Every year around this time, I publish a summer reading list of books I love and that have influenced my way of seeing teaching and leading. Here’s this year’s list:

Imagination First:  Unlocking the power of possibility.  By Eric Liu and Scott Noppe-Brandon.  In an age of round-the-clock testing, I was pleased to discover this book that encourages us to cultivate imagination in ourselves and in our students. This is not touchy-feely tome; the authors make a compelling case for why creativity and imagination are essential to higher order thinking and problem solving.  It helps us reframe our current challenges and uncover solutions that are unavailable as long as we stay stuck in formulaic thinking.  They also offer 28 practices that can be applied with students and with ourselves to help us develop imagination, creativity, and innovative thinking.

Why Don’t Students Like School:  A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How The Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. By Daniel T. Willingham.  This practical and readable book really helped me understand why some students don’t like school and gave me tips for how I can organize my lessons and approach better to make them more engaging for students.  He offers practical advice and some surprising insights about how children learn and how we can help them learn better. I especially loved his ideas about how to support struggling learners.

Linchpin:  Are You Indispensable?  By Seth Godin.  I attended a Skype riff with Godin this spring before I’d read his latest book and was immediately impressed with his passion. That passion translates into his book. Here, Godin talks about how the work world is changing and how now, more than ever, we need “linchpins” who lead, invent, connect others, and create order out of chaos. Godin has some interesting insights about how schools can prepare students to be linchpins in the new economy and he also challenges us as members of huge bureaucracies to become linchpins within our sphere of influence.  He shows us how we can overcome resistance and significantly impact our students and our schools. 

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.  By Clayton M. Christensen.  Christensen makes the case that the way that schools are currently structured actually impedes authentic learning.  He and his co-authors apply theories of disruptive innovation to schools and imagine what schools would look like if they were re-designed to better meet students’ needs. I like the way that Christensen challenges us to think beyond the current school structures to ways that we can leverage technology to help students create customized pathways to mastery. It’s a little radical for traditionalists, but it’s a great book to shake us out of our complacency and imagine new ways of schooling that better meet the needs of 21st century learners.

What Video Games have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. By James Paul Gee.  I was a little skeptical when a friend suggested I read this book, but after the first chapter, I was hooked. Gee makes a really compelling case for how video games embody some of the best teaching and learning practices and how we can learn from them. Since reading this book, I have seen several ways I can incorporate his principals into my own work with teachers and leaders who are grappling with how to make learning compelling to 21st century learners.

Switch:  How to Change Things When Change is Hard. By Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  The Heath brothers are two of my favorite authors so I couldn’t wait for their next book. They didn’t disappoint. This is essential reading for any instructional leader trying to move a school in a new direction. They break down the change process into three parts, give practical and actionable advice for how to implement each part of the process, and provide research and compelling stories to support their claims. It’s an easy read but filled with strong data and support for their claims.  I find myself turning to again and again as I help schools and organizations navigate the change process.

What are you reading this summer???  Would love to hear your suggestions.  Please leave your comments!

1.    I promise to pay attention to who you are and respect the currencies you bring with you to the classroom.

2.    I promise to keep out of your way so that you can take on the work of learning and enjoy the fruits of learning for yourself.

3.    I promise to provide you with a physically and psychologically safe learning environment.

4.    I promise to listen to the feedback you give me verbally, non-verbally, and in your work, and use this feedback to do a better job of meeting your needs.

5.    I promise to keep trying until together, we figure out the best way to help you learn.

6.    I promise to do all that I can to set you up to succeed.

7.    I promise to help you learn from your mistakes and show you how to get better at learning.

8.    I promise carefully choose the work I give you so that it clearly increases your understanding and proficiency and doesn’t encumber you with meaningless rote exercises that do little to help you learn.

9.    I promise to provide you with challenging and engaging instruction that stretches you to within but at the outer limits of your ability.  In this way, I will help you grow as a learner.

10.    I promise to learn alongside you.

What other promises should we be making — and keeping– to our students? Leave your suggestions in the comments section.

For years, I have unquestioningly accepted the prevailing wisdom that the holy grail in education is to have intrinsically motivated students who learn for learning’s sake.

And yet, most of us don’t do everything we do for purely intrinsic reasons.  We work at least partially for a paycheck. We drive the speed limit not because we enjoy driving 25 mph when we are in a hurry but because we don’t want to get a ticket and imperil the lives of the other drivers around us. We work weekends in order to meet deadlines and complete paperwork because its our job.  We clean behind the fridge because company is coming over and we endure family dinners with Aunt Midge so we don’t upset our mothers. In fact, very little of what we do is purely intrinsically motivated.

