We held our final Collab Lab for the 2016-17 school year on Thursday June 15th, where the topic for the evening was “Creating a culture of innovation in schools”.
We prompted the discussion with three questions:
- What does a culture of innovation look like?
- What stands in the way?
- How can you create one anyway?
Our notes from the evening are below. Thanks again to all who were able to join us. It was a great group and a really interesting set of conversations!
Big Ideas
- Innovation (continuous improvement) works in a system that instills a feeling of safety and encourages risk taking as a dedicated team.
- Look for cross disciplinary problems that have meaning for students
- Permission from the top for bottom up innovation
- Autonomy allows bright spots which can then spread
- Culture needs to come from school leadership
- Use the right metrics
- Start with what inspires the student
What does a culture of innovation look like?
- Inquisitive
- Focused risk taking
- Failure is ok — fail forward
- Collaboration
- High engagement
- interesting/fun
- Student ownership of learning
- Authentic
- Healthy level of trust within the organization
- Involvement
- Empathetic
- Public — welcomes feedback
- There is a purpose and time for innovation
- Innovation days — re-energizes staff
- Hackathons — new products/committed block of time
- Everyone drinks the Kool Aid
- Encourage the design process
- Inquirey
- Opportunistic
- Curiosity
- What education means
- Innovation is a value & aspiration, it does not equal effeciancy
- One can innovate around people, process, technology
- Leverage other resources, get kids involved
- Cross domains
- Power to the edge
- Teams w/autonomy w/in safety construct
- What is the smallest thing to start w/to start a feedback loop
- Autonomy “fails” all the time– acknowledge failure, know it, work past it.
- More difficult/important problems typically get less $$, time, resources
- Teachers develop understanding about what’s happening in industry
What stands in the way
- Taxpayer expectations
- Teacher training
- Uncertain ROI
- Implementation Fidelity
- Not everyone is innovative
- It’s tough socially to be an innovator
- Building (e.g. school) climate
- Schools are structured to resist change
- Mental models (of what school should look like)
- Expectations of students, teachers
- We train to technology rather problem solving/leadership
- Are we selling it well?
- Structure — no time to see what else is out there/what is possible
- Scaling 35 x 5
- It’s a big ledge to jump off of
- Lack of courage to go off script
- Lack “well functioning” partnerships w/industry
- Those in charge of designing the system impact the level innovation capability
- [Feeling that] “we’re looking good already”
- Parents
How can you create one anyway?
- Play to strengths
- Give permission
- Visit other rooms/schools
- Use different metrics:
- Engagement
- 21st century skills
- Focus on problems that matter to kids
- Start with problems in school
- Find a one off opportunity and then do it again
- Show that it is valued by school/district leadership
- Ask for something small at first
- Transparency– get ahead of perception
- Start as elective then tie into curriculum
- Look for bright spots
- Focus on interest in problems and who students need
- Acknowledge self discovery
- Leadership action
- Organize PLCs
- Align goals w/innovative initiatives
- Focus on the real problem
- Assemble the right people
- Incentivise problem solving
- Create a “Vision of the graduate”
