CPSEL #1: Building the Vision

Hallmark 1, SNDdN

The Opportunity:

Business 101 will tell you that the first year in a new leadership position is one of observing, talking to anyone who will speak to you, and taking copious notes. Despite the fact that I had been at the school for 13 years before moving into administration, I still followed that approach. A key reason for this was that I was filling shoes being vacated by an administrator who had been at Notre Dame for 18 years. The lack of turnover meant that there were lots of mixed emotions at the changing of the guard. Some were ecstatic to have "new blood", while others "liked things as they were." So observe, talk and take notes I did. And pretty quickly in, I saw that we had a HUGE opportunity to introduce some innovation into our rather staid and traditional school as we prepared to go 1:1.

Working with our Technology Committee (a volunteer group of faculty, staff and students), we began to envision an Innovation Lab as a way to repurpose some of the computer lab space on campus that would no longer be needed. In short order I made trips to different sites, using a variety of contacts to facilitate my "field trips". My goal was to see not only how other schools integrated innovation but also to get a feel for what sorts of working environments our students would need to be prepared for. All of my information was brought back and shared with the Tech Committee and our excitement began to grow.

The Process:

I visited Lick Wilmerding High School and Castilleja School to talk about their innovative programs. I learned about the Technical Arts program at Lick and the Maker Program at Castilleja. I also visited KIXEYE headquarters in San Francisco and the Google Garage in Mountain View. Once I had made these "field trips", we began to bring the vision to life. Space was identified that could be repurposed and dedicated as the Innovation Lab. I had conversations with our scheduler to understand the impact of taking not one, but TWO rooms out of commission in order to bring the Innovation Lab to life. Ultimately, this required us to reimagine how classroom space was used. This allowed us to pull two rooms out of circulation that weren't very sought after to begin with as teaching space due to the fact that they shared a false wall.

Wow! Excitement to share with the Tech Committee, but there was one problem: school was essentially over for the year so there was no way to fully brief the faculty about the impending build. OK, a challenge to plan around during the summer. I now had $100,000 to spend starting July 1 so I had to get busy.

When faculty returned in August, they were really not quite sure what to make of the space. So now came the next phase of building the vision. They needed training in how to use the space. Enter Krause Center for Innovation and Corinne Okada Takara. I had been cultivating a relationship with a few of the leaders at KCI for over a year--namely Steve McGriff --and they had been excitedly cheering on our initiative from the sidelines. Now that it was "real", they were the ones that I turned to for the first round of faculty training. Corinne trained our faculty in three groups on the basics of Design Thinking. This training took place during the fall of 2014. The reception was mixed, but I don't know that I expected anything else. After all, the speed with which this initiative had happened was not typical. Teachers had left in May with one set of expectations and returned in August to have those expectations blown out of the water! They were getting used to sharing classrooms along with the fact that students now had laptops AND they had a new initiative from my office to incorporate something called Design Thinking. Not a smooth start, by any stretch of the imagination. Despite this rocky start, there was AMAZING growth during the year.

To help provide additional support to the faculty, the fall Design Thinking training was followed up in the spring with some training in Project Based Learning. I had a friend/colleague who is the principal at New Tech High School in Napa come for the afternoon. Riley did a fantastic job and the faculty really appreciated his insights, as evidenced by their feedback from the day:

That spring, the faculty also had their annual exit ticket focused on Design Thinking. Here are some of the projects they did: Design Thinking samples. Really impressive and creative work. I was blown away by some of the projects they undertook, including my more traditional faculty.

Where We Are Now:

Since the launch of the Innovation Lab, the use of the space has steadily increased as evidenced by the Google Calendar used to book the space. This is what October, 2015 looked like:

A recent analysis of the space for the Board of Directors revealed that during the 14-15 school year (the first year the lab existed), the space was used 222 distinct times by 29 different faculty and staff members. That represents 54% of our faculty/staff population. Additionally, ALL academic areas visited the space at least once during the year. For the first year, I was pleased with that outcome. The full report can be read here: Board Update I hope to increase the statistics this year and for the first semester, it would appear that we are on the right track with usage increasing across curriculum areas.

One of my favorite examples to highlight the student piece is the success of our Healthy Living Club in securing TWO grants in the past year by competing in Design Thinking challenges with AdCap. The most recent "win" was featured in our parent bulletin earlier this school year:

Perhaps the biggest learning piece that I took away from this project was the communication with faculty. Because of the speed with which this project was ultimately executed, the faculty were not prepared. I was so caught up in the excitement of making it happen, I overlooked the faculty response. Thus, when they returned in August and had new classroom assignments and the requirement of learning how to function in a new space with minimal warning, it was not a smooth transition. The previous scheduling model allowed most teachers to have their own classroom. The new model (driven in part by the creation of the Innovation Lab) assigned four classrooms to each department. Each department then designated one room per grade level (for the most part). Many teachers have had a difficult time with this shift as it now requires all teachers to share classrooms.

Two years later, there is still some negative energy floating around. But with time and lots of listening to gripes, the tide is slowly shifting. I have learned to listen very closely to see if I might be able to identify a simple fix--like a different teacher desk or a new storage solution in the room--that can mend hurt feelings or ease the transition. I am taking this lesson to heart and working to do a better job of communicating with departments as some new construction initiatives are in place for this summer. You can read about those and the steps I am taking on my CPSEL 5 page.