Laura K Spencer, Ed.D.

Year: 2018

Pickle Hives and Design Thinking

“Babe, I was eating a pickle and it made my feet break out in hives!”

Not quite the greeting I was looking for after an exhausting 14 hour day of work, evening teaching, and traffic, but that’s what welcomed me at home. And sure enough there were giant welts all over his feet.

“Pickles did not give you hives. That’s crazy. You sure you didn’t get bit by an army of baby spiders or something?”

And so it began… the back and forth over the cause, and solution, for the sudden hives.

But I’ll get back to that story in a minute. Because this post is actually about problems. And HMW (How Might We) questions. And goals.

Our leadership team has been digging into culture, and the purpose of school, for a couple years now. Last year was the official first year of our five year plan to transform from a 20th century model of knowledge delivery and compliance to an extraordinary school experience that values the student and his/her inner genius. It was a year filled with first attempts, discoveries, and questions. All of those brought learnings and wonders and even more questions. And through those experiences, we developed a common vision and understanding of the WHY of our five year plan.

While setting the stage for this school year with the superintendent and assistant superintendent, we realized that, in order for the leadership team to dig deeper into the WHAT and the HOW of the plan, the 20th century model of setting goals and yearlong action plans in August wasn’t going to work. That model is based on the premise that the person setting the goals knows the path that needs to be taken, has an understanding of how to reach the destination, and can do so by an arbitrary deadline. Instead, our goal setting process needed to support our learning journey.

After reflecting on the vision of our plan, the purpose of setting goals, and the monumental work that lay ahead of us, we realized this year’s goals needed to center around identifying, understanding, and addressing a problem that was impeding the district vision.

So together, our leadership team identified problems. Some were instructional in nature, while others identified outdated or cumbersome systems and structures that stifled innovative actions.

Once everyone articulated a problem connected to their site and/or department, time was spent developing a HMW statement to begin understanding the problem more deeply. We shared our articulations with each other for feedback, pushback, and refinement.

And then some of us started identifying a problem with our problems.

Turns out, our HMWs had personal hunches embedded within them which was inadvertently skewing them into solution questions instead of problem probing questions. Here’s an example*:

Problem: Lack of student engagement during writing instruction.

HMW: How might teachers provide students with personalized topic choices so as to increase student engagement during writing instruction?

See the hunch? How do we know personalization is the key to increase the engagement of these identified students? We don’t. It’s a hunch. And that hunch can take us down a road of creating solutions to the wrong problem. Because in reality, personalized topic choices are a potential solution. They could show up on a post-it while ideating. But they shouldn’t have a home in our question.

Once we realized our preconceived solutions sneaking into the problem statement, we pushed more on the problem and the HMW and a second version emerged:

Problem: The Principal has observed a lack of student engagement during writing instruction for a group of 4th grade students.

HMW:How might 4th grade teachers create engaging learning opportunities within the teaching of writing so as to increase students’ active involvement in the writing process?

Now we’re getting somewhere. This question requires empathy-building with the end-user, aka 4th grade students, so as to figure out what may be causing their disengagement. Boredom? Too hard? Too easy? Language barriers? Personal issues? Something else? This version is not based on a hunch, but on a desire to understand and respond accordingly.

This goal-setting approach models a learning-centered culture. One not built on hunches. But on a design thinking mindset, which is pretty darn exciting!

As for John, we learned, after doing some good ol’ Google research, there actually IS such a thing as pickle hives, although it’s technically an allergy to a preservative used in some pickling methods. So maybe his hunch was correct after all. And maybe I should have stayed in the problem space with him a bit instead of jumping to my own conclusion.

(Although I have to say, I think an army of baby spiders is a much cooler end to his story than 2 Benadryls and some calamine lotion…)

*Not a real problem shared during our collaboration, but used here to illustrate what I was trying to say.

You know what’d make me happy? If you shared the link to this post with two friends. I’d be super happy if one of those two subscribed to my posts. Learning together is way more fun than learning on my own.

August 8, 2018
Relationships. Culture. Twitter. OY!
I was at a Women in Educational Leadership the other day, and one of the sessions presented by a local superintendent was on culture. She shared four essentials for creating a positive culture. They are:
- Energize and Encourage People
- Foster Connected Relationships and Teams
- Provide Opportunities for People to Do Their Best Work
- Empower and Enable People to Learn and Grow
After she shared the categories, she had us walk around the room and get ideas from others as to ways in which to provide those essentials. That time to talk about our ideas, elaborate on them and create new ones together created our own positive culture. In those few moments with each other we were truly listening, engaging with each other and building a sense of connection.

It’s what’s missing on Twitter. Lately, Twitter seems to be filled with dime store platitudes lacking any depth. If I could get a dime for every time someone says relationships are the key… the key to student engagement, the key to school culture, the key to learning gaps… without explaining just how to develop those relationships, I could pay off my student loans!

So I’m sharing my notes from our walkabout and challenging everyone to add an item. Let’s not just talk relationships and culture. Let’s talk about the work we are/should/can do to create positive cultures that truly promote relationships.

Notes from my walkabout. Template provided by Supt Candace Singh
July 4, 2018
Teachers Are Tired of Robert Marzano – Teacher Habits Blog

Marzano deserves our anger. But at this point, what he really deserves is to be ignored.
— Read on teacherhabits.com/marzano/

Sometimes it’s best just to share the words of others without adding any commentary. Enjoy the read.

July 3, 2018
Preparing for Life, or Preparing for School?

Being as my role includes the words “innovation” and “design,” I often talk to parents about shifts in educational practice, and why they are happening. Our district is elementary only, so some parents naturally worry about what will happen to their children after they leave an innovative elementary experience.

