Our Hearts Always Have Room For More
During my son’s graduation from Murray State University this past weekend it was stated, “May your hearts be full, but always have room for more.” This is one of those phrases that can have several different meanings depending on who is saying it. I believe we need to love all and keep looking for those people or issues that need our love. I talked about what I call my “passion bubbles” or what Mark Twain described as being what takes up the extra space we have in our hearts for things we care about in Leading The Crusade. I have a lot of things I care about and it always seems there is room for more. How about you? Does your heart have room for more?
Making Things Work
At my son’s graduation from Murray State University yesterday, President Dr. Robert Jackson made the comment, “Many things work to make things work.” Very true! He was referring to the graduation ceremony as well as the process of a student coming to Murray State as a freshman and graduating four years later ready to take on the world. There are often multiple factors or elements that contribute to making something successful or effective. This also suggests that there is not just one single solution, but rather a combination of different components that work together to achieve the desired outcome. Great leaders focus on the key inputs of organizations and make sure they are delivered at the right quality and at the right time.
Effective organizations rely on a combination of different processes/components rather than a single solution to achieve success. Those organizations, like Murray State University, understand that complex problems require a holistic approach and they are able to leverage the strengths of their team and resources to achieve their goals.
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Digging Up The Past To Get Past This
Last night I facilitated an incredible gathering of up and coming educational leaders from Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. The title is the evening was “Do You Really Want It?” I got the inspiration for this session from my friends in the band Nothing More. A couple of years ago I had the chance to spend some time in their tour bus with them visiting and talking about inspiration behind a couple of songs. They have an incredible song “Do You Really Want It?” that I use to prompt deep thought and reflection for discussion concerning change, diversity, and overcoming our American demons (a term introduced in the song). Last night’s discussion did not disappoint.
Every time I facilitate this discussion one stanza always comes up. “You gotta dig up the past to get past this.” I have been contemplating this a lot lately with all that is going on in the world. We must study the past and that sometimes involves digging up the past. But, we must get better at doing that in a productive way that allows us to actually learn from that past. I’ve been reading a lot on this and am reading Why Don’t We Learn From History by military historian B. H. Liddell Hart right now.
In the book we are told that when we’re able to learn from history, we can literally change the world. Otto von Bismarck “famously claimed that only fools learn from their own experiences. Truly visionary leaders – according to Bismarck – draw inspiration and insight from the experiences of others.” That is why we must study all leaders, even those in the background and behind the scenes, to learn from the good and the bad.
“History is the record of man’s steps and slips. It provides us with the opportunity to profit by the stumbles and tumbles of our forerunners.”
B. H. Liddell Hart
Every person needs to be studying history in order to broaden our understanding of the world. “Sure, an 80-year-old may have decades of life lessons to guide her actions, but a student of history will have hundreds or thousands of years’ worth of data to draw upon.” Hart taught us that, “Historians must pursue the truth even when it is uncomfortable.” I loved that Hart discussed that the context that the events of the past took place, the context of any documents created, and any biases must be taken into account when studying history.
We have an obligation to study history and it is critical that we provide history and civics lessons that students can apply as they become citizen leaders. In another great book I’m reading right now by Matt Haig, How To Stop Time: A Novel, Tom Hazard answered the question of how he would bring history alive for students by saying, “There was no easier question in the world. ‘History isn’t something you need to bring to life. History already is alive. We are history. History isn’t politicians or kings and queens. History is everyone. It is everything. It’s that coffee. You could explain much of the whole history of capitalism and empire and slavery just by talking about coffee. The amount of blood and misery that has taken place for us to sit here and sip coffee out of paper cups is incredible.’” This is so true and thus we must make history and civics relevant for our students. We must be infusing real world issues and problems into the instruction, so our students can apply and adapt learning.
Because our youth are our future citizen leaders, we have an obligation to make the fountain of wisdom unattainable through mere personal experience that studying history provides. Let’s all do our part to study and teach history so we have the hundreds or thousands of years’ worth of data to draw upon.
