Module 4: III.) Questioning Our Assumptions pt. 1

Now, as we share some examples of schools that are actually changing these assumptions and playing with these decisions, don't get too fixated on the actual decisions that they make. You may agree with some, you may disagree with others, it's not the point. What we're trying to illustrate is that you actually have these assumptions as things that you can play with in your context. They're choices that you can make.

So Summit looked at their school calendar and they had two desired outcomes. The first was for students. The second was for adults. For students, they wanted an environment where students could go deep on extracurricular or electives for a sustained amount of time. And for staff, they just wanted more PD time during the year to spend really thoughtful time in training with each other. So they looked at their calendar and they built these things called intercessions, which look a lot like a college campus intercession. For a couple weeks at a time, students work with either a set of teachers or community partners to do deep and meaningful sustained projects. And during that time, the staff have really rich professional development time with each other. Now, they used to have a very traditional schedule and they went after this change and in the process created something that looks very new and very different.

So when we started really rethinking our school model, one of the things we tried to free ourselves from was the traditional year long calendar, just like we tried to free ourselves from the sort of traditional bell schedule. And so we started with kind of a blank slate and we said, you know, what would be ideal, what would be optimal? And clearly there are some constraints because our society still has this notion of sort of summer break and things like that. But within reason, we said, you know, really, how long do we need to spend on an annual basis for kids to really be able to, you know, progress in the way we want them to progress and to learn the content and learn the skills they need to learn. And how can we rethink that year so that it's not like start and then run all the way to the end before you have a breather or a break or a time to reflect. And so we've done something really innovative, which is we have taken eight weeks of the school year, so really 20% of the students time in school for a year and, and said, you know, we know we value kids having authentic real world experiences where they're able to follow passions and do a deep dive and be in the community. Let's give them that opportunity during the school year. In our case, we've broken it up so three, two, Week periods and two one week periods scattered throughout the year. And let's give them the time to sort of step back from the regular day to day, to be able to reflect, to be able to immerse themselves in something else, to get that sort of breather and break and in a sense restart. Very powerful for students, not only what they're doing for that during that time, but what their, that break, if you will. But even more powerful is what it does for teachers because it gives our teachers eight weeks spread throughout the year, very strategically where they have time to professionally develop, where they have time to work as a team, who, where they have time to look at the data around their students and reconfigure and do these iteration cycles where they're really thinking about and looking at data of what they've built and what they're learning and how they can iterate on that and regroup around that and be true leaders. It's so incredibly powerful and I think it's one of the key drivers for how we're able to move our model forward so quickly, so efficiently and so effectively. And so, and I think a beautiful example of how you can take what's best for kids, principles and things you value and find a way to leverage that to make the model really, really work very well.

Now that's one way we've seen people start to play with the school calendar. Some schools we're familiar with are actually going to year round schooling and they're doing this in a variety of ways, having flexible groupings for students. They're doing very specific tracks so that they have different vacations and staggering the schedule within the school. And we're seeing all manner of innovations.

This, what we think is important is to remember that everything is a tool. The calendar can be a tool. Don't assume that it has to be the way it's always been. Think about your desired student outcomes that you want that learning environment and figure out how your calendar can support that.

Now, of all the schools that we're looking at, KIPP probably has the most different looking school day itself. Now you may be aware, but KIPP has made a very big commitment across its 140plus schools to have extended learning days for each child. And often the schedule goes from 7:30am.

To 5:00pm now, whatever you think about an extended school day, I happen to think length of time matters a lot. It's an interesting question to still ask, well, does this have to be true for every student? If we believe in our mastery based ideals, what if some Students need an extended school day and others don't. Could we envision a system where students could show mastery and maybe get an earlier release or even have a day of the week that they didn't have to come to school or, or that they could work on projects that they cared most about because they've already shown that they know it. So again, if you think about changing the length of the school day, you don't have to think in a uniform block of every student. We're still focusing on what individual students need.

And this brings up a really interesting question, which is everyone's favorite, which is homework. Now, do we actually need the same concept of homework that we've always had? Or if we're really focused on mastery, can we let the students decide where they do the work?

So we hold them to the bar of what they need to learn and whether they do it in school or at home almost becomes irrelevant. Carpe Diem in Arizona and Indianapolis combine these two ideas of question and homework and whether all students need the same schedule to create one of these models where students who's demonstrated mastery can take their Fridays off or work on something they're interested in. And similarly, Navigator Schools has built their schedule with an early release each day for students who are on pace and showing mastery. They get to go and either go home or work on something they want to. And the students who need more work to demonstrate mastery stay and get small group or one on one time with their teachers.

Another organization, Education for Change, is starting a new blended learning school called Epic. And at Epic, what they're going to do is introduce this time of flex time for each student. So similar to how Google gives each of its employees 20% time where they can choose the work that they want to work on. Basically what's going to happen in Epic is that as students demonstrate mastery, they're going to be able to earn this flex time so that they can choose what they want to learn. We've talked a lot about the use of time in this course and we even showed you how students schedules change back in week two.

So today let's focus on how people use time across the whole day as well as how the heck people manage this day to day in a school when there's these kind of different schedules happening.

Now one of the things we've emphasized is that when you move to blended learning, teachers can use time much more effectively within a classroom. But our protagonist schools don't just stop there. They're also thinking about how do you combine classes in novel Ways rethink schedules and actually move beyond using that time effectively just within a classroom.

Right. So in KIPP la they do a rotation within the classroom, but they also rotate between classrooms to mix and match students and teachers all around. The idea of getting the right kid in front of the right adult for.

