thesis project was defining and prepared them for writing everywhere, even in college.   They learned to learn for learning's sake, and felt proud of it.  These young adults were definitely skilled in STEMpathy.

Where the outdoors is both classroom and teacher

Kids are wired from birth to be scientists - to explore and discover things and use their senses.

Fourth and fifth graders today were begging to stay in the woods to continue their New York forest study.  They have each adopted a tree for a year-long project.  Tasks include describing the tree, drawing the tree from different perspectives like lying down or from above, writing a poem about the tree, and scientific investigation.

K-1's are studying salamanders and 2-3's are starting the year with their annual water study and participation in the DEC's Day in the Life of the Hudson River.  Middle schoolers have started something new - The Nature Patchwork Project, observing an area of the school's property for a year, and creating detailed nature observation journals that they will publish to Pinterest as a way to share their findings publicly.

Thomas Friedman in a September Op-ed We Are All Noah Now urges our generation  - and our children's  - to be the "Noah generation" - charged with saving the earth and its species from extinction.  To care about nature, children need to be immersed in nature and be environmentally literate.  In today's tech-focused world, that's not so easy.

How lucky are we that Parker is at the cutting edge of pedagogy in a unique learning environment, where the outdoors is a classroom and a teacher both?!

What you learned in preschool...

Baking apple muffins for a snack in Pre K

What should we be teaching kids to assure their future success?  

Claire Cain Miller in Why What You Learned in Preschool is Crucial at Work in the Sunday New York Times, cites recent long-term studies that support the basics of the preschool curriculum - for everyone.  It turns out that flexibility, empathy, sharing, negotiating and playing well with others, combined with intellectual acuity, are absolutely key.  Jobs and wages for those who possess all these skills have far outpaced those where just one or the other domain, either social or cognitive, is required.  

Of course, that's no secret for us here at Parker.  Part of our mission after all, is "nurturing confidence and community."  On the ground level in the classroom that means giving children daily challenges to work in cooperative groups - for example during middle school STEM week when small teams of "engineers" design and build a bridge, and then produce a documentary video to go along with it.

This year in the 2-3's teachers are piloting a "Flexibility" curriculum, specifically teaching children how to give up rigidity and embrace cooperation.  Teacher Lynn Schuster writes, 

This week's Power of Flexibility work involved the kids running through an obstacle course with a rigid body and then with a flexible one. The average speed for completing the course with a flexible body was twice as quick as with a rigid one.

Other skills that build emotional control and response inhibition - some of the basics for what is called executive function, are incorporated in practices like Responsive Classroom and time for sustained make-believe play.  In this way, children learn to think before acting, take turns, recover from disappointment, or deal with perceived unfairness.  

It is always nice to have our basic values and teaching philosophy supported by research. With graduates in their early 30's who are Emmy winning film-makers, mechanical and mathematical engineers, successful social and business entrepreneurs, doctors, artists, lawyers, and not-for-profit founders, we see it in action!

Middle School kids cooperate on the "Up and Over",
an element on our Low Ropes Course

Play and passion develop purpose

In Most Likely to Succeed, Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era Harvard education expert Tony Wagner with Tony Dintersmith contend that there are seven essential skills for kids to develop for future success:

1. Formulate good questions
2. Communicate in groups and lead by influence
3. Be agile and adaptable
4. Take initiative and be entrepreneurial
5. Effective written and oral communication skills
6. Know how to access and analyze information
7. Be creative and imaginative

And I might add another. # 8. Do good in the world

These skills are another way of talking about what educators call the Four C's of 21st Century skills:  collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and communication.

I would add: # 5. compassion.

These are great goals to strive for in educating students in and out of the classroom.  The trick in school is designing learning activities explicitly around these goals.

Presenting scenarios for humanitarian use of fuel cells (6-7's); preparing for a Show of Work on Hinduism (2-3's); coordinating a hunger awareness event (8th grade); running a "health clinic" for parents and buddies (Pre K 3) - these are examples of activities that build the kind of skills we seek.

The unspoken message is that teachers must possess all of these skills to model and prepare a nuanced and effective program.  There is no better way to say it: When Educators Make Space for Play and Passion, Students Develop Purpose.

Robotics to tree forts - the balancing act

Technology is such a mixed bag.  Building a LEGO robot and programming it to do very cool stuff - that's truly fun.  And so is building an awesome tree fort.

I remember as a child, begging to watch the hour of cartoons available on TV on Saturday mornings before I was told to "Go out and play!"  That part lasted the rest of the day.