Pathways To Quality Principals
Yesterday I had the opportunity to be part of a great National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) webinar where Susan M. Gates presented findings from research conducted by RAND Corporation. Click this recording link to view the recording of the webinar entitled Using State-Level Policy Levers to Promote Principal Quality. I was honored at the end of Susan’s presentation of the findings to, along with NASBE’s President and CEO Robert Hull, provide some thoughts, observations, and feedback.
First of all, this is such an important topic for state boards and all policymakers to contemplate. Leadership matters. The research suggested, as we might have all guessed, that there is no “one size fits all” policy that will miraculously place quality principals in all schools. Another point that came out in the research was that professional development alone is insufficient. Highly effective pre-service development must also be a part of the pathway to quality principals. As a former principal, I reflected as I was reviewing this report and was thinking about the complexity of being a principal. Ultimately, the principal is a leader of learning, but there are many parts to that. Highly effective teachers and facilitation of learning and leadership define how successful any school is. A school without a strong leader will likely fail the students it serves.
The RAND report gave us four key levers to use as policymakers. Those four levers are:
- Standards
- Licensure
- Program Approval
- Professional Development
Interestingly, four things came to mind as I was reviewing and listening to Susan’s report. Here are my thoughts, observations, and feedback:
- As state board members, we need to take the approval of teacher education and leadership development programs very seriously. In my own state, our department of education does a tremendous job of evaluating and providing us reports for revue prior to approval of programs. We still have an obligation to study these reports and make sure the programs meet the test of equity and excellence. We also need to make sure that any pathway to the principalship is not rewarding the person who can best meet meaningless requirements.
- As I listened, I wondered if there were ways to leverage the attention we are now rightly giving to teacher leadership. Teacher leaders are so important to building the capacity is schools and it seems to me we could better leverage identifying those teachers with the leadership dispositions and develop those skills. Notice I said dispositions, because many teachers are very interested in being teacher leaders but not, at least in the present-tense, being a principal. As a believer that everyone is a leader and that leadership should happen where the data is created, in this case the classroom, it makes sense we would be developing teacher leaders to make decisions that traditionally have been cascaded down to teachers. This real-time development would give teachers practical pre-service development that would be important to effective leading for learning whether a teacher or principal. I would argue that a well developed and highly effective teacher/teacher leader could be the best bet to become a high quality principal. You’ll want to check out Susan’s response to this point in the recording.
- Another point made was the fact that sometimes we need to look at subtraction as well as addition when formulating policy. We deal with this a lot in education where we continue to place mandates without taking anything away. We need to allow for more flexibility. Additionally, how can we more effectively use incentives or information sharing in the place of mandates?
- Finally, there was a suggestion in the report of finding opportunistic ways: “Be opportunistic: link principal initiatives to key state education priorities and build on related initiatives.” By doing this we might find new ways to streamline, provide flexibility, or identify those things that can be removed.
I really appreciate the research and this report. Again, it provides levers for us to consider using as policymakers as we contemplate how to better prepare and provide quality pathways for the development of our critically important principals.
The Education Catapult
Last evening I had the opportunity to do some of what I call #LearningTogetherApart. Yesterday was Day 245 of the Global Pandemic and the webinar was entitled “Post-Election 2020: Charting a Path Forward in Education.” The webinar was put on by The Hunt Institute and the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), which I am chair of the board for, was one of the partner organizations involved in making this conversation possible. Other partners were The School Superintendents Association, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National Association of Secondary School Principals, and National School Boards Association. And, what a great conversation it was. The panel included The Honorable Margaret Spellings, Former U.S. Secretary of Education (2005-2009), President & CEO Texas 2036; The Honorable Arne Duncan, Former U.S. Secretary of Education (2009-2015), Managing Partner, The Emerson Collection; Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, New York City Department of Education (2018-Present); and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, Miami-Dade County Public Schools (2008-Present). As you can see this was quite the lineup of experience and expertise in the room.
