Showcasing students work...Is it time to rethink the focus of schools?

Once again this summer, I am blessed to have the opportunity to travel to a couple of national conventions/conferences.  As such, the wheels of thought are spinning as I have had the opportunity to engage in great conversation with our schools leaders as well as witness some presentations and showcases that humble me in my own work as an educator.  I am eternally grateful to the #CozadMakers schools system for believing in my work and investing in my professional development, so that I can work to enrich the experience our students have at Cozad Community Schools

The first of these conference has been the Skills USA National convention in Louisville Kentucky.  Sixteen thousand attendees have gathered to watch students engage in an authentic showcasing of their technical skills across the spectrum of vocational, technical, and academic areas.  Students from high school and post-secondary institutions across the country have earned the right to compete and showcase their skills in every competition from industrial technology to robotics to health care and beyond under one roof at the Kentucky Exposition Center.  A national champion will be crowned in every competition, scholarships and prize winnings will follow, along with job offers from America's leaders in every industry as they jockey to secure the next Michael Jordan of their field.

Don't be fooled that these vocational competitions are for the 'other' kids.  These are the best and brightest in schools across the United States.  The worlds demand for workers with the skills to apply the theory they learn in academic settings is insatiable.  The world  needs people who can perform.  Their earning potential in many cases is higher than those who work in what are typically seen as the 'prestigious' jobs in America.

Unfortunately today, schools and our society seem to think that career and technical education is the 'ugly duckling' of education.  These STEM opportunities, may be receiving a great deal of press due to the buzzword phenomenon, but few schools are taking the leap to make these new programs the common occurrence as opposed to being the rarity in new program implementation.

So why is that so?  Why are schools so remiss in putting these CTE classes and programs as their flagship?  Why are we resistant to the experiences that are driving growth and innovation in the world?  Tom Whitby (@TomWhitby), an educational leader, blogger and 34 year veteran of education published a blog today, where he proposed an answer to all these questions: Because innovation is change, and we are afraid of change.  

To focus on career and technical education, in the same way we focus on the core areas, would be to change from what we have done for decades in education.  It would be to resist the forces that are mandating standardization and quantification in education.  It would require that we admit education can be done differently and it can be better.

After this week at Skills USA National Convention, I can assure you that I will be bringing some new ideas back to my alma mater where I work.  A few of the thoughts and questions I will work on finding answers to are:

• Lets rethink the course offerings we have as a school.  They nearly identical to the classes we offered 20 years ago when I was a student.
• Can we envision a school where we tap into the hidden genius in EVERY student?
• What opportunities can we offer our students by partnering with our business community that engage students in real world learning and application of skills and knowledge?
• If we believe that the word FAIL stands for First Attempt In Learning, then lets not be afraid to try something new and Bobbi, thanks for the reply. The booking reference is one that I ready a few years ago and I agree it's a great book. Your question at the end of what you do to turn those teachers around her still reluctant to change, in my opinion focuses on the concept of creating the shared vision. Once you have that  thanks for the reply. The booking reference is one that I ready a few years ago and I agree it's a great book. Your question at the end of what you do to turn those teachers around her still reluctant to change, in my opinion focuses on the concept of creating the shared vision. Once you have that 

It is easy to sit behind the keys of a blog and post these thoughts.  It is another to delve into the muddy waters and work to find a solution.  I can assure you, that I am vested in what is best for our students.  I can assure you, that I will never be satisfied with good enough.  I can assure you that as I watched the best and brightest in the nation competing here at Skills USA, I was pompous enough to believe that our students could be on this national stage.  I was confident enough in our teachers to believe with a focused and shared vision, we could be the best in the nation.

I am excited to head out to ISTE in Philadelphia Saturday and continue my journey to answer the existential call to improve the great education our students at Cozad receive.  I look forward to once again learning with my fellow #CozadMakers teachers.  I look forward to the great ideas that arise, the hard questions we will have to ask ourselves that will follow, and heart and soul of work that it will take to make things great.

