New View EDU

Episode 16: Challenging Success to Design Schools for Well-Being

What’s the difference between educating students for the future, and simply “doing school?” Are we designing school communities that foster the development of better adults, or are we clinging to old ideas about content and rigor that no longer serve us well? And what role do parental expectations, higher ed, and societal pressure play in the decisions we make about how schools function?

Guest: Denise Pope

Resources and Expanded Show Notes

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In This Episode:

• “Rigor is not the same thing as load…What I see with schools, it's exactly what you're seeing. They say, academic excellence, academic excellence. That's what our parents are sending their kids here for. And that's what we say we're going to promote. And academic excellence can very much be in the definition that, that you and I just set out, around critical thinking, around the skills they need, around teamwork, around cooperation, around weighing really challenging issues. And they need to see that that is not just piling on more stuff. And it's not the traditional way that they've been teaching, which is scary. Change is scary.” (10:10)
• “We're hearing I want my kid to be happy. I want them to be healthy. I want them to be fulfilled. I want them to go on to, you know, be independent and go to college and get a job. And what they say they want for success is not necessarily translated to their kids. So when we ask the kids how they define success, it's often money, grades, test scores, college, popularity.” (16:47)
• “The parents have to do their jobs, but the school has to do their job too. And that's one of the main things we talk to schools about. Less is more. What's going on with your schedule, what's going on with your homework policy. What's going on with the fact that they have to take so many classes at a time, or so many advanced placement or honors things happening at the time, right? Less is more.” (25:34)
• “You've got to fix the relationships happening at school first and foremost. You've got to make sure that kids are sleeping, that they have room for mental health, that they are not going, you know, 24-7 like chickens with their heads cut off. And then when you've created that space of belonging and health and safety, let's go to the next step on Maslow's hierarchy.” (39:09)

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Episode 15: Inspiring Wonder and Community in Schools

After the many challenges of the past two years, how healthy are our school communities? How attuned are we to the lessons we can learn from the people and influences around us? How can we approach learning with gentleness, curiosity, care, and a sense of wonder? And what do mushrooms have to do with any of it?

Guest: Michelle King

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In This Episode:

• “Winter is the hardening of the ground. So this is a time of reflection. This is a time of restoration. This is the time of withdrawal. In our culture, we treat everything like spring, go, go, go, grow, grow, grow. But you don't get the incredible brilliance of the flowers of spring without the hardening of the ground in winter.“ (3:59)
• “And I think about students who taught me so many life lessons, who are, who also had a sense of wonder, but they, these things can not be quantified or contained on a standardized test, but that wasn't a standardized being. That was a very complex and beautiful being that showed me the world.” (14:38)
• “How many spaces do you walk in, and you're like, as you're more than enough as you are? You know, a lot of times we come into spaces and it's like, especially teacher PD, is oriented around the idea that you don't have enough. You're not enough.” (20:19)
• “I remember reading a piece years ago that said busy-ness is another form of laziness. And I was like, what? I'm American. Busy is a currency, you know? But what's called for is connection, real connection. And to have that kind of connection requires trust. Trust, community, all these things are living concepts. They are not like, okay, we got trust in, you know, on Wednesday. And we're good for the rest of our lives. It is a living entity, just like community is a living entity.” (23:50)
• “I think one of the things as humans that we really want to be is to be seen. And another way to say that is to be loved. Is to be seen in our full complexity. I think that's when we come alive, I think we can inspire and teach people from that place of being fully seen.” (28:17)
• “We all have a part of stardust. And you think like, look at that. That's amazing. That being over there, even as complicated and challenging as they might be in this moment, that's a wonder. And I think to have that kind of a delight, and if we can't find it, I feel like we are not doing right, what it means to be lovers of life.” (38:09)

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Episode 14: Mapping the Future Purpose of Education

Independent schools are inherently mission-driven. What would happen if we focused on becoming purpose-driven instead? How would we define our purpose, and how could we allow our schools and our communities to be changed through purpose-driven leadership? What challenges could we meet, and how would our schools be positioned to positively impact the future of society?