Another highlight yesterday was receiving the new book Beyond The COVID – 19 Pandemic from authors Pradeep K. Kapur and Joseph M. Chalil. I am so glad that I started reading it in the space between the end of the work day and the webinar. In the preface of the book there are six questions posed for the global community to contemplate (p. xxi-xxii):
- What sort of changes are required at the policy level to cope with such pandemics in the future?
- How do we better equip global organizations to evolve for dealing with the challenges ahead?
- Do we need to think of setting up new organizations to replace the WHO and the UN?
- Can we have new paradigms for healthcare?
- How do we create reserves and stockpiles of essential healthcare supplies? Where will the money come from when the budgets are already under great stress?
- How do we get the global economy back on its feet?
As you can see, these are pretty good guiding questions and even though these are not education specific questions they could be great guiding questions for any conversation. Really, the answers to these questions need to involve education in every answer. The authors point out that the pandemic is the biggest disruption to our county in 100 years. In having studied the 1918-1920 pandemic, I am amazed that we are experiencing and struggling with many of the same issues we had then. I can’t wait to immerse myself into the book as these authors dream big and have offered solutions that are possible if we just reach political consensus and carry through to implementation (a core value of how I try to serve as a policymaker on the Indiana State Board of Education).
The panelists last night were also using their experience to dream big. I want to touch on a few thoughts they had by referring back to tweets I made during the conversation. Allow me to pick a highlight or two (or three) from each of the participants using tweets. You can check out all the tweets at @byronernest or by going to #ElectionEd2020. Here we go!
Secretary Margaret Spellings reminded us that education must be a major component of any pandemic recovery plan. As she said, “Education must be on the first train out of Washington.” And, she also reminded us that in order for there to be economic recovery, education must be involved. As a person who believes so much in the involvement of business/industry in education it gave me hope when she suggested that “Alignments between our schools and workforce are going to be critical right now.” This also includes continued alignments with higher education for all of dual credit, dual enrollment, Advanced Placement, internships, and work-based learning opportunities. We cannot let the pandemic take these away from our students. These opportunities provide for some of the greatest outcomes being afforded our students. I loved that Abigail Potts, NASBE’s Director of College, Career, and Civic Readiness, retweeted my tweet on this with comments that added the importance of our high school pathways, broadband access, and state and local investment. And, Abby pointed out in that tweet that education is not partisan but a place to come together to support our students. Thanks for the tweetversation (yes, I just made up a word), Abby!
Additionally, I have to add in one more insight from Secretary Spellings. She reminded us that “We cannot just go back to normal; we must catapult to the new way ahead.” I love the way she put that. I have continued to say over and over we have to take what we have learned and apply it and never look back. “Catapult” was the best term that could have been used for this. Go back to the questions posed in Beyond The COVID – 19 Pandemic and put them into the context of education and that is exactly where Secretary Spellings is suggesting we need to go.
I got to know Secretary Arne Duncan during my service as 2010 Indiana Teacher of the Year. He is so passionate about doing what is right for ALL children. In fact he made this clear when he said, “We need to be fighting for our most vulnerable.” I’ve also been impressed with the non-partisan way in which he views education. He also reminded us that “Education is our best way to bring the country together.” He firmly gave us a call to action for stitching our democracy back together. He posed the question, “What if we committed to go find every lost child?” Wouldn’t it be great if we could reach some consensus on a vital few things we could all work on and begin our evolution dealing with educational challenges? Secretary Duncan finally reminded us that, “We need need a healthy debate/conversation, putting aside political ideologies, based on data. We need the courage to do some things differently.” Well said!
