Redesigning School

Eric Hudson, Director of Learning and Design at Global Online Academy, has been at this distance learning thing for years, and he has wisdom to share. He joined the podcast to share important background and advice to help answer the central question of this moment: "What does it mean to be a teacher when you don't have a classroom?"

A few key concepts that Eric mentions:

• Cognitive Load
• Understanding by Design

A not so funny thing happened on the way to summer this year...

The global pandemic has disrupted the world as we know it, which has led all of us to reimagine, reconfigure, and redesign our lives. For teachers and students in particular, the moment has resulted in a momentous and sudden shift in how, when, where, and why we do our work.

At ReDesigning School, we're going to change the focus of the podcast for the next weeks to explore how schools are adjusting their programs in real-time -- the good, the bad, the we're-not-sure-yets.

First up: Jodie Ricci, chair of the performing arts department at Hawken and educational coach in Harvard University's Project Zero online classroom. We also interviewed Zoe, a Hawken senior, to hear a student's perspective on the shift to remote learning. 

What's clear is that for all its real and immense challenges, this moment is also an opportunity to refine and revise our approaches. 

A few days before schools closed and social distancing began, we spoke with Stacy Caldwell, CEO of the Mastery Transcript Consortium. She shared a lot of good news about how quickly and successfully colleges have accepted the Mastery Transcript. She also spoke about how the Mastery Transcript meets the moment when high schools are shifting approaches to focus on enduring skills, habits, and content knowledge.

Last month, we hosted the first cohort of accepted students at the Mastery School of Hawken for an evening of celebration and gratitude. It was quite a night and a key marker between the dream of a new school and its reality. To capture the energy of the evening, we set up the podcast and interviewed students and parents to hear their take on this enterprise. They had a lot to say!

We also asked Rasa Drane, the director of admissions for the Mastery School of Hawken, to join the pod to share her experiences so far and update us on where we are with building the founding class.  

The landscape of college admissions is always complicated, so what happens when you add in paradigm shifts like mastery learning and the Mastery Transcript?  To answer that and other questions, we invited Renee Bischoff, Hawken's Director of College Counseling, to join the podcast so we could explore the intersection of the college admissions process and efforts to redesign school.

The news, surprisingly perhaps, is good. 

A few resources that might come in handy:

• What about College? -- A whitepaper from your friends at ReDesigning School
• A Fit Over Rankings -- A whitepaper from your friends at Challenge Success
• What ReDesigning School Looks Like: The Story of Engineering
• Life in College Matters for Life After College  -- Results from the Purdue Gallup Poll 2014

The data around mental and emotional health in schools and college campuses are sobering -- to say the least. As we redesign school, we should think about ways for it to challenge, stretch and inspire growth without grinding kids down.

That's the life work of Dr. Denise Pope, founder of Challenge Success, a non-profit school reform organization affiliated with the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. Besides being one of the kindest, smartest souls around, Pope is also a senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where she specializes in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. She is the author of “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001), and co-author of Overloaded and Underprepared: Strategies for Stronger Schools and Healthy, Successful Kids (Jossey-Bass, 2015)

A few relevant resources:

• A Fit Over Rankings
• Rewriting the Myth of Supergirl

"Education is undergoing a period of dramatic evolution," Grant Lichtman writes in his new book Thrive. "The number of options families have for their children’s education is expanding at a rate never seen in human history. Schools that understand and deliver what families want and need will survive and thrive in the future; those that do not risk losing the critical mass of students they need to stay alive. This may not be the hand educators want, but it is the hand we have been dealt."

Grant joins the pod to share his insights on how schools are evolving. One key takeaway: The pace of change is rapid and driven by market pressure and a deeper understanding of what students need to thrive in the complex world they'll inherit. 

A few resources mentioned in the episode:

• Dr. Ashley Poklar's blog post
• Design 39 Campus
• In Search of Deeper Learning
• Grant's books
• Marie Kondō's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing 

We know the story: high school can be an emotional rollercoaster for some (or most or many or all…) students. What if we designed school with emotional and psychological health in mind? That's one of the questions gnawing at Janae Peters, Hawken teacher and member of the team designing the Mastery School.

Janae returns to the pod to talk about the whys and hows of embedding social-emotional learning into the very fabric of school life. For more, read her most recent post, "How to Make a School Human and Humane."

A few other mentions on the episode for those paying close attention:

• Pedro Noguera's research on Social-Emotional Learning
• The teaching methods of The Korda Institute for Teaching
• The Harvard Business Review article about strengths-based learning

On November 17, 200 or so people gathered at The Mastery School of Hawken's Open House. We thought it was a great time to take the pod out of the studio and record an episode in front of a live audience. Our topic: a deep dive into Macros -- the core building blocks of the academic program at the Mastery School of Hawken.

Julia Hodges, Roze Kerr ‘21, Luke Kim ‘20, and Katie McGregor of United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Cleveland join the pod to detail how the Engineering Macro works and makes a difference in the lives of everyone involved.

For a glimpse into the Engineering Macro, take a look at this short video. 

In our final installment of our Meet the Team episodes, meet Nick Cheadle, Spanish teacher and intrepid traveler. Nick joined Hawken this fall and serves as a key member of the design team for the Mastery School of Hawken. Hear about his background and his vision for how students can learn about language, culture, and themselves.