Why Collaboration Matters: A Call to Action (Reflections on the 6 Cs - Part Two)

Last September, OESIS launched its XP Pathways initiative to help educators apply ideas from OESIS network resources to their classrooms. OESIS Network Leaders are continuing to work on curating content by selecting videos & resources that can aid the OESIS user in learning more about specific competencies, such as Critical Thinking, or in this case, Collaboration. With this in mind, I wanted to share a blog post I published on the OESIS website about the value of collaboration. What follows is a Call to Collaborate (if you don't have time to read, at least skip to the bottom for the call to action).

Why Collaboration in Schools is so Important​

1. Knowledge is a collaborative enterprise
Descartes once offered the analogy of the architect to make the case that an individualist enterprise yields better results than working on a project collectively (Discourse on Method, Part Two). It was a radical notion that made perfect sense in a world where few were educated, but I wonder if today’s scientists would agree, considering that most advancements are the result of a community of engaged thinkers and learners working together (which is probably true of contemporary architecture as well). Although we could characterize the last century of education as a Cartesian one (Individualism over Collectivism; Reason over Emotion; Mind over Body), perhaps we’ve come full circle on how we value collaborative enterprises. We know we need to prepare learners for a world that is connected, where experts are abundant and have much to share with each other, and students need the skills and experiences necessary to thrive in such collaborative environments, and this is true for teachers as well.

2. Collaboration inspires lifelong learning
I entered my first classroom as an independent school instructor 14 years ago. Fresh out of graduate school, my eagerness was obvious: I couldn’t wait to spread my love for literature, and surely my passion would be contagious, right? With a sense of Cartesian heroism, I selected my reading lists, prepared lectures & frameworks for class discussions (based on years of training in my content area), and proceeded to teach in the likeness of my graduate professors who helped shape in me a sense of individual competency and expertise. What was I thinking? As if secondary education is about the transmission of knowledge from expert to amateur (hint: it’s about so much more!). You might be able to guess what happened next: to put it mildly, my spirits were crestfallen. Why weren’t my students as fascinated as I was by this undeniably valuable content? Why were they so disinterested and passive? The content was fantastic, by the way, but my pedagogy was limited, to say the least.

Frankenstein Student Conference, 2017

Fast forward a few years, I started to understand more about student centered learning, realizing the importance of designing curriculum where skills were at the forefront. I attended a conference and heard Pat Bassett, NAIS President at the time, speak about the importance of the 6 Cs, and by this time, I had made a resolution: I was going to focus on the idea of making learning more collaborative in my classes. That was the ‘C’ I was going to focus on. My idea, however, was still a traditional one: I was going to host a paper conference for high school students from various campuses, which was less of an ongoing collaborative practice and more of an event that would serve as a wonderful memory for all involved. The real turning point for me was an email I received while preparing for this upcoming project. Joel Garza, Upper School English Chair at Greenhill School, suggested we have our students start collaborating right then (the conference was months away). The email startled me: How would we collaborate? I’m not very savvy with all this digital technology. But I realized something. My demands for students to collaborate meant they had to get out of their comfort zones, and that’s what Joel was demanding of me, meaning I had no choice. I had to say yes. Our classes blogged together and visited each other’s campuses. Students traded podcasts and answered each other’s inquiries, and they began to do so for reasons well beyond a single grade. It was transformative, but it only worked as well as it did because we as teachers were transparent about our collaborative efforts as well. Since then I have grown exponentially as a teacher, in ways beyond the single competency of collaboration. However, it was “the first C” that started it all. The call to collaborate got me out of my comfort zone, which was frightening, but because of this, I discovered the joys of being stretched by others to accomplish something that could never have been done by a single person. 

The inter-institutional paper conference was a huge success, by the way. In fact, it's become a tradition of sorts in the DFW area. This year marks our 7th iteration as The Hockaday School prepares to host students from around the area for the 2019 Sandra Cisneros Colloquium, this Wednesday, February 13th.

3. Modeling: Collaborative teaching leads to collaborative learning
When I first encouraged students to embrace the idea of collaborative group work, I usually concluded such endeavors feeling frustrated. Students always found a way to “divide the labor” and simply complete the minimum tasks required for his or her portion of the project. It wasn’t authentic, but more importantly, I wasn’t appreciating what they had to go through. When reflecting on our collaborative experiences, Joel Garza offered an insight that sometimes we gloss over too quickly when encouraging people to put themselves out there: “Standing in the way of successful collaboration, in my experience, is a tremendous amount of ungrounded fear and anxiety that we don’t even want to name” (“A Tale of Three Classrooms” K12 Online Conference 2014). It’s so true, and it’s what makes things so challenging. Teachers, like everyone else, fear the idea of failing publicly as well as the idea of not being in control. Collaboration, however, requires us to embrace these possible outcomes. When I began to model for students successful collaborative practices, not only did they begin to collaborate more authentically, I too became a more empathetic teacher. I knew what was being demanded of them, but more importantly I felt it as well.