Superindent Carvalho and Chancellor Carranza brought great perspective to the conversation from street level at the school. Superintendent Carvalho taught us that “The rules of the past stop applying. We need to start using what we have learned from the last nine months.” Providing education to ALL children has been a continuing challenge for families, schools, local, state, and federal governments, and leaders around the world. To answer the challenge we have tried and need to continue to try different paradigms to equity in learning for all. In my opinion we must develop a system by which we are developing the whole child in every child. Also, we must develop an ethos that sees the potential in every student. As a policymaker I use the test question of “Will this policy reduce inequity, maintain inequity, or increase inequity?” to inform my decisions. As I listened to these two school leaders I thought about how, after 245 days, we really need to assess what to de-prioritize and what needs to be prioritized.
Chancellor Carranza warned us to not “let our foot off the gas.” Some might argue that in some areas we need to put our foot on the gas, but those are the areas that Secretary Duncan told us we need to all get around and start working together on. When speaking of early childhood education and education funding in general, Chancellor Carranza gave a very real example by asking and answering his own question: “Do we invest early in education? Yes! It takes $20,000/year to educate a NYC student. It takes $275,000/year to incarcerate someone in New York State.” This was a reminder to us all how important an investment education is. And, let’s not forget the economic impact of having students prepared for our ever changing workplaces. Additionally, I think a lot about how we need to identify all the reasons for our students’ learning struggles. This goes beyond having devices and internet access. It takes us into the support structures in place or not in place for the student. We must have the whole portrait of student if we are create the ideal environment for learning.
As you can see, this was quite the discussion and I’ve only scratched the surface. This truly was a conversation, not an interrogation around defining the challenges and how to best disrupt education with the exponential learning we have done during the pandemic.
Educating Students To Improve The World
The book Educating Students to Improve the World, written by Harvard Professor Fernando M. Reimers, presents an inspiring and bold vision of how schools should be organized to cultivate a range of skills and dispositions that effectively educate students to make the world better. The book is unique in the breadth of the scholarship it integrates and in how it builds a sensible model to understand the process of educational change that honors the multidimensionality of the process. It is, at the same time, a very scholarly book, an erudite treaty of the field of global education, and a very practical book, a book that makes sense to those in the business of leading schools and school systems.
Professor Reimers
The idea that the book contains is simple, yet holds remarkable potential to transform education around the world. The big idea the book contains is that public education, as an institution of the Enlightenment, was meant to be global since its creation, but the obvious global nature of many of the challenges facing humanity requires that education becomes intentionally global. Professor Reimers argues in the book that formal education should be aligned with audacious and hopeful visions for a more inclusive world, such as those contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Such alignment involves defining what kind of competencies would actually help students care about and have the skills to make a difference in advancing a more inclusive and sustainable world. With such clarity on the expected learning outcomes for students, the curriculum would then map backwards an instructional sequence to gradually support students in a rigorous process of development of such competencies.
But the merit of this book goes beyond articulating why education should help students develop a sense of purpose, aligned with ambitious purposes of building a better world, it then explains how structuring effective education programs requires that the process of change is advanced multidimensionally, reflecting a cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political.
The ambitions of the book are considerable, to bridge an evident schism between the scholarship and practice of global education. The book is an intellectual tour de force tracing the history of global education to the very creation of public education systems, and integrating research reflecting a variety of disciplinary perspectives in support of a conceptual framework in service of more coherent and effective educational practice.
Enhancing the credibility of the ideas in the book is not just the fact that the book is well researched and crafted, but that it builds on a long practice of the author actually doing the very things this books recommends should be done to develop a relevant curriculum. Professor Reimers invented an approach to take bold goals, such as the United Nations Development Goals, and translate them into student learning outcomes, and then curriculum and pedagogy. It’s a simple and intuitive idea, but it had not been done before.
It is the combination of the powerful idea that education should be aligned with ambitious goals for inclusion and sustainability with a theoretical model of how to structure efforts to translate that idea into changed educational practices that makes this book unique. It is not surprising that since it was published, as an Open Access resource by Springer, a week ago, the book has already been downloaded 24,000 times.
The book can be downloaded here https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811538865
❤️ Kids Having Ownership!