For years I thought the key to student engagement was to make work more interesting and yet studies have found no evidence that the interest value of material is a determinant — as opposed to a consequence — of learning. In fact, the more I read the literature on motivation, the more I am struck by one startling idea: Intrinsic motivation may be over-rated.  Two concepts have changed my mind.

The first is the idea of integrated extrinsic motivation.  The research shows that external motivators, when used correctly, can actually help people develop intrinsic motivation over time.  When students recognize the underlying value of a behavior, identify with it, and integrate it with other aspects of themselves, they will carry out the behavior independently and outside of your control — even if they are not intrinsically motivated to do so.  Although externally motivated, they are more likely to transfer to internal motivation.

In order to achieve integrated extrinsic motivation, three factors must exist. Students must feel a sense of autonomy – that they are not being forced to do the activity; they must feel that they can be successful at the activity (competence); and they must see how the activity helps them function within the classroom and outside culture (relatedness).

The second concept is emergent motivation. This theory asserts that although students may initially find an activity boring, it doesn’t mean that they will always find it so.  When they begin to see relevance in the activity or their skill set with the activity improves, and if they can find in the activity opportunities to be successful, the activity becomes more interesting and finally, enjoyable. In other words, our motivation to do something may be initially low, but we can actually grow our motivation over time.

For too long, we have been trying to get students to care about what we teach and lamenting their lack of intrinsic motivation. Turns out, the problem isn’t that our students are not intrinsically motivated.  They may never love literature the way that we do. They may never get their kicks from solving impossible math problems and spelling may never be as important to them as it is to us.  The real problem is that the way we try to motivate them externally fails and puts the work on us. We have to keep pushing them to get any work out of them at all and we are exhausted.  But what if our external motivators could be, well, more motivating?  Do we really need students to love everything we do in the classroom or is it enough that they engage for externally motivated reasons, and in doing so, learn to build their own motivation over time?

Don’t forget to leave your ideas and comments here

For more information, check out the Handbook of Competence and Motivation. (2005, Elliot, A., and Dweck, C., Eds.)

~Robyn R. Jackson

Here is Robyn’s Latest Newsletter Article:

I was talking to a friend and colleague over the holiday break about my frustration with most professional development models. You know the kinds of experiences I’m talking about – the sit and get, spray and pray deals most of us have had to endure perched atop those really uncomfortable cafeteria stools or crammed into the media center aimlessly flipping through a stack of handouts or secretly completing a crossword puzzle while desperately wishing I was in my classroom grading papers and praying for 3:30 when they would unlock the doors and set us free. I’ve always hated those days and work very hard not to deliver the same kind of professional development when I conduct workshops and yet, there were several times in 2009 when I came very close to providing or participating in someone else’s providing the very same kind of experience.

There has got to be a better way.

And in 2010, I am looking to find it. So I am throwing down the Professional Development Gauntlet: If I cannot deliver a professional development experience that is worth more to teachers than spending the same amount of time grading papers, I won’t offer it.

You see, I started Mindsteps not because I wanted to get in on the professional development gravy train. I started Mindsteps because I believed that there was a better way to help teachers. I have never understood why we use such bad teaching practices to show teachers how to be better teachers. I want every teacher to become a master teacher, to reach every child in his or her classroom and to have a ball doing it. I love teaching so much that I want everyone in this profession to love it. And I am convinced that can’t happen if we continue to teach teachers in the same ways we always have. So, I am going to stop trying to improve the old model.

I am going to build a new one.

The old model doesn’t work and I am no longer satisfied with trying to tweak it. I think if we are going to do what’s right for kids and provide every one of them with a quality education we have to start and end with a master teacher in every classroom. That’s a scary idea to a lot of people. Whenever I declare that any teacher can become a master teacher with the right kind of support and practice, I always face skepticism. People think it isn’t possible and they are right as long as we continue to provide the kinds of training we are currently providing. If we are really going to make a difference for teachers, for the quality of their teaching and the quality of their lives in the classroom, we have got to start by dramatically overhauling the kind of support and practice we provide them.

I want professional development that:

• invites teachers to co-create the learning and influence the direction of how we spend our time together
• is customizable so that teachers have several access points and can move through the experience at their own level
• is practical so that teachers have ideas and tools they can use immediately but can also customize so that they are more relevant to each teacher’s context and students
• models the same teaching principles we expect teachers to use with their students
• is meaningful and lasts longer than the experience
  actually improves the way that we teach and think about teaching

It’s an ambitious list that I am sure will grow and change over the next few months as I begin this journey. And if I am really honest, this is a scary thing to do. It means that I am now accountable to you and it also means that in my attempts to create a new way of providing professional development, I will make some mistakes. Publicly. But I am tired of the same ole, same ole.

I think you deserve better.

