School’s Out for the Summer! Revisiting the Hypotheses Behind Next Gen Learning

Many of NGLC’s school models are based on working hypotheses about how schools might be better designed to meet student needs. As we wrap up this academic year, it’s a good time to reflect on the hypotheses behind next gen learning, so I asked several of our leading school innovators to answer two questions:

• What was one hypothesis you had at the beginning of the year that proved accurate?
• What was one hypothesis you had at the beginning of the year that proved inaccurate?

Caroline Hill, Principal
E.L. Haynes High School (Washington, DC)
NGLC Regionals Grantee: CityBridge Foundation

Accurate Hypothesis: Learning habits facilitate content mastery. They may be as important or even more. A thoughtful, responsive, self-paced curriculum can facilitate the development of essential meta-cognitive skills for learning. When the curriculum teaches the habits of engagement and the hows of learning, learners can apply these skills in novel contexts. Habits of learning should be valued, taught, and assessed as much as content mastery.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: Tech enabled = Personalized. There is a device divide and an engagement divide. Even in tech-enabled classrooms, students need to learn how to engage, navigate, discern, manage, and create new ideas with ubiquitous content. In our personalized classroom, some students will use the internet to learn new skills and answer questions. Others will ask a teacher or a fellow student. A few will access reference textbooks. While these are all resources, some develop more independence and agency than others. Personalization with access to ubiquitous content can help students develop the learning skills needed to thrive in content rich environments. One to one campaigns close the device divide. Personalization can close the engagement divide.

Adam Carter, Chief Academic Officer
Summit Public Schools (California & Washington)
NGLC National Grantee: 2012 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: Assessing, tracking, and reporting on ‘Habits of Success’ (qualities of Emotional Intelligence, Self-Directed Learning, and Learning Strategies) is going to be difficult work with lots of fits and starts.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: Math, as a high school subject, cannot be conceptualized (in assessment, curriculum, and instruction) in precisely the same way as other disciplines. (Math is also not to be conceptualized entirely differently from every other discipline, but it does have qualities that make it unique.)

Sara Cotner, Founder
Montessori for All (Austin, TX)
NGLC National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: This work is hard and humbling but so necessary and worth it.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: I had hoped that I could plan my way around the pain of launching a new school, but I couldn't. I just had to put my head down and walk straight through it.

Chip Linehan, Founder
Building 21 (Philadelphia, PA)
NGLC National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: Relationships lie at the foundation of everything we do - true personalization begins with knowing our students: who they are, what they care about, what they aspire to, what they are passionate about, what they are curious about, etc.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: We assumed that to effectively divorce ourselves from the "default culture" of urban secondary schooling that we needed to completely break away from traditional high school structures right out of the gate. This was incorrect. What we really needed to do was to provide a "bridge" to our new personalized approach to high school in which teachers, in particular, could safely explore and learn how to change their practice over time.

Nicole Assisi, Founder
Thrive Public Schools (San Diego, CA)
NGLC National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: If you build a high quality school in a low income neighborhood you can draw a diverse community. People doubted our ability to bring in a truly diverse student body that represents our city and we did--17 zip codes, 20% ELL, 60 % FRL, some families drive 45 minutes each way to get here. That is the power of a great vision, exceptional staff, and an innovative, student-centered instructional program.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: You cannot defy the laws of the “innovation cycle.” Greatness takes time and sometimes you have to pick where you start. At the beginning of the year we wanted to do it all--technology, culture, content and community. We quickly learned that the most important piece we must first get right before anything else is our school culture and then we could add in additional components.

Benny Lile, Superintendent
Metcalfe County Schools, KY
NGLC National Grantee: 2015 Planning Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: If quality and consistent digital learning opportunities are made available, reluctant staff members will at least acknowledge the fact that it can be a viable path for students.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: That everyone could see, understand and appreciate my long term vision. I have learned that some people do better proceeding one step at a time. We are all different. There is no right or wrong in this statement. It is just human nature. What is important is that we, as leaders, recognize and understand this and react accordingly.

Solomon Lieberman
Intrinsic Schools (Chicago, IL)
NGLC National Grantee: 2013 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: A big classroom space for 50+ students team-taught by three adults empowered by technology can fuel differentiation, produce small-group instruction opportunities, and motivate students to connect with their own learning.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: That you need a separate time dedicated to online programs. Instead, we learned they should be integrated into the normal flow of class.

Ray Schleck, School Leader and Designer
Match Next (Boston, MA)
National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: Kids adapt quickly; they aren't phased by 'new classroom models.' If you don't have a good plan or good people, they'll sniff it out in an instant, no matter how you rearrange the chairs.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: Digital content would save teachers time creating curricula.

Ken Montgomery and Nicole Cerra 
Design Tech High School (Milbrae, CA)
National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: Students have superpowers. We believe that when students are given autonomy and authentic learning experiences they can produce results beyond what we could even imagine for them. Whether it was building wearable technology, running the school dance, or designing our learning space, they consistently delivered beyond our expectations.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: Our community will always love innovation. We misjudged how easy it is for students, parents, and staff to retreat to familiar practices in the face of ambiguity. We constantly had to believe in the process and push against a return to the status quo when things weren't working on the first try.

