Jade, Mike and I had a chance to sit with the teachers at Willis Junior High‘s iAcademy. This is a new program to the Chandler Unified School District. Principal Jeff Delp is pushing against the status quo and gave us the opportunity to explore.
We took the time to do the human thing and asked them “How can we help you get where you want to be?“. It looked something like this.
Quick introductions to the staff with an explanation about putting our brain in play mode. How might we do this? How about some improv (Yes Jose, Improv!). We pulled some of our favorites from Forty’s morning warm ups out. Playing electric company and then one word story. It was absolutely hilarious. After a few seconds of awkward they fell right into the playful and real selves. (approx 10 min)
We then jumped in the four C’s exercise. This is a quick exercise we use at a lot of corporations that helps illicits the Characters, Characteristics, Components and Challenges around a system. In this case the iAcademy. This is a highly interactive session that has teams and lightning quick data collection. In about 25 minutes they collected the following items.
From there we took another 15 minutes to independently brainstorm items for ideas that we could tackle based on the insight gained from the 4C’s data collection. Below is a list of 40 items generated:
- Peer to Peer Teaching
- Individualized Instruction
- 21st Century Purpose “Define It”
- More Collaboration w/ Teachers In Similar Programs/Content Areas
- Almost Completely Open Internet
- Other Blended Schools
- Cross Class Room Sessions
- Create a Community of Practice
- Opportunities to Engage with Other Risk Takers
- How can this scale beyond an experiment?
- Tech Accessibility
- IS Needs to be a partner and respond quickly to our best interests
- Standardized testing (this teaching doesn’t translate to tests)
- More technology (tablets, video editing software)
- Lack of funding to take program to next level
- Restrictive technology policies
- Shared vision. What is the ideal?
- More time to plan 7th & 8th
- Stop focusing on the technology
- Skills first content second
- How can I differentiate for 100 different levels of math
- Self organized students and teachers
- Where can I find discovery math lessons
- What is the focus of iAcademy
- Publicity and/or marketing to the community and future students
- What are the expectations of the students
- How to share experiences and challenges with others who can help
- Mentor for problem based learning
- Access to better lab facilities and more chemicals
- Student/Parent teacher feed back forum
- Individualized learning vs standardized tests
- More engaging classroom layouts
- Evangelism
- Physical environment to foster creativity
- Conferences to get more ideas
- Shared vision without a box
- Truly student driven
- How to teach knowledge workers
- Willingness to make mistakes
- More student ownership of how/when things are done
We then quickly dot voted the top items that could really make an impact. The items above in bold were the top 10.
We immediately walked away saying we could tackle the following low hanging fruit.
- Run an agile project liftoff to set team vision for iAcademy
- Connect iAcademy with Litchfield Park school using Scrum and academy in Tullamore, Ireland doing blended learning
- Work with the IRC and district to tackle current Internet policies
- Brainstorm professional development opportunities for teachers wanting to move the bar
- Setup open space for faculty from within district to share experience
- Work with staff and facilities to challenge classroom layout’s
- Connect school to community in meaningful ways
What an inspiring hour. We learned a lot. Already there is a K-6 hacknight in the works at a local school and new programs for professional development programs at ASU being discussed from this conversation.
I plan on sharing more thoughts and how you can help. Our people are our greatest asset. It is far more productive to cultivate talent than it is to import it. It starts with us. No More Bricks! If you want to help hack education let me know and follow No More Bricks!
