We can do better

I am going to pick up where I left off in my last post, when I shared the statistics from Jenkins' Loss of Enthusiasm for School Curve and I said I wasn't okay with just over 1/3 of our high school freshman still loving school.  Well, today in the car, my 16 year old daughter said to me, completely out of the blue, "I don't want school to start up again.  I just don't like it.  It's way longer than it should be for what I get out of it." and then she looked at me with a very sad and distraught face.  She goes to a good school, she does not get in trouble,  she knows the value of an education, she wants to go to college, and it is not hard for her.  She shouldn't feel this way.  My heart broke a little today as it does every day when she tells me how much she doesn't like going to school.  What makes it harder is that I know that many other children are uttering the same phrase, and that many of them have even more reason to say it.  Some of them do not have a nice school to go to, and some of them find school very difficult because it is not welcoming to them or it is not equipped for them.  I know we can do better.

I really started to believe this about a year ago.  Last July (2018), I experienced my first Annual Visible Learning Conference in Chicago.  Despite the fact that I had already read much of the work of Hattie, Nottingham, and Fisher & Frey, hearing them share how their ideas have been applied in schools and classrooms around the world was impactful for me and left me energized and excited.  I was fortunate to join John Hattie, his son Kyle, and Sarah Martin for the Lunch and Learn where they talked about Stonefields School in New Zealand and how the Visible Learning practices are embedded in everything that they do.  I came back from the conference with big dreams of opening a brand new school for our region built on the practices that I had been so excited to hear about at the AVL.  I shared this idea with my boss and he didn't say no.  This was a big deal to me because I have always been a dreamer, but had often been met with reasons why my ideas would not work.  No money, the parents won't understand it, the community won't support it, our kids can't do that, there is no time....  This time what I heard was that I needed to find other models, figure out funding options, decide what my vision is, and start talking to people.

Fast forward one year.  I now know for certain that we can do better because there are places all over the world where educational communities have worked together to be innovative and brave as they create schools that do not look like what we have always had.  And it is working!  Stonefields School in New Zealand, is one example.  They have grown from 50 to 600 in their first 8 years and they have remained innovative and learner centered and have been very successful.  This year at the AVL, Ka'Imiloa Elementary School in Hawaii was honored as a Visible Learning School.  They had a complete transformation in their culture as a result of a community commitment to Visible Learning.  Highweek Primary School in Newton Abbot, UK has worked with Challenging Learning since 2016 and has already seen significant changes in student and staff mindsets and they have seen all members of their learning community join in their efforts to make learning a priority.  Michael Fullan introduces deep learning in his books Deep Learning: Engage the World Change the World and Indelible Leadership and he discusses the successes of  New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPDL) Partnership which includes hundreds of schools engaging in systemic change.  I could keep going, because there are a lot of schools making significant changes in response to the research.   They are making shifts in their schools to more closely match the flexible learning needs of all students in the 21st century.  There are schools where achievement gaps have almost disappeared, where dropout rates have plummeted, where all children seek challenges because they want to learn, and where community involvement is constant and effective.  Clearly, we CAN do better.

Robert F. Kennedy once said- "Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom, decency and justice."  At this point, at least for myself, I do not believe that I can continue to close my eyes and ears.  I know that we can do better, and therefore to do nothing is to tolerate what I know is wrong.  I am absolutely frightened about this next part of my journey, but there are great models out there, I know where to find sound research, and I also know that I have met and continue to meet a lot of brilliant people who will have ideas that will build on my own.  One thing I have learned in the last year is that I am definitely not alone on this journey.  And my motivation?  It is, and will always be, all children.   However, there will be this constant echo in my head that will keep me fighting... "I don't want school to start again.  I just don't like it."