Reimagining School
Reimagining School
How we rolled out a radical idea to administrators and faculty
How do you move a programmatic idea forward? What are the steps you should take?
If you have already started a conversation with your colleagues, and you have built a small coalition of support, now is the time to hit up your administrators. Each administrator runs their ship differently, and you will need to consider their personality and rules for initiating change. I suggest sitting down for a one-on-one meeting and sharing your idea.
When developing our large multidisciplinary program, my colleagues and I were fortunate enough to have a principal who was very supportive and encouraging of new ideas. He always listened intently, and if he believed your pitch was best for kids, the new idea would be a go.
When we first met with him, his one caveat for our initiation of the program was --the program has to be rigorous. He refused to have us run a summer camp type program during the school year, and we agreed wholeheartedly. This rigor was reflected in how we designed every aspect of our program.
Do some research, have concrete ideas in place. Have answers to these questions:
How will you persuade your administrator?
What does your school have to gain from such a program?
How will it help your school improve its use of 21st century skills?
Start small and see if he or she agrees to a small scale version first. We had lofty ideas in the beginning. We hoped to include over 400 students and 40 faculty members in our program the first time, and we wanted the entire faculty to help design the framework and program.
After many stumbling blocks, we had to scale down to half of those numbers. Starting small, however, enabled us to experiment and also solve logistical challenges.
Faculty Roll-out
How did we share our idea with faculty? After approval from our boss, he suggested we share our idea at a faculty meeting. Then, we connected with department heads to see if they would support our idea and help us move forward. Here is where we had our biggest pushback.
Although our school ran on a daily basis by team, the department heads managed the curriculum aspect. I think many felt we were stepping on their toes even though we had invited them to join us in the journey. At the time, department heads were not committed to the idea, much less the journey.
I can see how department heads would feel a programmatic change infringes on their content and larger impact in the curriculum. However, ideas are not limited to those in leadership. We must be willing to try innovations, no matter if the idea springs from school leadership or not.
As well, we cannot allow ourselves to be bound by traditional systems and content. Our world is changing at a rapid pace. Instruction, content, and schedules will need to adapt.
Think of it this way, Google came up with a great search engine. Do you think it’s the same search engine as when they first began? Did they stop there? No, they built all kinds of other aspects in order to build the company.
In this way, Google became more relevant, more powerful, and a household name. Why shouldn’t we approach our schools just as Google approaches its business?
In some respects we were fortunate to have some teachers push back on our ideas as this enabled us to “test run” our framework on a smaller group. We could then more easily handle all of the logistics of time, space, coverage, and frankly, we had fewer hands in the pot of design.
Establishing the Committee
Our next step was to establish a committee of dedicated faculty who were committed to our idea. We invited team members to join a committee, and we ended up with a group of seven people.
We expected committee members would be involved not only in discussions but in the follow through of the program design. Members would craft frameworks, do research, run faculty brainstorm sessions, lead course design process workshops, and converse 1:1 with faculty.
All of these were volunteer efforts, without additional pay. Our committee members were so excited about the concept and being part of a new and innovative idea they were all eager to put their fingerprint on the program.
We all had vision and imagination.
We saw the opportunity to build this program as a stepping stone to something larger for each and every one of us as well as the school as a whole.
If you want more detailed information on how to build a program step-by-step, check out my book, From the Ground Up.