Learning is Change

Saying that the students are our future is a little bit like saying that we trust gravity to hold us to the earth. Students are our future is the truth, but that in and of itself is not profound. The future will occur and those students will be a part of it no matter what. They will outlive us, plain and simple. The meaning of this statement only hits home when you realize that the students know this too. They are waiting for us to empower and let them assume their rightful place as stewards of a future that we would actually want to take part in, a future that is worth sticking around for.

When I hear someone say that students are our future, I want to hear a sense of urgency in their voice. I want the next sentence to be about student ownership of the future and our responsibility for doing right by them. I want that forward looking statement to be backed up, and require students to actually proclaim the future as theirs.

On Thursday night of last week, I saw exactly that. At the DPS Foundation Achieve Gala students were front and center the whole time. They gave the keynotes they were featured in the amazing videos. They were the focus. In talking to a number of the student board of education members, I saw that students were living out the future, simultaneously reaching out for it and achieving it.

And, there were 1100 people who bore witness. 1100 people who saw students as the center of what DPS is all about. They saw students in control of their own destinies and by extension the destiny of the great city of Denver.

Among these student leaders, I had the pleasure to meet three individuals from East High School, West Legacy and from Montebello.

Each student had different story to tell how they were empowered. Each story was one of adults getting out of the way. Each story was of the students taking the responsibility of creating the future on to themselves.

One student talked about how the ninth graders in her school couldn’t see the finish line. She talked about them becoming discouraged and not having the role models to help them graduate. And, then she spoke about getting together with 33 juniors and seniors to bring together the splintered family that is West High School. These students will not only help 9th graders to be connected to something bigger than one year of school, they will help each other in the essential act of building community.

A second student talked about the connections they were making in a daily announcement circle. The simple act of making sure that all students know about the opportunities available is powerful. They are encouraging the type of engagement that begets engagement. They aren’t just talking about the “current events” of the school, but rather revealing just how students can help to make the memories that determine the next steps.

The last student I spoke with focused on something literally called the Future Center. It is the place where students can go to learn about and plan their own future. It is incredible that such a place exists, a Future Center within a school, encouraging and empowering students to become a part of it.

We know that students are the future, but they have to see it that way too. It isn’t enough that we know. They have to know it and live it. These students clearly do know this. We have proved it to them through organizations like the DPS foundation, where we show our support of their stewardship of our collective future.

Running a program for one year is something to talk about. Running one for two years is a trend. After three years, even the laggards start to take notice. Doubts fade after four years. And if you are running a program into your fifth year, well then you are an institution.

The Denver teacher residency is in its fifth year. That is mind-blowing in terms of school reform efforts. My favorite thing about it, though, isn’t that it’s been going for five years or that they have held fast to a single vision throughout that time. Rather, my favorite part is that they aren’t afraid to try new things even after establishing themselves as an institution.

Julie Rottier-Lukens is the Manager of Program and Curriculum for the DTR and I am really glad that she is. She knows not only where the program is going but where each school is going within the program and where each teacher is going within a school. She sees how all of those pieces fit.

And I don’t think she would say it was magical or that  it has been up all fun and games. But, I do think that she would say that it is been worth it. Her passion shows through the program in each teacher that takes part.

To still be expanding out into new schools where new teachers gain exposure to a residency model in their fifth year is a testament to just how well it works. But, we should never take an institution like the Denver teacher residency for granted. When I met with Julie and she said that some of the teacher residency members had been with them since the beginning and were starting their “super senior” year, I found it amazing. To have something that others want to be a part of five years after its inception, defies gravity.

But, she is still learning new things. She is still reaching out for different ways of helping teachers to teach. Whether in looking for ways to create a digital repository of resources for her teachers or in giving timely feedback, she runs with her vision in hand. And we should all be so lucky to see the future of education so clearly.

We should all be so lucky to work on something we know is going exist five years from now. We should all be so lucky to believe in something so whole heartedly and pursue it each and every day. We should all be so lucky to work with people like Julie and the rest of the folks involved with the Denver teacher residency, whose mission is clear and the work itself has made it into an institution.

What does a grade mean? Does an “A” look like the same thing from all perspectives? Does it feel like a slap in the face to some and a stunning achievement to others? Does it measure attendance or does it measure understanding? And really, what do we want it to mean and measure? Is there some grand vision for “the Grade” that we could all get behind? 

Noah Geisel, of East High School, helped me think all of these questions through when I met with him this week. He helped me to consider the way he envisions grades: as representations of what students know and can demonstrate, rather than how much they can turn in their homework on time and “play the game of school.” This isn’t revolutionary, nor is it outside of the scope of our work to consider. Rather it is perfectly normal, or at least it should be.

Grades should not represent that you raised your hand in class; they should mean that you learned something. If you earn an “A”, it should be because you have constructed knowledge and can demonstrate that construction. To a very large extend, I don’t think we have this figured out quite yet, at least not in every classroom. 

Learning is not a singular act, isolated from the overall path a student is on. It is not a status symbol to be affixed to a piece of paper. The grade is not something outside of the standards, but rather an extension of them, a way of making them real. If we take grades away from the demonstration of learning, they lose all of their value. The grade is both part and parcel of school. It can convey the meaning of student work or distract from it just as easily. 