Guests: John Gulla and Donna Orem

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In This Episode:

• “Once we do start to talk, we realize there is a lot that we don't know about each other. I also think compounding this, and there's been a lot of research on this, is that probably for the last 40 to 50 years, trust in core institutions has been declining. And that's not just education, but it's all the core institutions that make up the fabric of our society.” (10:44)
• “Schools—meaning really elementary, secondary, college, universities—are often the places where we come into the most intimate connection with those who are unlike us. And it's a result of that otherness, that lack of familiarity that causes the disagreements that, I regret, in today's world seem to require, on the behalf of all sides, success defined only as winning the argument and not in coming to a deeper understanding of how others might think.” (14:03)
• “Of the literally thousands and thousands of teachers I've had conversations with on behalf of the foundation, I don't know anyone who went into the profession so that they could make a more effective widget for the global capitalist system. That's just not what I think motivates people at their core.” (19:49)
• “I think that we've had for too long this industrial model of education with children progressing through schools in age cohorts, in quanta of classes, taught the same material from often the same text by a single teacher, without the differentiation that can come as schools reconceive the way in which they will go about this work. And part of what's necessary, if my dream for education were to come to fruition, would be, you know, 10,000 different flowers blooming of different types of schools, that will ultimately make it a lot more difficult for parents to define in their terms, the right school for their child, because it will require them to really know who their children are to decide what is the right school for their child.”  (26:18)
• “I think as we also know through brain research, the connections between mental health and physical health and academic outcomes, you know, that we create schools where mental and physical health are really at the center of what we do, that we understand where children and adults are situated, and we understand very specifically what each one of them needs to be whole mentally, to be whole physically. Because I think once we are able to do that, you know, we are taking those rocks out of the way for students and adults to achieve anything. But we have the means now to do that, I think we have more of the understanding to do that.” (35:53)

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Episode 13: Giving Away Power for More Authentic Leadership

We’re used to working and teaching in hierarchical structures, where power flows from the top down. But what would happen if, instead of maintaining power at the top, leaders gave power away to others? How could sharing power change the way we work, the way we relate to others, and the way we approach problem-solving? And what would schools look like if everyone was part of a constellation of contributors?

Guest: Matthew Barzun

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In This Episode:

• “The problem with power sharing is it, because so much of us are in this pyramid mindset, it's sort of like, well, if I have 10 units and we share it, I guess I'll have five and you have five now. But what all these amazing leaders who inspired me realized was no, no, no, power isn't a finite thing, like something you mine in Western or Eastern Kentucky, like coal. It is something, it is infinite, and you make it. And you make it with other people sitting around a table, virtual or real. And it all begins with giving away power.” (14:28)
• “Diversity and division. They have the same root, ‘div’. So what they love most and fear most has something to do with separateness. And so that, you know, now we see where it ends with the constellation. I was like, so they want to stand out as an individual like me, but they don't want to stand out so much that they're lonely. Right? So they want to stand out and fit in. And then I was like, boy, do we have a good image for that in the form of a constellation. Stand out, be special and form something special to you. Easy to say, hard to do.” (30:57)
• “We want freedom together. And not some mushy compromise, right? Half freedom, half together. Freedom with and through one another…the hard part was how could we figure out how to be free together? Thirteen separate colonies. And we did a constitution and we, you know what I mean, all that kind of stuff. And we had a motto for it: From Many One. And we had an image that was supposed to go⁠—remember, he named that ship the USS Constellation. We had an image that's supposed to go with that motto.” (43:37)
• “It cannot be isolated to the teacher or to the student or to the comedian or to the thing. It's this mutuality, it's this interdependence. It's the invisible. When someone shows you Orion's Belt, right? The lines aren't there, you have to imagine them. And then once you've seen them, you can't unsee them. And so that, I think, is what's going on here, that if we can find those connections, pass them onto the next generation, they will be alive and not be able to unsee them and be able to build useful, much more powerful things together than we could on our own.” (47:25)

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Episode 12: Applied Imagination and the Possibilities of School

We know what it means to teach history. But what does it mean to teach the future? Ruth Wylie applies imagination and critical thinking to big questions about science, technology, artificial intelligence, and what it means to shape the futures we want to see.

Guest: Ruth Wylie

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In This Episode:

• “I think that even, you know, at maybe the most basic, but also perhaps some of the most profound, is to start to think about how to get futures thinking and foresight anticipation into our K-12 curriculum. So starting to encourage our young people to think about what are possible futures for themselves, but also getting away from the individual level and looking about what are possible futures for our communities, for our countries, for our world.” (5:44)
• “So when we're talking about futures, it's also about reflecting on our histories, our past, the indigenous knowledge. It's reflecting on what's happening today. And then it's about thinking about futures. So again, it's not about just creating a brand new course and hiring brand new teachers, but it's about creating a culture of futures thinking and embedding that into our everyday classroom practice.” (8:29)
• “And so we need to also be thinking about how we're building technologies to address equity, to address people across different lifespans, different spectrums. And I think it's really important again, that if we're going to be making decisions that have larger community, global, national impacts, we need to make sure that people from all of those different spheres are at the table when designing those technologies and thinking about the implications.” (18:50)
• “Agency is a construct that we talk a lot about at the center, and about how do we develop agency and shift that mindset away from ‘the future is going to be unveiled at the next press conference or it's being done by folks in white lab coats,’ and we really take and empower people to realize that they have agency over their future.” (27:48)

