Wrecking the ant mound: My remarks to this year's graduates

My remarks last week to our Depot Campus graduates:

What a time we are living in! I certainly haven’t seen anything like this! And what a time to graduate from high school. You’re graduating online! When I was in high school, there wasn’t even an internet yet, and there weren’t any pandemics. Though there were certainly some protests and even riots. It’s a crazy time. And so much has happened that it can become very discouraging. We’re all socially isolated. We may be lonely. We’re all anxious about everything that’s going on. We may feel threatened or afraid. And it’s easy to get discouraged. Maybe you feel like that. Maybe you even feel hopeless about your future. I hope not, because it’s never hopeless. This is a time of tremendous disruption and upheaval. It’s a time of tremendous change. And that means it’s a time of hope. When I was in my admin prep program, a classmate made an analogy about change. He said when you wreck an ant mound, it doesn’t go away. It rebuilds itself in a new way. And that’s what happens any time there is a big disruption. Something new is built. And that’s where we are now. The ant mound is getting disrupted. And something new is going to be built. And you can help build it. Or at the very least, you get to experience it. And I’m convinced it will be better. I’m convinced that it will be better because I think this is the time where young people and people who have been held back for too long will take the lead. And whether you take the lead or not, you will have the chance to take advantage of the change. Look for the opportunities that will arise as this new ant mound is built. Old ways are passing away. New ways are coming. Keep your eyes and minds open. No one can predict what all the changes will be, but there is hope for a world with less racism and more justice and equality. There is hope for a world with more compassion and less consumerism--more focus on the things that are really important, like community and family, whatever that means to you. So don’t give up. These are hard times, and for some of you, it may seem like it’s always been hard times. But I’m here to tell you times change. And part of what determines that is you. No one is coming to save you. No one is coming to ride up on a horse and scoop you up and carry you off into the sunset. You are on your own horse. You need to do the work to be able to be part of this new thing that’s being built. You are one of the ants. Things are tough right now. And I have a feeling they are not going to get easier very soon. But at the same time, these are exciting times. They are times of change. So think about who and what you are and who and who and what you want to be, because everything, right now, is up in the air. And finally, realize that all of this uncertainty is OK, because really the only thing that is ever certain… is change. And if you can get comfortable with uncertainty and change, you will have a superpower. So lean into all of this change. The philosopher Alan Watts said, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” Join the dance of the ants rebuilding the mound. I wish you all the best as you move to the next stage of your journey!

Resistance training: Big changes at the Depot

"I do not like Project Block. Nobody likes it. Everybody hates it."

That was what one student said as he came in and plopped down in his seat for "Project Block" this week.

It's just one of the big changes we've made this year at E. O. Smith's Depot Campus. For an hour and half, three times a week, we get all the students together in the Big Room, with Ellen and our new UCONN interns, Rose and Nick, and we work on projects together. It's meant to be a scaffold--to help them learn how to plan and carry out their own projects.

As I explained to my disgruntled student, even though our school was built on an independent learning model, there was too little of that going on--our students simply lacked the skills.

And they have to work hard during this block. We put a big timer on the screen, and for ten minutes they have to be 100% focussed on their work--no phones, Youtube, or talking. We take a short break, then repeat. The goal is to break the process down into short-term goals and build their ability to focus. A successful ten minute run means a poker chip, and poker chips add up to credits and rewards.

Last Wednesday, they worked through five 10-minute cycles like that, and they cranked through their biomes powerpoints, which are the first project in our climate change theme.

Each project will focus on a part of the project process, and we'll gradually release responsibility to them until they are able to work independently for an hour and a half, three days a week, on their own projects.

It's just one of the big changes we've made as we continue to work to build the Depot into a place known for hard work and innovation--a place where students can stand out through real world experience and really cool independent projects.


Of course, I expect a little resistance along the way, but that's OK. It's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to make us stronger.

That goes for me and them.

