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Collab Labs

Collab Lab 10 Recap

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs ,

Building Resilience

Over the course of our Collab Labs this year, we’ve often heard that well crafted, collaborative, authentic learning experience provide students a safe place to fail and recover and through that, build resilience.  At Collab Lab 10, we focused on resilience directly, asking the following questions:

  • What do you see that worries you?
  • What drives that behavior?
  • What strategies do you use to overcome that?

Our discussions ranged from students dealing with trauma to those who’s main source of stress is continual pressure to perform at a high level.

Sheri Marlin from the Waters Foundation was able to join us again, and provided a couple of causal loop diagrams as part of our reflection at the end of the session:

  • Trust/Resilience : Increased levels of trust lead to increased resilience. Increased resilience leads to an increased ability to trust.
  • Environment/Resilience: A supportive environment leads to increased resilience. Increased resilience helps create a more supportive environment for others

As part of the wrap up, Lori Lange from Beloit Memorial High School shared the story of the laundry program she put together to develop the capacities of special ed students and help address a basic need of those that are economically disadvantaged.  It’s a great story of students working together to build resilience. You can read more here: https://beloitschools.org/loads-to-success/

Thanks to all of our participants for joining us for another great evening of discussion. Notes from our breakout groups are below.

Group 1

What do you see that worries you?

  • Wandering halls — unfocused
  • So focused on discipline that there is no self-discipline
  • Focus on trauma misses developing resilience
  • Adults losing their ability to be resilient in front of kids
  • Absence of consequences
  • Compassion fatigue
  • How to teach it?
  • Reactive — social norm is don’t worry until it is too late
  • Kids have to stay in resilience mode constantly
  • Trauma — complexity of trauma/lack of support systems
  • What do you “bounce back” to?
  • Facade of perfection (self told stories)

What drives (resilient) behavior?

  • Resilience is a muscle
  • Adapting
  • Knowing when to use strategies
  • Survival instinct
  • Past failure and recovery
  • Self talk – resilient people have a unique ability to control thoughts, beliefs and attitudes
  • Good support — relationships — trust
  • Mentoring — modeling — role models
  • Infant bonding
  • Coping vs resilience
    • peer pressure
    • fate?
    • social norms
    • unexpected change
  • Reading history
  • Perspective
  • Family stories (immigration)
  • Exposure — expectation — hope — dreaming
  • Knowing healthy ways to cope
  • Sense of constancy
  • Diet — sleep — routine
  • Purpose
  • Faith

What strategies do you use to overcome that?

  • Develop a common understanding of resilience
    • from ambiguous to concrete
  • Self discovery
  • Providing experiences — not teaching “it”
  • Pedagogy of confidence– building on students’ life stories
    • “Learning to Walk” — “trial and learn”
  • Design thinking
    • providing experience
    • healthy risk taking vs risk adverse
  • Catching kids being resilience — name it
  • Creating safe space — language
  • Trusting relationships — time/space
  • Community
    • multi-age interactions
  • Perspectives
    • avoid over managing
    • discovery
    • sharing experiences
  • Modeling mentoring
  • Re-teach coping strategies
  • Remove barriers to healthy coping strategies
  • Brave space vs safe space
  • Accountability/Voice

Group 2

What do you see that worries you?

  • Lack of understanding of level of stress
  • We don’t use failure as a teaching tool
    • “You didn’t fail, you are just not there yet!”
  • Life events – conflict at home/in community
  • Meet people’s basic needs (kids →families)
    • not happening
    • laundry program (in Beloit HS to meet that need)
  • No emergency room for mental health
  • Increased occurrence of trauma among youth
  • Rigidity of the classroom
  • Lack of connection/dependable suppport
  • Teacher burnout
  • Lack of purpose in life

What drives that (worrisome) behavior?

  • Institutional roadblocks
    • teachers can do it anyway with leadership support
  • Erosion of supports
  • Culture
    • preconceived notions
    • us vs them
    • political climate
  • Structural poverty
  • Violence as a taught behavior
  • Food desert
  • State pressure on school districts to perform
  • State testing!
  • Parent expectations
  • incarceration of minority men

What Strategies do you use to overcome that?