Teaching methods model for students the kinds of behaviors and habits we want to see them practice. What does Cartesian individualism, for instance, model for students as a method for teaching, lesson preparation, etc.? One might suggest that it inspires students to be confident individuals as well. I would caution, however, that it could serve the opposite end, namely communicating to them that there is an individual expert in the room, thereby encouraging the learner to be a passive recipient of the expert’s construction of the content. This is the same passivity I confronted in my early years of teaching. To me such modeling runs contrary to the kind of skills we want to cultivate in students to prepare them as leaders in the collaborative communities of their future careers. Students need to see us collaborate with peers so that they understand we don’t have all the answers, so they realize that to be successful one must network with others and participate in a community of lifelong learners. This is how we make space for them to become individuals in our classrooms. I would argue that it is only by way of collaboration that we discover our confidence as individuals. The binaries are not exclusive.
​

A CALL TO COLLABORATE

For those who might be interested, I'm looking for teachers and students who want to collaborate with my classes. Currently, I teach 4 sections of 10th grade literature. From Feb. 20th to Mar. 8th, we'll be reading 4 dystopian short stories that confront the question of technology (either directly or more subtly):

1. E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" (Feb. 20th-26th)
2. Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" (Feb. 25th-28th)
3. Philip K. Dick's "Minority Report" (Feb. 27th-Mar. 4th)
4. Ken Liu's "The Perfect Match." (Mar. 4th-8th)

Go here to read more details about the unit, but the basic idea is to get students from different campuses to read the 4 stories collaboratively using Hypothes.is - a platform that lets readers annotate collectively any text that can be found online.

If interested, leave a comment or reach out to me via Twitter (@jcolley8) or email (jcolley@theoakridgeschool.org), and I'll send you a link to our hypothes.is reading group. I'd love to evolve this idea more, so I'm also open to suggestions. After all, for students to collaborate effectively and successfully, they need to see teachers do it as well, so email me and help me make this project even better.

Reflections on OESIS Boston: Humanities without Textbooks & Bringing Poetry to the MakerSpace

Two weeks ago, I attended the OESIS conference in Boston, MA, and I’m still processing all the things I learned over such a short period of time. I had the privilege of sitting on two panels, one on online collaboration and another on student agency, as well as presenting with my colleague, Joel Garza, on some of our previous collaborative projects.

I wanted take a moment to share some notes and observations about a couple sessions I attended that relate to English instruction (Also, for more reflections on OESIS Boston, check out the article just published by Global Online Academy, The Power of Networks: 10 Ways Schools Are Tackling Innovation):

1. Humanities without the Narrative by Deborah Shaul from La Jolla Country Day School

Deborah’s session was about blending a US History curriculum with an American Literature class without using an anchor textbook for the course. When Deborah ditched the textbook, it freed her to approach the content in a less linear fashion, and instead, scope and sequencing were often shaped or influenced by the interests and choices of the students as they immersed themselves in a deeper, more interconnected investigation of American literature and history. As she stressed, by allowing to make more choices as to what primary documents they wanted to research, the teacher and the author of the textbook were no longer the “keeper of the keys” to the narrative. One thing I appreciated about Deborah’s session was her candidness about student and parent responses, which were not always positive. Doing away with the textbook created fear and anxiety for some. They weren’t always sure what to study or how to do so, but I think such push back always happens when we truly turn over agency to students in relation to their learning. Why do some students prefer having a textbook?

(a) It serves as a security blanket because the answers are explicitly provided

(b) Students don’t always trust their own answers nor those of their peers

(c) It’s easier to perform well on a test when one can memorize pre-packaged content

She surveyed her students, asking them how they prefer to learn, and Deborah was a little disappointed to see that many students still prefer lecture/power point formats. However, I think it’s important to step back and ask ourselves: are students conflating “getting good grades” with learning? Perhaps the survey results reflect that kind of confusion that one would expect from the average independent school learner whose main priority is his or her transcript.

If you have more questions, you can reach out to Deborah at @Dshaul3.