Falling behind the curriculum with the mastery model

So here I am at the end of the third quarter and I figure I am 5-6 weeks behind where I was when I taught the same course 2 years ago.

I know it's crazy, but I just realized this yesterday, when I took a close look at my gradebooks and Moodle site.  I might have noticed earlier, but we switched around some topics in the curriculum, so it made it hard to compare years.

As I started scratching dates and topics into my Bullet Journal and it began to dawn on me just how far behind, I started to get anxious.

This is the course I've been experimenting with--the one I'm differentiating and using the mastery-based approach with.  This is the one with no zeros, no late penalties--the one of been trying to motivate with autonomy, mastery, and purpose (my mantra).

Maybe it's failed.

That's what I was thinking, anyway.

Then I got practical and came up with a plan for paring down the remaining content so I could cover the required breadth of material in the remaining 8 weeks of the year.

But still, today in class, I felt the need to pressure them: "OK. So you need to get done x, y, and z by tomorrow or you're going to end up with an incomplete on your report card."

...which is exactly what I don't want to resort to--the carrot and stick method, the cattle prod method, the authoritarian method, the "beatings will continue until morale improves" method .

Because Pink's "autonomy, mastery, and purpose" approach has evidence to back it up. It works better than external motivation. So though I'm open to being wrong, first I'll look for the problem elsewhere. I can think of a few places off the top of my head:

1) The curriculum is just too broad. And it turns out I added 3 new projects this year that I didn't use two years ago, including one on cancer prevention. These projects that took the place of faster, easier worksheets and other traditional activities I used to cover the same material two years ago.

2) It's been a rough 3rd quarter, with tons of snow days, multiple sophomore extend field trips, and a student teacher.

3) "What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity... What looks like laziness is often exhaustion...What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem." This quote from Chip & Dan Heath's book, Switch, is my other mantra.

4) I started using the mastery approach this year, which allows the students multiple attempts at every assignment. This has obvious potential implications for time.

5) I also implemented a "no zero" policy, which includes a "no late penalty" policy, which together with #2 tends to stretch out the time-line of projects a bit.


6) Though I've seen some success, I haven't mastered the art of motivation in this mastery-based approach.

Excuses? Maybe. But why should the traditional mile-wide curriculum/traditional instruction model be the default, anyway. Seems to me, the system is crying out for change. As long as there are failing students, it's failing them.

Pushing the envelope, and loving it

I know I'm late to this party, but my instructor showed this vid in class the other day and I keep thinking about it.

I know it focuses on the first follower, and that's important, but I feel like the "shirtless guys" need the most encouragement. Isn't their role the scariest? And isn't that partly why the first follower is so key?

And I think that's why watching this video is encouraging.

If you've ever been on the front lines, on the edge, risking things and trying things and making yourself vulnerable and open to criticism and failure and pushing the envelope of your abilities and maybe even the envelope of what people expect or think is possible, then you can probably can relate to this guy, too.

Of course, he's just having fun. It's pretty low-stakes to dance at a concert. But then again, most of what we're usually worried about is actually not as high-stakes as we think.

And isn't it pretty cool even before everyone joins in? In fact, isn't that the coolest part of the video, before everyone else joins in? When he's out there alone, "making a fool of himself," and then when the second guy comes out (the first follower).

Of course it's exciting when everyone joins in the party, but the coolest part is clearly the beginning.

What if it had died out after the first few? 

No party, but still pretty cool.

What if the first follower had not come out?

Not quite as cool, but I would still love it, just because this gutsy and fun-loving shirtless honey badger of a guy is throwing it our there.

So what are you afraid of? What am I afraid of? The fear, the challenge, the rush, like you're about to crash... that's what it's all about, isn't it?

It's not just about success. It's about the process of pushing that envelope.

And that's what leadership is about, too, at least a big part of it: Vision, and overcoming that fear of change and criticism and failure and having the guts to be that shirtless guy.