  • Bike program
  • Boundary program
  • Mental health clinic in the school (may cause problems at home)
  • Empowerment
    • resources access
    • break through co-dependency
  • Peer examples/role models
  • Student ownership of changing one’s circumstances
  • Separating by gender
    • break through stereotypes (STEM)
  • Trauma informed care at the school
    • reduce expulsion numbers
  • Teach children to rely on each other
  • Build context to relate to in “why” decisions
  • Accommodate different learning styles

Group 3

What do you see that worries you?

  • Lack of motivation (students, parents, teachers)
  • Unhealthy coping — cutting
  • Kindness is getting lost (cooperation/caring)
  • Inability to connect
  • Lack of history/common experience
  • Disconnect from culture
  • Frustration with how to reach kids
    • How to connect
  • Self validation vs validation from others
  • Inequity
  • Lack of caring for kids
  • Sense that no one cares/I am heard
  • Sadness/anxiety
  • Kids don’t move
  • Integration of social/emotional health
  • Relevance– lack experience/context

What drives that (worrisome) behavior?

  • Lack of skills/understanding
  • Parents are lost
  • Use of social media
  • Sitting all day for classes
  • Liability of going out on a limb
  • Teachers lack skills for trauma informed care
  • Teacher/students from different cultures
  • Empathy fatigue
  • Who can I ask for help
  • Teachers are forced to triage
  • Parents don’t value education
  • Too much stress in personal life
  • Survival — all I see is failure
  • Pressure for material goods
  • Divorce — parents are overworked
    • single moms working 2-3 jobs
  • Kids aren’t safe alone
  • Lack of opportunities to fail well
  • Low expectations
  • Parents in survival mode
  • Mismatch between teacher evaluations and what is important (to do for students)
  • Kids pushed through system
  • Grades
  • Fear of talking about emotions

What strategies do you use to overcome that?

  • Mindfulness
  • PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports)
  • 4 days of instruction, 1 day job embed
  • Bring awareness of trauma
  • Awareness of different situations
  • Support from outside to take the load off of teachers
  • Understand why students struggle
  • Use research — let kids experience failure
  • Alternative evaluations
  • Exercise/physical activity
  • Community service
  • Policies adapt to community
  • Self care/set boundaries
    • start early
  • Care of others/empathy
  • Building community
  • Having system support

Collab Lab 9 Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs ,
Collab Lab 9 360 Selfie
360 Selfie under the guidance of Quentin Allums at the close of Collab Lab 9

Collab Lab 9 focused on evaluating success of makerspaces and FabLabs.  We used three questions to guide the discussion:

  • What does success look like?
  • What makes it difficult to assess?
  • How can those barriers be addressed?

Our discussion groups came up with these three big ideas to take home:

  • We have to learn to be comfortable with failure (and willing to model it for our students).
  • Makerspaces are a tool for developing a mindset
  • Successful makerspaces are the definition of individualized learning — teachers have the opportunity for one on one interaction with students, students are able to follow their passions.

And as a bonus: If students aren’t having fun, you aren’t there yet.

Links to things people heard about at Collab Lab 9:

April 20th: Tour of Milwaukee Jewish Day School’s Innovation Hub

April 27th: Betty Brinn’s Making in Education Community of Practice

May 11th: Collab Lab 10: Building Resilience

NEXT.cc: NEXT.cc supports making across the curriculum with STEAM based project learning set to NEXT Generation Science, Art & Design, and North American Association for Environmental Education Standards.  Scaffolding cognitive learning with discovery, NEXT.cc’s eLearning DESIGNopiedia introduces skills and integrates K12 classrooms with apps, virtual field trips, TEDed courses, free data sets, mapping, and science interactives bringing our youth into the future of lifelong learning.

21st Century Classrooms
Outdoor Classrooms
Makerspaces

Mark Keane’s architecture classes for high school students:

Draw to Build I & II
UWM SARUP now offers two dual enrollment Architecture courses for juniors and seniors in high school.  They can be accessed via Youth Options or PLA. Contact Prof. Keane for more information: keane@uwm.edu.  Here’s a brief piece on the course featuring Collab Lab attendee Cindy McClinn and her students: http://uwm.edu/news/area-students-explore-architecture-100-and-perhaps-a-career/

Notes from breakout groups:

Group 1: We have to learn to be comfortable with failure (and willing to model it for our students)

What does success look like?