2. Discovering Poetry Through Maker-Space Projects by Amy Alsip from The Oakridge School

Amy shared with us a project she did where students made poetry as well as artifacts inspired by their literary creations in the context of a MakerSpace. One through-line I noticed that connects Amy’s project to Deborah’s curricular innovations was the role of student agency in each scenario. Students would enter the MakerSpace, and there were several stations/choices for poetry creation:

(a) Dice Roll haikus

(b) Using book spines to create poetry

(c) Using the name of paint samples to create poetry

(d) “Blackout poetry” using markers and a found text (like a newspaper)

(e) Using scrabble games to construct poetry

And there were a few more stations that escape me now…

Amy Alsip presenting her poetry/maker project at OESIS Boston

Students would then share their 20+ poetry creations with peers to get feedback. Once they had selected their favorite 3-5 poems, each poet would return to the MakerSpace to create an artifact inspired by the poem in question, and once again, they had many options:

(a) Coding

(b) Sowing

(c) 3D Printing

(d) Repurposing found materials

(e) Circuitry Boxes

(f) Legos

Again, I believe there were 1 or 2 more options that I cannot recall now

The whole project culminated in a poetry read-aloud night at the school for the community to attend. Of course, the students got to showcase their fabrications as well. As an English teacher, I like how a project like this reminds us that English classes have always been spaces for making.

If you have more questions, you can reach out to Amy at @amyalsip.

What is Student Agency? Some Provisional Notes

Next week I will be speaking at the Online Education Symposium for Independent Schools Conference in Boston on October 15-16.  One of several things I'll be doing is participating on a panel titled, "Student Agency - Strategies and Opportunities."  I'm excited to be a part of such an exciting conversation with so many impressive fellow educators. 

I'd like to share some of my preliminary thoughts as they relate to 5 crucial questions for our upcoming panel, and any critical feedback from those of you who are reading this post would be much appreciated as I prepare for next week:

Question 1: What is Student Agency?

First off, I think it’s important to note that there are two terms here: “student” and “agency.” The word "student" makes me think of the following modalities: learner, investigator, inquirer, maker, practitioner, deconstructor, apprentice, evaluator. In other words, to be a student, we must be willing to move outside or beyond the self for purposes of encountering teachers, experts, peers, as well as a body of knowledge in a given field of constructed inquiry.

As I think about the word "agency" some words that come to mind are will, choice, autonomy, ownership, personalization, and individuality. If being a student demands us to "get outside our selves" to experience the world and others, agency is the practice of taking responsibility for the self by being one's own advocate and by managing one's priorities, capacities, and interests autonomously. Agency relates to choices about pacing, sequencing, and scope when it comes to curricular engagement as well as deciding how to demonstrate one's knowledge and learning.

With all this in mind, here's my working definition: Student Agency is empowering students to develop, not only the hard skills necessary for a particular curricular scope and sequence of content, but the soft skills as well to map that scope and sequence for themselves in a personalized fashion that fits their sense of purpose while doing so responsibly and productively in partnership with a community of learners (teachers, experts, peers, etc.).

Question 2: Why does it matter?

Students are capable of learning anything, and they need to take responsibility for that innate capacity, but that can only happen if we expect and demand that of them in their formative years of socialization and education. Otherwise, we risk messaging something much less inspiring: that there are those who are good at school and those who are not, when in reality everyone is good at learning, especially if we’ve been given the time and space to develop the soft skills needed to manage that innate capacity productively. However, this can only happen if students have a safe place to practice agency during the formative years of their educational development.

Question 3: What structural and cultural barriers in our schools inhibit the development of student agency?

For structural barriers, here are some insights that came to mind for me:

1. It can take more TIME: pacing can be unpredictable and varied, and not every student moves according to the same timeline. As a result, teachers may not be able to cover as much ground.
2. School schedules can be a hindrance, but the reality is we need to "have the minutes match the mission" - meaning if cultivating agency is important for your school then there needs to be a schedule that allows for such environments to flourish. I think it's harder to achieve this when students meet for shorter time periods (such as the 45 minute, 5-days-a-week schedule).
3. Technology is often a supporting tool for scaffolding agency, so inequity can be an obstacle when it comes to having access to such resources.
4. Sometimes there can be "mixed messaging" for a given student when traveling from one classroom environment to another.  Some classes demand the exercise of agency, while other classes may inadvertently suppress it, making it difficult to develop the kinds of habits of mind that are necessary for students to take ownership of their learning.
5. High stakes testing.
6. I believe agency is motivated by authenticity, so it's important a student's educational experience is (inter)connected across departments as well as to the real world (beyond our campuses).  

For cultural barriers, here are some thoughts that occurred to me:

1. The tug-of-war between the scope of content vs. the depth of the learning experience can make it difficult for teachers to prioritize student agency. This gets back to the structural barrier mentioned in #1: it takes time to cultivate agency.
2. For some of us, there is a real fear of losing control of the classroom, and the fear is well-founded.  One does lose control, but we have to ask ourselves: What does active learning look like? I think the answer to that question makes clear that there is a need to cede some control in our classrooms.
3. Our cultural perceptions of the role of the teacher can get in the way: there's little room for the distribution of agency when the teacher is content king/queen. We have to rethink our role if we are to empower students to drive their learning.
4. The “messiness” and diversity of student demonstrations of learning can be daunting: How do we assess them? What are we assessing in a classroom that prioritizes agency?
5. It can be difficult to trust students to take responsibility for their learning, but we all know that they need to practice having such responsibility before the stakes are raised in college.