How to know it's time for a change

"For the last eight years, I've had an internal struggle: between wanting to improve myself, and wanting to be content." -Leo Babuta 

And so have I. And though I was pretty happy with my latest approximation of a solution--that contentment is appropriate in some circumstances but not in others (like when being chased by a lion), I realized I lacked an easy way to determine when to choose contentment and when to opt for change.

And this is key, because when I'm not sure whether I need to change or not, or I have a vague sense it's needed, but not sure how to do it or if it will work, then that causes anxiety. The feeling that I am not where I need to be causes anxiety. And it's not a good anxiety.

If it's clear that I need to change and I'm working on it, it's OK to be a bit anxious, like when I'm running from a lion. But if the anxiety is not necessary, then I want nothing to do with it.

So here's my first approximation at a change matrix: a strategy for determining when I should just sit tight and when I should start running.

Basically, I need to ask myself two questions:

1) How likely is it that this plan for change would succeed? Can I really pull it off? What are my chances for getting a new job, running a successful mastery-based classroom, getting six-pack abs, learning to keep bees, or learning to speak Chinese?

2) How certain am I that the benefits will outweigh the costs? And here I need to consider investment costs, opportunity costs, and collateral damage that the change may cause. I may have to put in some long weeks if I decide to pursue my administrators certificate (and I sure did), and I may miss out on time with my family (and I did), I may not be able to eat pasta and bread if I want six-pack abs (and I don't), and I may not get through the same amount of content if I switch to mastery-learning in biology. And the costs could get more serious than this.

And the oversimplified idea is this: If I can't be sure the benefits will outweigh the costs and that I have a decent likelihood of success, then I'm better off just forgetting about the idea and being content where I am--practice mindfulness and learn to enjoy the moment. If there's a high likelihood of success, it'll probably be worth doing more research to find out more about the costs and benefits. And if you are sure it would be a good thing, but it's just not likely right now, then start laying the groundwork for change in the future.

Just a start, but an important first step for a change addict who routinely defaults to "Change it now!"

Cold comfort or change?

Every now and then I read or hear something that so lucidly expresses such a deep truth or so resonates with reality that it's like someone struck the gong of my mind. That's what happened when I came across this passage in Transforming School Culture by Anthony Muhammad in which he summarized the findings of Dan Lortie about teachers who resist change--teachers Muhammad calls "the fundamentalists" (emphasis mine):

1) Teachers have been socialized in the field where they have practiced since they were 5-year-old children and have not been removed from that context since entering kindergarten. Since age 5, educators observed others' practice in the field in which they would eventually practice themselves.

2) On average, teachers were very good students and occupied the highest levels of the organization. As teachers, they bring that experience to the classroom and seek to preserve the same system that they enjoyed and benefited from as students.

Lortie concluded that it is irrational to expect people who benefited from a system to be the catalyst for changing that system. In fact, we should expect them to try and preserve a personally beneficial system.

BOOM.

That's it. That's why this is so hard. That's why changing the system from a filter and gateway and sorting system into something that actually aims to help every student succeed is like pulling teeth.

But isn't this true for all of us. Change--admitting we've been wrong, or that the system that benefited us is wrong, or is not what's best for everyone, is hard. Breaking out of our comfort zone is hard. It's risky.

But reality is risky. Being human is risky. but we have to choose. Cold comfort or change. Personal security at the expense of humanity, or exposure and vulnerability with increased humanness.

That's what I'm going for here.

Humanness. Openness. Change. Not for changes sake, but in a constant quest for something better: A sort of infinite flexibility, an evolvingness that is willing to be daily deconstructed in response to new data--a worldview that sees wrongness and failure as a springboard to rightness and success.

To be wrong, to see it, own it, then turn around and change, and realize you may still be wrong. To realize that the cold comfort of pseudo-security that comes from fundamentalism can't compare with the vibrancy of running right into reality and and the warmth of real humanity.