But most of us stopped getting grades after high school or college. Most of us stopped relying on them for determining self-worth or as descriptors of what we were passionate about long ago. So, I wonder if the disconnect from grades and the demonstration of learning stems from our lack of authentic grading in our own lives.

As a Spanish department chair at East High School, Noah has helped the department to look at their grading practices in ways that are authentic to both adult learning and student learning. He has engaged in the work of change management by maintaining high standards for the folks he has helped to bring on board. As a part of the interview process for new teachers, he called each candidate and spoke to them in Spanish. While that may seem like a typical thing that most people might do in his position, I can assure you it is not. He has applied the same methodology for encouraging teacher quality as he does within his classroom. He is asking others to demonstrate their learning.

It is special when someone goes out of their way to make their working environment collaborative, yet based upon an objective understanding of what is important. When grading simply becomes a way of evaluating the quality of learning and the ability to exhibit that learning, it is authentic and powerful. And I hope, something we can all get behind.

Piloting something new can be a natural process. We have the capacity to do it all the time within ourselves. Our ability to see something of value out of the world, pursue it and then to build capacity towards being able to use it should be something we do almost without thinking.

Great teachers are masters of the pilot in exactly this way. When they see a piece of curriculum or a new technology tool, they immediately start to analyze it to see what it might do for them. Then they work to incorporate it in a small way, perhaps within a single project to see whether or not it is effective. If it is, then they really start using it in earnest, transforming their practice with possibility.

One such teacher I met with recently, does this all the time encouraging innovation at every turn. Specifically, his use of Prezi has extensively pulled resources from the AP biology community, curating them into amazing learning objects that guide his students throughout the curriculum. Nate Grover of East High School does not just pilot things for himself, though. He pilots for all of us.

He pilots technologies and ideas because he knows that doing so makes him a better teacher. Then he shares them back to the communities he is a part of. We just need to ensure that we are a part of the same communities of practice that he engages in to gain the same value that his colleagues see in his contributions. Nate and other teachers like him should have easy access to ways of sharing their effectiveness, their best practices and their ability to pilot new things every day in their classroom “laboratories”.

District pilots do not tend to move quickly, which is perfectly okay. We are interested in things like scalability and scope. But the daily pilots going on at East High School and other schools around the district are not fictitious. They are not unimportant or trivial, either. We must learn from them to encourage the district pilots and ensure they actually reach the students they are meant to.

It is also our responsibility to help them sustain these pilots. It is difficult to continue on doing something new and different in the classroom when the only support is in-building. We can connect the dots to make sure that innovative teachers know that there are more people doing the same things they are doing and there is a community that is available to support them. Because while piloting is natural instinct for great teachers, sustained change is not. When you think you are alone, you tend to create and discontinue pilots whenever you like, based upon our own needs or time constraints. Sustained change and growth is something we must support because no one can do it on their own.

In the end, it is so important to talk with, listen to, and learn from people like Nate Grover at East. Making time to do that is what makes sustained growth possible.

Project ownership is hard, mostly because it’s hard to own people or their time. I mean, can you really own someone’s tasks or their ideas? At the end of the day, it becomes struggle to own much of anything.

And yet we have lots of projects that seemingly need ownership. None of them will start or finish or continue without someone propelling them along, ensuring responsibility for their continued efforts.

When we own something real though, we get to know it, inside and out. We see how we can use it and who we can use it with, but it is still outside of us. When we try and own a project it becomes a part of us, almost like a child. And there is a danger in that. The danger is in getting too attached that we are devastated and unable to go on when it fails or is taken away from us.

I met with someone yesterday, however, that doesn’t suffer from this troubling trait. She has handled many projects within DPS, creating project plans and requirements documents. She has done all of this without the need for her to call them her children, without the need for to dispair when situations conspire outside of her control. She takes a look at all of the things she has accomplished, is proud of them and goes about the work of finding the bridge from the old landscape to the new one.

It is the ability to move on and to find continuity between the projects that are foist upon us that gives us the ability to become resilient and to have an Elastic Membership with our work.

And that is what Kristy Briggs (of the Academic Product Team) has. She has an elastic membership to her projects and the projects of others, rather than having a project ownership only for her own tasks. The words she uses to describe her projects are ones of excitement, of pulling resources together, and of talking specifically to schools to learn about their needs. And when it comes down to having a project owner she can fill that role too. She can have those conversations about who does what and when. But, her projects do not define her because she is working on something bigger than herself. She is working for the students, and it is apparent in every sentence she says that the students come first. She is the embodiment of the DPS values that are hung around all of our Administrative hallways and our schools.

I do not begrudge people who want to have project ownership or who treat their projects like their children, but I do think that there is room and space for an elastic membership of many projects and the ability for us to see the connections between them rather than only owning the one that we are trying to drive. This elastic membership, however, requires all of us to be members. It requires a community of people, a collaboration that elastically pulls and pushes and snaps back into place.

So, let us form these collaborations. Let us become elastic members of many projects. And let’s redefine ownership to be participation and engagement rather than project planning.