Question 4: Are all students capable of driving their own learning? What gets in the way?

In my experience there are 3 identifiable cases of students who have a hard time driving their own learning:

(1) The student who has always “schooled school”: usually this type of student is a “high achiever,” but his or her strategy for success is to give the teacher “exactly what they want to hear or read.” I like to think in terms of “mapping” versus “tracing,” and the kind of student I’m describing here is very comfortable with “tracing” what the teacher “maps” - instead of taking the risk of leaving his or her comfort zone to map the learning for his or herself. Oftentimes this kind of student needs to be challenged to exercise agency - especially before they leave for college where more independence and agency will be expected of them. Usually consistent conversations (of a metacognitive nature) that reflect upon why such experiences matter can be enough to get this kind of student to understand what’s demanded of them and why. The real challenge here is when the “high achieving” parent of that student expresses skepticism about what you’re trying to get your students to achieve. Again, I think frank conversations about the soft skills that will be demanded of them once they leave for college can be a good starting pointing for winning this type of parent over.

(2) The student who struggles with executive functioning or related skills that are the foundation for exercising agency successfully and productively: some learners, for a variety of reasons, have a hard time self-initiating and staying organized, as well as understanding strategies for prioritizing tasks to get a job done efficiently. A student who has these challenges sometimes necessitates intervention and assistance from the instructor, but I believe this can only work if there is a communicative partnership with parents or guardians behind the scenes. It’s important to let these students make mistakes, but it’s also important to vigilantly serve as a source of support. I often schedule weekly meetings with students to help them identify what priorities matter for them this week and strategize ways to get it done.

(3) The student who is (nearly) completely disengaged from school and perhaps from the greater community: this to me has been the most challenging case in terms of winning a student over to the idea that he or she can drive the learning. No single classroom environment can completely solve this conundrum; that’s why I mentioned community because it has to be a communal effort to reengage the student. Most importantly, there has to be a mutual partnership with parents/guardians as well. The best place to start I think is to get to know the student as well as his/her interests and/or hobbies, but if the parent/guardian is disengaged as well, it becomes a difficult, uphill battle. One thing that can work here (I think) is peer mentorship, namely finding student(s) who have bought in and could collaborate with (aka mentor) the student in question.

Question 5: How do you determine if a student is motivated, engaged and taking charge of their own learning?

First off, I strongly recommend looking at the Bartle Test for Gamer Types. There are 4 categories: (1) Achiever (2) Explorer (3) Socializer & (4) Killer/Griever; and the test results reveal where you fall (in terms of percentile) with each given category. It measures what’s motivating different types of gamers by identifying what keeps them engaged with the game over a sustained period of time. (Go here to learn more about the taxonomy of types). I suggest using this resource to better understand what type of learner you are working with as well as what motivates them to stay engaged with a project or task. If you have a “socializer,” the student is most likely motivated by social factors; therefore, make them a group leader who reports back to the teacher about the success of the group’s work. An “achiever” wants to feel a sense of accomplishment, and they want it sooner than later, whereas “explorers” want to investigate all options and pathways in a given unit of study. The “killers” are interesting; they like sabotaging other people’s progress. I like to gamify my units, and I always recruit the killers to be beta-testers who look for glitches or loopholes in a given unit (and they are very motivated by this role).

Here are a few more observations about indicators that students are truly motivated to take charge:

1. They stop asking about grades and the bare minimum requirements; instead they start focusing on completing the task they have envisioned

2. I know there's a shift towards agency when students stop asking what I want (for a given assignment) and instead start telling me what they’d like to do.

3. I know they're engaged when students demand that I adjust, alter, or modify an assignment, not because they don’t want to do the work, but because they see a connection or direction that motivates their inquiry elsewhere.

4. Students are taking control when what I’ve planned (in terms of a lesson) gets derailed by the demands of what students need that day for purposes of getting done whatever it is they are working on (in terms of an ongoing project, etc.).

5. I know something is going well when students start talking about what they’re doing/learning outside my class and start making connections with other learning experiences both in other classes and in the real world.

6. (In the context of gamification) I know they're engaged when students go beyond the required amount of XP points because they want to finish the task, “beat the game,” or have the most points.

Wow, I didn't expect this post to be this long, but I've been thinking about this a lot over the past several weeks. Again, please share feedback; these notes are provisional so I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the matter.

