Learning is Change

Our district is a complex organism. Much like the human body, each organ is responsible for its own functions, but no one organ is responsible for moving forward. It is also true that we have prescribed a number of different remedies for ailing or overworked organs within the district, and each one could be seen as competing for time and attention. After all, if you know you need to exercise your legs by going for a jog, you can’t very well give your heart a rest at the same time. We have competing priorities, and many times, competing initiatives.

But, one school has found a way of integrating these priorities and putting these initiatives into the larger context of their work. High Tech Early College has a principled approach for supporting district-wide initiatives while staying true to their pillars of success: Concurrent Enrollment, Project-Based Learning, and Executive Internship.

In my visit with the principal, John Fry, I saw how many of the things that could compete with each other worked together instead. It was evident in everything from calling an “audible” early dismissal in order to congratulate students on their hard work throughout the statewide assessment to the ability to cohesively articulate and demonstrate how the initialism soup of DTR, SSA, PBL, and many others fit into the classrooms as we walked around. They are concerned not with the individual “initiatives,” but rather how they can meet the specific goal of getting kids college and career ready.

The heavy emphasis on posting and using data to ensure a culture of accountability were clear on every wall. The ability to see the students who were already working on their college degrees from high school was both inspiring and concrete. That is not to say that HTEC has it all figured out. The principal and teachers were the first to admit that they are still working out their execution, but the fact that they are a part of all of these conversations makes me think they are on to something.

The organism of the district is no less complex for them than it is for any other school, but I believe they are looking at it from a different perspective. They are not going to a general practice physician and looking for a single medicine that will cure everything. Rather they are using a wide network of specialists that are working together to help address individual concerns. The real results are forthcoming, but their approach is worth emulating. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be caught up in the complexity, but rather look to our network of support to help us strive toward a specific goal: A more Healthy district, school, and student.

We are known by the promises we make to others. We are known for the promises that we keep too. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is a microcosm of both, and I am glad that it exists. This story isn’t one about a single person, or a single school, but rather it is the story of documenting our relationships people and schools.

A “memorandum” is something we are choosing to write down. It is something that is intentional and has purpose. We intend to use it, both right now and in the future. It is something we can go back to and look at from all perspectives. The “understanding” is our common ground. It is the shared space that we all get to work from. It is the connection held between us that allows for the relationship to take place. Without understanding we have no conduit for shared respect and open dialogue, without the memorandum we have no record of our ever having reached understanding.

That is why this construct is special. In looking at the MoU between a school and my team, certain things jumped out at me. I first saw timelines and promises of money or support. But as I looked closer, I saw the understanding that laid beneath it. It was a document of change, of EXchange. We are both giving and getting in the equation, but it isn’t quite a transaction. Neither of us believes we are getting the “better end of the deal.” Rather, we are looking out into the future and writing down what we see.

It is both promise and wish.

We are promising to one another that we will be true to our commitments, but we are wishing that the continued collaboration bears fruit and the change manifests itself in ways we haven’t envisioned. This Memorandum of Understanding doesn’t hold us accountable. Clearly, we are responsible for doing that for ourselves. Instead, the MoU is the reminder of what our promises and accountability is for: learning from one another.

It is this learning that gets me most excited. It is the chance to join ourselves to others by officially agreeing to learn. The memorandum sets the stage, and the promises provide the structure, but it is the learning that creates change.

So, I would like to construct a memorandum of understanding with each of you. I would like to set the stage for our relationship, commit to supporting you, and then learn from you in order to change our district for the better. They may be my own personal MoUs, but they are no less important for working together than the ones stored in our official documents. I would like to be known for making these promises, and for keeping them too.

Before GPS was in everything, before it was in phones and tablets, before it was helping us with driving directions and telling us where the closest bathroom was, it was a simple set of coordinates that allows us to navigate to particular position on the planet. And we liked it that way.

We liked geocaching (global scavenger hunts) and we liked being in this secret club of people who had figured out a location for everything in existence. We were lucky because we held the tools that allowed for exploration and for discovery. But, without a map, more often than not, it was aimless wandering. More often than not, it was trying to find something but not quite making it.

In a conversation with Savinay Chandrasekhar, who works on standards implementation in DPS, he described a similar thing happening in his work. He described teachers who were excited about empowering students to go on their own learning journey. But, those same teachers are interested in developing a map for this journey rather than just giving the students a set of coordinates.

This metaphor actually comes from a conversation Sav had with math teachers as a part of his work, and it immediately resonated with me. I was surprised at how much was packed inside of it. A learning map can exist and contain all of the “places” that a student needs to travel to within the course of a year, but each student could take a different path. Because the map is the set of standards, there is a common (core) set of expectations, but uncovering the map is the work of the teacher and students working together.

It is pretty clear that we can’t go back to the days of GPS. We can’t go back to giving students coordinates that aren’t connected to the full landscape. And both Sav and the teachers he is working with understand this. In fact, they are passionate about it. I find the commitment to listening to one another and building the map together to be truly inspiring.

Afterward:

If you want to hear another perspective on Learning Maps, I highly recommend this talk.

Responses:

Thanks for the story and this perspective. I fully agree with you about mapping. I also believe we as central office support to schools must let go of our tendency to be the voice on the GPS the that allows people to blindly follow. With no context and no sense of directional pull our leaders may find themselves stranded in an unknown remote territory because the iPhone 5 map was poorly programmed.. As leaders we all deserve the learning experience of mapping the course for those who are in our group and alter the course based on the pace