Finding the balance for our kids today is challenging.  How much computer time is OK?  How can we make sure our kids are getting time outside for exploring?  Both build skills they will need in their futures: intellectual acuity, perseverance, ingenuity, a creative mindset, emotional stamina, flexibility and cooperation.

Teachers struggle with this balance, too.  When should we start teaching keyboarding?  How young is too young for learning through apps?  Here is an interesting article from MindShift about an experiment that shows that pencil and paper note-taking is much more effective for recall and analysis than taking notes on a computer.  The brain processes information in many ways, and we want to get it right!

This summer our faculty is reading Catherine Steiner-Adair's book, The Big Disconnect.  I've heard her speak and she is compelling in her arguments against screen time for both adults and kids.  Our reliance on our phones and iPads  - our literal addiction to our devices - prevents us from connecting on an emotional level with those we love most.

Teachers will be discussing The Big Disconnect this fall and we'll hold some discussions with parents, too.  I hope you will join in the conversation!

Beyond Books

6-7's practice the presentations they will give to executives at local
fuel cell company, Plug Power.

Raising smart kids isn’t about teaching to the tests; it’s about building brainpower. Kids who can seek information, connect ideas and apply what they’ve learned aren’t just book- or school-smart – they are life-smart.       ~ Four Skills Smart Kids Need to Succeed, Metro Parent

Parker is a school filled with kids who love books.  But they don't stop there.  During the last weeks of school, we witness the multitude of ways our kids move beyond "book-smarts" to "life-smarts".

• The 8^th grade thesis presentations were passionate and poised.
• 6-7’s STEM Week: students built hydrogen fuel cells and wrote persuasive speeches about how Plug Power should donate them to places in the world where there are humanitarian crises.  They will give the speeches on June 8 to Plug Power executives. http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Photos-Students-present-fuel-cell-project-6314833.php#photo-8119187
• 4-5’s had a great trip to Ellis Island. They are each taking on the persona of an immigrant to America, then writing and performing a play for their Show of Work.
• 2-3’s are studying China: writing research essays, learning Chinese music in English and Mandarin, accompanied by our Xingtao on the hulusi (traditional Chinese instrument) and creating scroll paintings.  They will be performing a dance for the Show of Work.
• K-1’s are studying Africa through stories, research about animals of the Savannah, weaving, song and dance.
• Pre K classes have taken field trips to Five Rivers and are delighting in the beautiful spring weather.  Teachers prepared a slide show highlighting the rich themes they explored this year.

The secret to math education in preschool

Here's an interesting article about math in preschool, Why Math Might be the Secret to School Success.  It refers to a recent study showing that math knowledge at the beginning of elementary school is the single most powerful predictor determining whether a student will graduate from high school and attend college.  That's a new one!  We usually hear about reading skills and the ability to delay gratification (The Marshmallow Test) as top indicators.

Perhaps it is actually a richness of experience while they are little that gives children an edge.  Math is an important component.  Math that is intentionally incorporated into activities like cooking, gathering, sorting, building and making patterns is crucial for developing brains as a base for deeper understanding.  You can read Pre K 3 teacher, JoAnn Bennett's blog  This Week! (scroll down to the Looking Deeper section) to learn about the math activities involved in block building, for example. 

Engaging, exciting and loud are the key elements with math for preschoolers.  “We want kids running around the classroom and bumping into mathematics at every turn.” says Doug Clements from U. Denver.  That sounds like fun!  And a lot like our Pre K 3's and 4's at Parker.

How do we motivate kids?

A preschooler explores the properties and movement of water and air.

A sixth grader designs his own project for the 3D printer with Google Sketch Up.

A K-1 team uses their knowledge of force and motion to move a ball with a LEGO robot.

An eighth grader leads her mother and grandfather through her portfolio and goals at her student-led conference.

How do we motivate kids at Parker?  Motivation has been a big topic in the education news lately and here are some great articles about what elements you need in school to create it.

How to Foster Students' Mindsets and What Keeps Students Motivated to Learn? both in MindShift.

These articles could have been written about Parker, along with another, Moving Towards Inquiry about Project Based Learning (PBL), that urges schools to use PBL as effectively as we do.

The methods and mindsets described by these prominent educators tell the story of how we teach at Parker. They are not just buzzwords and they really do motivate students.  Here are a few of the elements we weave into the life of the school. The pictures above show some of them in action.