OESIS is Rolling Out Its XP Webinar Program and Listservs - A Call to Join the Network

Looking for some good PD opportunities for the upcoming school year? Are you interested in attending a conference or online learning experience that focuses not on the device but on innovative teaching and learning?

If you teach in an independent school and want to network and grow as a professional, you need to attend the Online Education Symposium for Independent Schools (OESIS) for one of their regional gatherings, such as the upcoming OESIS Boston conference on October 15-16. I'll be there this year presenting on topics such as online collaboration and student agency in the classroom.

However, if you can't attend the conference, that's ok because OESIS is introducing in September their new XP webinar program with more than 200 live sessions planned for the 2017-2018 school year. Teachers and schools can now personalize their PD needs by selecting what webinars would suit their interests and desires for growth and innovation. This September, I'll be hosting two OESIS webinars: one on gamification in a humanities class and the other on collaborating online across campuses. Schools and educators can sign up for access to the new OESIS XP webinar program by going here, and educators can submit proposals for future webinars (which includes a $200 honorarium) by going here.

In addition to the webinars, OESIS is also debuting their innovative listservs for the 2017-2018 academic year. Each listserv will be managed by at least one OESIS network leader: for instance, I will be facilitating discussion for the English teacher listserv. The purpose will be to provide a continued channel of communication after OESIS conferences and webinars, but the listserv will also serve as a platform for sharing useful content, resources, and ideas among a network language arts teachers from across the nation. Anyone can try out the listserv this month to see if it's something they'd like to subscribe to for the rest of the year, so I encourage readers to give it a try:

To learn more about (and sign up for) the listservs go here.

To sign up for OESIS XP webinars go here to learn about the various offerings.

To view the webinar schedule for September 2017 go here.

To submit a proposal for a future XP webinar go here.

To learn more about the OESIS Boston conference taking place Oct. 15-16 go here.

Resources from Lausanne Learning Institute - July 10-12, 2016 - Memphis, TN

Lausanne Learning Institute, July 10-12, 2016, #LLI16

Last week I had the opportunity to attend one of my favorite summer conferences: the Lausanne Learning Institute in Memphis.  If you've never had the chance to go, I highly recommend LLI for the educator interested in current conversations about educational technology and student-centered learning. There's no better place to have such discussions than in a city like Memphis with its fascinating history, rich musical culture, and savory southern cuisine. For 3 years now, I've had a blast attending Lausanne, and it's exciting to hear that they'll be growing their brand as well as their reach as a professional development institute as soon as next year.

Beale Street, Saturday evening

The Oakridge School is the 2016 Spotlight School

Attending this year included the added privilege of representing the 2016 Spotlight School of the Year. The Oakridge School was recognized as "the most innovative independent school, from technology integration to student-centered curriculum" by the Lausanne Learning Institute based on its extensive review of schools across the nation. I was proud to be a part of such an impressive team of collaborative, student-centered educators: all in all, we hosted around 20 sessions at the conference on topics ranging from maker spaces to authentic learning to writing across the curricula. Below you can watch the acceptance video that was shown at the opening banquet when Jon Kellam, Headmaster of The Oakridge School, accepted the award on behalf of the school. (The video was made by Oakridge upper school students...)

Resources for the 4 Sessions I Hosted:

Over two busy days, I hosted four sessions, two with Claire Reddig, Writing Specialist at The Oakridge School, and two on my own. Day one, I facilitated a conversation titled, "Rhizomatic Learning & Disrupting School Silos." Most of what was explored in this session stems from my interactions with the #Rhizo16 community as well as my work with Joel Garza and Seth Burgess (including our "Ignite" Keynote from OESIS LA 2016). Go here to read more about my thoughts on how "Rhizomatic" thinking could provoke a radical shift in mindsets in terms of how we rethink school organization. Below, I've provided an embedded version of the Google slides (contact me if there's any questions):

Unfortunately, my first session on "Rhizomatic Learning" was not very well attended, but those of us in the room, perhaps due to the smaller size, had a great conversation. One of my administrators joked that I've got to quit putting obscure words in my session titles if I want more people to attend. That's fair advice, but esoteric word choices didn't stop people from attending my second workshop: "Pwning the Humanities: Gamification in the Classroom" (for a definition of "pwning" go here...).  One of the best parts of the session was the fact that students attended, and they weren't afraid to join the conversation and give feedback.

The students in the room are digging gamification with @jcolley8 and ready to ask for it at their high school. #LLI16 #oakridgeowls

— Sarah Kramer (@builtamom) July 11, 2016

Although I don't have a "slide show" for the session on gamification, go here to find resources, related content, and links based on what was discussed, and again, contact me if there's questions.