Top ten reasons to be a school principal

Thought I'd follow up on the ten things I like most about being high school chem teacher with the top ten reasons I'd like to be a school principal:

10) The heart of the school is the classroom, and change has to start there, but a principal can facilitate it by finding, encouraging, supporting, and empowering innovative and growth-minded teachers.

9) Revolutionizing education is going to require radical changes in school structures. This is going to require school leaders who are bold and willing to be first adopters.

8) The key to school improvement is in a truly collaborative model of school governance. Only school leaders can make this a reality.

7) As a teacher with a passion for innovation, experimentation and improvement, the approval, encouragement, and support of my own Principal has been a key component of my success.

6) I have a passion for hacking education--for making a system that is more human, a better fit with our DNA. As a teacher I can do it at the classroom level. As a school leader I can do it at the whole school level.


5) In the classroom, I believe the most important thing is to design and foster a structure and culture in which autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the motivators instead of grades, rewards and punishments. The same is true at the school level.

4) The other day, I saw a student who succeeded in my differentiated, mastery-based geology class last year. He couldn't make it in his other classes. So even though I was able to help him, he still failed to succeed in the school in general. As a Principal, I'd look for ways to make his success universal.

3) As a Principal, I would have the chance to have a profound impact at key moments in the lives of struggling and at-risk students.


2) As teacher, my influence is limited to 40-60 students per year.

1) As a principal, I could help a thousand... per year.

Why teaching is so hard, and our 2 options

I think I know why teaching is so hard: Modern schooling simply does not fit with the way kids (or adults) are built. It doesn't fit with the way our brains work. The so-called recitation method, bell schedules, desks, detentions, honor rolls, grades, hierarchies, and traditional subject-specific curricula are out of sync with our biology.

And instead of performing open-heart surgery and overhauling this beast, we just keep adding more of the same wrong drivers, like accountability ("The beatings will continue until morale improves."), new curricular mandates (well intentioned but miss the main point), initiative after initiative, program upon program. But the thing just gets more tangled and unwieldy. And we're in denial.

And teachers, they may get lots of vacation time, but they also get to work in this thing and try to get kids to actually learn in it. And make no mistake, learning is a very organic and human activity. It's not something that can be legislated or mandated or dictated. (It can be studied though, and it has been. And the system as whole hasn't really paid attention.)

There's a good reason one of the world's top educational theorist said "I no longer believe in institutional public schooling." Though he may have seemed like Nietzsche’s madman prematurely announcing the death of God, he's no madman. This champion of instructional rounds and inventor of the concept of the instructional core is both amazingly insightful and willing to face the brutal facts.

Meanwhile, as this beast is in its death throes, teachers have two options:

1) Dig in and entrench themselves in the status quo, like Vicksburg under siege by Grant's army, work against change, and defend their service to society in filtering out students who just don't meet the standard. To be fair, many of these folks are really just defending themselves. They don't feel they have the time, skills, energy or support to change (and with all the new mandates, many don't). So they become defensive, competitive, protective, and isolated... and ineffective. Ineffective, because creating a system that helps every student is going to require a truly  collaborative effort like nothing we've seen before. Or,



2) Be the change. Say, "It starts with me." The cool thing is, this is how change really takes place. It usually starts small, then grows to a crescendo, a paradigm shift. (That's what we need by the way.) Experiment with more "human" strategies, break free from the factory model in your own classroom, whether this means throwing out grades like Mark Barnes and Starr Sackstein, trying out #geniushour, or just focusing on relationships like Rita Pierson. (My current effort surrounds mastery-based learning.)

But here's the rub: Being the change means being vulnerable--being open and willing to take criticism, exposure, face brutal facts, and acknowledge your weaknesses and the failures of even your own pet strategies on a daily basis.

As a Melissa Salgado said today on Twitter, many teachers are "terrified someone will find out they aren't perfect." I'm thinking that may be the single biggest barrier to change.

And that goes not for just teachers, but for us all. The biggest barrier to improvement is our own fear. But on the other side of fear is freedom.

