- To me, Isabella embodies what all kids want—to be able to live the life they want to live. To be happy, successful, and true to themselves. Like all kids I know, Isabella wanted an opportunity—not someone to save her. - In my first few years of teaching, I realized how lofty and unrealistic my goals actually were. I simply couldn’t get to know each student. So many kids came through my high school classroom in fifty-minute intervals that for every student I got to know well outside of class, there were ten that I didn’t. And when I did get to know my students and learned of their problems, I couldn’t help them in a meaningful way. What’s more—they didn’t necessarily even want me to. What they wanted was a voice and the ability to help themselves, just as I had wanted for myself. - I can tell you from personal experience, anyone who has ever been poor knows no one wants to be poor. When you are poor, your entire life is about surviving and trying to get yourself, or at least your kids, out of poverty. - College completion is what got everyone’s attention because that is what provides the best opportunity for economic security. But what mattered most to us was how we prepared our students for this success: by equipping each of them to live their own, unique, fulfilling life. - When people begin to spell out the problems of their schools and how they spill into their family lives, looking for me to share a silver bullet answer, I start to squirm. - The journey we have been on for the last sixteen years has been a quest to design a school that can truly prepare our children, all children, for the life they want to live—to be the best versions of themselves, to be successful in the fullest way possible—so they can live a fulfilled life. A life filled with financial security, purposeful work, strong relationships, meaningful community, and personal health. While what we have learned is directly applicable to how to “do” school, I believe it is also incredibly informative for how to parent. - Sometimes teachers from other local high schools would join us and I started to notice a pattern emerging in the conversations. It sounded like we worked in a war zone. Our dialogue was peppered with words like “front lines,” “battle,” and “hand-to-hand combat.” I couldn’t deny it felt true and even found myself falling into describing administrators as the “enemy.” - Everything I learned I tried to implement. But it was much easier to read about imagined and ideal systems, schools, and classrooms in a book than to create them in practice, especially as people stopped seeing me as a teacher. I walked into the faculty room one day and a group of teacher leaders asked me not to keep a desk there any longer. They explained that even though I was still teaching half-time, now that I was part of the administration they didn’t want me eavesdropping on their conversations. I was crushed. The teachers whom I had taken this job to serve now saw me as part of the problem, and everything I was trying to do to set them up for success didn’t seem either to stick or to matter much. - I learned that to get into the preschool I drove past every day I was going to have to camp out overnight and hope to secure a coveted spot. And the moms in the neighborhood told me if I wanted to make sure my child got the good teachers in elementary school I would need to start volunteering now for the fundraising committee so I would have influence with the principal. There were tips and tricks about getting into the right playgroups and music classes. Everything was whispered and shared secret club–style because there were only so many spots and everyone was vying for them. - For years I had been pointing out and trying to fix all of the problems I so clearly saw in the schools where I taught. But never once had I stopped to think, what would these schools look like if they were just good? From a blank piece of paper, I got to design—not fix—a school. The opportunity was exhilarating, the responsibility overwhelming. - <mark style="background: #FFF3A3A6;">The big difference was the approach to learning. Could this teacher believe another way was possible? Could he let go of his experiences and training enough to learn a different approach? It was the number one thing I weighed in hiring.</mark> - Projects begin with a problem, question, or challenge that is relevant to the student and his community and life. They end with the student performing a task that directly addresses the problem, answers the question, or meets the challenge. As the student moves toward a solution, he gets timely and actionable feedback, so he improves as he goes. It’s not that students don’t learn about the industrial revolution or life cycles—they do. But they learn about them through a project that makes the connection to their life, and gives them the space to problem-solve. A history project might be “The Industrial Revolution: The Story of a Product,” wherein students trace a product from its invention to how it’s used today. - These projects aren’t wedged in, but rather are the day-to-day work of the students. Lectures are replaced with deep discussion, planning, research, model making, writing, and lots of critical