Dean Harris, MYP and Curriculum Coordinator 
DC International School (Washington, DC)
Regional Grantee: Breakthrough Schools: D.C.

Accurate Hypothesis: If students have choice, they have greater interest in learning and achieve better outcomes. 

Inaccurate Hypothesis: It is impossible to be an effective coach/advocate and an evaluator. Throughout the year, I have discovered that if there is trust, and protocols to aid objectivity, and there is a good understanding of the difference between critiquing and criticism, it is possible to be both a coach and an evaluator.

Jeremy Chiappetta, Executive Director
Blackstone Valley Prep (Cumberland, RI)
National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: I figured that starting a next gen high school would be really challenging. Yup, we can check that box. 

Inaccurate Hypothesis: I figured that because of the new school design (and a host of other contributing factors) that we might lose a number of our young people to other choices...that hasn't happened yet...and we are working hard to keep it that way!

Erin Mote, Founder
Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School (Brooklyn, NY)
National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: A decisive factor of overall school effectiveness would be the purposeful use of technology to enhance teacher ability to support personalized learning. As a part of this hypothesis, InnovateEDU is developing Cortex, a secure, dynamic, digital, next generation learning platform that interconnects instructional tools, digital content, student goal setting and feedback, formative assessments, and administration applications. It also captures data to build a rich picture of each student’s learning and progression, including demographic information, course and program enrollment, assessment, grades, and attendance. It securely delivers this information back to instructors, administrators, students, and families via various applications. Our hypothesis was that consolidating operational, instructional, and assessment data in a single place would allow educators to take concrete action on this data, thereby maximizing learner outcomes. Investing in Cortex proved to be a decision that paid dividends that we couldn’t imagine—from students taking ownership of their achievements and areas for improvement, to our ability to understand the “whole student” as a staff and faculty and adjust our practice accordingly. Our investment in Cortex was central to realizing the promise of our academic model. 

Inaccurate Hypothesis: The more adults we had in the building, the better it would be for everyone, regardless of said adults’ ability to build relationships with our scholars. I was wrong. I underestimated the challenge of building a high performing adult culture while having 24 recent college graduates in the building whose first professional experience was during the founding year of a school serving a diverse population. I underestimated the challenge of identifying the type of personnel who could encounter an environment rich in complexity and constantly demanding flexibility. I should have hired differently, trained differently, and been more adept at identifying the skill set that would make someone successful at this work. It’s not about having more adults in the building—it’s about having adults who understand the need for building relationships with our scholars and whose relationships extend well beyond the novel, problem set, or enrichment they are teaching.

Eric Tucker, Founder 
Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School (Brooklyn, NY)
National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: We set out believing that great school design emerges from serving students from the most diverse ZIP Codes on the planet. LAB serves students with widely divergent levels of preparation and a variety of learning dispositions and needs. Each day, we learn more about how to design whole schools that push all students to meet high standards while at the same time motivating and supporting the most underprepared students. We hoped that recruiting academically talented students with high aspirations and students with special educational needs to the same school would shed insight into how best to recuperate and accelerate learning within students’ personalized learning plans. Serving a diverse set of learners requires a departure from business as usual school models and one size fits all approaches. We’ve learned about how to ensure that learning experiences should meet students where they are, engage them deeply in inquiry and mastery, and tailor challenges in a dynamic, personal manner.

Inaccurate Hypothesis: I overestimated the importance of reconfiguring individual elements of school design (e.g. learning time, technology, teacher support). Again and again, we’ve learned that in order to truly do school differently, we must fundamentally redesign how teaching, time, technology, and resources are invested to ensure that all scholars succeed. To achieve our goals, school design must be from scratch; it must be systematic, strategic, and thoughtful. Whole school solutions must emerge from unconstrained, inventive thinking, research, and design work. The whole school models that emerge must be truly centered around student needs, interests, and mastery. Just as the disadvantages that hold students back are interconnected, so too must solutions embrace a holistic approach that integrates best practices in youth development, prioritizes rigor and mastery, iterates upon operations and academic systems, achieves efficient and productive operations, secures and cultivates effective human capital, supports students through key transitions, and personalizes learning in a manner that gets students on track toward college readiness and postsecondary success.

Todd Dickson, Founder 
Valor Collegiate Academy (Nashville, TN)
National Grantee: 2014 Cohort

Accurate Hypothesis: Spending longer than you think getting the structures and culture right in the fall is worth it. 

Inaccurate Hypothesis: We are going to need to design a curriculum/sequence of lessons to make sure all kids are able to use their laptops. Kids probably won't be ready for great Socratic seminars in 5th grade—we are really going to need to scaffold them.

Summary

The reflections above are fascinating in both their convergence and divergence.

Several leaders point to the importance of teaching process-based skills and habits in addition to traditional content-based subjects. Others discuss their learning around technology and digital tools. And other leaders reflect on the real-world challenges of starting a new school model of any type, along with the natural timeline required for an innovation to take hold.

RELATED POSTS:

• What's New about Next Gen Learning?
• What Would Socrates Wonder about Next Gen Learning?