"Pwning the Humanities..." | Mon., July 11th, 2016

Day two, Claire Reddig and I hosted two sessions related to writing. Our first workshop was titled "Connecting Writing with Authentic Audiences," where we facilitated a conversation on what it means to connect student writing to an authentic audience as well as what strategies we could employ to make it happen in our classrooms tomorrow. I've embedded the slide show for this session as well; feel free to take a look:

After lunch, we hosted another workshop on a similar topic, called "Writing Across the Curricula at The Oakridge School," and we were blown away by the turnout for the final session. It was standing room only, which made clear to me that this is a timelessly valuable topic: how do we integrate one of the most important, transdisciplinary skills across the departments in way that is intentional, clear, and collaborative? Much of what we shared was based on the hard work done by the Oakridge English department (and beyond) in recent years to improve the execution of writing instruction across the campus, K through 12. Below, I've supplied the slides to this one as well, and I urge anyone to take a look and give feedback:

For more resources related to the sessions I hosted at #LLI16, go to my google site, which can be found here. There's many more links and useful content to be found there.

On February 23-24, 2017, The Oakridge School is hosting the first LLI Southwest Conference!

Jon Kellam accepting Spotlight Award

Another exciting development related to last week's conference was the announcement that The Oakridge School, LLI's 2016 Spotlight School, will be hosting the first southwest regional gathering for LLI in February 2017. One of the main themes we keep returning to as we begin to plan February's conference is the idea of "Making Good Teaching Visible." With this in mind, we plan to schedule two kinds of session formats: (1) the traditional 1hr. block workshop for presentation & conversation and (2) what we're calling "fishbowl" sessions, such that the first 45mins will include a lesson with students in the room, followed by a 45min presenter-led debrief without the students in the room. We're excited about the 2nd format because it allows teachers to see each other's craft in action: it makes good teaching visible for everyone to see! We hope to have educators submit proposals for both kinds of formats, and we hope attendees and presenters come from all over the nation. Make sure you go here to submit a proposal for next February, and hopefully we'll see you in Arlington!

Jared Colley

@jcolley8

Submit proposals here for the 2017 LLI Southwest Conference at The Oakridge School!

Metaphors We Teach By, Part Three - Consider the Rhizome: On Deterritorializing Silos in Schools

It is a question of a model that is perpetually in construction or collapsing and of a process that is perpetually prolonging itself, breaking off and starting up again.

               -Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 20

What models and metaphors do we employ to make sense of how we organize our schools? Much has been said about the “factory model of education” (go here or here to see what I mean), and Audrey Watters is right to make the point that a large part of the story has been manufactured to fit certain narratives about the present (go here to read her critique of “the factory model of education” conversation). However, factory and school design are both born out of a similar historical-intellectual event, one that is rightly associated with the Enlightenment and its influence. Both institutions, more often than not, exemplify organizational models that reveal our tendency (as post-Enlightenment thinkers) to “mathematize our life-world” as Edmund Husserl might put it - or what Bernard Stiegler might call the “grammatization of human life.” Understandably, schools and factories, like many other organizations, are structured according to rationalist concepts such as binary logic, hierarchy, centralization, and order, and with this in mind, I understand why critics of contemporary school models might make connections (but perhaps too crudely) between factories and campuses.

On the Idea of Silos:

So what’s prompted all this philosophical reflection? I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of silos and more specifically how a “silo mentality” fits well with organizational structures that are hierarchical and centralized (like a hub-and-spoke or factory model, for instance).  And I’ve been asking myself: what about Silos in schools? I'd like to thank Seth Burgess and Sanje Ratnavale for pushing my thinking in this direction! Seth and I will be delivering an Ignite Keynote, titled “Breaking Down the Silo Mentality – A Grassroots Movement,” at the upcoming OESIS conference in L.A., this Feb. 23-24, 2016.

Not that long ago, the idea of silos was foreign to me, and others like me might be wondering what the term means in this context. The concept helps one describe an institution’s vertical organization; it’s used metaphorically to mean a system, process, or department that operates in isolation from others.  Audra Bianca defines silos with the following critique: “A silo mentality can occur when a team or department shares common tasks but derives their power and status from their group. They are less likely to share resources or ideas with other groups or welcome suggestions as to how they might improve. Collaboration in a business culture with silos among teams or departments will be limited… In addition, the members of a silo tend to think alike. They get their power from association with their function and their shared technical knowledge” (“What Do Silos Mean in Business Culture?”).