Freedom, and schools that are not filters, but fire-starters.

So that's my mission, make a better fit between humanity and education.

Find common purpose, and strategies are just details

Lately I've been part of a new initiative at my school. Surprise, surprise. Any of you familiar with American education will know that new initiatives are nothing new--they're the like an addiction.

But this one, I really do like. It's about using mastery-based performance tasks to measure students' progress toward broad, practical graduation standards like communication and problem solving skills.

But, frankly, to many teachers, it is just one more thing (and for some, it's the straw (after the straw after the straw) that broke the camel's back).

That's why my ears perked up when I heard the following. I've been listening to Crucial Conversations during my morning commutes (and sometimes afternoons, though those are usually reserved for blowing off steam with my favorite Dutch DJ, Armin van Buuren). And yesterday they were covering their C.R.I.B. Method for establishing a mutual purpose (C.R.I.B. stands for Commit to seek Mutual Purpose, Recognize the purpose behind the strategy, Invent a Mutual Purpose, Brainstorm new strategies.) 

When we are in disagreement with someone, one of the most important things we can do is seek a common purpose. Instead of arguing about strategies (like mastery-based learning or performance assessments), what if we first found our common purpose? Maybe it would be something like: 

"We all want to see all students succeed."

(BTW, I hope it would be exactly that.)

Once we establish that all of us want every student to succeed, then the only question is how best to do that. And then the details are really minor issues in my book. We can work them out together. Whether the strategy we use in the end is mastery or the old fashioned lecture, as long as we agree that the goal is to get every child to succeed, and as long as we measure our progress and really do progress toward that goal, I'm satisfied.

And I think the same thing goes for so many relationships and issues in life. If we can establish a common purpose (and if we have trouble with that part, that's what the C.R.I.B. method is for), the rest is just details.

The future of schooling

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men.  -Nietzsche's "Madman,"

Richard Elmore has been a staple of my administrator preparation program. His work on improving the instructional core was foundational. But in this 2012 video (HT to Gary Houchens and Steven Delpome), he's doing something else:

He's announcing the doom of institutional public school, and he does it with all of the gravity it deserves. And like Nietzsche's "madman," I'm afraid it fell largely on deaf ears. He came too soon.

But he backed it up with a theoretical explanation: in today's world, hierarchy is out, networks are in. Institutional schools are hierarchical, and cannot survive in the future.

I'm not sure I completely grasp his idea of networks, but I'm pretty sure I get the gist of it. In my dissertation research, I was fascinated by how the complex behavior of the fire ants I studied emerged from the countless interactions between individual ants. They’re a picture of the power of networks. Lewis Thomas sums it up better than I can in Lives of a Cell:

"A solitary ant, afield, cannot be considered to have much of anything on his mind... It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for wits."

I see the same thing working with my honeybees. This sort of organization is eminently more powerful for than hierarchy. That's why nature is arranged as a network instead of a top down system of authority.

That's why I shoot for a cooperative, egalitarian, open, and voluntary approach to my classroom and leadership.

But as to Elmore's pronouncement: I have to say it's a bit discomfiting to someone whose just finishing a gruelling two-year program for school administrators, but I have three things to say.

1) Good riddance to hierarchies. They are the antithesis of natural order, cooperation, compassion, free thought, creativity, and the kind of autonomy that motivates us all.

2) I can envision a more network-based, less hierarchical school, and that's what I'm going for. Elmore implies the inevitable demise of institutional public schooling will not  be good for everyone. But I am more optimistic than that (and perhaps more ignorant). I think we can avoid the fallout and inequities he refers to. I think the public system can evolve into something that will not only survive, but thrive.

3) I'm most concerned about what's best for kids, and if that's something different than what I'm preparing for, then so be it. Good riddance to whatever is hindering us as a species.

