After experiencing incredible challenges during the pandemic, schools are returning to in-person learning. Podcasts for Leaderful Schools hosts, Bob Maxfield and Suzanne Klein, invite their guest Will Richardson, co-founder of the Big Questions Institute, to reflect on the pivotal question of what’s worth teaching and learning, and how to promote learning so we can live up to the promise of American public education.

“It really is about not going back to school, but going back to creating environments where learning happens really deeply.” Will Richardson pointed out “the distinctions between learning loss and schooling loss; let’s get back to learning versus let’s get back to school; and not just going back and doing things a bit better, but doing things different. We’re helping schools, teams and communities build capacity to engage in conversations around different not just better, which is a shift in the way we talk about schools and education traditionally.” 

What is a coherent definition of learning? “The first step is you have to have some coherence as to how you define what learning is, and how it happens, and what the conditions are that are required for that. And the honest truth is that a lot of schools are still incoherent about that.”

“If you don't have a coherent, shared, lived definition of learning, then kids are in ‘incoherence’. They're going from classroom to classroom, having to figure out what every teacher means when they say to learn something. There isn't a coherent narrative or this thread or through line in their experience where everyone is building on the same understanding of how learning happens and what it needs to look like in classrooms.”

What contributes to learning? “We're starting to realize that a lot of what we do in schools really is not supportive of the way humans learn. Putting kids into age-grouped classrooms is not a great condition for learning, nor is limiting them to fifty or sixty, or eighty-minute time sessions, one subject at a time. That's not how we learn in the real world. None of those are conditions for really great learning to happen.”

“The type of learning that we want to see our kids do in classrooms is problem-based, question-based and meaningful. I think a lot more schools are trying to figure out how to create situations where kids can do more agentic learning where they have more agency, more choice, and more real freedom to pursue what they want to learn on their own terms.  Adults in the room fill in and support, question and probe, and do all those things that deepen that experience for them. I think that we're seeing a lot more opportunities for kids to really go in their own direction.”

“What we are seeing now are schools popping up on the edges that are really different and going about things very differently. They’re basically leaving the traditional systems, narratives and practices behind and going grade-less. They're not organizing by age. It really is about deep student-driven, project-based inquiry-based learning, with teachers more as supports. “

“Teachers may be up against a whole bunch of obstacles when it comes to moving into those types of pedagogies and those types of learning environments, because there is no coherent vision for what they want it to look like as a school, as a community. I don't think they've had the conversations.”

What do leadership teams need to do? “One of the most important jobs for leadership teams right now is to figure out a capacity building strategy for the community to understand a different narrative, a different story about the experience of school for their kids.  How are kids going to thrive in the future if they continue to live the current story?"

“Helping to create a different narrative or story is something we have to embed in our practice on a regular basis as school leaders, teachers and people in school.It's things like exhibitions of student work during the year or the community open exhibitions where kids are showing the types of interesting learning that they're doing, and describing it and talking about why it matters to them.”

“There is another layer to this that gets even more complicated, but is equally urgent. It’s not just about our kids in our schools; it’s about the world now. How do we all see ourselves as a part of the much larger kind of living system that is on this planet that is under duress right now?  I know a lot of people have a struggle even having that conversation in the community.” 

Should schools be places for the private or public good? “Schools have to be places now for literally the public community good, where we frame our work in the context that says we are part of a much larger system here. It can't be about ‘me’; it has to be about ‘we’.  It really has to change in terms of what we teach, how we teach it, the experiences we provide for kids, and the conversations we have in an ongoing way with the people in our communities.”

“We are facing a lot of challenges right now in the world. We’re not going to solve them without education. We can mitigate the challenging hardships and really contribute to the solutions if we think about education differently.”

What are two books you recommend to school leaders? “The first one is Who do we choose to be? by Margaret Wheatley, which is the powerful question she asks leaders.  How do we lead in our communities at a time of very, very deep difficulty, being good human beings and interacting with one another with a spirit of joy and hope but understanding that the larger problems may be unsolvable?”

“The second book is Education in a Time Between Worlds by Zachary Stein. His thesis is that we are in a ‘world system transition’. For education this brings up an almost unimaginable design challenge in terms of how we create an education for humanity at a moment of huge, huge shift.”

“Meg's book is about how we take this particular moment and make the best of it.  Zak's book is how we take this particular moment and aspire to something that really is different, and then begin to think about pathways to getting there.”

What is the design challenge for schools?   “We're helping schools move away from strategic planning to strategic design instead. How do we create the skills, literacy and disposition of designers, when we have conversations around schools, our practice and our environment?”

“So, if we're in this ‘world system transition’ and if we have this design challenge, then can we transport ourselves into the future to look into schools and see what are the things that are happening there that are good or bad, but then actually create artifacts and bring them back into the present?”

“As powerful as a story and narrative is when it comes to thinking differently or changing the script, even more powerful is actually holding an artifact in your hand and thinking about it. How do we get there, if it's something that we want to have happen? How is our work in the present getting us toward this kind of aspirational future?”

Final thoughts:

“I think that leaders have to engage in radical truth telling right now.  I think that we have to just be deeply honest about what's working and what’s not working in schools, in the context of how we understand learning and human beings, and acknowledge those things.”

“It requires a truthful assessment about the state of schools today, as well as thinking about potential opportunities for students and teachers and learners in communities in a world where we continue to see an explosion of ways that we can connect, create and access teachers and information in interesting and fascinating ways.”

“Engage students, teachers, parents, community members in these ongoing conversations.  Bring people together in groups and ask questions like: what is learning, what success means right now for this community. Be transparent about those conversations, and really try to use them as ways of building capacity in their communities.”

References:   https://bigquestions.institute/bqi-new-homepage/

Stein, Zachary, Education in a  Time Between Worlds Essays on the Future of  Schools, Technology and Society,  San Francisco, California, Bright Alliance, March 1, 2019.

Wheatley, Margaret, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity, Oakland, California, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, June 9, 2017.

Podcast for Leaderful Schools, previous episode with Will Richardson, October, 2021

https://podcast-for-leaderful-schools.simplecast.com/episodes/epic-design-challenge-for-schools