My major takeaways from the Learning Forward conference include some valuable new facilitation protocols that Julie Hannah, Jackie Walsh and I gathered and hope to share in the coming months with many of you who participate in the ABPC networks – and some “big ideas” shared by three memorable keynoters.
Ron Clark Academy: Dynamic Learning
I was also very impressed with “celebrity” educator Ron Clark, who gained a lot of attention some years ago with the publication of his book The Essential 55: An Award-Winning Educator’s Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child, accompanied by appearances on Oprah, CNN and other media venues. Clark, a former Disney Teacher of the Year who drew his “rules” from teaching experiences in both North Carolina and Harlem NY, went on to found the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta.
I’ll confess that I was a bit skeptical about what I would hear from Clark, after all the personal publicity, but what he had to say really blew me away. It’s clear that he’s managed to leverage his name recognition and positive “buzz” to create an exciting middle grades program serving a diverse commuity of students who clearly love this learning experience.
Rather than trying to describe the Academy myself, let me share this video about the school and its philosophy, produced by an Atlanta PBS station. It features both Clark and RCA co-founder and executive director Kim Bearden, another Disney TOY. I’ll share one memorable quote from the video: “Our students, by the time they leave 8th grade, will have traveled to six out of the seven continents.”
Clark was the last of our Learning Forward keynote speakers, and one powerful point he made — it was a question, really – continues to surface in my mind: Why do some teachers pull each other down?
Reeves and Hargreaves: What Works
Two other thought-provoking keynote speakers – Doug Reeves and Andy Hargreaves – also left me with some great takeaways.
Doug Reeves, best known for his 90/90/90 (challenging) school studies and his practical approach to standards, assessment and accountability, organized his talk around what he called “Four Arguments.”
1) Focus on people and practices, not programs.
2) Even the best initiative will fail without effective leadership.
3) Schools that need the most focus usually don’t have it.
4) Tools exist to give schools that focus.
To gain the tight focus on teaching and learning that every school needs, Reeves identified six areas supported by research:
1) Consistent and ongoing use of formative feedback for adults and students.
2) Use time well.
3) Employ high expectations.
4) Bolster efficacy.
5) Emphasize non-fiction writing: describing, persuading, analyzing.
6) Monitor progress of both students and ADULTS.
You can explore many of Reeves’ ideas at this Webinars Archive page on his Leadership and Learning Center website.
I first came to know about Andy Hargreaves through the series of “What’s Worth Fighting For…” books he co-authored with school leadership expert Michael Fullan in the late ‘90s. Hargreaves has gone on to write many other books – several of which have won scholarly and popular awards. His most recent, The Fourth Way, is co-authored with Dennis Shirley and describes “a successful and sustainable fourth way to integrate teacher professionalism, community engagement, government policy, and accountability.”
Hargreaves began his presentation by noting that “We are the people we learn with.” He went on to recap the results from a groundbreaking study of 18 organizations – spanning three continents and five countries and ranging from beer breweries to schools to shoe manufacturers – that consistently outperformed competitors.
While synthesizing their findings, Hargreaves and the other principal investigator Alma Harris, were able to identify “powerful combinations of factors and core sets of leadership, change and improvement principles that make performance beyond expectations much more likely and achieveable.” (Performing Beyond Expectations Executive Summary, 2010, p.5). The authors used alliteration as they surfaced 15 “F-Factors” shared by the 18 organizations.
I’ll spare you a recounting of all 15 factors here, but you can quickly scan them in the executive summary. I do want to highlight three that I found particularly intriguing:
F1: The Fantastic Dream – The organizations “aspire to and articulate an improbable collectively held fantasy or dream that is bolder and more challenging than a plan or even a vision. It’s not about simply being the ‘best’ or ‘world class,’ but more about an ‘inspiring and definable destination to reach for.’” As an example, Hargreaves pointed to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, reminding us that he talked about a dream, not a strategic plan.
F2: The Fear – The organizational leader often risks “failure, ridicule, humiliation and even extinction in a way that galvanizes a commitment to change.” As an example, Hargreaves pointed to Shoebuy.com, which in the early 1990s switched from mailing catalogues to doing all if its business via the Internet, an unheard-of business model 20 years ago.
F14: Friendly Rivalry – These 18 organizations seek opportunities to collaborate with their competitors because they know that the best way to improve is to help someone else. They also “have a sense of social justice in providing service to less fortunate neighbors.” Hargreaves calls this the “collaborative edge.” As an example, he points to Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, which started a new beer with a major competitor so they could collectively “promote their shared vision of micro-brewing together.”
A final reflection
As the Learning Forward conference drew to a close, and we pulled out of Atlanta on the road back to Montgomery, my head was full of new ideas, inspiration, and hope. When I joined A+ almost two decades ago I remember one of our consultants telling us: We know what to do. The question is: Do we have the will to do it? I think that is even more true today. We’ve seen a great boom in educational research about what really works for students and teachers. The Internet and great conferences like Learning Forward give us up-close access to this wealth of knowledge. The questions before us all are: What can we do to ensure that all students get the type of education they deserve? And: Do we have the will to get it done?