• Inquiry
• Deep learning
• Student-centered culture
• Collaborative teams
• Integrated projects
• Hands on learning
• Topics relevant to students
• Self and peer evaluation
• Learning from failure
• Belonging to an academic community

These elements describe the tenets of the progressive movement in education. They are inherent in our mission.  We do them really well - and they work.  The education mainstream is finally catching on - and urging schools to be more like Parker.

What does it mean to be a STEM school?

4-5's testing the results of the solar ovens they designed and built in teams

In a recent article in MindShift, educator Anne Jolly sums up the criteria for a lesson that authentically fulfills STEM goals:

– Does it engage students in the engineering design process?
– Do students address a real-world problem?
– Do they work in teams to solve this problem?
– Are there multiple possible solutions?
– Do students get to explore and come up with ideas on their own, without being spoon-fed?

It strikes me that these criteria describe the whole learning philosophy at Parker.  If you substitute "learning" for engineering in the first point, it is a pretty exact fit for almost any project.

STEM is a hot term right now, and rightly so.  It encapsulates the idea that if we want students to become effective thinkers for the future, we need to innovate in the ways we teach them.

This list will be a great touchstone for teachers to use in assessing their plans for the year.

What makes kids smarter?

6-7's turn a study of sound waves into a jam band of wacky self-made instruments.

If you do nothing else today, read Eight Ways of Looking at Intelligence by Annie Murphy Paul in MindShift.  The article talks about having a different mindset about what can make us smarter: relationships, expertise, even our bodies. 

Great news for us at Parker - I love it when science catches up with what we are doing here.  Daily we watch as children's intellects grow within an environment that values and cultivates friendships, deep learning, lots of movement, and self-regulation. 

This year we watched a reluctant third grade writer, because he believed he could do it, achieve his goal to pen five essays for one Show of Work, and then go on to teach his class how to create a PowerPoint.  We listened to an eighth grader, who as a fifth grader wouldn't walk through the math room door, tell with pride how because of the belief of her math teacher she came to believe in herself.

...a feeling of belonging is critical to the full expression of students’ ability and intelligence.  These eight ways to look at intelligence are a powerful lens for our school's mission to inspire curiosity and a passion to achieve.

How do we teach creativity?

Teams in K-1 designed and built bridges to support a cup of sand.

It worked!!!

The best creative works happen when we are trying to explore our world and make sense out of life. It is that sense of purpose that propels the creative process. 

So says John Spencer in Ten Things I've Learned About Creativity, a blog post in Education Re-Think.  He also says that creativity takes a lot of courage - the courage to overcome the insecurity of being wrong.

The kind of school atmosphere that Parker has, the kind that allows for re-do's, re-thinks, and do-overs as a regular part of learning is crucial for creativity to blossom.  Doing multiple drafts of a piece of writing, perseverance in LEGO Robotics, teams charged with real challenges, all these experiences accumulate to form a creative mindset. 

Spencer also says the joyful exuberance of play is often involved in creative endeavors.  You can see it in the children's faces in the photos - shared purpose, experimentation, the give and take of a small group:  it's pretty apparent how we teach creativity!

The Art of Focus

Camille spoke compellingly about the issue of gay marriage in her thesis presentation.

4-5's read their creative stories about characters both real and fictional revealing historical knowledge about 20th Century immigrant experiences.

Different types of activities require different types of focus - and practice can take us into a zone of "relaxed presence when mind and body are in the same place at the same time" as described by James Fallows in his Atlantic article The Art of Staying Focused in a Distracting World.

Last night and this morning, Parker students showed their growing expertise as public speakers and their focus seemed just right.  With a little bit of nervousness to heighten the senses, students' talks were relaxed and conversational.  They were concise, and that conveyed that vast detail and knowledge had been mastered and distilled.  Future TED talkers!

More about innovative learning

4th grade math students explore together how to draw 2D representations of 3D objects. Students can then make drawings from their own designs for others to try recreating.

K-1's all contributed to this story about an unlikely friendship between a bobcat and a cat at Parker.  They are going to turn their story into a book.

This article in MindShift, 7 Essential Principles of Innovative Learning expresses how we teach at Parker.  Author Katarina Schwartz pares it down to 7 elements that correspond exactly to what we call project based education or signature experiences.