Granted: Elmore's solemn prophesy in 2012 has obviously not come true yet, and may not. But he's no madman. It's hard to ignore the trend in business and society as a whole. Just because public schooling is a bit slow on the draw doesn't mean it won't soon succumb. He was a bit too soon with his pronouncement, but it will come. And I'll be ready. In fact, I'll be one of the folks saying, "What are you waiting for?" Because I don't see the future as doom and gloom, no matter what the particulars are. I see it as bright--bright as a thousand suns.

On the status quo and the need for change

I'm always puzzled by those who defend the status quo.

Maybe it's just that I'm a change addict and junkie for improvement (glutton for punishment?).

I understand the numbing and disillusioning effect of the constant torrent of new initiatives, and I don't believe in change for change's sake, but it seems to me that as long as there are things not working, then something needs to change.

Take the achievement gap, for example, or the place of the US in the PISA results. But I don't even need all of that evidence. I have it in my own school, my own classes, where I still have students who are not reaching their potential.

Maybe the problem is simply that we haven't been implementing the old, traditional methods with fidelity--that I'm not.

Maybe. But to me that's kind of like saying the reason we haven't cured cancer is just that doctors aren't doing a good enough job with surgery, chemo and radiation.

Maybe that's a bad analogy. But maybe not.

To me, if your method isn't working, whether it can't be consistently implemented with fidelity, or it just doesn't work well, then something's wrong with your method (which is exactly the complaint often raised against differentiated instruction, interestingly enough).

To me, what we need is an system of education that isn't forced, one that will be implemented with fidelity because it fits human nature like glove, one one that essentially runs itself.

Maybe that's beyond us, but I don't think so.

What looks like laziness...

"What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity...
What looks like laziness is often exhaustion...
What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem."

-Chip & Dan Heath, Switch

These three keys to driving change have become my mantra as a teacher.

And number 2 comes home especially strongly every Friday.

When I find myself reacting to students' apparent lack of motivation, especially on Fridays, I have to remind myself how ready I am for the weekend. I have to ask myself if it's realistic for me to expect them to be as driven as I am.

I have to ask myself if it's realistic to be as driven as I am, period.

Data, teaching, and education

"I love teaching, but I hate education."

-A veteran teacher

I heard a teacher say this today. I think she was referring to the new teacher evaluation system, which requires us to set quantifiable goals for student performance and then rates us according to whether we meet them or not.


While I think the current system is a bit misguided in it's emphasis on accountability as a driver for improving education, I doubt improvement is possible without a data-driven approach. Looking at the numbers, the "brutal facts" as they are called by Collins, is difficult, but it's the only way to know if we need to change. And we do.

This week I looked over the results of my latest chemistry test and realized that 25% of my students failed it. I also realized it was my fault. It was my failure. But we conducted what Collins calls an autopsy on that failure, and that opened the door to improvement. Next time, we'll do things differently.

I understand why many teachers recoil from the new system. But I think their fear (and that's what it is) may come from too narrow a focus. I think a focus on what I get out of teaching is the wrong focus. The right one is a focus on whether kids are learning (and whether they are all learning). That is, after all, my job. And that's education.

Our obligation to change things

“Not too far from us, a few blocks away, there are kids without enough to eat and without parents who care. A little farther away, hours by plane, are people unable to reach their goals because they live in a community that just doesn’t have the infrastructure to support them. A bit farther away are people being brutally persecuted by their governments. And the world is filled with people who can’t go to high school, never mind college, and who certainly can’t spend their time focused on whether or not they get a good parking space at work.

And so, the obligation: don’t settle.

To have all these advantages, all this momentum, all these opportunities and then settle for mediocre and then defend the status quo and then worry about corporate politics – what a waste.

Flynn Berry wrote that you should never use the word “opportunity.” It’s not an opportunity, it’s an obligation.

I don’t think we have any choice. I think we have an obligation to change the rules, to raise the bar, to play a different game, and to play it better than anyone has any right to believe is possible.”

- Seth Godin, Tribes*

And that's how I feel about education. As long as there are students who are failing, who are struggling, I have an obligation. This would be true even if they were half way around the world, but they're right here in my own classroom and school.