This past week I had the honor of doing a day long professional development for teachers from all schools corporations in Elkhart County, Indiana. I am representing Noble Education Initiative carrying out this customized professional development. This was part of an ongoing Project Based Learning partnership created by Horizon Education Alliance to bring business/industry and education together to best educate students. I love doing professional development workshops, particularly when they are on topics that I am passionate about. Project Based Learning (PBL) is one of those topics. It is also energizing to be with a group of educators who are very engaged. Groups like this always remind me and validate what Gallup® finds teachers value in question 12 of the Gallup Q12 Index©: “In the last year, have you had opportunities to learn and grow?” These teachers have been given this opportunity and very much value the opportunity, and are taking advantage of the opportunity to learn and grow.
The group last week was both passionate and engaged. We started the day with what I called “Level Setting.” I had them work in pairs to talk about their PBL experience now that we were half way through the school year. I wanted them to talk about what they had learned, “wow” moments, what they still had questions about, and what they still needed help with. They were to represent this on a tear sheet and put it up on the wall. Here are a few of the tear sheets that were put up:
Did you see the comment “❤️Kids Having Ownership”? That’s what this is all about. The next few paragraphs will dig into that a little deeper.
Aubri Mosness with her students
We then had everyone individually do a gallery walk and pick one thing that stood out to them. This was an awesome discussion when the group came back together. There were questions like, “who wrote… I would like to know more,” or “I had that same experience because…,” or “I am so glad you wrote that because that same thing happened to us, and we are still trying to figure out…” You get the idea. One comment really stood out to me during this discussion; It was by Goshen High School Teacher, Aubri Mosness. She said, “I have felt the transition from me doing most of the work to the students doing most of the work. At first I was a little uncomfortable because I felt like I was doing much, but then I realized how much the students were getting out of it.” I was so excited by this. This is such a revelation in teaching. Great teaching should have the students doing most of the work. She was truly facilitating with a student managed classroom and the students have student agency and choice.
Then, at lunch Ms. Mosness’ students presented to the whole group and business/industry representatives that had joined us, on their project and I led a little Q&A. The students were incredible. During the presentation Ms. Mosness commented, “When I give my students too much, too much information, too much guidance, I am taking away opportunities for learning.” This was a drop the mic opportunity as far as I was concerned. The students all concurred. I then asked the students to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on the following question: “School work should look more like real work?” All six students gave me a thumbs up. Our students deserve to learn in an environment that is facilitated in a real world and relevant context.
These students were giving first hand testimony affirming the research I did for my book, The Hand In The Back Of The Room: Connecting School Work To Real Life.” In the book I talk about that the hand in the back of the room was mine, and probably yours too, that was raised wanting to know why I needed to learn what I was being taught. In other words school work must be connected to real life. This is why PBL is so great. Using PBL teaching principles will make school work look and feel like real work. In other words, the question from “the hand in the back of the room is answered as to why she needs to learn what she is being taught. When teachers are allowed to make student learning the ultimate test of facilitation of learning, then instruction improves to produce better learning. The results of my research showed improved achievement/performance in science when students are taught in a relevant context. For me that context was agriculture, but there many other real world contexts to be used. This is why the partnerships with business/industry is so important for our students. The challenge to all of us in education is to find ways to make learning visible by connecting school work and real life for the students we serve.
Scaling Partnerships In Education & Telling Our Story
I’m so sad to be sitting at the airport because I hate leaving Harvard University. I always learn so much from my friends at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As always, my thinking as stretched, what I thought I knew challenged, and new creative and innovative ideas developed. As Dr. Mandy Savitz-Romer said last Sunday, “You may not leave here with complete closure, but with new questions.” That is learning at its best! My description for my learning this week is that I have been “coached up!”
Today’s learning was just as great as the rest of the week. I loved doing a case study on a partnership with the Nike Innovation Fund for improving Oregon student success. Dr. Monica Higgins did a great job of facilitating the case study and I learned a great deal about scaling the impact of public private partnerships. This learning was followed up by a great session by Dr. Irvin Scott on story telling and its importance to teaching and leadership.