1. Learners have to be at the center of what happens in the classroom.

2. Learning is a social practice and can’t happen alone.

3. Emotions are an integral part of learning.

4. Learners are different.

5. Students need to be stretched, but not too much.

6. Assessment should be for learning, not of learning.

      7. Learning needs to be connected across disciplines.

I would take it one step further than she does, adding "8. Learning should result in purposeful action."  This concept includes projects that have a purpose beyond the school's  walls - learning that expands into the world beyond the classroom.  That is what gives the depth and meaning to activities that will excite students' imaginations and passions.

Entrepreneurial learning

The Global One-Room Schoolhouse: John Seely Brown (Highlights from his "Entrepreneurial Learner" Keynote at DML2012) from DML Research Hub on Vimeo.

What does it take to cultivate entrepreneurial learners?  Visiting scholar at USC and independent co-chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge, learning innovator, John Seely Brown ruminates on play and how to develop a questioning disposition.  This is a very cool animated video of his ideas.

At Parker we practice critique and purposeful action among other ways to get kids to "play" with ideas and explore the results - here is another way to think about it!

Projects, passion, curiosity

Science teacher, Kate Perry sent this wonderful article from Edutopia my way:  Change the subject: Making the Case for Project-Based Learning.  I urge everyone connected with Parker to read this - it really describes how we are educating students here.  While not abandoning the classic subject areas, Parker teachers collaborate and combine the disciplines for rich, interesting, connected studies of big questions and relevant explorations - that have real-life applications and audiences. 

Our graduates attest to the value of how they were educated at Parker: flexible, adaptable skills for an always changing future.  Thomas Friedman's editorial today echoes the same theme: the Passion Quotient (PQ) and the Curiosity Quotient (CQ) are now as important for economic success as IQ.  Passion and curiosity must be intentionally nurtured in school - and that is what a project-based curriculum like Parker's is doing. 

K-1 students have been studying crystals, rocks and minerals.  Today they imagined what lies below the surface of the earth: burrows, pipes, rocks, bones...endless room for wondering, testing and exploring.

4-5's study of lizards combines art and language arts: 2 and 3 dimensional work in oil pastels and sculpture and perspective-taking in writing.

Exploring the properties of motion and force: middle school science students build Rube Goldberg style machines: passion, curiosity and intelligence are all engaged here!

What is outside that informs the study of crystals?  Snow!  And there are animal tracks!

Tread softly over their dreams

Sir Ken Robinson always informs and inspires.  His TED Talk on "Bring on the Learning Revolution" is a great listen.  His theme revolves around education that is personalized and customized.  He notices that time takes on a different course when you are doing something that resonates with your spirit - that feeds your energy and your passion.  Why shouldn't learning and school be fun?  Looking to the future, it has to be.

Sooner isn't better

How does the magic skill  - reading - come about?  At Parker, it comes from children's desire to understand the world around them - the best motivator for an emerging reader. 

Through stories read to them, and stories they tell; from describing a bird's feather to deciphering a friend's message of the day, Parker kindergarteners and first graders acquire the tools and the desire to read, to write, and to communicate.  And they master it on their own timeline, just like when they learned to talk or walk.

Children practice translating sounds into letters and words: phonics.  They keep personal "word walls": sight memory.  They interpret the meaning of a story or the facts in a research book because they really, really, really want to know all about it: purpose.  They publish a book about butterflies or a poster on poultry farmers for a Show of Work: audience.

In our K-1 classrooms, reading is bound up with everything that happens: the morning meeting, research, science and social studies, or writing and performing a play.  And it is formally scheduled for over an hour every day.

Over the last two summers our language arts teachers revised our curriculum with specialist, Miriam Raider-Roth, a professor at the University of Cincinnati and a former Parker parent.  They consulted state and national guidelines and adapted them to our own high standards.  They published the school's curricular document and now it is on our website. Click here and scroll to bottom.

I hope you will take a look, so when someone asks you why Parker kids aren't filling out workbook sheets to learn to "read" in kindergarten to take state tests - you can say with confidence, "Sooner isn't better."

Bold brains!

On our professional development day, the faculty worked with Connell Frazier, director of Sage Online.  She is the parent of our alumna, Alex Frazier, currently a senior at Troy High.  Connie taught us about moodle, wordle, photofunia, scribblar, spellingcity, animoto, audioboo, voicethread, glogster, xtranormal, zoomerang, dipity and jing.  Wow!  Do you think our heads are full?

Here is a movie I made on animoto that shows us at work!

http://animoto.com/play/qpk7dkX6FQ3dG8wFfCNBqw

Next step:  share with the kids!