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Episode 11: The Importance of Play in Schools

Societies depend on our ability to “play well together.” That concept is at the heart of Jill Vialet’s revolutionary work. But at a time when there are so many perceived threats to our well-being from external forces, how can we convince leaders of the importance of play? And what unique value does play bring to our schools and communities?

Guest: Jill Vialet

Resources and Expanded Show Notes

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In This Episode:

• “We're not totally comfortable with silly. We are a culture that, you know, in many ways, still very much buys into sort of the Horatio Alger myth about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and, you know, it's diligence and hard work that's going to overcome obstacles..I just think teachers and people in schools are in a really difficult position.” (6:04)
• “I think one of the things that play tells us over and over again is, given the right sort of stepping stones to achieve that, kids are capable of quite rigorous negotiation and compromise and insight around how to take care of each other. So often, I would say, better than their adult counterparts.” (16:25)
• “I think our kids are amazing. And, and they are capable of so much and we need them so desperately to find their own agency and leadership. Like the very future of our planet is, is depending on their ability to do a better job than we have done. And so I feel like trust your gut, they can do it.” (19:45)
• “ I think American democracy has always been an experiment. Some aspects maybe need to be rethought. We've gotten a little sclerotic in our willingness to be innovative in democracy. But again, a playfulness, a willingness to experiment, a sort of-- an openness to tapping creativity and how we do it. Like, and again, it's like, think about, if you are an educator listening, about the kids. If you think about kids playing, their ability to self handicap, like Jill and Tim, you switch sides. Like that's a pretty nuanced human interaction. Or like, Ooh, this rule is not working. Let's, let's change it up so that, like, this is the boundary instead. Like that spontaneous sort of re-imagining of how we work together, that's what's needed for us to navigate this moment.” (24:38)
• “I guess I'm hoping that we come to recognize that actually the education of our youngest citizens is foundational to our ability to navigate the current challenges we seek, whether that's climate or misinformation or all the myriad things that are worrisome in this moment. That ultimately educating our young people well, it's, it's the only hope that we will actually address any of these challenges. But to do that, you need humans who are cared for as well.” (34:25)

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January 2022 Bonus Episode: Designing Backward to Move Forward

What is the goal of modern education, and are we designing our schools and practices properly to help us meet that goal? That’s the central question of this episode with Jay McTighe, who provides a detailed road map to help educators navigate the answers. What should a school’s mission statement actually include? What is the most productive and meaningful structure for “professional development” days? And what are we missing when we focus on covering content instead of designing our classrooms for deeper learning?

Guest: JayMcTighe

Resource List:

• Jay’s website: Follow his work and keep up with Jay’s latest news and thought leadership. 
• Understanding by Design: Delve into the framework Jay developed with Grant Wiggins to help provide a planning process and structure for schools.
• Books by Jay: Add Jay’s published works to your reading list.
• Jay’s articles on ACSD: Read Jay’s writings on topics like “For School Leaders, Reviewing Isolated Lessons isn’t Enough,” “Assessing Deeper Learning After a Year of Change,” and more.
• What is Understanding by Design? Watch a video interview with Jay as he breaks down the key concepts of the framework.
• A Conversation on Assessment: Jay joins Carol Ann Tomlinson and Dylan Wiliam for a recorded webinar on assessment practices.

Full Transcript

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We are excited to share an episode from our sister NAIS podcast, Member Voices, which features stories from the independent school community.

This episode shares the story of Logan Bowlds, Head of School at Stratford Academy, who talks about what it was like to be appointed head of school at age 29, how he got to this point in his career so quickly, and how he finds balance with two young kids at home.

The episode was released July 1, 2019, when Logan was a brand new head of school. Member Voices also recently aired a 3-episode miniseries taking a closer look at the transition to headship.

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After a season of conversations about education, leadership, and the future, we’re pausing to reflect. What changes do we need to make to our systems and practices to best support students in navigating a future shaped by the events of 2020? Teaching and learning through a pandemic and a period of historic social and political change has exposed cracks in our system—but also surprising strengths. What have we learned to value more highly in our learning environments? What new, meaningful contributions were made by students, and what enabled them to make those contributions? And how do we design new, better systems of education that support the changes we want to introduce?