There are two quotes I think about often.  The first one is one that is also a favorite of great friend Jed Droge (@ibejed)

The second one is a quote I use while with athletes as a coach.


I am excited to see the #CozadMakers teachers, students and community join me in moving from good to great and making our better best!

Setting Goals & Creating Accountability

With each school year comes the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and begin again.  Over the past few days I have spent some time setting goals for myself and for our students for the 14-15 school year.  What dawned on me is that even though it is a chance to wipe our slate clean of past projects, failed ventures, the stress of a long school year, etc, I believe that we should each take the time to fill our slates up with the messages and goals we want to showcase to the world.

At ISTE in Atlanta this summer, I had the opportunity to once again hear +Adam Bellow (@adambellow) speak.  During his session he asked each of us to snap a selfie and use the hashtag of #TYIW (This Year I Will) and post something that we will challenge ourselves to accomplish professionally.  If you have ever had the chance to hear Adam speak, you know how motivational he can be, but even more importantly you know how impacting his comments are.  It is not surprising that his challenge was one of the things I am going to work on bringing back to our school.

In my mind the real power of this is not just writing down a goal.  It is hidden power of social pressure.  My artifact found at the top of this page is not one that I have hidden.  I have it posted outside my office, posted above my desk, and I am sharing it via social media.  My hope is that others in our school will do the same.  Posting and sharing these goals publicly and permanently will allow us to hold each other accountable throughout the year and focused on what we said we would achieve.

I am choosing to fill my slate with several new initiatives this year.  Fortunately, my Principal Mr. Beckenhauer (@B_Beckenhauer) and Superintendent Mr. Applegate (@applegate_joel) have given me the professional latitude to pursue many if not all of my professional goals.  Without their support, the things I write on my 'clean slate' would be little more than just more scribbles.  Just as important as having supportive leadership is to be surrounded by great teachers and I truly feel that I am surrounded by a World Class teaching staff who will be instrumental in helping me accomplish my goals.

Because I am pillar of moderation (read that with a sarcastic tone) I took this challenge to heart and created a large set of goals and initiatives I will work to accomplish this year for the benefit of our students.  I am willing to share my large working document with anyone who wants to take the time to read it.  So if you are interested in reading it, shoot me an email at dustin.favinger@cozadschools.net and I will share it with you.  The document I am willing to share elaborates on each of these ideas that I am listing below.

Here are four of the things I will work to accomplish this school year:

• Host an innovation week where students drive their own learning

• Work to organize a school-wide day of service where students and staff volunteer in our community

• Organize a college week with activities for students and staff to increase our college going rate

• Continue to work on growing the ‘Genius Hour’ initiative for our students

If you see me out and about feel free to ask me about my progress in achieving these goals.  Here is to a great school year!

Follow me on twitter @CHS_Mr_F

Taking Risks: Student Designed Courses to Personalize Learning in K-12 Education

One yearly task that seems to cause dread, almost universally, among counselors is SCHEDULING and REGISTRATION.  While the reasons behind that dread may be varied, we all know how difficult it can be for a school and the course offerings of that school to "be all things to all people."  I have been thinking lately about ways to become all things to all students.

What if we as public education entities embraced the power in allowing students to truly direct their own learning for part of every day?  What if we modeled our school day after Google's concept of 20 time, where students were given 20% of their time to study or work on a project of their own choosing and design.  Now I am not proposing just free time with no expectations, but rather time to truly invest themselves into a course of study that they direct.  Nor am I proposing abandoning our traditional course offerings.  I am proposing a system that engages kids in their own learning.  We all know that when we are passionate about learning something we harness that power and throw ourselves full force into it.  We become almost obsessed with it and it invigorates us and refuels us to work on it.  