I also want to make it clear: I am not beating up my colleagues who provide professional development. I understand how easy it is to get sucked into the old model of providing PD. Many of the conditions are frankly outside of our control. We come in for a day or two and then leave hoping that somehow that brief amount of time has made a difference. I have been sucked into that model as well. But I want something better for the teachers I serve and I am inviting my colleagues to join me in reaching for it. In fact, I will be engaging my colleagues in conversations about how we can create a new model of professional development that honors teachers and our profession. I cannot solve this problem alone. I need their help.

I also need your help. What kind of professional development would be most useful to you? What kinds of experiences would dramatically improve your practice? Go ahead and dream big here. I can’t do this without you. I invite you to leave your comments and ideas here. I will check in with you each month and let you know how we are doing.

Please take time to comment and let’s build something better together.

Here is Robyn’s latest article from Mindsteps’ December Newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

Have you played a video game recently?  Maybe you play a little solitaire or free cell on your computer to unwind after a particularly stressful day, or you are addicted to bubble breaker and bejeweled on your mobile phone. Perhaps you were the PacMan champion in your day or you secretly rule in Guitar Hero or Halo. No matter how difficult, complex, challenging, or frustrating, there is something about video games that’s just plain addictive

Lately I have been wondering why we can’t seem to  make learning in school as addictive as video games. Why is it that students are willing to engage in complex and difficult tasks in a gaming environment but resist doing so in the classroom?  Why is failure motivating in a video game but devastating on a test?  Why is it that learning is fun during a game but boring in class?  What’s the secret?

I don’t know that I have “cracked the code” entirely here, but I do know that if we really want to make learning more addictive and our lessons more compelling, here are five things we should learn from video games:
 
1.  Video games integrate a variety of skills.  Students don’t learn one skill and then another until they have the repertoire of skills they need.  They are asked to synthesize a range of skills and use them to solve increasingly more complex problems.  School on the other hand teaches discrete skills and tests students on how well they have mastered an individual skill or small group of skills.  Rarely are students asked to synthesize their skills to solve problems.  If we want lessons that are more compelling, we have to stop focussing on merely teaching discrete skills and give students a opportunities to integrate and synthesize what they learn.
 
2.  Video games allow students to solve challenging and complex problems immediately.  You learn how to play the video game by playing the game.  There is no passive sitting on the sidelines while you watch an expert perform.  In the game, you jump right in.  Gamers have to develop hypotheses for the best way to solve problems according to the game’s logic and rules and they have to test these hypotheses and develop new ones within the game space.  They don’t have to wait until they happen upon the right answer before they can play.  It is the act of playing that allows them to learn how to solve problems effectively.  All too often, the exact opposite happens in the classroom where students are asked to get good at something before they are allowed to do it.  Students might become more actively involved, more invested in their own learning, and develop better problem-solving skills that were transferable to other situations if they were allowed to develop and test their own hypotheses as they learned. 
 
3.  Video Games allow customization. Players can create their own avatars, choose the attributes of their characters, and in some cases build their own environment.  They can decide where they want to go in the game space and how they want the game to proceed.  They can make decisions on how to play the game that are best for them within the parameters of the game.  All of these these choices mean that each person’s experience playing the game is unique.  In school, students are rarely offered the chance to make meaningful choices that influence how they will learn.  If we really want students to take ownership over their own learning, then we have to give them a sense of agency and shared control.  We have to structure the learning environment so that they can customize it to meet their own needs.
 
4.  Video games do an excellent job at scaffolding. Players can play a game before they are good at the game.  They don’t have to wait and practice drills and demonstrate competence before they begin playing.  They are thrown right in and learn the game as they are playing it.  When they get stuck, they can access the supports that are built right into the game or ask other, more experienced players. The more they play, the better they get.  Video games also have different levels and each level presents a challenge that is just beyond the skill of the player. At each level, players learn how to solve problems until they can do so routinely and automatically. As players get better at one level, they proceed to a new level with a new set of challenges that require them to integrate their old skills with new ones to reach a new and deeper level of mastery.  This cycle of repetition and new challenge helps players develop expertise rather quickly.  In school, the opposite often happens where struggling students have to languish at lower levels until they demonstrate competence.  School would be much more engaging for struggling students if they received the supports they needed during the learning process, in real time so that they could keep up with what was happening in the classroom and progress to the next level of learning.
 
5.  Finally, video games make failure motivating.  Learning a new game can be tough, but each time a player fails the player learns something that he can use to make his performance better next time.  Video games keep the play just outside of a player’s level of competence so that while they are challenging, they are also doable.  Video games take the stigma and sting out of failure.  Failure is an integral part of the learning process and everyone expects to fail several times before they succeed.  Each time you fail in a video game, you get immediate feedback that shows you how to learn from your failure and do things better the next round. Failure becomes just another event in the learning process rather than an evaluation of your learning process.  In school however, failure is not a part of a learning process; it is a signal that the learning process has gone wrong somehow.  Students don’t routinely get the opportunity to learn from their failures and try again in school.  While they often get feedback that tells them that they have failed, they don’t get immediate feedback from their failure that shows them how to do better next time.  In school, failure is not a natural part of the learning process; it is something to be avoided at all costs. Thus video games encourage risk taking in ways that school does not.

