Sunrise Student wins Contest (Also: The Importance of Music and the Arts)

I am very proud to share some great news with you.  One of our students at Sunrise Elementary had his slogan chosen by the Westmoreland County Music Educators Association to be used in a public relations drive for music education in public schools.  I congratulate Joey Basista for a great job.  I also want to congratulate Joey's teacher, Mrs. Patty Kearns, for encouraging her music classes to participate in the contest.  Music and the Arts are an essential part of any education for children as we prepare them to excel in the 21^st Century.  No longer do we look upon the Arts and Music as a “soft” skill that is “nice to have” for our students.  Rather, the act of creating something (whether it is a piece of music, an art object or designing a robot) is an essential skill for citizens  as we strive to thrive in the 21^st Century.  Congratulations to Mrs. Kearns for allowing her students the opportunity to create.  The following is an email that Mrs. Kearns sent concerning the contest and our winner:

The Westmoreland County Music Educators Association (WCMEA) is planning to design a billboard to advocate music education in Westmoreland County.  This billboard will be in Mt. Pleasant and is being donated by Olympus Media. The design is also going to be featured on an LED billboard in the Irwin/Greensburg area. The music students throughout Westmoreland County were challenged to create a slogan consisting of around five words advocating music education.  I am pleased to announce that the winning slogan “Music is Medicine for the Mind” was created by Joey Basista a fourth grader from Sunrise Elementary School.  Joey will now meet to assist with developing the artwork and his picture will also be included on the billboard.  Congratulations Joey, we look forward to seeing you as we drive Route 30 in the future!

21 Things that will be Obsolete in Education by 2020

I have done a lot of thinking over the last few years about the future of education.  As a matter of fact, I have mentioned in this blog the group of teachers and administrators that are meeting to specifically think about what the future of education will hold for PT.  The scope of this thinking has really expanded beyond this group.  There are projects and pilot programs started by teachers throughout the school district that address the question of “What will public education look like in the future”.  I sense that a grand discussion about the future of education will break out between all members of our community because of the smaller conversations occurring now.  I am simply very excited to be a part of this process.  I have discussed the adjacent possible and innovation in previous posts so I do not want to beat a dead horse.  However, when we start hundreds of conversations about how our school district can improve education and lead the future of education then innovation will occur and the adjacent possible will be reachable.  With that in mind, here is an interesting list of 21 things that one person thinks will be obsolete in education by the year 2020 (8 years away).  Take your time to look through the list.  What do you agree with?  What items do you think should be off the list?  I will be interested to read what you think.

Congratulations to the Robotics Team

I received the following email from our high school robotics teacher Mr. Jeff Newsom.  He coaches the high school robotics team and they did very well in their competition last weekend.  The email will explain how well we did, but I also want to discuss a conversation I had with Mr. Newsom this morning as he was telling me about the competition.  Mr. Newsom told me a few times how proud he was of the hard work the students put in to win all of these awards.  He has students in his room before school, after school and during classes to work on the robots and learn how to improve them more.  The amount of time and dedication that the students put into this project is amazing…but the results are amazing as well.  Anytime a school can engage students in their passion, great learning will occur.  Mr. Newsom is also one of those teachers that demands excellence while at the same time knowing what it takes to keep the students motivated.  Congratulations to the students and Mr. Newsom!

Here is Mr. Newsom's email:

On Saturday, the robotics team competed in the Western Pennsylvania VEX World Cup Qualifier.  The students had designed, built, and programmed three robots to compete in the competition.  There were 22 robots from the region that competed including schools from Plum, Johnstown, McKeesport, Beaver, Frazier, Eastern Westmoreland Career and Technology Center among others.

    Teams were competing for two Skill Events, Tournament Champions, and the Excellence Award.  The tournament champions would qualify to compete at the National Championships in Omaha Nebraska, in March, and an opportunity to qualify for the World Championship.  The Excellence Award winner would go to the best overall robot and automatically qualify them to compete in the World Championships in Anaheim CA, in April.

    PT's Robotics teams, who had qualified for Worlds the last two years, saved their best for their senior year.  The three robots finished 1, 2, 3 in the preliminary rounds that determined the seeding for the head to head tournament.  The team won not only both Skills Challenges, but a National Championship birth by winning the Tournament and also won the Excellence Award for best overall robot and earning a birth to the World Championships.  Two out of the three robots are moving on while the third missed by one point.