Dewy — Congnition — Metacognition
Mistakes & Failure
Outputs:  What does it look like? What does it sound like?
Growth Mindset
Common Process
Audience?
Economic?
Engagement

What makes it difficult to assess?

Teacher/Educator thinking
Tasks — What is authenticity?
Standardization
Questions are unwelcome
Grade based system
Lack of experience with failure/open tasks
Kids are trained to think about school in “school” ways
Behaviorist vs Constructivist

How can those barriers be addressed?

Common processes
Digital modeling
Community involvement
What is making?
Hope
Culture
Expertise

Group 2: Makerspaces are a tool for developing a mindset

What does success look like?

Passion for a career path
Meaningful collaboration
Focused engagement on task
Problem solving
Equality of ideas/contributions
Success is nurtured and progressive
Teachers as facilitators & learners
Learning through experimentation
High level of resilience to change
Authentic experiences
Makerspaces is a process/culture
Fun
Futuring

What makes it difficult to assess?

Traditional buildings
Lack of exposure/access to tech
“Accounting mindset” of leadership
How do I manage the learning process?
How do I track learning that takes place 24 x 7?
Gather the info that leadership needs
Kids don’t know how to self-assess/be accountable for their learning
There is not time to teach anything that doesn’t lead to a 22 on the ACT
Don’t know how to reach outside businesses for real higher level learning
Parents
Teacher education is not continuous and focused on designing engaging project opportunities
Tine to do something other than standardized tests

 

Group 3: Successful makerspaces are the definition of individualized learning — teachers have the opportunity for one on one interaction with students, students are able to follow their passions

What does success look like?

Start with purpose– of the space; of the school
For who?  Student, teacher, school, community
Attendance up
Increased engagement– students and teachers
Growth
Leadership
Curiosity is sparked
Students (and teachers) are not afraid to fail
Becomes part of the culture of the the school/community
It is demonstrated
Craftsmanship
Ability to transfer and apply the skills learned
Hit high standards
Process
Finding one’s self
Be able to adapt/be responsible
Kids set their own expectations
Compliance does not equal success
Integrated with curriculum
Other teachers are comfortable using the space
Students understand how to be life long learners
Teachers have an individual connection with students
Fun

What makes it difficult to assess?

Who is asking– district, school, parent, student
Subjective
Individualized
Long time frame required to see the results
Figuring out what is important
Pressure for standardized testing
Students are handed off to someone else (for the makerspace work)
Changing expectations
Getting teachers to adopt a new role– mentor/guide

How can those barriers be addressed?

Agreement on what you want to see happen
Ask how the community can help
Ask students for self evaluations
Classroom teachers should work with students within a makerspace (rather than handing them off)
Show off the results of student efforts

Collab Lab 8 Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs, Workshops ,

Collab Lab 8
Collab Lab 8 focused on integrating the arts across disciplines.  We used three questions to guide the discussion:

  • What capabilities do arts educators bring to schools?
  • How might those capabilities be leveraged across disciplines?
  • How can can we get started?

Thanks to Nancy Blair for a wrap up process that helped us get down to the one big idea coming out of the discussions of each question.  Here’s what our discussion groups came up with:

What insights/capabilities do arts educators bring? (Raw materials)

