Why Innovate?

WHY?

Creating engaging and inclusive opportunities for all students to see themselves in their learning, to feel inspired, to be supported, and to excel.

"CRRP is a research-based pedagogy that has been around for many years and has proven to positively impact family engagement and student achievement. It is not a framework that can be quickly implemented, nor is it a set of lesson plans or activities. It is a shift in how we think about ourselves, students, families and communities and how we use lived experiences and culture to ensure equitable outcomes for all students."

WHO?

  • Leaders who are innovators ask challenging questions that test the status quo.

  • They see the world through fresh eyes trying to find new ways of doing things.

  • They associate with people who are different than they are in order to get a different perspective on things.

  • An innovative leader is always looking for and trying out new ideas and experiences.

Innovation springs from a culture that encourages everyone to come forth with new ideas, however small, and then provides the time and seed money to develop them. It comes from openness to trends and ideas outside of the company. True innovation might pop up anywhere, where it is least expected, and not just in the big multi-year projects that companies mount in their search for blockbusters. If leaders encourage small wins, they will create a culture making big wins more likely.


HOW?

Innovation is a mindset.

"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough." - Elon Musk

To foster learning environments for creators to discover and try new approaches and ideas.

Personalizing learning experiences that connect curriculum to the community and society at large.

Experiential, interdisciplinary learning, and design thinking provoke the core skills needed by 2025.


"I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better."


According to an article in Forbes magazine, anyone can be innovative if they follow the five skills that innovative leaders demonstrate. They are:

  • Questioning: This allows the innovator to challenge the status quo and come up with new ideas.

  • Observing: This helps the innovator observe behavioral details in others that will help them to come up with new ways of doing things.

  • Networking: This will help the innovator get different perspectives from a wide range of diverse backgrounds and cultures.

  • Experimenting: This makes the innovator try out new experiences, take things apart and test new ideas.

  • Associational Thinking: This step helps the innovator make connections between unrelated fields - between questions, problems, or ideas and then ask themselves how to creatively come up with new ideas.


How can we harness creativity?

  1. Try something new & Challenge ourselves

  2. Push boundaries

  3. Don't be afraid of failure


"When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars, people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked."

Tony Wagner "Creating Innovators"

"What the world cares about is what you can DO with what you know....does the student have the skill and the will?" -Tony Wagner

“If you look at 4-year olds, they are constantly asking questions and wondering how things work. But by the time they are 6.5 years old they stop asking questions because they quickly learn that teachers value the right answers more then provocative questions. High school students rarely show inquisitiveness. And by the time they’re grown up and are in corporate settings, they have already had the curiosity drummed out of them. 80% of executives spend less then 20% of their time on discovering new ideas . . . The problem is that school sometimes treat {curiosity} as a bad habit . . . like any habit, creativity can either be encouraged or discouraged” (pg 17).

Seven Survival Skills of Innovators:

  • Critical thinking and problem solving

  • Collaboration across networks and leading by influence

  • Agility and adaptability

  • Initiative and entrepreneurship

  • Accessing and analyzing information

  • Effective oral and written communication

  • Curiosity and imagination


Tim Brown’s Five Characteristics of “Design Thinkers”

  • Empathy

  • Integrative thinking

  • Optimism

  • Experimentalism

  • Collaborators