For ways to make your lessons as compelling as video games, check out the December TIP Sheet here
-Robyn R. Jackson

Here is Robyn’s Latest Newsletter Article.  You can subscribe to our Free Monthly E-Newsletter by clicking here.

After a year of resisting, I finally drank the apple-flavored kool-aid and bought an iphone. I had read about its brilliant design but was entirely unprepared for its simplicity. Now I suppose the folks at Apple could have sent me a questionnaire in order to discern my likes and dislikes and used that information to figure out what I wanted and needed in a phone. And I guess they could have sent someone out to interview me to determine my telephone and texting habits and the gone back to the factory and built a phone to my exact specifications. But Apple didn’t focus on trying to build a phone designed just for me. In fact, it did just the opposite. Rather than offering an array of colors, the phone comes in only 2 – white and black. Instead of offering an array of built-in applications, it offers just a few basic programs loaded into the phone. Instead of trying to offer an array of phones to meet my needs, Apple offers just one.

But this phone does meet my needs exactly. I can buy a cover for the phone in any color and design I can imagine. I can download any additional software I need from entire app store filled with applications not built by Apple but by its customers. Although I bought the same phone that anyone else can purchase, I have the opportunity to make it uniquely my own. I was able to customize it to fit my needs.

Later that week, I was following the Twitter edchat on my iphone about Differentiated Instruction while I was waiting for a plane I began to think that maybe Apple could teach us a thing or two about teaching. For years we have tried to differentiate our instruction, often creating several different lesson plans to meet the needs of more of our students. Often we miss several students’ needs and wear ourselves out in the process. I wondered what if instead of differentiating our lessons for students, we created lessons that were customizable? What if we taught like an iphone?

Stay with me now. I promise you that I haven’t turned into Steve Jobs’ evangelist. The brilliance of the iphone’s design is that it can be customized to meet the individual needs of each us. Apple doesn’t bother creating apps it thinks we might use, instead, it offers us the users an opportunity to build our own. Apple doesn’t try to anticipate my needs. Instead, it built a phone that is flexible enough that I can make it fit my needs.

In the days of DVR’s that allow you to watch TV when and how you want, and Pandora radio that lets you create your own radio station customized to your tastes and preferences, it is hard for many students to sit and get lessons that are pitched to the nebulous middle. And, even when we attempt to get to know our students’ individual likes and dislikes, learning strengths and weaknesses, backgrounds and dispositions and create lessons that address all of these, trying to do so for every child every day is next to impossible and we often settled for superficial connections or just give up entirely.

Maybe instead of differentiation, we should focus on building lessons that are flexible enough that each student can find a way to access the curriculum. Maybe instead of trying to guess what our students may need, we should teach students how to show us what they need in ways that can be quickly addressed by the supports available in the classroom. Maybe instead of trying to adapt our lessons to meet each student’s need, we should create lessons that students can customize themselves.

Differentiation focuses too much on individualization rather than customization. We are trying to meet the individual needs of students rather than showing them how to meet their own needs. We are building individual lessons for each student instead of building lessons that are flexible enough so that all students can access them.

Differentiation presumes that we know what is best for students and puts the onus of meeting their needs on us. But what if we enlisted our students to partner with us to figure out what they needed instead? If we did, we would create a shared learning space where we can work with our students to help them get what they need from our classes. We would also show student how to leverage the currencies they bring with them to the classroom to access the curriculum in the way that works best for them.

Imagine what would happen in this kind of classroom! Students would be more engaged because they would be actively involved in creating and monitoring their own learning. Students would also feel more comfortable because they are learning how to leverage their backgrounds and currencies in order to access the curriculum. Learning would take place at a much deeper level because students are learning how to learn and how to take the curriculum and adapt it to their own contexts. Rigor and relevance would naturally increase, and because students and teachers are co-creating the learning experience, relationships would thrive.

I know, I know. Creating this kind of classroom is really hard at first. It requires really understanding your curriculum, flexibility, and the time to create and implement. And, thinking about teaching this way requires a real shift in our thinking. The TIP sheet this month has some ideas for getting started and in the next few months on our blog, in this newsletter, and on our site, we will be posting new resources and offering new workshops that provide step-by-step guidance for moving towards customization instead of individualization. Stay Tuned.

Robyn R. Jackson