I want to come back to a topic I spoke of with all staff in the school district on opening day this past September – something I have labelled as West Vancouver’s 2020 Challenge.
While I know Karl Fisch’s Did You Know? slides are now well-dated (four years is an eternity in the digital age) and have been overused in the world of digital technology presentations, I thought a lot about one specific reference in Karl’s presentation; his reference to Great Britain. Here are the slides I used on opening day (the first four from Karl’s original PowerPoint, the second four my own):
We have a wonderful challenge – we are doing really well. It is something that over the last seven years has been framed around the work of Jim Collins‘ Good to Great. The focus has been built around several of Jim’s themes including getting the right people on the bus, then figuring out where to go, and attracting level 5 leaders, who are humble but driven to do what’s best for the school district.
As I take on the role of Superintendent, part of the challenge is to ensure we continue to flourish on the existing metrics of excellence (test scores, graduation rates, etc.) while also building capacity and readiness with the new skills (I hesitate to make a 21st century skills reference) that, by some in B.C., are being defined as the 8 Cs:
- Critical thinking and problem solving
- Creativity and innovation
- Collaboration, teamwork, and leadership
- Cross-cultural understanding
- Communications, information and media literacy
- Computing and ICT literacy
- Career and learning self-reliance
- Caring for personal health and planet earth
Our challenge is to create an urgency for change, while simultaneously reinforcing the confidence that comes from a district with a 98% graduation rate, and amazing scores on all internal and external measures.
One could make the case we should be the last community to embrace the personalized learning or 21st century learning agenda, since we have tremendous success on all the current measures. Our belief is just the opposite.
Our commitment is to be able to continue to flourish on all these levels while preparing our students for the rapidly changing world. We are finding it is not an either/or proposition. Students, teachers and schools embracing formative assessment, for example, are seeing greater ownership by students of their learning, and exceptional results on all the traditional success measures.
We need to make sure that in 2020 we are not still talking about how good we were in 2010. This is a huge challenge – and very exciting.
cultureofyes.ca 
Is there a disconnect between striving for existing metrics of excellence and pursuing a curriculum and pedagogy based on “21st Century Learning” skills, ideology,etc.? Will not assessment of the “21st Century Learning” (sorry keep using that word!) educational system be different to match the curricular and pedagogical change? Our metrics of excellence will evolve to suit?
This is a question that stumps me right now – just what are the metrics for 21st century learning? My suggestion is though, even if we look at the same old measurements that have been used for decades, if we embrace personalized learning, the 8 C’s etc. our students will perform as well or better on them, as they do with our more traditional teaching methods.
It comes back to the idea of do we have to have to regularly practice “the test” for students to do well on the test. Most teachers would say no.
I am very curious in the emerging metrics of 21st century learning – I suspect this is where much of the discussion will be over the next few years. People get it – the system is changing and needs to change. What the community wants to know is how will we know how we are doing in this “new” system.
Great food for thought! How might we listen more closely to our clients – our students? How will me make sure that we truly connect students to, and inspire their passions? How might we enhance our facilitatoin of the learning process so that they WANT to come to our classrooms/schools, and do not want to, as some student leaders have commented – ‘Pass us by?”
Hi Sue,
Thanks for the feedback. How we listen to students is a topic that I think a lot about. I worry we engage in “tokenism” with students often – we have one student (of our choice) sit on committees and we ask them for feedback and then use it most when it benefits what we are already thinking.
We are just getting our heads around the idea of parents and partners, and I think we are still not there with students as partners.
I like your recognition of the challenge inherent in promoting the need for rapid change without devaluing the existing culture of success within our District and student body.
There is such a fine line there. Promote change without acknowledgement of current success and accomplishment and you risk counterwill and discouragement; encourage change as a way to make the best even better and you inspire.
Thanks Julia for the response. I think the “fine line” you describe is one we feel at both the District and Provincial level. It is clear that we are on the verge of some quite major changes, provincially, in how we looking at curriculum and learning. The challenge is that B.C. scores among the top jurisdictions in the world on all measures. It is interesting to watch Finland, widely seen as the top performing system in the world, look to re-invent their system while they are at the top. Perhaps Finland can offer West Vancouver some lessons.