thinking as student and teacher work side by side. These projects aren’t relegated to the wee hours of the night before they’re due, and look nothing like a poster board with hastily written paragraphs and home-printed pictures. The final products are high-quality presentations, models, simulations, websites, campaigns, building plans, and businesses. Projects aren’t dessert—they’re the main course. - I find it ironic, because the purpose of standardized tests is to show how students perform and how prepared they are, and yet these tests get in the way of the best way to prepare them. Even more ironic is the fact that PBL kids do well on standardized tests. - Teachers try desperately to do what they are supposed to do and, at the same time, what they believe is best for their students. - There’s a tricky psychology at play when it comes to school. Everyone who went through school (which is most people) has a bias and perspective about what it should be. We can’t help it. We’re human and we generalize our schooling and experience. Educators certainly do it. Most did well in school, or at least felt comfortable there. - Our communities need adults who, when they encounter a complex moral issue, have the decision-making skills to contemplate both sides, apply different types of reasoning, and question assumptions. Kids don’t want to just recite how a bill becomes a law (if they happen to remember it), they want to know what it feels like and takes to push an issue through that is important to them. They want to be prepared for life as much as we want them to be. - For well over a hundred years, American schools have had this basic premise: kids need to know certain information before they become adults. The job of the school is to teach it and the job of the student is to learn it. The other job of the school is to show the world the student learned it. The approach is pretty simple. Basically a teacher presents the information to a group of students using a lecture, text, film, or any other methods they see fit. The student internalizes, studies, and practices the knowledge, then shows they know it on an exam. The exam is scored, the student is ranked via a grade, and the class moves on. - Teachers, then, have two jobs that are in opposition to each other. On the one hand, they are responsible for students’ learning. This is obvious, I know. It’s also what motivated most teachers to enter the profession in the first place, and one of the things they love about their job. Their second responsibility is ensuring students’ grades show what the student has done, and that they grade their students in a fair and ethical way. - Simply put, mastery is when you become good at something, autonomy is when you have some measure of control, and purpose is when you’re doing something for a reason that is authentic to you. We read Pink’s work, and thought, <mark style="background: #FFF3A3A6;">what if we designed learning with mastery, autonomy, and purpose at the center? Today, we call it self-directed learning.</mark> - five power behaviors often throughout the day. Those five behaviors are strategy-shifting, challenge-seeking, persistence, responding to setbacks, and appropriate help-seeking. - What Will had realized was that he had to engage, that he had to do something or he wasn’t going to learn anything. Previously he had mistaken the movement of the class for his own movement. As we talked it became clear to me he had no idea what it meant to actually learn something and the role he had to play in order to learn. - Failing is only productive when two things are true: first, the person who fails actually learns something from it and is thus motivated to try again; and second, the failure doesn’t permanently close future doors. - Teachers don’t want kids to fail, either, and so they offer extra credit for meaningless work to allow for passing grades. They also credit “effort” in their grades, problematic because it keeps the student moving along when really they might be falling further and further behind. Schools offer summer school courses that are more about attendance than learning. The intentions are right. No one wants our kids to fail out of school. But nor do we want kids who are dependent upon others to structure everything for them. - <mark style="background: #FFF3A3A6;">Getting too involved, by taking over, is a mistake I see parents making constantly, and from personal experience, I get why. So Scott and I created some rules for ourselves. When Rett’s cooking, we decided, one of us needs to be present to answer his questions. But we need to be doing something else, too—paying bills, reading an article, or doing some work—so we are not there exclusively to oversee Rett.