  • Metaphor
  • Teaching life skills through the arts
  • Boost in self concept especially with low performing students
  • Accountability through feedback
  • Develops relationships
  • Gives students power to create and execute
  • Gives light and energy to students day
  • Symbiotic relationships teachers teaching kids teaching teachers.
  • Can reinforce/correlate with other subject areas (reading, math, art, social studies, science)
  • Inspiration, different way of seeing, Skills (how to)
  • Opportunity for collaboration through different points of view. (requires a structure)
  • Supports a project based approach to learning
  • Meaningful creation-problem solving
  • Art is about everything and nothing without context
  • Performance amazes the audienc
  • Knowledge of material
  • Manipulation of phenomena
  • Art is about “everything”
  • Art is nothing without context
  • Creativity within PBL
  • Balance between skill building and creativity
  • Leverage “taste” vs natural exploration
  • Creativity and learning or built-in
  • Creativity leads to understanding and “lateral moves”
  • Understand struggle and making “mistakes”
  • Content →skills  → engagement (motivation)!
  • Evaluate the accomplishment/competency
  • Creates engagement and motivation
  • Creates trust for problem based learning
  • Teacher is coach-role model-how do you learn from mistakes
  • Create time and space for students to guide their own learning.
  • Bust out of rigid traditional structure
  • Models personalized learning
  • Can teach the design cycle that can then be applied to individual interest area.
  • Rich feedback and critique
  • Arts are a way for communicating the inevitable-brings out tacit knowledge from students
  • Values what each student brings to the table.
  • Creativity
  • Questions
  • Ability to work in chaos
  • Embrace uncertainty
  • Different way of seeing
  • Healing
  • Willing to accept randomness
  • Provide permission to play
  • Make us human
  • To dream new view-what is work
  • Being vulnerable
  • Connection
  • Empathy/compassion
BIG IDEA: Art and Art Educators provide structure to build skill and catalyze creativity that connects to everything.

How can those be leveraged across the curriculum? (New ideas transferable to other parts of the school/curriculum)

  • Shared resources, space,
  • be scrappy
  • artist resource network
  • collaboration can pic up slack-partnership, creating innovative environment, inspiration, different levels of funding, New relationship, partnership,
  • change and inspire
  • adopting new technology
  • promote unplanned , unstructured learning opportunities
  • Arts educators are often isolated in schools-others don’t understand what you do
  • The more relationships can be built across departments the more advocacy can occur for project-based learning
  • Once relationships are established gaps can be bridged
  • Build a small group of teachers that can build consensus then it can spread.
  • Pick a sample project that can be shared with other teachers to peek their interest
  • Showcase the work so teachers can appreciate the students work
  • Take the opportunity to showcase the process as well as the product. (informance)
  • Some arts educators see arts integration as a threat or “arts light”: Have to be careful with approach.
  • Administration can offer time for art educators to collaborate with classroom teachers.
  • PD for leadership to make initiatives sustainable
  • Takes one or two energetic people in the building that want to take it on
  • Has to grow organically
  • The FabLab is a space where other disciplines could be reaching out
  • Break down silos
  • Usually doesn’t come from leadership
  • Just do it and see what happens-grab it through the children
  • Make products visible-provide exposure to peek someone’s interests
  • Make cool stuff and give it away
  • “Explore Like a Pirate”, a game application for the classroom
  • Show link between art/design to 21st century skills
  • Build the technical skills to apply to different content
  • Build the bridge between what the students are learning and the type of world the students will live in.
  • Build literacy skills across all subject areas: process and conception different.
  • Effective use of maker spaces-making things that are quality, sustainable, repairable
  • How can the arts to build a better future- a world that is want to live in
  • Create positive feedback between business and the arts-make a business case of the value and practical application of the arts.
  • Most problems are not rocket science –they are solvable
  • Opportunities for kids-Exposure to everything-allow them to engage with real world problem.
  • More opportunities to reach beyond the walls of the school –connection to the real world beyond the school world
BIG IDEA: Collaborate within and without to break down silos and open up connections and possibilities.

Where do we start? (Action)

  • Provide evidence to parents-_Youtube
  • Talk, share, network
  • Showcase event →work backwards to weekly (?) level
  • Make your own tutorial
  • Bring in an expert to critique
  • Use global audience network
  • Mobility – Teach in a different setting
  • Flash mob demos
  • Leverage MPS Year of the Arts
  • Field trips
  • Find ways to teach being comfortable with being uncomfortable
  • Cultivating patronage for the arts in schools
  • Funding is essential
  • Redefine patronage to extend support beyond current forms
  • Develop relationships with contributors at all levels-its up to us to determine where.
  • Use Informances to develop interest and curiosity
BIG IDEA: Inform, motivate and entice through shared products and processes to organically build support and resources.

