Well I have made it! Officially into my 3rd week as a principal. This journey has been such an amazing ride. I am so thankful to have crossed paths with many people that have helped me along the way. I would not be who I am today without the support of my family, the faith and trust of Liz Bryan, and all of my friends within New Tech Network and at New Tech schools around the country. Throughout my time in education, I have learned so many valuable lessons that have come to fruition in my first 3 weeks as a school leader. I’d like to briefly share what things have been my biggest takeaways:
Enthusiasm is Contagious
I am a firm believer in a positive approach. By no means do I expect all people to think, act, or feel the way I do. However, I have come to find that enthusiasm is a dangerous weapon. If harnessed correctly, it can help foster an environment that encourages positive risk-taking, promotes deeper thinking, and most important makes coming to work fun. The work we do is hard, but so worth it when we are willing to approach it from a lens that lets us use all that stress for good.
Communication is Key
This is not a new concept. Creating systems that allow for stakeholders to easily access information is important. But what is more important, is communicating clearly so that information can be enabled into action. So much time is spent on logistics. I am a firm believer in Inbox Zero and that concept has even been challenged in these first 3 weeks. We have really focused on normalizing our communication strands to make sure that each party involved can be the most efficient and effective at what they need to do. Our logistics team is using Voxer to communicate and it has been fun to continue to explore new ways to get better at communicating as a school.
The World is In Your Hand
I have always felt that I can do a pretty good job at juggling others people’s needs. However, I have always had an issue at being over-involved. It is just in my humanly nature, but I am working at building the collective efficacy and capacity of those around me. With that being said, I am learning more and more how central the role of school leader is to the school ecosystem. Everyone’s problems are your problems. What might feel like a small bleep on your radar is someone else’s greatest need and concern. Their Titanic is sinking and you are just trying check your voicemail for once. Balancing everyone around you’s world in your hand is a challenging task, but key to keeping the school moving forward.
It’s Still About the Students
I have always believed that adults are the biggest hurdles to student success. Whether that be home situations, external parties, or even the adults in the school. In my first 3 weeks, it remains apparent, it’s still about the students. I have no problem with working on something late at night if it gives me more opportunities to be around students while at school. If I really want to know what is happening ON my campus, I need to be IN my campus. We all know this can be challenging, but I feel like even with all of the vultures that can pull at me, I have a pretty good grasp on being a student-centered principal.
2 weeks down, many more chances to keep learning, growing, and getting better. It hasn’t been a perfect couple of weeks. I know I still have lightyears to go, but I can tell you one thing, the buzz of excitement in the New Tech High community is on fire right now and I love it!
Let me start this post off with being up-front: WE ARE NOT a design thinking school. In fact, before last Thursday, there were only a couple people (students or staff) in our school that even knew what design thinking was. New Technology High School has a rich history that is rooted in project-based learning. However, we really wanted to examine a way we could kick-off our school year the right way. That is where design thinking came in. Now, I know we aren’t the first school to utilize design thinking with students or staff, but I do want to share the magic that happened to start our 2015-2016 school year. It is launching us into a new era of what New Tech High is all about: creating a culture of excellence with a bias to action.
Since moving to Napa, I have been blessed to get plugged into the work that the Stanford d.school and IDEO are doing. Whether it be through their School Retool pilot or attending a design thinking workshop with one of our facilitator’s this Summer, it has definitely influenced my thinking as a leader. Last Thursday, in our first professional learning day, we introduced design thinking to our staff through a classroom hack challenge. We brought students in to create empathy, allowed them to prototype in human scale in their classrooms, and test out each others ideas to get feedback. This really set us up in a great position to launch the new school year in a brand new way.