    Congratulations to the following students for their hard work and perseverance:
    Bryan Wilson
    Tyler Silcox
    Nathaniel Heydt
    Evan Tatarka
    Jordan Locke
    And also to Bryans brother Mark, who was a big help loading the robots during the competition.

Innovation

I believe that Penn-Trafford has the potential to become the most educationally innovative school district in the Commonwealth.  Innovation may not be what you think of when public schools are mentioned, but it will be what you think of when you think of our public school.  Why do I think that we will become the innovative center for education in the State?  Two reasons: it is already happening, and we have great people.  Right now there are innovations occurring in every building.  I watch as schools in our district are working to build programs (innovations) that have the potential to fundamentally change the way we do business.  We have teachers thinking about how to individualize instruction for all students, math teachers incorporating literacy strategies in their instruction, and teachers struggling with how to provide the best individualized education plans for all of their students.  I am so proud to be part of an organization that shows this level of concern for our students.  We also have outstanding people working for the school district.  Our staff consists of people that have the best interests of the children at the forefront of everything they do.  They not only love their jobs, they love kids.  That is my highest compliment. 

How does innovation occur in an organization? In this video, author Steven Johnson shares what he learned about innovation while researching his book Where Good Ideas Come From”.   Innovation occurs in organizations when there is an atmosphere of collaboration and cooperation.  Innovation does not occur when a single person sits in a room with a goal of developing an innovation.  Rather, innovation occurs when a group of people work together toward a common goal and they share ideas together and create new ideas from scraps of everyone’s individual ideas.  I also want to make sure that we allow space for innovation to occur.  As educational leaders we must allow people the space to try new ideas, learn from mistakes and celebrate successes.  This cannot be from a “top down” organizational model.  I do not have the answers for how to make this school district the best in the nation; I only hold a small fraction.  The answer lies in everyone involved in the school district.  Working together, I believe we will innovate to become a premier school district in the nation. 

A Failed Integrity Scan

I am a two time alumni of Penn State.  I received my undergraduate degree from Penn State as well as my Ph.D.  I also was a student-athlete at Penn State and was indoctrinated into the culture of integrity and academic excellence that started to be embedded into the athletic department in the late 1980’s.  Some of my first memories as a child are driving to Penn State with my uncle (who was the captain of the basketball and baseball teams in the early 1970’s) to watch basketball games or to visit the Penn State farms.  As a senior in high school there was only one real choice for me as I looked at colleges...Penn State. When deciding where to get a Ph.D. it made perfect sense to me that I would travel over 2 hours one way four times a week in the summer and once or twice a week during the school year so I could receive a degree from a program (Educational Leadership) that was the third ranked program in the nation at the time.  In other words, I bleed blue and white; which brings me to what is presently occurring at Penn State.

I am sickened about what I hear of the sexual abuse case at Penn State.  I am appalled and infuriated that children were placed as pawns in a way to protect the image of the football program.  I am also deeply saddened that a few key people totally failed an integrity scan.  Susan Scott, in her book Fierce Conversations, talks about a conversation that all of us should have with ourselves at least once a year.  This conversation is called an “integrity scan” because you ask yourself if your actions align with your stated values.  An integrity scan is a powerful and scary undertaking.  For example if you state that honesty is a value you live by but you find yourself not telling the truth in a lot of conversations then you have failed an integrity scan.  If you say one thing in private to someone and state the opposite in public, then you have failed an integrity scan.  I understand that humans are fallible and not perfect. As a matter of fact, I know that I am far from being perfect and have had to realign my actions to my values.  I also know that organizations are a collection of imperfect human beings working (hopefully) toward a common goal; thus organizations are not perfect.  However, to have a total failure of integrity within an entire system (as occurred at Penn State) is simply unacceptable.  In this case children were forever harmed because of a total lack of integrity. It is sickening to think about. 

Moving forward, what does the tragedy (for the victims) at Penn State teach us?  I think our individual reactions to this mess probably tell us more about ourselves if we are willing to listen.  For me it emboldens me make sure that I can do everything I can in my personal life to align actions to values.  As a leader of a great school district I want to make sure that the organization and everyone involved in it acts with integrity.  People are not perfect and none of us should expect to be perfect, but it is not unreasonable for all of us (as well as the organization) to strive toward aligning actions with values.  Not to do so can lead toward a complete failure of integrity and in our business that means children get hurt. 

