If you read my columns regularly, you know I am on a mission to help the youth and adults involved in the systems that support youth thriving take small but steady steps towards embracing the organized chaos of learning ecosystems.
I’ve shared examples of what I and my Knowledge to Power partners call “ecosystem activators” – powerful but easy to use tools that give youth and adults a quick taste of the satisfaction that comes from approaching a familiar task from a very different vantage point that quickly unleashes hidden assets.
I love showcasing sophisticatedly simple tools like these because they remind me of the quote about simplicity attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes:
“For simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn’t give you a fig. But for simplicity on the other side of complexity, I would give you anything I have.”
The consistent success of these ecosystem activators is directly linked to the decade or more of work each organization has put into figuring out the simplest, most consistent way to spark voluntary action to try something different. Those years were spent learning what it takes to get people to think differently about presenting problems (e.g., academic unpreparedness, teacher burnout). They invited youth and adults to explore root causes and look for examples of positive deviance (instances where the results are consistently better than what would be expected). They encouraged them to talk differently – adopting language that forced them to check the reflexive use of terms that narrow possibilities (e.g., using educator rather than teacher, setting rather than classroom, learner rather than student, progress rather than grades).
The biggest challenge, however, is getting people to see differently. I’ve been in far too many settings – in schools and in youth organizations – where new language is on the walls, but old habits are still in the air. Less often but no less important, I have seen clear evidence that the desired outcomes are occurring but are being called into question because they don’t feel familiar. I use a four-minute video clip to show this phenomenon. It’s from the feature-length film produced for the XQ Institute on the first graduating class of Crosstown High in Memphis. It shows students who are deeply engaged in project-based learning complaining that they aren’t learning because the teacher isn’t lecturing. Their concerns are allayed only after the teacher gives them the previous year’s end year exam which they all passed easily.
This is what makes ecosystem activation tools so important.
They compress the talk-see-act steps into a manageable time period (from a few hours to a few weeks), giving learners and educators a contained opportunity to both use new language and new lenses but also reflect on what they experienced, making them eager to repeat and expand.
But as powerful as these tools are for jumpstarting the design of more engaging learning experiences in any setting, they don’t give us everything we need to see the people and possibilities in the totality of settings in all the places that support learning across the community.
Over the years, we have embellished the wonderful graphic created by the National League of Cities and the Afterschool Alliance to show the places in the community that surround schools and families to support learning and thriving. We’ve added in people and overlayed a spirograph of lines to show the abundance of connections that could be optimized. We are always amazed at the smiles and nods that come from people seeing colorful icons depicting the places and functions beyond school buildings and academics.
But, ultimately, the best way to see both the variety of and variation in assets young people bring into the learning experiences we design for and with them is to ask them. A few months ago, I spent an afternoon with a group of high school principals who were making great strides towards fulfilling their commitment to connect every student with a career-relevant, community-based internship before their senior year. The logos of the partnerships developed with businesses and community organizations was impressive. So, I asked them whether any of these relationships or internship-sparked interests carried over into the summer months. All but one admitted that they had never thought to ask.
Regularly acknowledging the fact that learning happens everywhere and all the time and that young people have the opportunity to take the learning experiences they have with us into other places and spaces is the best way to ensure that all of us are thinking, talking, seeing and acting differently to ensure that every connection is optimized.
Shifting mindsets: Acting differently requires us to think, talk and see differently first
If you read my columns regularly, you know I am on a mission to help the youth and adults involved in the systems that support youth thriving take small but steady steps towards embracing the organized chaos of learning ecosystems.
I’ve shared examples of what I and my Knowledge to Power partners call “ecosystem activators” – powerful but easy to use tools that give youth and adults a quick taste of the satisfaction that comes from approaching a familiar task from a very different vantage point that quickly unleashes hidden assets.
Tools and resources like:
I love showcasing sophisticatedly simple tools like these because they remind me of the quote about simplicity attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes:
The consistent success of these ecosystem activators is directly linked to the decade or more of work each organization has put into figuring out the simplest, most consistent way to spark voluntary action to try something different. Those years were spent learning what it takes to get people to think differently about presenting problems (e.g., academic unpreparedness, teacher burnout). They invited youth and adults to explore root causes and look for examples of positive deviance (instances where the results are consistently better than what would be expected). They encouraged them to talk differently – adopting language that forced them to check the reflexive use of terms that narrow possibilities (e.g., using educator rather than teacher, setting rather than classroom, learner rather than student, progress rather than grades).
The biggest challenge, however, is getting people to see differently. I’ve been in far too many settings – in schools and in youth organizations – where new language is on the walls, but old habits are still in the air. Less often but no less important, I have seen clear evidence that the desired outcomes are occurring but are being called into question because they don’t feel familiar. I use a four-minute video clip to show this phenomenon. It’s from the feature-length film produced for the XQ Institute on the first graduating class of Crosstown High in Memphis. It shows students who are deeply engaged in project-based learning complaining that they aren’t learning because the teacher isn’t lecturing. Their concerns are allayed only after the teacher gives them the previous year’s end year exam which they all passed easily.
They compress the talk-see-act steps into a manageable time period (from a few hours to a few weeks), giving learners and educators a contained opportunity to both use new language and new lenses but also reflect on what they experienced, making them eager to repeat and expand.
But as powerful as these tools are for jumpstarting the design of more engaging learning experiences in any setting, they don’t give us everything we need to see the people and possibilities in the totality of settings in all the places that support learning across the community.
Over the years, we have embellished the wonderful graphic created by the National League of Cities and the Afterschool Alliance to show the places in the community that surround schools and families to support learning and thriving. We’ve added in people and overlayed a spirograph of lines to show the abundance of connections that could be optimized. We are always amazed at the smiles and nods that come from people seeing colorful icons depicting the places and functions beyond school buildings and academics.
But, ultimately, the best way to see both the variety of and variation in assets young people bring into the learning experiences we design for and with them is to ask them. A few months ago, I spent an afternoon with a group of high school principals who were making great strides towards fulfilling their commitment to connect every student with a career-relevant, community-based internship before their senior year. The logos of the partnerships developed with businesses and community organizations was impressive. So, I asked them whether any of these relationships or internship-sparked interests carried over into the summer months. All but one admitted that they had never thought to ask.
Regularly acknowledging the fact that learning happens everywhere and all the time and that young people have the opportunity to take the learning experiences they have with us into other places and spaces is the best way to ensure that all of us are thinking, talking, seeing and acting differently to ensure that every connection is optimized.
[Related Grant Opportunity: K-12 STEM education program grants]
***
In her columns, Karen Pittman is exploring the research behind the statement, “When Youth Thrive, We All Thrive.”
The post Shifting mindsets: Acting differently requires us to think, talk and see differently first appeared first on Youth Today.
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