</mark> We need to stay on the opposite side of the counter. That keeps us from getting into his space and stems the temptation to take over. We also need to suck it up if a meal isn’t all that good or the kitchen is messy. We need to prioritize his learning and development and be willing to make ourselves a bit uncomfortable in order to foster it. - The bottom line is: Scott and I, like all parents, like being needed by our child. As Rett began to access the tools and build the skills to direct his own learning, it completely changed our role. It felt uncomfortable that he knew more than we did. - One research study after another shows that kids who have even one meaningful relationship with an adult in school have better outcomes than those who don’t. - We started with the concept of the “homeroom” and decided to make it actually feel like home, like a safe place you could go for support and where you would be known. - when you have a personal relationship with them, and when you create a safe space so they can come to know one another and themselves. - Reflection happens in Summit classes each and every day, and is a critical part of learning and growing in all skills. It is a significant part of goal-setting, and holds a valued place in the self-directed learning cycle. The point of reflection is to inform the setting of the next goal, so there will be improvement and progress. - They are open-ended questions, questions that beg for thoughtful answers: What do you want from this situation? What emotions do you have? What behaviors are you exhibiting? What is working or not working? Why? Put yourself in the other person’s shoes—what do you think their perspective is? What role can you play in getting to your desired outcome? Is there anything you need to do to make the relationship right? We ask reflective questions verbally, and we also ask them in written form—which is particularly useful when helping to mediate a conflict between two or more students. - In most schools, when two kids get into a screaming match, either no adult notices or, if they do, the kids are disciplined, perhaps suspended for a day. Unfortunately, punishment doesn’t actually address the relationship problem. It’s common for videos of fights to end up on social media where they fester and grow into multi-student feuds and often violent encounters. It is human to disagree, to become angry, to get hurt, and to hurt others. It is healthy to learn how to repair relationship ruptures, so they don’t escalate to a point of no return, but instead relationships become stronger from the process of healing the break. - One of the most effective shifts I’ve made with Rett has come from what I’ve learned in mentoring. I never ask, “What do you want to be?” or “What is your favorite subject?” Rather, I ask, “What do you like doing?” “What parts of that do you like most?” And in the course of our conversation we come up with a list of what we call the “ing” words. In experience after experience, he has accumulated more and more “ings” and is beginning to see a pattern. - As I shared this sentiment at one of my first board meetings, one of the members wisely said to me, “A culture will develop in the organization. The only question is, will it be the one you want?” - I saw this play out over and over at Hawthorne or Mountain View when a decision would be made, say, to adopt a new textbook or focus on a particular goal, but a good portion of the teachers would say, “I didn’t vote for that,” close their classroom door, and do what they wanted to do. It is so common in education that there’s a phrase to describe the phenomenon: “This too shall pass, so I’ll wait it out.” The best decisions are those achieved with a full consensus. That doesn’t mean everyone will get exactly what they want—often no one will—and it doesn’t mean everyone will be equally happy with a decision. However, done right, consensus means everyone agrees to support the decision and they are held accountable by the group. - Our decision grid clearly and transparently communicated who had the authority to make which decisions (D), who could veto a decision (V), who could make a proposal for a decision (P), and who could simply give input (I). We wanted to make important decisions by consensus, but we also were pragmatic about the sheer number of decisions we had to make each day. - Group work goes wrong in two primary ways. First, most often the task assigned isn’t actually worthy of group work. What groups do well is solve complex problems that benefit from different experience, expertise, skills, and knowledge. - The second way group work goes wrong is when the task is sufficiently complex, but no adult is teaching and supporting the skills - Zack wasn’t making any effort whatsoever—and then respond to that evidence by bubbling in an F? Maybe it would teach him a lesson, but most important, it would clear some space so she could focus on the other kids who could possibly make it. This train of thought was not only common in every school we’d ever worked in, but completely understandable: I’ve done what I need to do, and you haven’t. I’m going to wash my hands of responsibility now. - We didn’t see ourselves as saviors. Even if she had enough to give to Zack, she’d be completely burned out for the next Zack, or the one after that. A one-off approach would make teachers crazy, and teachers pushing themselves to the point of burnout does not make for sustainability. I was pretty intense in those days, but even I was reasonable enough to see that. - teachers doing more couldn’t be our answer. Instead we had to figure out how to enable kids to do for themselves. It turns out that meant we needed