*Thanks to http://initiative360.org/ for the quote!

Convo with my former self: Failing students

What follows is a brief conversation with my former self about teaching and students who fail.


Bill (2014): Your standard level biology class looked pretty good last year. Average around 75, a few As. But you also had a few Fs and Ds in that one class.

Bill (2010): Yeah, that one is tough. Many of those students are unmotivated or too distracted by social issues, iPhones, or video games. Some lack the self-discipline or perseverance to do their homework, lab reports, or study for exams. Maybe their histories or home lives are just not conducive to doing well in school. Some are carrying so much baggage that school was just too much.

Bill (2014): How do you feel about that? I mean, do you feel like it is your responsibility to help those kids--the ones who have Fs, Ds, and Cs, to do better? Do you feel like you've failed with those students?

Bill (2010): Well, of course it's my responsibility to teach all of my students, but I guess I don't feel like a failure because I did the best I could. At some point it's just the student's responsibility to put the effort in to learn.

Bill (2014): But if, as you mentioned, some of them either lack the skills or support to do that, then how can you expect them to?

Bill (2010): Well, what's my alternative? I'm supposed to teach biology, and some do want to learn. I don't have the time to teach study skills, self-control, and responsibility.

Bill (2014): So what's the point of "teaching" those struggling kids at all? What are we doing to these kids if we force them to attend four years of high school, knowing they will likely fail because of factors they can't control, and the whole time reinforcing those factors by repeatedly reminding them of their failure?

Bill (2010): Hopefully some will learn responsibility before it's too late, or discover their motivation. But I think that's a systemic problem. I'm just trying to do the best I can in a flawed system.

Bill (2014): So you're OK with that? Doing the best you can in a flawed system and watching several students per year continue their school-enhanced downward spiral, accelerated by your teaching?

Bill (2010): Not really, but what's my alternative?

Bill (2014): What if you made it a priority simply to help every one of them to succeed? What if you shifted your expectations from a 75% average and a few As and Fs to 100% mastery of essential skills? What if you shifted your priority from "teaching" a fixed set of concepts, skills and facts to actually helping your students succeed in life?

Bill (2010): What would that look like?

Bill (2014): That's a good question. It's not likely to be easy, but isn't it worth a try?

Hacking education

What would it mean to hack education? According to the "official"  hacker jargon file, a hacker* is someone who:

• enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities
• programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) 
• is an expert or enthusiast of any kind
• is one who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 
• believes that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.

So, hacking can be can be summed up like this: Making things better by challenging the status quo and breaking through barriers for the sheer joy of it. And though I was inspired by Code.org's phenomenal trailer to learn some Python, I'm not looking to become a computer programmer. Instead, I want to hack education. According to philosopher Pekka Himanen, this hacker ethic applies outside the bounds of programming.

Of course, we've all seen the power of the hacker ethic in the world of computers. The original hackers included the likes of Tim Berners-Lee (a key architect of the internet), Marc Andreessen (Netscape), Steve Wozniak (Apple), and Linus Torvalds (Linux). Their philosophy has been the driving force behind innovations like the personal computer, Linux, Ubuntu, Wikipedia, and the internet itself (it is basically the the same philosophy that made science so powerful).

Many professors, teachers and administrators have always operated this way. I think of closet eduhackers like Ian Guch, who posts a profusion of chemistry worksheets and an online textbook for free use at his Cavalcade o' Chemistry website. I think of a former colleague of mine, Nicole Waicunas, who's passion for helping students and outside-the-box style is inspiring. And I think of Salman Khan and his game-changing website. Whether in their enthusiasm and passion, their out-of-the-box, unorthodox creativity, or their openness and generosity, they embody the hacker ethic. And then there are the big names, like Ken Robinson, Pekka Himanen, Pasi Sahlberg, and Andy Hargreaves--people trying to hack the whole system. And why not? Isn't that what the hacker ethic is all about--improving the system for the sheer joy of doing so for the benefit of all? "School" is just a system, not unlike a computer program--a system with all sorts of rules and procedures and traditions and habits and red tape and hierarchies and deeply ingrained beliefs.