The question usually goes something like this:

Are my children going to be prepared for a traditional ______
(middle school, high school, college) experience?

It made me think about my own children, and what I prepared them for, and how I prepared them. I knew there’d be a time when both my girls would have their hearts broken by a love interest. But never did I think to myself, “Perhaps I should break their heart fnow so they are prepared for this moment.”

Instead, I focus on building confidence and independence in my daughters. I model resilience by being open about my own disappointing life experiences. I share books, articles, movies, and songs with positive life messages. And above all else, I encourage open dialogue with them so they see me as a source of support, and not fear.

I didn’t need to break their hearts to prepare them for heartbreak. They have each experienced the woes of teenage angst, and unreturned love, and came out a stronger, more determined woman.

Likewise, I don’t feel children need to be prepared for traditional school experiences by mimicking those experiences. Instead, children should be taught the skills they will need to thrive and find success regardless of the situation in which they are placed. If they learn critical problem finding and solving skills; how to collaborate with a team, even if the team is less than ideal; ways to empathize with others; and how to engage in creative thought and process they will be equipped with the skills to not only get them through the outdated, err traditional, school experience, but they’ll also have the skills to be successful in life.

I suggest we help parents instead pose the question:

Are my children going to be equipped with skills needed for a successful life,
regardless of their _____ (middle school, high school, college) experience?

June 22, 2018
My Boyfriend Is Smarter Than Me…

I have five degrees. Five! An Associate degree, a Bachelor’s degree with a double major, a Master of Arts degree, a Master of Science degree, and a Doctorate in Education. I love school.

And yet, even with all those fancy certificates, my boyfriend is smarter than me. He’s a welder. No fancy college degrees. But he can build and create and fix and imagine in ways my brain can’t comprehend.

John fabricating seat mounts for our ’68 Jeep I nicknamed Wabi Sabi.

Case in point: We bought a Jeep. A ’68 Jeep that hadn’t been loved in a very long time. It had been parked in a field for 15 years, stripped of its elements and left abandoned to nature. No seats. No pedals. No steering assembly. All wiring stripped and sitting in a pile in the cab. Rusty nuts and bolts that belong somewhere filled a coffee can.

And yet he is rebuilding it. There’s no manual for this. No YouTube video series that connects all the dots. He has to figure it out. He IS figuring it out. Sometimes with parts that are there. Sometimes with new parts he is purchasing. And sometimes with parts he fabs up on his own. Watching him work mesmerizes me. His ability to see in three dimensions, and to understand the interdependency of systems and how they contribute to the overall form and function, is a form of genius I don’t possess.

I share all this with you not just because I am insanely proud of his skills (although I am!), but because I think it’s important to remember that there is not one best way to learn. As much as I love school and books and conversations about school and books, John would shrivel up in that environment.

Our experiences often have a greater impact on us than degrees ever will!
— Jonathan Spike (@Mr_JSpike)

When I started play teaching my dolls and neighborhood friends at age six, I knew everything and dispensed my knowledge to them through worksheets I drew, and books I read, and homework I made them complete (my poor friends!). When I started actual teaching twenty years later, not much had changed. I still made worksheets for my students, and read books with (and to) them, and assigned homework. Over the years, I learned and adapted to a 1:1 environment, and brought in Genius Hour and Project Based Learning. But sadly, and I am not proud to admit this, I controlled much of the learning structure in my room.

But our role as teachers is changing. We need to be cognizant of the needs of our learners. All our learners. Not just the ones that are compliant. Not just the ones that are college bound. Not just the ones that look like and sound like we do.

And part of that change is the realization that the best way to support a learner may simply be to get out of his/her way and let the learning figure itself out, like it does for John.

***

If you like Jeeps, or just watching things come to life, feel free to follow along via Instagram @wabisabi68jeep as we get this thing desert ready!

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June 19, 2018
Has It Only Been a Year?

To culminate the school year, my Innovation and Design team published a blog post reflecting on all that we accomplished, and more importantly, all that we LEARNED, this past school year.

It’s crazy to think we’ve only been working together for one school year, and yet in that time, we co-planned with classroom teachers to create 65 design thinking units. There were other design thinking opportunities provided to students that we weren’t directly involved in, too.

Below is an excerpt from that reflection. I share it here because I think the learnings are universal to many. You can view the original blog post as well, which also includes a fun infographic.

*****

When people think and act like a designer, they must be able to see not just what is, but what might be (Berger, Cad Monkeys). The design thinking opportunities teachers facilitated for students this year truly exposed students to what might be by helping students discover their inner genius, and then empowering students to use that genius to advance the world. We watched in awe as students demonstrated sincere empathy and felt a call to action within, and outside of, design thinking experiences. We felt joy when watching the faces of teachers as they saw their students demonstrate their passion for learning. And we enjoyed seeing those proud parents listen to their children present their prototype solutions at packed exhibitions!

And we learned a lot, too! We learned…
– how important it is to always start with why and to know the priorities. When people understand the why and have an opportunity to be a voice in building the how and what, there is a greater success in change efforts.
– that every site and teacher, just like every student, has unique qualities requiring a customized approach to integrate design thinking experiences.
– connecting with industry experts to not only dive deeper into the content standards and relevant application to careers today, but to provide high-quality feedback on student thinking, exponentially increases student learning. And that expeditionary partnerships with local organizations is truly a game changer that leads to extraordinary experiences for students!
– a constant feedback loop is important from all stakeholders. Feedback, or better yet, feedforward, is an art form, and we are all working towards being master artists.
– our beliefs and experiences inform our actions. It is critical to give people an opportunity to experience something new for themselves so that they are empowered to contribute to leading change initiatives.

DMUSD Innovation & Design Team

June 18, 2018