What drives us to think and operate in this way, one might argue, is the well-founded desire to successfully facilitate management, productivity, and efficiency at the workplace. When presented with the question of what’s the most rational way to organize company x or institution y, models like the hub-and-spoke example serve us well (at least in relation to certain desired outcomes such as order and efficiency). Emotionally speaking, the silo mentality may stem from basic human desires to belong to something, to have significance, and to be able to exercise one’s sense of responsibility in ways that are manageable and quantifiable (or traceable). At the root of this mindset, therefore, one uncovers the natural and good desire to belong to something and to be responsible for it, and it’s important to remember this when discussing institutional changes like “breaking down silos.” Usually, we don’t seek to change something because we disagree with the intention behind it – more often, we share common goals, desires, and priorities but seek to change things because the map to getting there constantly needs improvement, clarification, and adjustment. But before mapping new changes (and employing new organizational models in the process) one first needs to know clearly and specifically the values, goals, or desired outcomes of the institutional culture in question.

On Goals, Priorities, and Outcomes:

What are the goals, priorities, and desired outcomes shared by educators who seek to prepare the citizens of our global future? How have Silos – as a form of organizational mapping – come up short in helping us realize these goals? What do we need to adjust, improve upon, or change when thinking about the functionality of Silos? But first, what do Silos look like in education today? Immediately I think of academic departments, content-based linear curricula, classrooms, campuses, division & grade levels, etc., and it occurs to me that a Siloed organization operates according to the logic of binaries: one is either in a class or outside it, on a campus or off of it, engaging relevant curriculum or indulging irrelevant information, and as my colleague Jason Kern points out, the person who is the least siloed in schools is the student herself. She is the nomad who travels from one territory to another while the instructors and administrators remain in their fiefdoms, so one might ask, what are we modeling for our highly connected and heterogenous students as isolated instructors? Gilles Deleuze writes, "We learn nothing from those who say: 'Do as I do.' Our only teachers are those who tell us to 'do with me,' and are able to emit signs to be developed in heterogeneity rather than propose gestures for us to reproduce" (Difference and Repition 23). Departmental silos often demand students to "do as I do" and to trace and reproduce in isolation, so why have silos in schools? One answer gets back to the models and metaphors which shape our organizational thinking, but another response points towards the goals and outcomes we seek to realize.

When thinking about our desired goals as educators it’s important to remember that the metaphors and models we teach by can limit and expand our possible ways of thinking about certain concepts and how they can work. In other words, our mindsets map the expanses and limits of our ability to match thinking and strategy to the realization of our goals and priorities. With this in mind, what do the metaphors or models of binaries, factories, hub-and-spoke structures, etc., expand for us in terms of desired goals or outcomes? Possible answers might be maximizing profit and efficiency, establishing control and power, fostering competition, maintaining safety and predictability. Some of these might be goals we value and prioritize for schools today, but others may not, meaning we need to pose the opposite question as well: What do the metaphors or models of binaries, factories, hub-and-spoke structures, etc., limit for us in terms of desired goals or outcomes? Some responses might be trust and collaboration are more inhibited; spontaneity and risk tend to be discouraged, and divergent thinking as well as creativity could be stifled; yet many of us will agree that these are priorities we want to expand upon, not limit, in our modern learning spaces. So I think we have to (continually) return to two questions: what are the most important priorities we need to focus on as a school, as a class, etc.? And what are the models and metaphors for thinking that expand the possibility for us to make those priorities a reality?  Instead of factories, hubs-and-spokes, binaries (and dare I say trees), we need to root our thinking about education in new metaphors; in fact, we need a new kind of root altogether: consider the Rhizome, for instance.

On the Rhizome and Responsibility:

Every rhizome contains lines of segmentarity according to which it is stratified, territorialized, organized, signified, attributed, etc., as well as lines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees... That is why one can never posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in rudimentary form of the good and the bad. You may make a rupture, draw a line of flight... 

               -Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 9

Google defines a rhizome as “a continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.” Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guatarri offer it as a metaphor or model whose purpose is to resist binary conceptualization and static formalization (It’s much easier to teach Plato’s theory of the forms when discussing trees as an example as opposed to considering the Rhizome…). It’s hard to talk about “the form of the Rhizome” in traditional, ontological terms, but D&G suggest the following qualities:

-A rhizome is pure connectivity

-A rhizome is pure differentiation

-A rhizome is pure multiplicity (as opposed to binary)

-A rhizome resists territorialization

-A rhizome maps, but never traces

-A rhizome is a form of decalcomania: “forming through continuous negotiation with its context, constantly adapting by experimentation, thus performing a non-symmetrical active resistance against rigid organization and restriction” (A Thousand Plateaus 20).