As I have done all week in Thriving Students, Developing & Supporting Our Students: Future Identity Versus No Future Identity, and Changing The Narrative For Our Students, I compiled a top 20 list of the things I learned today. Here is my list:
- It’s not just if we do partnerships, it’s how we do partnerships.
- Partnerships should match the core values or mission of the partners.
- Partnerships are great ways for industry to understand education and for education to understand industry.
- It is very important to analyze both sides of all partnerships.
- Partnerships are a psychological contract.
- Everything’s not always explicit (context, risks, et cetera).
- In partnerships everything is not always spelled out.
- Move partnerships from individual to individual to organization to organization. This plays to sustainability.
- Open communication is key to partnerships, even when things go wrong.
- Agenda items versus surface level just for show.
- Eliminate hidden targets in partnerships
- Partnerships need an exit strategy so the innovation can be sustained without the partner.
- Partnerships should be mutually beneficial, with beneficial up for debate.
- In partnerships:
- Make implicit explicit
- Have clarity of roles and limitations
- Have flexibility built in
- Have mutual goals, timelines, and milestones
- Is the voice of the student heard in the partnership?
- You never want to scale until you know you have something that works.
- Need to decide to scale deep or scale out.
- Everyone has a story of how they got where they are. What is your trajectory?
- We need to be warm demanders for our students.
- We need to give an academic press to our students.
- You can’t lead if you don’t read.
- Why story/narrative in leadership?
- Stories are fundamentally human…
- Stories build connection…critical for leaders…
- Stories bring data alive…
- Stories capture what is possible…
Changing The Narrative For Our Students
Yesterday was another powerful day of learning at Harvard University. It started out with Liya Escalera walking us through changing the narrative, valuing the cultural wealth of our underrepresented students in order to achieve equity. Additionally, she taught some great asset-based approaches to leading for student success. The best part was how she had us start this session. She had us reflect on situations in an educational setting that made us feel unwelcome and then reflect on a situation that made us feel welcome. This was a great way to get us in a mode of thinking about changing the narrative for our students. Liya also worked us through asset based communication. Below is a slide that does a great job of showing what our discussion included: 
Then we spent time digging into family engagement and making families true partners with Stephany Cuevas of Harvard University. We know that students with engaged families:
- Exhibit faster rates of literacy acquisition
- Earn higher grades and test scores
- Enroll in higher level programs
- Are promoted more and earn more credits
- Adapt better to school and attend more regularly
- Have better social skills and behaviors
- Graduate and go on to higher education
The learning did not stop here. We then spent time with Daren Graves diving into issues of race with intentionality. This was very powerful learning. We discussed how racism can happen without it being intentional. In education we must be diligent in monitoring the areas where we see disparate racial outcomes or impact:
- Curriculum
- Groupings
- Assessment
- Relationships with students and faculty
- Relationships with the community
- Recruitment/Retention
Just like in Thriving Students and Developing & Supporting Our Students: Future Identity Versus No Future Identity here is the top 30 list from our Tuesday learning:
- Reflect on a situation in an educational setting that made you feel unwelcome.
- Reflect on a situation that made you feel welcome.
- Asset-Based versus Deficit-Based Communication
- It is a bad habit to not look at all our communication through a critical lens.
- What is the problem? The problem is not our students.
- Is the problem that our students aren’t post-secondary ready, or that our education system is not student ready?
- Cultural competence will not cut it. We need to be highly skilled, not just competent.
- We need to make sure all schools are student ready.
- Google Translate™ is a good thing, but must be edited, or those reading will feel disrespected.
- We need information to go to parents as well as the students.
- We need to offer parents parents questions to ask their students.
- Our families are collaborators.
- We need to have parents presenting to parents.
- Have parents talk to each other.
- Students need to be thought of as part of a family, and then the family as part of all the practices of the school.