Collab Lab 7 Recap and Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs, Workshops , ,

Using Systems Thinking tools to explore driving engagement

Iceberg diagram
Adapted by Systems Thinking in Schools, Waters Foundation www.watersfoundation.org from Innovation Associates, Inc.

As a prelude to the Systems Thinking Institute coming up in March, Sheri Marlin from the Waters Foundation and Ellen Grasely and Betsy Markwardt from Humboldt Park K8 School helped facilitate and captured notes from our breakout groups in iceberg diagrams. The key idea behind systems thinking and this tool in particular, is that:

  1. outcomes are driven by behavior
  2. behavior is driven by the structure of the system within which individuals operate
  3. that structure, in turn, is driven by our mental model of how things should work.

To drive a systemic change in outcomes then, one needs to change the mental model we operate from.

In our discussions, we walked through each of these layers from the perspective of both how the current system works and what we’d like to see it move to.  We wrapped up each discussion with the question “How will you move forward?”

Group 1

Current Situation

Desired Results

How will you move forward?

Long term

  • Start your own school
  • Redo licensure
  • Only hire pros (interesting people), pay them $$$, train them to teach

Medium Term

  • Invest in professional learning: Articulate, spend time $, 3 years of focus
  • Develop testing
  • Common planning time

Group 2

Current Situation

Desired Results

How will you move forward?

  • Reflect on how you react to an engaged classroom vs an unengaged classroom
  • Pay attention to school culture – everyone
  • Ask kids what would make this fun for you, excite you
  • Build personal relationships
  • Help to change your mental model, parents’ mental model, kids’ mental model of “school”
  • Teachers learn to reflect and take the time to restore (remove yourself)
  • Autonomy, purpose, mastery

Group 3

Current Situation

Desired Results

How will you move forward?

  • Rubric Scoring
  • Stories
  • Find allies — kids in particular
  • Build from grass roots
  • Relationships are key
  • Ask for solutions as part of homework
  • Root solutions in research
  • Training for parents — table talk questions so parents– promotes to meaningful discussions of what their kids are actually working on

Collab Lab 6: Notes from our breakout groups

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs, Workshops , ,

Thanks all for a great discussion last night at Collab Lab 6 (actually, a bunch of great discussions). To recap, we framed the conversation around three questions:

  • What can your makerspace/FabLab offer teachers?
  • What problems does this solve for them?
  • What keeps them from taking advantage of it/how might those issues be addressed?

Here’s what we noted:

What can your makerspace/FabLab offer teachers?

Group 1

  • “Blood in the mouth” how do you get teachers really excited about the possibilities?
  • Take content & make it physical
  • Get students to go beyond their textbook
  • Learning to play → playing to learn
  • Relevance, rigor, application
  • Practicing Failure
  • Space designed to fit needs
  • Can become epicenter – pivotal point
  • Authentic, relevant problems to solve
  • Bring content back to experiment

Group 2

  • Additional capacities to help kids express ideas
  • Expands the pallet of tools & opportunities for teachers
  • Limited understanding of what it is
    • Ideas → ideas II → ideas III
  • Safe place
  • Capture & share stories of success
  • Show different ways of learning
  • Develop and share culture of makerspace
  • Set up to enable students pursuing passion → no mandatory activities

Group 3

  • Tools for:
    • artists to make art;
    • business classes to make a product
    • community service projects to make something useful
  • Hands on professional development for PBL
  • Support for elementary school
    • South Milwaukee: elementary school students working on symmetry design snowflakes.  Students are then paired with high schooler who helps them 3D print their designs.
  • Ad hoc opportunities to put something together
  • Attractive for students
  • It acts as a “send kids here to do that” space/ a place that allows groups of students to take on work that isn’t done easily inside a classroom
  • Provides crafting opportunities for teachers (who are then better able to generate ideas for how they could leverage the space for student projects)
  • Real world relevance
  • Provides a platform to do different (from traditional lessons) things
  • Provides a chance for students and teachers to bump into something new/exposure
  • Helps produce a change in mindset/change of pace
  • Provides a way to engage kids in a different way
  • Provides opportunities for kids to interact with students that would interact with elsewhere in the school
  • Provides application/support to teachers
  • Is able to draw funding and resources to the school
  • Provides flexible space
  • Becomes the place to address 21st century skills development
  • Makerspace lead handles prep for projects (so teachers do not)
  • The equipment is maintained and ready to go
  • It a fun space
  • It produces engaged kids

What problems does that solve for them?