Guests: Ashley Harper, Wakefield School; Lisa Waller, Berkeley Carroll School; Luthern Williams, New Roads School

Wakefield School: Learn more about Ashley’s school community in The Plains, VA.

Berkeley Carroll School: Explore Lisa Waller’s school community in Brooklyn, NY.

New Roads School: Get acquainted with Luthern’s school community in Santa Monica, CA.

Entry on New Roads’ Innovation on Hundred.org: Take a deeper dive into the innovative practices supporting the liberation of human potential at New Roads.

“If I was to center education around three principles in the future, it needs to center on knowing yourself, seeking to understand others, and finding your purpose. I think those are the three most important elements of education.” (5:12)

“And so for me, I think the role of education has to be now foundationally to provide a foundation for well-being—and, you know, as the basis for liberating human potential, in all of its forms, and helping the kids understand how to function in a variety of contexts. And sometimes when they don't have the skill, to create the skill, that they need to improve upon our condition and to serve the common good.” (9:08)

“I always say in a school, there is no one who is not an educator. Everyone in the school is an educator, and that's the sort of position and posture that everyone should take.” (17:57)

“When the pandemic hit, we were doing all of this work, and good work, and we were moving forward and I was proud of what we were doing, but I felt like in many ways we were taking very incremental moves. And something bold had happened and incremental moves weren't going to make it. And so in that moment, I said...I want you to do what's right for the students in your estimation. We have 48 hours for you to pivot from one style of learning to another style of learning for our students. And I trust you.” (19:18)

“We have to move to having the drummer's instinct. And that is an urge not to lead people, but to be part of it in rhythm with others. And I think that that's a piece of what each of the heads have said, is that we have grown and learned so much by letting go of those instincts, by being vulnerable, by being humble. And so, if I have a huge hope for the future for leaders, it's that we all adopt the drummer's instinct.” (23:54)

Full Transcript

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Are we being good ancestors? This thought-provoking question strikes at the heart of what it means to design for the future. What can school leaders do right now, in the present, to ensure that long-term thinking is a pervasive, prominent practice in our schools? How can we overcome the daily short-term pressures of educational settings to take a future-focused approach to teaching, learning, planning, and innovating? And what would schools look like if we modeled seventh-generation leadership in everything we do? 

In many ways, school leadership is immediate, present-focused work. Leaders must respond to constantly changing daily circumstances, external pressures, and influences. Never has this immediacy been more clear than the past 18 months, when school leaders have had to constantly adapt and react with real urgency to shifting guidelines, precautions, and safety concerns while continuing to provide a valuable educational experience. But all this quick, reactive decision-making can lead us to neglect long-term thinking—the kind of deliberative planning and forecasting that allows us to create sustainable, nurturing systems that will serve not just today’s students, but the students of the future.

In this episode—in the temporary absence of co-host Tim Fish—Lisa Kay Solomon sits down with Roman Krznaric to dig deeply into the concept of being a “good ancestor.” Roman, a public philosopher, bestselling author, and founder of the world’s first empathy museum, explains how the good ancestor framework can be a foundational guiding principle for school leaders. Starting from the place of asking what legacy our present-day decisions will leave for future generations, Roman traces good ancestor thinking from indigenous cultures to present-day innovations in Canada and Japan. He shares how grounding futures thinking in a deep understanding of empathy can lead people to make radically different choices than they would make under other conditions. And he makes the argument that the way we approach strategic planning may not actually be very future-focused at all.

Roman challenges us to make the future both real and felt by bringing future generations into the room. He examines embodied practices like role play and costuming as ways to envision the future as part of our present communities. Roman also raises the question of approaching long-term thinking as community-building: Why are we able to expand our ideas about impact to people who live at a geographic distance from us, but not to people who will live in our own locations years from now? How will we be remembered by those future residents, and how can our current decision-making have a positive impact on their lives? Roman makes the case that schools are already inherently a long-term setting, providing educational foundations that will serve students 10 or 20 years down the road. But what innovations might we create if we started to think farther into the future, beyond 20 years, and design our schools for generations ahead? And what potential might we unlock in our students right now by starting to teach them to look up from the instant gratification of their curated worlds, and think about the worlds they want their children to inhabit?