Public Schools and the Adjacent Possible

Today I want to discuss some misconceptions that some educational “reformers” have about public education.  I read in the papers and on the news that educational “reformers” (I like to call them “deformers”) believe that innovation in education cannot occur in public schools.  They believe that Charter schools and other private schools are the only spaces available for educational innovation to occur.  The unstated belief that underlies this viewpoint is that all public school districts are a morass of incompetent bureaucrats and teachers that do not care.  In my experience in public education this is simply not the truth.  There is a space for innovation to occur in public education and it occurring every day. There are pockets of innovation all over the public school landscape that need to be explored and reported on.

In my last blog I discussed “the adjacent possible”.   The adjacent possible is where innovation is occurring in public education.  Many school districts are facing unprecedented challenges.  Two of the biggest challenges are monstrous budget cuts and well intentioned (or not) educational reformers peddling tonics that will “fix” the system. Although I wish these two challenges did not exist, they have moved school districts into an adjacent possible.  School districts are currently considering solutions to problems that would never have been taken into consideration a few years ago.  I know of school districts that are starting their own charter schools, opening after school programs, operating virtual academies, designing challenging curriculum and offering ground-breaking, meaningful learning opportunities to their children all because they have entered the adjacent possible.  I wish that public schools did not have to face some of these challenges, but the important thing to remember is that the vast majority of school districts have risen to the challenge.  Overall, public education is doing well.  If we do not believe this simple fact then our society is in trouble.

I am incredibly optimistic that Penn-Trafford is already working in the adjacent possible.  I spent some time yesterday with the Trafford Middle School faculty.  The discussions they had about helping kids and how to improve their own practice showed me growth into the adjacent possible. There is a teacher-driven movement afoot at Harrison Park that, if realized, will significantly impact the learning opportunities of their students.  Of course we have the reinvention of school group which is not only operating in the adjacent possible, they are continually moving the adjacent possible to explore more possibilities.  Innovation occurs when individuals start to believe that they can make a difference for their organization and when they are shown the doors to the adjacent possible.  I know this is occurring at Penn-Trafford and in many other public school districts.

The Adjacent Possible

I would like to talk today about something that has been percolating in mind since I read Steven Johnson’s latest book, WhereGood Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. The idea is called “the adjacent possible”. This is basically the “space” that exists as a “next step’ in an innovation. In other words, what are the possibilities in the future for a particular innovation or good idea? As Johnson himself has written in an essay in the Wall Street Journal:


The scientist Stuart Kauffman has a suggestive name for the set of all those first-order combinations: "the adjacent possible." The phrase captures both the limits and the creative potential of change and innovation. ….The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself…The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations.

What does this mean for education and the Penn-Trafford School District? First, I want to state that public education can be a place of innovation. I would further state that public education (and our society) must have innovation in public education if democracy is to survive. Second, I am using innovation as a term that means more than the politicized mumbo-jumbo that Federal programs like Race to the Top have turned the term into. True innovation can only come from a grass roots development of ideas that meet the needs of a local community and school.

The nature of innovation indicates that it must develop slowly and that it builds momentum as good ideas emerge and develop into the “adjacent possible”. Public school systems must start the process of building momentum by developing innovative ideas that address local needs. The first step is to ground decisions in a school district based on local values and needs. This will assure that the decisions reflect local “flavor” (something that Race to the Top failed to take into account). Once this is done, a list of issues that are threatening the values of the school district or community must be made. Solutions to address these threats are then developed. This is somewhat simplistic, but I believe that you must start at a basic, grassroots level. Action is important. You cannot move close to the adjacent possible if there is no action.

We have started the journey to the adjacent possible at Penn-Trafford.  As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, there is a pilot project consisting of teachers and administrators that is looking at how to reinvent education.  These discussions have already walked us closer to the adjacent possible as more staff members become involved in the conversation and newer ideas and perspectives are added to the existing ones.  As we look into the future I anticipate that the adjacent possible will be explores with students, community members and staff.  Penn-Trafford will become the beacon of excellence for education in the United States and exploring the adjacent possible will help us get there.

Field Hockey Champions!

Congratulations to the field hockey team on becoming WPIAL Champs last night!  Great job and we are all proud of you!