The Major Takeaways: Our Raison D'etre

In the past decade, we as authors have embarked the road to school improvement. And like so many others, we have sought out good ideas, best practices, new technologies, and new strategies to fix problems we have observed in schools. We have tinkered, fixed this or that, considered this path or that, and, actually have seen improvement-albeit slow, incremental improvements.

For example, in the Wilton Schools and with a great superintendent, we rolled out a Ready-Access Digital Learning Program that went beyond the typical 1:1 laptop initiative. The program is one about providing students and staff the resource-rich learning environment that empowers them to learn when and how they need to. The award-winning Library Learning Commons program is truly a 'hub' of innovation that gets tried out in the Library and then, if successful with the students, is mainstreamed into the classrooms - throughout the schools. Transdisciplinary Learning units provide students at each grade with opportunities to solve authentic problems using design thinking and sharing them widely using technology.

And, yet, with these fixes and steps forward, the powerful winds of changes in our society, its culture and the world of work, small incremental changes need to reconsidered. Like Kodak, we can continue to improve our box camera, but when we realize that disruptive change just might put us out of business, we just have to take a step back and use some design thinking in order to prepare a generation of young people for what is happening right now around them, let alone the uncertainty of what the future holds.

We have found that while incremental change can and do make things better that there are three main juggernaut barriers in education that put a tremendous drag on innovation. They are:

• The master schedule in every school that creates pods or silos that act independently but not collaboratively to make real change happen.
• Assessments that give only one view of what a student knows; ignores collaborative learning; and, causes the whole "teach to the test"syndrome.
• Content management systems that are structured around direct teaching and assessment that encourages teachers to continue to create lists of assignments, strict rubrics that dictate the cookie cutter approach to what a young person must know and master.

Perhaps there is a fourth moat to cross: federal and state mandates...

In all these cases, we find it difficult to continue to create work arounds to make the changes needed for real school improvement. It is like trying to attack a city that has three concentric circles of moats that must be navigated to get ourselves into the city center.

When we embarked on our own design thinking for this site, we wanted to lay out in an empathetic way the foundational beliefs we hold for the reinvention of education and we found that many of them require disruption in the organizational structure of what we call school. Here are a few of our thoughts and encourage the readers to come up with a list of their own.

We are a continuous improvement school; an experimental learning laboratory where both the adults and the learners thrive because they are getting better and better at what they know and can do.

• We believe that variety is the spice of learning and teaching, not a "my way or the highway" approach
• We believe in bringing back the joy of teaching for educators and the joy of learning to our learners
• We believe in the chocolate chip cookie approach to curriculum. That by mixing the ingredients that both specialists and classroom teachers bring to the table, that an amazing and delicious cookie bakes just right and is highly desirable.
• As teachers, we believe that whenever possible, that two heads are better than one. When two educators with differing, yet complementary expertise combine their efforts that surface learning fades as deeper learning rises.
• We believe in the flexible learner; the learner who can succeed in both directive experiences as well as self-directed learning. This type of learner is most likely to succeed in a fast changing world where they will need to have the confidence that they are in command of their own learning and can learn anything at any time in order to change careers and make a contribution to the world.
• We believe in multi-dimensional assessments where both the adults and learners are looking at knowing and doing from a variety of perspectives.
• We believe that technology must demonstrate its power to improve teaching and learning if it is to be implemented by both adults and learners.
• We believe that a learning community is more likely to succeed than a bunch of siloed professionals trying to achieve excellence alone.
• We believe that high quality of information is preferable to a glut of opinion.
• We believe that both hard and soft skills can be successfully combined regularly in learning experiences and their impact assessed in a multi-dimensional view.
• We believe that alongside macro-assessments and large scale testing, that micro-documentation at the teaching unit level often reveal both success and problems much more effectively.
• We believe that students should have a growing and more powerful voice about what they learn, where they learn, and how they learn.
• We believe that new master scheduling, learning management systems, and assessments need to be invented to promote innovation rather than blocking it by their very structure and design.

Using these foundational beliefs, we have created not a concept that engulfs and surrounds the entire school with multiple ways within its structure that make a real difference. Thus, we could see a name change of the school from the Jackson Elementary School to the Jackson Elementary Learning Commons the Jefferson Middle School Learning Commons; The Martin Luther King High School Learning Commons.

We are not so naive to think or propose that our way is the one right way and everyone else's proposals are wrong. Yet, we are confident in the direction of movement. Our path began with our frustration with the limitation of the traditional library of books and a few computers and databases. That led us to the invention of the Library Learning Commons that brought new life and energy into the place and has been accepted so readily by the student patrons. And yet, we have realized that we are not there yet because of the barriers that face us on our journey to that castle on the hill.

You may come from a different perspective of experience, but if you consider seriously our proposals, they will lead your efforts in school improvement on a fresh pathway toward success.

The future is now! Let's get going.

What next?

The website can be used in a number of ways. We suggest the following steps:

• Take a look at the "Basics" page. It is the Table of Contents for the entire site
• Look at the "Using This Site" page for ideas on implementing various ideas in your school
• Check out the "Help Us" page if you would like to help us turn this site into a learning community
• And, finally, the "About Us" page lists the main authors and contributors to the site.
• Comments are appreciated to David Loertscher at reader.david@gmail.com and to Fran Kompar at: komparf@wiltonps.org

Finally, just in case you need more evidence, listen to these comments made by students and organized by the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/learning/what-students-are-saying-about-how-to-improve-american-education.html?utm_source=Smart+Update&utm_campaign=cac452f8d6-SMART_UPDATE_2020_1_9_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_17bb008ec3-cac452f8d6-321306465

Quick Overviews:

• A five min. slide presentation about the School-wide Learning Commons: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mXr_jf3kVgtuEacVsuwMYvaM44HRiuKYxzsoXG4E7wg/edit#slide=id.p14
• An earlier video about the transition from library to learning commons done by David Loertscher and Carol Koechlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7nX2cj7Dqo&t=22s