What if we thought about school organization more rhizomatically? How might rhizomatic models help us deterritorialize the fiefdoms of silos, especially when they discourage collaboration, creativity, communication, and spontaneity? As I think of rhizomatic models (along with hub-and-spoke or factory structures), one common goal or priority stands out for me: all of these organizational frameworks want to encourage teachers, administrators, and students to exercise responsibility for something, but responsibility can work differently according to the metaphors and models we use. In the siloed form of organization, responsibility tends to function as such: as an English teacher, I am responsible for the student’s education in literature and composition, but her knowledge of polynomials does not matter for my purposes. I call this distributed responsibility. But what if we thought about our organization differently? In place of factories, I suggest the metaphor of the community garden, which is much more rhizomatic in the way such social spaces promote unpredictable connections and spontaneity as well as a deterritorialized sense of ownership. No one owns that specific tomato, for instance, but everyone is responsible for the garden itself: I call this shared responsibility. What if we could deterritorialize the departmental landscape of the traditional school model? How might that make possible new pathways for mapping our responsibility for the student’s learning and development? Like a community garden, education is about sharing the responsibility of cultivating certain universally-valued skills that all learners need to master; it's not about Shakespeare vs. polynomials or curricular material vs. irrelevant information. Instead of asking, have they learned Shakespeare?, we need to ask together are students thinking critically? Are they exploring creative solutions? Are they collaborating and connecting with others? Silos, unfortunately, often discourage the latter kind of mindset.

As students, administrators, and teachers, we all care about results (and we should) and with that comes the need to feel in control. Silos make that emotional reassurance possible, in my opinion. We feel a heavy sense of responsibility to produce certain outcomes because there is so much at stake, but it’s also possible to share the weight of our labor more collaboratively. Hub and spoke, inside and outside silos, curricular content and irrelevant info, inside and outside departments… these categorical binaries are meant to help us trace certain outcomes, but where are the opportunities to map new possibilities which resist such rigid organization? It’s important to make clear, however, that organizational infrastructures and models (on a macro-institutional scale) can’t be rethought in completely rhizomatic terms, not for tomorrow at least (that would be a revolution, for sure), but my call to action is a “grassroots” one. How can we as teachers, students, and administrators rhizomatically disrupt (actually, make that deterritorialize) the silos we found ourselves in today? What can we do tomorrow? Think of a silo (such as a classroom, a department, a campus, a curriculum) and ask this question: where is there an opportunity for an offshoot, for a new line of flight? What small steps can I take to deterritorialize our traditional landscapes for learning?

Some examples in recent years for me:

-Last fall, the drama director at our school invited me to direct a one-Act version of William Shakespeare's Richard III. I had never directed, blocked, or acted in a Shakespeare production in my life. We also invited the drama teacher to join our literature class project and discussion which focused on cutting lines for the production. Drama and English departments were in lock-step, molding to each other's shape like the wasp and the orchid, and students' learning became more connected, relevant, and integrated.

-Last spring, the forensics science teacher enlisted the theatre & set design class to build a crime scene for a project. Drama students were cultivating the appropriate skills for building sets while also engaging in conversations about science and forensics making their learning more spontaneious in its offshoots.

-In recent years, I (along with two teachers from different schools) have collaborated across campuses using blogs, garageband & audacity, youtube, as well as other programs, in an ad-hoc, organic way such that the boundaries of who's teaching whose students (as well as boundaries of who's the student and who's the teacher) have become more and more rhizomatic and fluid. (Go here to watch a K12 video about these collaborative projects)

-Last spring, I gamified my British Literature class, which provided more options, paths, and methods for demonstrating learning, and with a wider variety of assignments and learning styles, students discovered passions well beyond that of literary analysis. One student made a dagger (don't worry! it was blunted metal!) when studying Macbeth for some extra XP points, and in the process, he discovered his love for building things. It may have been "irrelevant," but it was awesome all the same!

-In recent years, I have used google docs as a platform for my students to construct and curate their own exam, making it a collaborative, student-driven form of inquiry such that the high-stakes test itself truly becomes something for the students & by the students. As a result, they owned the learning together. 

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In Charles Dickens's novel, Hard Times, one might recall the scene where Mr. Gradgrind, the utilitarian school supervisor, stands above the rows of desks filled with silent, passive children as he proclaims, "Now what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them" (9). I can't help but imagine Deleuze and Guattari interrupting to say, "Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant! Don't sow, grow offshoots! Don't be one or multiple, be multiplicities! Run lines, never plot a point! Don't just have ideas, just have an idea" (A Thousand Plateaus, 24-25)

Mark Ingham. Boy Pool Rhizome: http://socialdigitalelective.wordpress.com/groups/rhizomes/

Works Cited:

Bianca, Audra. "What Do Silos Mean in Business Culture?" yourbusiness.azcentral.com. Gannett Satelite Information Network, Inc., n.d. Web. 17 December 2015.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Print.

Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repitition. Trans. Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Print.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. New York: Barnes and Nobles Books, 2004. Print.

Watters, Audrey. "The Invented History of 'The Factory Model of Education.'" hackeducation.com, 25 April 2015. Web. 17 December 2015.