Innovate or Die: The Plight of American Education

When we talk about innovation, we rarely think of schools as a place where we can find innovation.  Think about it,.  Schools still look the same as when we adults were students and we were just—well…20th Century Learners. 

I went to elementary school in the 70’s and 80’s.  I  went to Thoreau School; a progressive school.  In the classroom, we sat in table groups of four; shared crayons and markers;  and worked together on some projects together and some projects by ourselves.  One project in fourth grade that I remember involved learning about the different body systems.  My group was given a large piece of paper and we were assigned to draw the nervous system.  This project involved researching and writing a paper on the nervous system and drawing the nerves of the human body.  We created the body outline by having one person in our group lay down and then we traced his body outline.  We used this tracing to serve as our “visual” for the nervous system.  I was responsible for the drawing.  I totally faked it and just drew lines all over the place thinking that it looked like the nerves themselves.  I got an A—totally not deserved.   I remember that I learned absolutely nothing from this project; much to my dismay—not really.  But, this was a typical school project.  And, very little has changed since my time in Mrs. McNally’s class. 

Now this kind of science project is no different than most of the projects I see in classrooms today.  Nothing will change—inertia is what we educators do best.   Teachers need to innovate more and school leaders must provide the environment that pushes teachers to innovate.  I try to take advantage of the best business strategies that companies like Apple use to innovate and try to influence my employees:

1)   Encourage teachers to really explore and experiment with new ideas.  A while back, I visited a company that does some amazing things with video conferencing.  With my encouragement, one of my Science teachers was able to set up a “virtual fieldtrip” to the Denver Museum to explore the human heart (an actual one—it was wild)  in a Science activity.  The company, Vidyo, brought in the hardware and set it up to make it easy for my science teacher to conduct his lesson.  This science teacher is now someone who will try anything if it has potential.  He has gone on to try other experiments as well. 

2)   Give teachers resources to learn about something new.  Last year, my physical education teacher came to me with an idea and wanted to learn more about how teachers at different schools are compensated .  She knew of a great school in Los Angeles where she could explore this idea for us.  I was able to find resources to allow her and two other people go to Los Angeles to learn about this compensation program first hand. 

3)   Honor teachers with a special award / recognition for innovative ideas.  When I arrived at my school, I wanted to do more to publicly acknowledge the excellent work that is done.  I started these awards five years ago.  Our school’s big running event, “Run For Funds” came about because of innovative thinking on behalf of a few teachers who were looking for a unique way to raise money for our school.  It took one weekend to develop the idea and about one month to take care of the details.  This idea literally saved our school. 

 These items may not sound like huge innovations—and I would agree.  But, for teachers, these kinds of accomplishments are needed to get people to the point where they are willing to look beyond what we do and what we know as teachers—and take a risk.  When I think of education innovation, I want us to be outside the box.  I want us to be experimenting with:

1)   Online classes and coursework and integrate this into our program

2)   Creating a virtual school for families that want to be a part of the community yet need the flexibility that an online program has to offer

3)   Bringing in experts in academic areas through the real time video access in order to teach and engage our students. 

4)   Break down the traditional notions of a classroom.  Start thinking about smaller learning communities where teachers are now as much facilitators as they are teachers..  Let’s get rid of classrooms and think of space differently. 

5)   Enroll kids from all over the state and have them be present at the school through video interface

6)   Break down the traditional notions of grade levels and group kids in different ways—by interest, or subject, or project

7)   Radically alter how we deliver classes like Art and Foreign Language and Music and Physical Education.  Have kids going to “Art Centers” that looks like a village shopping mall.  Perhaps take some classes online as well

8)   Offer classes like math and English through community colleges

These are the kinds of innovations I would love to see happening and experimented with when we talk about 21st Century Learning.  These kinds of things make parents nervous or worried that somehow their child may be disadvantaged and not learn as much.  But, innovation is always scary.  True innovation is not taking something familiar and just tweaking it.  True innovation is coming up with a radical idea that is not familiar to our notion of what is “normally done”.   And, going with these kinds of ideas is a leap of faith.  After all, we will never really know how effective these kinds of innovative ideas are unless we try to implement them.

And, each of the eight ideas I suggested is all technically possible and can be done.  They are not too far outside the box.  Unfortunately, it is the school leaders and school board and the teachers have to be willing to take that leap.   Unfortunately, I have yet to find education leaders anywhere in this country willing to take that leap of faith.