Some of the key questions Lisa explores in this interview include:

• How can school leaders not only take a longer-term view, but communicate that stance clearly to their key stakeholders—parents, the board, alumni, etc.?
• Although our brains are vulnerable to short-term distractions, The Good Ancestor also makes the case that we’re hardwired for long-term thinking. What’s the difference between our marshmallow brains and our acorn brains, and how do we train ourselves—and our students—to be more attuned to acorn thinking?
• How can we practice the kind of long-term, good ancestor thinking that ensures our school community’s values are sustained and upheld through future generations? And how does this kind of thinking impact the way we design and plan for priorities like capital campaigns?
• Can good ancestor thinking help leaders to design truly diverse, collaborative conversations that invite multiple perspectives, rather than designing conversations that subtly seek buy-in to decisions that have already been made?
• How can we use good ancestor thinking and long-term perspective taking to inform our study of history? Can we begin to teach students to examine events both backward and forward—with consideration for how history informs what is happening in the present, and will inform the future?

Resource List:

• Roman’s website: Dive into more of Roman’s work, including videos, cartoons, graphics, and resources for expanding your understanding of good ancestor thinking.
• The Empathy Museum: Explore the world’s first empathy museum and the “Mile in your shoes” exhibit.
• The Man Who Planted Trees: The short story by Jean Giono, which Roman cites as an inspiration for his own work.
• The David Suzuki Foundation: A future-focused climate sustainability foundation that embodies good ancestor principles.
• Future Design in Japan: Read more about the municipal planning practice Roman discusses in this episode.
• Roots of Empathy Curriculum: Get more information about the evidence-based program reducing childhood aggression and increasing social competencies.

In This Episode:

• “What I mean by conceptual emergency around long-term thinking is that I think most of us have picked up newspapers, looked at websites and things, and seen people talking about the incredible short-termism of society, whether it's the fact that our politicians can't see beyond the next election or even the latest tweet, or businesses can't see beyond the quarterly report or a market spike and crash and speculative bubbles.And we're constantly looking at our phones.” (2:17)
• “Let's not just step into the shoes of people who are maybe voiceless or marginalized in today's world. Let's try and step into the shoes of future generations.” (8:20)
• “You know, in many ways we know we are the inheritors of very positive legacies from the past, you know, legacies of cities we still live in, or medical discoveries we still benefit from. But we also know we're the inheritors of very negative or destructive legacies, legacies of colonialism and slavery and racism that create deep inequities that must now be repaired, or legacies of economies that are structurally addicted to endless growth and fossil fuels that must now be transformed. And that raises a question. You know, about what are we going to pass on to the next generation, given what we've inherited, which bits do we want to keep and which bits do we want to move on from?” (8:50)
• “And it's to recognize that, you know, like for me, my 12-year-old daughter could easily be alive in the year 2100, you know, that future isn't science fiction. It's an intimate family fact, and caring about the lives of someone now in the future is kind of what schools are all about, right? Because it's about giving kids something great in their lives today, but also about doing something for their lives into the long future and giving them the tools that they need to survive and thrive in a very uncertain and turbulent world.” (21:11)
• “A satisfying conversation is one that makes you say things you have never said before.” (32:32)
• “I think just that question of recognizing who I am as a leader, you know, the definition of a leader, in a way, needs to be inspired by the idea of seventh-generation decision-making. A good leader is one that's thinking seven generations ahead, let's say, as a rule of thumb. And that is a leadership quality that has worked for indigenous peoples for thousands of years, you know, it's a form of ecological stewardship, but the stewardship that a school leader has is also a kind of a social stewardship, you know, about the community they're creating and they're generating and regenerating.” (41:11)

Full Transcript

About Our Guest:

Roman Krznaric is a public philosopher who writes about the power of ideas to change society. His latest book is The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short Term World. His previous international bestsellers, including Empathy, The Wonderbox and Carpe Diem Regained, have been published in more than 20 languages.

After growing up in Sydney and Hong Kong, Roman studied at the universities of Oxford, London, and Essex, where he gained his Ph.D. in political sociology. He is founder of the world’s first Empathy Museum and is currently a research fellow of the Long Now Foundation.

Roman has been named by The Observer as one of Britain’s leading popular philosophers. His writings have been widely influential amongst political and ecological campaigners, education reformers, social entrepreneurs, and designers. An acclaimed public speaker, his talks and workshops have taken him from a London prison to the TED global stage.

Roman has previously been an academic, a gardener, and worked on human rights issues in Guatemala. He is also a fanatical player of the medieval sport of “real tennis” and has a passion for making furniture.

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