From the Chief Learning Officer

March 1, 2010

Dear Colleagues:

The human brain is all about making connections - in fact, that's what it's wired to do. We live in a society where connecting ideas across many different domains of knowledge increasingly defines how we work and socialize, yet I fear that traditional school work continues to be a hodge-podge of isolated bits of knowledge. Too often, the tasks we design for our students don't take advantage of their ability to synthesize knowledge. Instead, we give them narrow, linear assignments in which, at best, each task is an end in itself. At worst, the tasks don't inspire creative thinking at all-- they simply require our students to recall basic facts or follow directions. And the grades we assign them are not a reflection of mastery so much as they signify compliance with procedures and behavioral expectations.

Following procedures and obeying the norms of behavior are important, but when we feed them a steady diet of worksheets, step-by-step instructions, and other disengaging tasks, it should come as no wonder that many of our students respond through listlessness, boredom, and apathy. This happens in schools across the country.  We can do better. We MUST do better.
Daniel Pink is an inspirational thinker and writer whose greatest gift, in my opinion, is taking abstract ideas and boiling them down into common-sense maxims that are accessible to everyone. For example, he urges schools to emphasize "right-brain thinking" - the part that allows us to adapt, to be creative, to be deeply aware of our surroundings and our connection to it. He urges his readers to ponder the implications of what he refers to as the new "Conceptual Age" of society. Pink outlines what he believes are the "Six Essential Attributes" of the Conceptual Age: 

1. Design, not only functional but beautiful and engaging.
2. Story, not only argument but a compelling narrative. 
3. Symphony, not just focus but synthesis, creating a new whole. 
4. Empathy, not just logic but caring and understanding. 
5. Play, creating a balance of work and play for general well-being. 
6. Meaning, not just money but purpose, transcendence and even spiritual fulfillment.

What Pink is advocating is a new kind of schooling that moves away from teachers as dispensers of knowledge to teacher as designers of learning experiences. In classrooms like these, students don't see English as a confining mish-mash of nouns, verbs, and adjectives but rather a flexible and infinite means of expression. The conversations are not driven by students trying to guess the "right answer", but rather by tasks for which there are multiple interpretations and layers of meaning, and that require real critical thinking.

I encourage you to share with me and your colleagues learning experiences you’ve designed for your students that you feel are in the spirit of these attributes. Have you ever designed a lesson not completely sure how things would turn out, but in the end found that it yielded surprising and unexpected results? Have you ever underestimated the potential of one of your students? Has this caused you to think differently about how you teach?  Please share.

Sincerely,
Deanna Burney