Over the course of my thirteen years in education, I have numerous times felt like there have been students who we have failed.  That failure to serve students can be grouped into two categories:

1. Failing the high ability students by handicapping them with our pacing and limiting them to our course offerings.

2. Failing the disengaged students by not allowing them to study what is relevant to their lives and futures and consequently never teaching them the power of pursuing your passion.

Now the first group of students succeed in spite of our work as educators.  Truthfully, these are the kids who are good at the game of school.  They earn good grades and learn regardless of the quality of instruction or materials.  They are just bidding their time until they go off to college or enter the real world where they become 'game changers'.

The second group of kids are those who are chronically disengaged from school.  They show up week in and week out on the eligibility list, detention lists, at-risk list, etc.  They hate coming to school, they find it a waste of their time, they don't see the school as applicable to their lives.  Sadly, many times I have to fight back the urge to agree with them.

What if we changed our system of schooling to allow every kid the opportunity to study something they are passionate about.  Then we allowed them the opportunity to create some sort of learning outcome they could showcase to teachers, administrators, community members, heck even the entire world!  I can almost guarantee you that when students are given the opportunities to study what they are passionate about they will almost always hold themselves to higher standards than we as teachers do when applying our industrial model of assessment.

Now, I am sure you are reading this thinking, 'What a whack job!' 'Doesn't he believe in accountability?'  Yes, and yes, I am not afraid to think outside the box and I do believe in accountability.  I believe we need to allow students the opportunity to hold themselves accountable.

Think back to the first group of kids I say we have failed (High Ability Students).  I believe that we have failed them because we have handicapped their potential.  Rather than setting benchmarks for them to reach, we put a ceiling in which they are not to exceed.  The second group of kids we feed more broccoli to even when they don't like the broccoli.  Why not put some cheese on the broccoli to make it more palatable.  Lets give kids the opportunity to create their own coursework for one elective and see just what happens.  The worst thing could happen is that they don't learning anything useful or don't do anything....(News Flash: That worst outcome is already happening in the courses we offer).

Now consider the possibility of one of those chronically disengaged kids choosing to pursue the study of cell phones and how they work.  What if in the course of that study, he learned about the electrical circuitry behind all of that and realized, 'Hey, wait a minute, I need to know Trig so that I can understand this.' or what if she got curious about the programming behind the user interface and learned how to code.  Next think of the shift that would take place as these kids came to our math or science or computer classes and engaged even more so they could learn what they needed to go even further with their personalized learning course.  Can you imagine how awesome that would be to have students who want to learn not for the sake of the test, but for the sake of applicability and pursuits in which there is no reward other than the intrinsic reward of learning?

With all the resources that exist digitally and the MOOC movement taking hold, why not harness the power of the winds of change before it becomes the tornado that destroys our pretty little system of mass education.  Why not use what we see working with these MOOC's to accomplish our goal of educating kids who are able to problem solve while pursuing their passion.  There are free resources online (Coursera, EdX, Udemy, etc.) There are communities abound online where collaborative discussions take place on nearly every subject imaginable.  Why not allow our kids to go beyond what we know and connect with these resources to really learn?

Why not?  Well it is messy and we don't like messy in education.  We like standards and maps and flowcharts and crosswalks.  I challenge each of you as you read this to consider the possibility that maybe we have it wrong.  Maybe, just maybe we need to personalize rather than standardize.  As people we all want individualization and to be seen as an individual with unique skills.  Why not give this a shot and risk being right?  What if this worked for 10% of the kids?  Would that make the reward worth the risk?

If we are truly educating kids to the best of our ability, then we can't be the limiting factor.  Let's get out of their way and start directing learning, facilitating their learning, provide guidance/feedback/criticism/encouragement to go above and beyond what we currently offer.  Heck it just may cut down on those who make our coveted lists!

Thanks for reading and best wishes as our school year begins.

Dustin Favinger
9-12 Counselor
Cozad Community Schools
@CHS_Mr_F