- Staff needs to view families as collaborators and partners.
- Staff Relationships With Parents + School Knowledge = Family Engagement As Confident Partner
- Staff needs to think of themselves as mentors to their parents.
- Family engagement is a way of thinking, not a practice.
- Family engagement is a value, not just a practice.
- There is no gene for race. Science saved the day!
- Race is an idea.
- Race is not culture.
- Race is something that happens, not something we are.
- It’s not about doing well in school, it’s about doing school well.
- Racism is usually pretty mundane.
- A system that confers privilege and produces disparate outcomes on the basis of race.
- historically-based systems
- actions/beliefs/policies/practices/conceptions
- confers visible and unacknowledged privilege
- Sometimes we set students up for failure by trying to not set them up for failure.
- Start with implicit biases, then move to structural biases.
- Racism can happen without anyone intentionally wanting it to happen.
Thriving Students
I have been learning at Harvard University this week on post-secondary success. As an exercise to help myself digest all of the information and make some sense of the learning, I like to come up with a top list from each day. This day’s (Sunday, June 23rd) learning came from Mandy Savitz-Romer and Francesca Purcell, and included learning about post-secondary gaps and opportunities and the data and trends behind public policies to increase post-secondary success.
One of the things that really jumped out at me from the reading and learning was the introduction of the Thriving Quotient. I was very interested in the thought and reality is that we always want to measure student success primarily in terms of academic performance and persistence to graduation. I became enthralled when reading “The “Thriving Quotient”: A New Vision for Student Success” by Laurie A. Schreiner, where she introduced this assessment tool. Thriving students are academically successful and also believe themselves to be part of a community and psychological well-being. These things make it possible for the student to get the most out of their educational experience. The thing I like about Academic Thriving is that it goes beyond what I call compliance – attending class, doing homework – going through the motions. In the Thriving Quotient, Academic Thriving students are psychologically engaged in the learning process. What really resonated with me about this was that the idea of making a connection between what the student already knows or is interested in. This connection to relevant contexts helps the student be an engaged learner and THRIVE.
The Thriving Quotient also includes Intrapersonal Thriving. This thriving is about the student having a healthy attitude toward themselves and the learning process. Additionally included is Interpersonal Thriving. We can’t truly thrive without relationships. So, time spent on the Thriving Quotient and so much other discussion on Sunday led to the following top 20 list of things learned:
- Learning with and from each other from different sectors.
- Pull don the walls and step outside our lanes.
- We have to get the singular narrative out of our mind.
- Sometimes we are creating a narrative for students that does not fit their why, or what is best for them.
- Actions of students do not match their aspirations.
- Only 10% of students that drop out of college had below a “C” average.
- Student problems vs. institutional problems
- We highlight student problems, but sometimes instead of highlighting problems, we need to change the process.
- With multiple pathways available to students, we need to make sure we are sorting in a way that is about best fit, not about other factors.
- We need to get better at moving from thinking about student success in terms of just quantitative box checking like graduation rates, number of applying or accepted to college, and test scores by moving to the idea of students THRIVING!
- We can’t think of college as just one singular thing because there are many different outcomes from many different types of colleges.
- The highest stakes tests students take are the placement tests once in college. Then, in some cases, we waste the students’ time in developmental education.
- We must find a way to scale up the things that work!
- A college credential is a solid investment that will pay off over time.
- More likely to give back to the community and vote
- Higher levels of personal well-being (health, et cetera)
- Higher earnings and tax payments
- What is it that the adult wants, versus what the student wants.
- Adults always think we know best, but many times we don’t know all the options, or nor does the student know all the options.
- “College is not for everyone, but it is for everyone that looks like you when you are a school.”
- We maybe need to think about amending the 14th amendment of our constitution to include higher education.
- We are nearing universal enrollment in college. What does this mean?
- A
college goingfuture identity.
As you can see, there was a lot to digest after a single afternoon of work. If any of these statements resonated or made you think, please comment here on this post.
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