This past weekend, I had the incredible opportunity to work with both board trustees and superintendents on the idea of “Laying the Foundation for Innovation in Education” and how we can move from “pockets of innovation” to a “culture of innovation.”
This is not about pushing new ideas onto staff and students but creating a culture where people feel genuinely empowered to find solutions in their own context and create innovative learning opportunities themselves. An idea I shared with the group repeatedly is that everything you want to happen in your district is already there; you have to find ways to unleash it within your community.
One of my suggestions was to highlight through a simple video the incredible things happening within your community. Too often, the teacher across the hallway is doing something great, but they don’t have the opportunity to leave their own students and watch other great teachers teach.
I shared the following in “The Innovator’s Mindset“:
When I first moved into administration, a conversation with Carolyn Cameron, my former assistant principal when I was a teacher, shaped the way I worked. She told me that her role in administration had helped her become a better educator because she now had the opportunity to see great teachers teach all of the time. She also learned by watching practices that were not strong. She was right. I quickly learned that the best way to become a better educator is to have access to other teachers. I made sure that I went into classrooms every single day to observe and absorb what great educators do. The flexibility of my role, like Carolyn’s, made it easy to observe other teachers. But budget and time constraints didn’t afford my teachers the same opportunities.
The question that kept going through my mind was: How do we make great learning go viral?
Now I believe there are opportunities where administrators can cover for teachers in the classroom so that they can watch others in their community teach. This allows your staff to learn from each other and keeps administrators fresh on the realities of teaching.
One of my suggestions for the group was to go into classrooms, witness great learning, and talk about what they had just shared. This is not about “branding” your school or anything like that but giving people in your own community the opportunity to learn (and grow) from each other. Branding might happen, but as a byproduct, not the main feature. The number one focus should be how we improve learning in our schools. You can “brand” all you want, but if a kid goes home and says they love or hate school, that tells a family more than any social media post could ever share.
As I was talking about this practice, I invited Chapel Hill ISD Superintendent Lamond Dean to share what he had learned in front of the group. He shared his answer, and then I asked him if he would be willing to share the same answer in a video that I could share with the entire world via Twitter or Instagram.
He then gave the same answer, but better.
Why?
Because he knew anyone in the world could see it.
It reminded me of this quote from Rushton Hurley:
We then talked about how we need to do this same practice not only in our professional learning days but how we could highlight the great things already happening in our own districts.
As the session happened on Saturday, I was delighted to see this tweet today (Tuesday) from Lamond:
Great things happening in @ChapelHill_ISD @gcouros #chapelhillisd pic.twitter.com/oQbJe9j2lW
— Lamond Dean (@dean_chisd) February 21, 2023
I loved the INSTANT modeling and doing Lamond made happen in his own practice. He is leading through his example.
Something I shared with the leadership teams at the conference was, “Do NOT go back to your districts and schools and tell people new things that they are going to do. Ask yourself what you are going to do differently first.”
Lamond did precisely that.
So then, I started scrolling through Lamond’s tweet and saw his video highlighting students.
Dance class @KissamPRIDE ! We connect students with their passion at an early age! Shaping the future, one child at a time. @ChapelHill_ISD @KissamPRIDE #chapelhillisd #kissamintermediate pic.twitter.com/mEqD0t1UBr
— Lamond Dean (@dean_chisd) February 21, 2023
Seeing this tweet shared by Lamond, highlighting not only his staff but also his students, made my morning.
He is creating the “spark” to make great learning go viral in his role.
In a conversation with a former superintendent at the session who had been in the role long before I was born, he shared that in his work in the 1960s, the one thing that was most likely to make any new innovation “stick” within an organization was if it was featured in any communication home or the newspaper. If people saw something good, they were more likely to want to be a part of it and recreate it themselves. He then shared that if he were a current superintendent, he would be “all over” this social media after seeing how I encouraged the group to use it in their own context.
What I love about this use of technology is that we can use to focus more on connecting locally, not just globally.
I also wrote about this in “The Innovator’s Mindset“:
I want to note, too, that the use of technology does not lessen the value or impact of face-to-face connections. In fact, if we use technology to share on a consistent basis, face-to-face connections will likely improve. Teachers from other schools in the same district may only see one another every few months (if that), but when they have constant access to each other online, they stay connected. Being able to see what is happening within our own schools by using a common hashtag could also enrich the conversations in the staff room. Imagine what saying, “I saw your tweet about what you did yesterday… can you tell me more about it?” would do for both the learning and the relationships of your faculty.
There are so many opportunities to connect with educators all over the world, but making great learning go viral in our own community should be our number one priority.