Goals
There were some clear goals of utilizing design thinking in our kick-off project. We first decided that including all 415 students in self-selected mixed grade groups was important. The following goals really drove our work:
Build understanding of the design thinking process
Create a clear bias to action in our work
Deepen the level of collaboration across grade-levels
Strengthen student voice and choice
Build school culture through an authentic learning experience
The last goal really was a game changer. Many times schools (myself included) struggle to create authentic experiences to build school culture. School culture activities take place independently from authentic learning and can sometimes seem fluffy. If students opt-out, then it creates a new “distraction” to the goal of the culture-building. By utilizing a design thinking challenge as our orientation, we were able to cultivate a deepened sense of collective efficacy in our school as a whole. I want to provide a brief overview of what the 3-day challenge looked like:
Day 1:
We started day 1 with what we call an all-school meeting (ASM) to kick-off the school year and challenge. Students were presented with the question:
How might we tackle a problem that effects our community (local, national, global)?
We kept the question as vague as possible to allow teams to really create their own problem definition moving forward.
After the ASM, students explored 10 theme topics: teens, violence, water, human rights, privacy, equity, food waste, immigration, robotics, and change as growth. All students got to be in one of their top three topic choices. After getting in their theme groups, students began to examine potential users to build empathy. They did interviews, created empathy maps, and began self grouping into common problem teams within their theme. Next, these new teams began crafting a needs statement for their user. By the end of the day, we had come back together as a school to reflect on the day and examine some new logistical need to knows.
Day 2:
Day 2 started with students getting back in their theme groups. They revisited and expanded on the empathy map and needs statement they created. Students focused on brainstorming wild ideas. We really focused on deferring judgment and challenging assumptions during this process. No idea was a bad idea. Before narrowing their idea, we spent some time analyzing our new school-wide learning outcomes and sense-making what “student agency” was. Along with this, upperclassman spent time supporting freshman and new students through buddy walks, breaking myths, and answering need to knows.
To narrow their idea down to start prototyping, we watched a video from Nordstrom’s Innovation lab about rapid prototyping. This really kicked our groups off into action. Along the way, students participated in a few creative expression activities to help build culture within the context of the challenge. This was amazing to watch. We didn’t need to stop the project to build a stronger connection between our students.
Before I talk about prototyping, I must say we are blessed to have such a supportive school community. Families donated a wealth of supplies to help encourage that bias to action. To end the afternoon, student teams focused on designing their first iteration of their prototype for the solution to their problem. At this point, we essentially had 10 themes, and about 100 different problems being solved!
Day 3:
To build energy for the final day, our ASB lead student’s on a school-wide scavenger hunt. The focus on the hunt was to find out more about who we are as a school. Each clue had a discussion question that groups had to answer before getting the clue right.
After this, we jumped right back into prototyping. Students used user feedback protocols to get ideas for improving their prototypes. This was one of the hardest tasks for our upperclassman. I found many older students were okay with being content with their first iteration. The staff did an amazing job at challenging each group to re-iterate, re-iterate, re-iterate; building the capacity of our students to utilize feedback to make positive changes to their idea.
Before lunch, each of the ten theme groups presented their ideas to each other. In these groups, they would decide on one team to send forward to pitch their prototype to the entire student body. It was awesome to see our students share their learning and continue to take feedback on their ideas.
After lunch, we gathered as a whole school to hear the 10 theme finalists pitch their prototypes to their peers. We had students represent all 4 grades, all ethnic backgrounds, and all comfort levels of public speaking. Our finalist ideas covered the entire spectrum of the challenge. Here are a few of the prototypes:
A web-service to connect immigrants with potential employers in our community
A fortune cookie series to promote online “cookies” safety
An app for transgender teens to find safe transport
A robot family member to support a changing workforce
An app that allows teens to limit their social media access
A scientific tool to help farmers regulate water use based on barometric weather
All of the prototypes were 100% driven by the students interest and developed through the design thinking process. The awesome thing is that every single group will have the ability to move their prototype forward. The winning group will get extra support (coaching, seed grant, and trip to Stanford), but every student will have an avenue to continue to develop their idea.
Regular classes start Thursday at New Tech High. But I can tell you, our Design Thinking Challenge to kick-off the year built culture, deepened learning, and created a buzz around what it means to be a Penguin at New Tech High!
Project-Based Living 