David Perkins spoke on the last day of the institute about how to take these ideas back to our schools.  He mentioned the 5-year effect: new ideas get implemented, get traction, then slowly lose that energy and eventually die off.  So, how do we make sure the energy does not fall away, and that key ideas and frameworks can have a long life?  One thing that many schools do use is what Perkins calls the "installation model" of implementing change.  Some training happens, maybe posters and brochures are made, teachers implement it, but then over time things begin to change back to the way they were.  How do we combat this and ensure longevity?  David talks about the "ecological model" of introducing change which has 4 main "legs": 

1. Frameworks - pick a few strong frameworks; don't overload with frameworks because that will cause chaos
2. Leadership - have two leaders: the political visionary and the practical visionary.  The political visionary approves budgets for the change, sells the change to parents and the staff, is a champion for the cause, and most likely is the principal and/or assistant principal; the practical visionary has a deeper role - they manage the program "on the ground", talk about it with the teaching staff, and is usually a teacher or group of teachers.
3. Community - this is the community of educators and leaders in the building; start with a small group of people invested and let the group slowly grow; ensure that all staff members are welcome to join at every step along the way; you don't want to alienate staff that isn't ready or is resistant - make sure that they have options to hop on board at all times; you don't want it to turn into an 'in-group' and 'out-group' situation
4. Institution - this does not have to be looked at until you have made it to about year 3 or year 4; once you have made it this far, the innovation has to get written into the DNA of the school;  what has to happen is an explicit effort to ensure that if principals or teachers leave that have been part of the innovation, the new teachers and leaders are brought up to speed

Please check out the full article on "Giving Change Legs"

Wow!  What a week!  Things are beginning to wind down here in Cambridge and will culminate tomorrow when Tina Blythe and David Perkins, both of the Project Zero team, give a talk on "Giving Change Legs," which I believe will help us to utilize many of the awesome things we have learned here this week.  First I included a few pictures. Then I include some discussion on the course "All Learners Learning Every Day."

All Learners Learning Every Day (ALL-ED) by Rhonda Bondie
Key takeaways:

• ALL-ED defines differentiated instruction in terms of teacher decision making.
• "Differentiated instruction is a continuous teacher decision making process where teachers search for and respond to academic diversity that will either impede or strengthen effective learning within a community.
• Structures for classroom routines (see figure 1 below):
  • Note the effect that explicit instruction has on student autonomy and student engagement
  • As the structures change, students become more engaged, which isn't surprising.  However, the wow moment for me was the white dashed line that represents teacher thinking time - as structures in the classroom drift away from explicit instruction, teachers have more time to think about how the lesson is proceeding so they can make informed decisions about what to do next.

• A visual describing the learning that happens in a classroom.  If a classroom is primarily set up for 'independent' or 'direct instruction (DI)' learning,  student engagement and autonomy is low, and the teacher does not have as much time to think about the path of the learning.  There certainly is a place for those types of learning, but they cannot be the driving force in a classroom.

• There are 3 forms of differentiation, based on the goal, materials, & assessment.  When most of us hear 'differentation', we automatically think of the third option of different goals, different assessments, and materials, when in fact there are two other types. 

• One interesting method to group kids that I learned in this session was called a triad method of grouping.  In the figure below, you can see a number surrounded by the letters A, B, & C.  The number is the group number.  The letters are where each group member puts their foot and it is their spot in the triad.  One way to use this is to put these sheets around the room (there were ten of them in this session), and then have the class get up and move to a triad sheet; the students would pick a sheet at some place around the room, and put their foot at their letter.  This is one quick way to group the students while giving them a choice in doing so.  Our instructor said that she left her triad sheets around the classroom all year long - it just became part of the routine.

• One of the best parts about this session was about student choice.  Rhonda believed that giving choice to students makes the students part of the learning instead of being just an observer.  She gave a nice example from a math class.  The students were learning about fitting a line to a set of points.  One option would have been for the teacher to use direction instruction to explain the concept.  Instead the teacher gave the students 15 minutes and during that time they had the choice to do one or more of the following: 1) look at the steps to fitting a line to a set of points (the steps were written on chart paper and posted in the classroom, 2) brainstorm with a partner on how to do this process using the graphing calculator 3) watch a video playing at the front of the room that shows somebody doing the steps for line fitting.  The students knew that at the end of the fifteen minutes that they would be held accountable for that learning, but they had a choice in how they attained that learning.  Please watch this video which shows the teacher giving the students this choice in their learning:

To encapsulate day 1 of the Project Zero classroom, I am going to utilize the See-Think-Wonder thinking routine from "Making Thinking Visible" by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison.  Below I highlight the steps of the routine and apply it to the first day...

What do you SEE?  Today I saw over 360+ educators from 30 countries. I saw an enthusiasm that would motivate any teacher.  I saw people that I have read about: David Perkins, Howard Gardener, Mark Church, and Daniel Wilson.  I saw a study group of people that I did not know at 9:00 this morning, but by 4:00 was working with them to create a visual arts representation of a poem that we were studying.  I saw a campus with incredible architecture.  I saw other educators that motivated me to want to be the best that I could be.  I saw a thoughtful place that I want to be a part of for the next four days.  I saw a place that I can't wait to tell my colleagues about.

What did you HEAR (this technically is not part of the routine, but it was too important to pass up)? 
​I heard many incredible things:

1. 'The Culture of your classroom is your best co-teacher; it can make your year long or short'
2. 'Sometimes what we are teaching just doesn't matter to the students.  We need to give our topics significance by the way we ask the questions'
3. 'The question "how many points is this" is not a natural question.  Elementary students don't ask this question - as students get older, they get the 'memo' that this question is important'
4. 'In our classrooms we need to tame the wild, but we should also not be afraid to wild the tame'
5. 'Is your classroom a lawn - well manicured, predictable, and neat, or is it a ravine - wild, messy, with organized chaos'?'

What do you THINK is going on here? 
I think this is an institute that is a must for any educator at some point in their lives.  I think I made a great choice in taking the time out of my summer to come here.  I think this institute will help my students understand their content, think critically about it, and reflect thoughtfully about what they have learned.

What does this make you WONDER?  This makes me wonder why I didn't come to this institute sooner.  It makes me wonder how my students learned anything in my early years of teaching.  It makes me wonder why I thought I had teaching perfected when I was 25 but how at age 45 I realize I have so much more to learn.

Many times I have heard fellow teachers say things like, "if I could just teach and not grade", "my whole weekend was spent grading papers", or "I wish I could hire somebody to do all my grading for me!"  It is true that stacks of papers are an inevitable part of teaching at any grade and any level, but as Ron Ritchhart states in his book Creating Cultures of Thinking: The Eight Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, "Taking a stack of papers home to read through and mark is rarely an energizing task for any teacher" (p. 94).  Amen to that!