Group 1

  • Amature meets expert
    • Promotes mentorship
  • Redefines learning process
    • Who are the learning for?
    • Learning how to learn

Group 2

  • A way to develop empathy
  • Instill a mentality/culture
    • Ideation
    • inquiry
  • Invest in professional development
    • Teachers are professionals
    • Lifelong learning
  • Incrementalism

Group 3

  • A way to meet requirements for PBL/development of 21st century skills
  • A new point of entry/cheap way to start with PBL
  • Allows teachers to break out of silos
  • Can attract outside funding which reduces pressure from budget constraints
  • Costs of space can be shared across multiple departments
  • Remove overhead from teachers (makerspace lead puts together projects and materials)
  • Teachers aren’t sure what they could do, makerspace lead can help frame projects
  • Shows teachers a path into PBL
  • The teacher does not need to know everything– they can rely on tech staff/students to help with equipment
  • It’s a way into learning (as opposed to educating)
  • Test scores improve among kids engaged in problem solving
  • Produces engaged students
  • Provides a change of pace
  • Provides an opportunity to model creative thinking/problem solving
  • Provides both teachers and students a safe place to fail
  • Teaches teachers 21st skills
  • Having a tech lead that can set up projects reduces stress/risk for teachers that want to take on PBL

What keeps them from taking advantage of it?

Group 1

  • Must provide learning outcomes/goals/assessment
  • Needs continued reward
  • Broken 3D printers
  • Who started it???
  • Incorrect definition of “maker”
    • Creative Space
    • Genius Bar
  • Not knowing what can be done
  • Fear
  • Needs a facilitator
  • Permission from administration
  • Parents
What would help address these issues?
  • After school volunteer club for teachers
  • Customer discovery
  • Sleeper agents → referrals
  • Having an Idea person that helps connect teachers (Librarian)

Group 2

  • Competing priorities
  • Lack of culture to stimulate risk taking
    • What is “risk” taking
  • Lack of technical skills
  • Early vs late adopters
  • Lack of development of “grit”
  • System promotes end-point learning
  • Focus on experiences, not on “things”
  • If you can see it you will want to use it
  • Absence of design drivers (shared)
    • Visitation later in the design experience.

 

Group 3

  • Teachers need hands on professional development
  • Feels risky
  • Lack of control
  • Funding
  • ROI on time
  • Teachers aren’t sure what they can give up to fit something new into schedule
  • Change is seen as a threat
  • Change is seen as “We’ve seen new ideas before, this too will go just like the rest of them”
  • Focus on equipment
  • Mentors don’t know how to work with kids — kids have kid issues
  • Focus on learning to use the equipment (technical skills) rather than an opportunity to learn in a different way
  • Self selection to participate is missing from school makerspaces, which makes it more difficult for the space to become self regulating
  • I already have my lesson plans set and they work for me.  Why would I want to give that up to try something new.

 

What would help address these issues?
  • Visibility of student work
  • Visible credit given to donors of equipment (so it is not viewed as cutting into the school budget)
  • Shift resources from equipment acquisition to developing the mindset of teachers
  • Staffing — endowed mentor/tech position
  • Mentors — Lead off with small doses so they have time to figure how to work with kids
  • Figure out how to allow users of the space to come and go on an ad hoc basis (after school?)
  • Shift the mindset of funders from equipment to professional development

Collab Lab 5 Recap

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs, Workshops

Thanks!

collablab5A warm thank you to the 20+ folks who braved the cold to join us last Thursday for a rather passionate discussion around engaging with community partners. As always, it is great to see the level of enthusiasm and thought attendees bring to the room and that so many of you were able to make new connections.