to value developing the habits of success as much as we valued developing academic skills and knowledge. - We often don’t immediately recognize which block a kid is missing—we just know the structure supporting a student’s learning is rickety. As a faculty, we use the habits of success building blocks to guide us as we look for the underlying issue. - I asked Rett why he wasn’t doing his homework. I know it sounds crazy, but asking why wasn’t something I frequently did, and if I did, I only asked once. This time, every time he gave me an answer, I asked why again. It was hard not to insert my opinions and dispute his facts, but after a bit, we got into a flow. Just like with the kids at Summit, the answer he gave to the first why and the answers he began to give after the fourth, fifth, and sixth whys were very different. The latter answers were much more insightful, honest, and, ultimately, useful. - For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I had run a homework system like this for so many years. Sadly, my best explanation came down to this: good teachers give homework, good students do homework, and parents think that homework means something is being taught. Or so we all believe. - And at the end of the day, if Rett is self-directed, curious, and has a sense of purpose—in multiple settings, and without support—I’ll know he is prepared. - The message to the teacher is: “To be good at your job, present knowledge—just do it in an entertaining and captivating way.” It’s hard to change a teacher’s mind about their role, and it’s hard to change a student’s mind about the teacher’s role. - School makes this unproductive cycle even worse. Up through third grade, schools focus on teaching kids to read. However, in fourth grade, a switch occurs and kids are expected to read in order to learn new information. This obviously creates a problem for kids who haven’t really learned to read by fourth grade, but as studies show, reading proficiency is heavily dependent upon how much you already know about what you’re reading. There are many implications in this for schools, but as a parent, my biggest takeaway is this: my child will learn more and perform better in school if he has a lot of knowledge to begin with. - At Summit we put a lot of thought into exposing students to as many experiences and ideas as possible. Exposure provides the spark of interest. Part of that involves simply encouraging everyone, from teachers to students, to share their own interests and passions. The school hallways are filled with signs, posters, pictures, clothing, and stickers showing how members of the community are involved with a wide variety of topics, from knitting to politics. - when we confuse acceptance to a school or a job with preparedness for them, we miss the mark. When we prepare for not a specific school or job, but for the life we want, we tend to get both acceptance and fulfillment. We don’t have to compromise. - We supported our students as much as we did because we loved them and would do anything in our power to help them succeed. Yet even while we were doing it, deep in our guts, we knew there were going to be issues later. Just as parents so often do, we rationalized our choices by saying if we didn’t step in now, they didn’t even have a chance at the future. And we were right, in many cases, to have done so; we couldn’t let them fail big. But we could have let them fail small along the way, supporting them as they learned. - “Is it ethical for you to do nothing, when you know you can do something? How many sons and daughters will continue to be lost if you don’t act?” - The little everyday actions by teachers matter. Our beliefs about what our kids are capable of, and our willingness to be uncompromising in helping them see what is possible, matter. It is the personal connection and seeing someone for who they are and what they want that enables them to become who they are and to know themselves. Clearly the little things had made a huge difference - Today, most students and their families frame the college process by asking, “What school will accept me?” when the real question should be “What school will I accept?” - When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. - “Fine” is the word I hear most often when talking with parents about their kids’ education. “She’ll be fine.” “He’ll be fine.” It’s a statement made usually after the parent has articulated a concern or pointed to a problem, something that just isn’t right. In some cases the worries are extreme (drug use, bullying, depression, failing) and in others seemingly minor (boredom, stress, small academic setbacks). “She’ll be fine” is generally coupled with the statement “This is life and kids need to learn how to deal with it. I had challenges. I made it through. I turned out fine.” What would happen if we expected more than fine? What would happen if being satisfied didn’t mean your child was fine, but meant your child was great, and happy? I’m not talking about the shallow happiness young kids get from a piece of candy or a toy they really want. What if great meant they were fulfilled? What if they were engaged in purposeful work, community, and meaningful relationships?