We can argue about how well the system is doing, but one thing we can't argue about is this: it can be improved. In fact, it's due for a radical rewriting of the software. The hierarchical, factory model is woefully inadequate (if it ever was adequate) in today's headlong, digital, global, exponentially changing, "whitewater world." The hacker ethic demands that the educational system be hacked, and hackers may even have provided us with a model for the change.

The powerful open source model that hackers employ means anyone can tinker with the "code" and submit their improvements to the larger group. If people like it, it gets incorporated into the system. Interestingly, it implies  decentralized, rather than hierarchical organization, and empowers each individual equally. It's based on real, voluntary, social cooperation. Hacking education according to this model will mean making education more open, efficient, personalized, and decentralized. It will mean taking the Finnish Model and ideas like Elmore's distributed leadership model  further, replacing traditional hierarchies of State-district-school-administration-teacher with networks of teachers, administrators, students, parents, and schools. 

And technology will play a central role. I'm not just talking about online learning, MOOCs, open courses, Moodle (my favorite), Edmodo (another cool tool), BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies and flipped classrooms, as cool and equalizing as they are. I'm thinking of paradigm shifts in  the whole organization of the system, possibly through P2P (peer-to-peer) technologies that could help give every student, teacher, parent, and community member a voice and contribution to the whole. I'm thinking of something more sophisticated than a system of open observation, communication, feedback and voting, though that would be a good start.

 John Robb sees the same thing happening to government. In a recent interview with the Foundation for Economic Education, he said, "The technology is changing, and so will the methods of organizing life. Until recently, we've relied on 'bureaucracy' and 'markets' to manage and allocate resources (more or less depending on the ideology employed)." But, he added, "Our inability to go beyond markets and bureaucracy is stopping us from actually entering an information/creative economy that is as qualitatively better as democratic capitalism was an improvement over feudal agrarianism." How will this happen? "One of the 'new' organizational methods we see will likely be based on P2P (think in terms of BitTorrent and BitCoin)."

I'm convinced that the more power and autonomy you give to individuals, the more their potential will be released. But I'm also convinced that the more people cooperate, the more their potential will be enhanced. The hacker model does both, and the application of the hacker model to education it could go even further.  In his book, Pekka Himanen envisions schools entirely based on the open-source model of computer programming: 

We could also use this idea to create a generalized Net Academy, in which all study materials would be free for use, critique, and development by everyone. By improving existing material in new directions, the network would continuously produce better resources for the study of the subjects at hand. Members of the network would be driven by their passions for various subjects and by the peer recognition for their contributions.

Logically, the continued expansion and development of this material, as well as the discussion and examination of it, would also have to be the net Academy's only way to grant study credits; and, true to the spirit, the highest credits should be given for those accomplishments that prove the most valuable to the entire learning community...

In the Net Academy, every learning event would permanently enrich all other learners. Alone or in the company of others, the learner would add something to the shared material.

Whether it will be Himanen's model or something else, no one can tell. That's the nature of paradigm shifts. But one thing's for sure, it will change--and for the better. And wherever it leads, I want to go there, for the pure joy of the challenge and creative work, and the reward of seeing it improve and seeing students' lives improved. It's one of the benefits of living in a country (and soon, a world) where scarcity is giving way to abundance, and we sit atop Maslow's pyramid, with what earlier generations would have called superpowers, with the opportunity to use our minds and efforts to creatively hack life for our mutual benefit. And what better target for hacking than education. We all, each and every human being, have such tremendous and fascinating potential, and education is about unlocking that potential.



*A hacker is not to be confused with a computer cracker ("a malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around"), but the kind of hacker who creates for the sheer joy of seeing people benefit from her work.