 

Notes from the session:

Why do you want to partner?
Schools

Real world validation of content and essential skills
Students get authentic experience
To teach what students can’t get from Google
Showcase what K12 does
Create a spark
Develop career related skills
Foster a symbiotic relationship with community
Change perception within the community
Establish an ongoing relationship
Stop brain drain from Milwaukee
Develop awareness of career options
Learning gets replaced
Offer a diverse set of experiences
Facilitate learning adaptability
Reconnect teachers with industry

Industry/Organizations

Synergy-community-establish makerspace community of practice
Avoid training recruiting costs
Offer real world problems to students
Offer real world validation of kids’ work
Stimulate re-thinking education

What stands in your way?

Timeline perspective of business
Next quarter job needs
Focus is too narrow – What is success measurement
Focus on “doing” not “thinking”
Legislation – political views
School board control
Parent perception of learning
Knowledge of how to build relationships as a teacher
Constraints on teacher time/skills

How will you move forward?

Sharing – Community
Connect
Open your mindset
How do you redefine “Ready”
Begin in your own social circle
Building relationships
Ask “the customer”
Learning how to “let go”
Create showcase events for community
Have a plan for involvement
Allow them to help you with the plan

Collab Lab 4 Report

Joost Allard Blog, Collab Labs

Excited Teachers

We hosted over 30 excited education professionals from 10 Milwaukee area districts to connect during our fourth Collab Lab at Ward 4.

We invited these teachers to discuss whether and how their school districts create space to innovate on existing teaching/learning approaches.

 

Collab Lab Purpose

Milwaukee is missing a vibrant teacher community that stimulates and engages teachers in exploring ‘what’s possible’ to continue to evolve schools to prepare students for 21st century life and work. We’re doing something about that and the starting point is getting those in education to share and hear what works.

We hear that these gatherings are valued for several reasons:

  • Provides a chance for community building among innovation-hungry teachers
  • Provides an opportunity to develop a stronger innovation-oriented mindset and ‘can-do’ attitude
  • Offers participants a tangible, practical, start-this-tomorrow process for doing innovation in their schools

What was the challenge?

We thought we needed to give attendees an opportunity to learn from each other how they are finding ways to start innovating. And if those initiatives are not happening, what are teachers indicating that is standing in the way of that. We asked them to reflect on three simple questions:

  • What is your big innovation dream (What gets you excited in this regard)?
  • What are the things currently standing in your way?
  • How can you start anyway?

To bring in some diverse perspectives on how professionals in other settings approach the challenge of innovation, we invited the following individuals:

It turns out that many have the same challenge: It is easy to come up with 10 – 20 reasons why your project could fail, or not even get off the ground. It is much more difficult to imagine (and think through) how you could get started anyway.

The challenge seems to be 2-fold: anticipation of not getting approval and inability to break the idea down into (much) smaller pieces that could get done ‘under the radar’.

The numbers

We assembled 30+ curious education professionals (teachers, administrators and others) for this second discussion evening of the 2016-2017 season. About 40 % of our attendees returned after a previous Collab Lab, the remainder were curious after speaking with colleagues that had attended.

This is a unique opportunity for those teachers itching for an opportunity to connect with others in the Milwaukee area to share and learn what colleagues are doing.

The districts and organizations represented in Collab Lab 4.

Chart of attendance at CL 4 eventchart of attendee categories for CL4

 

What’s next?

We are hosting 5 more opportunities to connect with others and build new ties with likeminded teachers this school year. The next opportunity to share what you are up to, or what your dream innovation could look like, is on December 15. We’ll be especially focused on why (and why not) schools could embrace building closer relationships with both local companies as well as non-profits with a mission in education and youth.

For a full schedule for this season and topic, please refer to our Connecting Calendar page.

Curious about the ‘What’s next?’

Once you and your colleagues have experienced the engagement of people attending our Collab Lab, you may want to see if a project is feasible at your school or district.

Learn Deep provides coaching and professional development for teachers excited about tackling their own innovation project. Through our facilitation of the project, we introduce the latest processes used by startups and corporate innovation teams, based on systems thinking and design approaches. These focus on problem identification and solution development in a fast, incremental manner. Initiatives using this approach are much lower cost and lower risk, while methodically collecting evidence to obtain buying for scaling projects for a larger audience.

2024-25 Collab Labs

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