The right lesson, we thought, wait, why don't we play to our strengths? We have a teacher who's really good at getting the low babies up. We have a teacher who's really good at getting those bubble students. So the students that are right in the bubble, proficient, advanced, pushing them all the way up and getting them solid, advanced. So why don't we play to our strengths? So we started mixing the kids, we started sending kids to different teachers for the math blog to make sure that they were truly getting what they needed.

Similarly, think about how Navigator schools created a school wide schedule that allows teachers to peel off students as they've mastered material so they can dive in deeper with the students who are still struggling with a concept.

I'll give you an example. A second grader would begin the day in the math class. They have a 60 minute math lesson. And at the end of that 60 minute math lesson, we assess the students learning for that day on what we call daily learning objective. Those who got it go on to the blended learning part and do ST math for 30 minutes. The rest are pulled into small group intervention. We have a para that comes in and covers the computer time. While the students are working, the teachers are working with the kids.

And these lab rotational models are going to require school wide coordination because you have fixed resources like a lab and different students using them. So this is by definition going to bring everybody in the school together, coordinated on schedule.

Now, as we think about a flex model, the opportunities for school wide reinvention around schedule become even greater. And the reason is because we lose those distinct demarcations between subject matter times because in essence, students are picking when they want to do math, foreign language, reading, social studies, science, within that period of flexible learning.

So at Carpe Diem, the school we mentioned in Arizona and Indianapolis, they have large open blocks of time, often multiple hours. And one student might spend a little bit more time on math and a little less time on English. And this is really nice because why do we think that all knowledge can be broken down into a 57 minute chunk? Some activities are going to just take more time and that's really hard to do if the bell rings and sends kids on every 57 minutes.

We've created time and space for Students to really drive their own learning. We call this personalized learning time. Personalized learning time in our schools for one day a week happens in a really large chunk of time. And during that time, students are also engaged in a one to one conversation with their mentor. So it's this combination. And really what we were driving for here is that we wanted students to sort of build that muscle, if you will, to get the experience of thinking about a longer chunk of time, a big stretch of time that they really were going to control in terms of planning for it, setting goals, actually working their way through it, accessing resources, seeking appropriate help. And we felt like the way schools are traditionally structured, students really only have short chunks of time in which they're asked to do, do that. We wanted to give them a longer period of time that they could really build that muscle, because we do think that's more like college, career and life, that you're going to have those big open spans of time that you really have to think about. We also wanted to give kids the chance to really do a deep dive and to get immersed in their learning and thinking about something and be able to really chase it down for a longer period of time before they have to pick up and move on to something, something. And finally, as we think about where our model is going, because we're just at the beginning, the idea that there could be a day in the week where eventually students could really drive their own learning and say, you know what? I don't need to be on campus for this whole day. Well, I need to be in an internship because I know where I want to go or I want to explore this career. And I'm really good right now. I've got my skills down, I've got my plan down. I'm learning and, and this is what's meaningful to me and more impactful for me. The idea that we could give that time to them and free that up and be flexible is really exciting. And I'm looking forward to the next iterations on our model that allow for that personalization.

At Acton Academy, which is a blended learning school in Austin, Texas, the school gives students two to three and a half hours each day where they can pick and choose what they work on to meet their individual learning goals. So some students may be working on math by consuming videos on Khan Academy, or working through Aleks, which is a math software program. And others might be working on English, or still others learning their foreign language through Rosetta Stone.

And this idea of flexible schedules is not a us only phenomenon. Especially for those of you taking this course internationally, take a look in Sweden, an organization called Kunstkup Kollan, which has schools in Sweden, New York and other settings here, students actually create much of their own schedule each day.

So they've essentially eliminated this notion of a classroom schedule. And students are progressing through their own individual pathways. And they actually divide classes up in steps. So there's steps one through 35 that students are working on. And it might actually seem sort of chaotic, but from the student's point of view, they have a strict schedule. It's determined by their learning goals, which they record in a log book, and they work their way through them.

And it's fine for Michael to be on step 34 and me to be on step three, but we both know where we are, and there's a minimum that they're ensuring everybody is still making progress at. Now, I want to pause for a minute and put my old principal's hat back on, because if I'm honest with myself, it was really hard to manage just one master schedule. And I used to fanatically look at the right teacher, the right room. To think about building flexibility into that would have been like playing three dimensional chess. And I think it would have been really hard for me.

Me.

So I want to put two ideas out of how people are working on this. The first is to really still hold that control and to put just as much attention to the master schedules we've always done. But now to really build in that flexibility. And this is hard work, but it's doable. It's almost like being a wedding planner on steroids. You have to get everybody in the right seat, but Uncle Joe can't sit next to Aunt Sally. And then what happens if there's a disaster? But if we think about flexibility as a piece of the scheduling matrix, it actually can be done. And schools are doing this new model.

Now, if we move to a flex model, this sort of demonstrates the second option in front of us, which is to sort of relax our rigidity around each minute of the school day and let students actually own and drive the learning. So if we look at our flex schools like Summit and Acton Academy and others, basically students are making those decisions about how they use that individual learning time themselves.

And again, this isn't all day. Take away the rules. We think school schools need lots of structures and systems to hold kids accountable. But could we envision a part of the day where for some amount of time, kids have more control and therefore more flexibility? We think yes. And this is a win for students because there's nothing that says I need to spend just as much time on my reading as I do math or that Michael has that same formula. If we can let each student customize a bit, it will be a more efficient learning system.

And if we think about post secondary success, it seems logical that students will do much better in the post secondary or workforce environments if they've had the experience of managing their workload at the K12 level.