Kyle Wagner - The Power of Simple: Transform your school by conquering the standards, individualizing learning, and creating a community of innovators

The power of SIMPLE

Transform your school by conquering the standards, individualizing learning, and creating a community of innovators

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the greatest teachers i have ever known - my mom and dad.

T his book would not have been possible had it not been for the giants who stood beside me. It is a culmination of their guidance, support, and patience that helped me become a better educator.

I would first and foremost like to thank my wonderful husband Roy, who forgave my absence as I belabored over this book, and encouraged me to speak up when I felt as if I had nothing valuable to say.

Thanks to my writing coach and friend Azul Terronez, who helped me simplify my message, insisting that only through honesty and humility could I inspire educators to action.

I would like to thank my best friend and brilliant graphic designer Nathan Mohle who helped with the branding for my business and book.

Thanks to my brother Chad Wagner, who served as an editor and coach in making my prose more readable and personal for readers.

Finally, and most importantly, I would like to thank the educators that have dedicated their lives to the betterment of others. You are my greatest inspiration.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I quit my job, sold my car, terminated my housing lease and finished packing my bicycle into a small carrying crate. It was the last item of value I had left to my name. Its destination- Shenzhen, China. Whether or not it would make it there was completely left to chance. What was I doing? I was leaving behind my family, friends and most notably a job at one of the most innovative schools in the country, if not the world, for a place that had only recently allowed foreigners to teach in its international schools. A communist country so tightly controlled that I would have to use a VPN just to check my Facebook News Feed. I was leaving the land of the free to find my American Dream 3,000 miles away- in China. People thought I was crazy. Perhaps I was.

Sometimes it takes a crazy decision to actually find your sanity. I was sick of being stuck. On the outside, you would never know it. I hid it well. To others, I appeared the consummate idealist. Always smiling, focused on the positive, committed to new ideas, cheerful, optimistic and ever-changing; but on the inside, I was terrified of actually making a change.

Every time I considered making a change, the self- critic crept in. Why change? Kyle, it begged, dont forget that you teach at High Tech High - a school that has 2,000 students begging to get in. Where else in the world will you have the freedom to innovate that you have here? You get to help students create work of value that serves a purpose in the real world! The voice in my head served as a constant reminder to stay put, and not jeopardize everything I worked so hard to achieve.

And so I remained in that space for over two years. How I suddenly built up the courage to finally make the change will forever remain a mystery. It was neither an epiphany nor a near death experience that prompted a radical change. It was a self- realization that I was born to create change.

Fast forward to today. Because of that decision to leave everything three years ago, I landed the job of my dreams at an innovative international school in one of the most closed countries in the world. I was hired to create an adaptive future school within a school and make some radical changes in education. You see, its not circumstance that holds us back. Its only ourselves.

Futures Academy at the International School of Beijing is a school without limits. Our schedules change every week depending on the learning experience. Our students present professional work each month to experts in the field. Visitors from around the world come to learn from us several times a year. It is an innovative, fully integrated program built around students exploring their passions and creating work of value in the real world. Its a school from the future built inside a school of today. Most importantly, it is a school that I could never have envisioned had I not first left my current position.

What if you were given the time and freedom to make major changes in school? Where would you start? What would the school look like? What would students learn? What opportunities would their schedules include? What would instructors teach? What would the classroom look like? Would you even need a classroom?

Helping you find these answers is what this book is all about.

Perhaps you find yourself in the same position I was in before risking everything. Who am I to create something so great? Deep down you yearn to promote and foster radical change in education but are too bogged down by the systems that currently exist. You know that you want to create a community of innovators and future problem solvers, but feel powerless with the lack of time and curriculum youve been provided. Perhaps your school has already granted you license to make major changes, but you feel paralyzed by the enormity of what that implies, not knowing how to take practical first steps.

This book will help make those first steps more simple and painless, providing you with the structures to bring about the greatest change and move forward. It is written by someone who used to be in the same position you are in now.

Real change is scary; which is why schools have avoided it for half a century. It takes vision, dedication, persistence and a commitment to our ideals. But it doesnt have to be as hard as weve made it. By helping you adapt and re-think some of the underlying structures of scheduling, planning, curriculum and assessment, you will feel energized to inspire the kind of learning you envisioned when you first became an educator.

This book is not about asking you to create another school that mimics Futures Academy; but rather, it is about inspiring you to create your own. Its about taking a few of the strategies you find most useful and adapting them to best fit your own needs.

welcome to the power of simple.

Every journey begins with a single step. -Laozi

Do a few things and do them well

T o create change in your school, you are going to need a crystal clear vision. Many educational institutions fail because they try to be too many things to too many people. Its impossible to blame them. Schools have the hardest job in the world, with the most stringent demands. If tightening things up and focusing on delivering rigorous standards, society complains that they are not allowing room for creativity. If allowing students to take multiple approaches to learning, people gripe that not enough focus is being placed on the curriculum. Therefore, for fifty- years schools have compartmentalized learning to deliver on every societal demand in isolation. But by trying to do everything, what in fact many schools have done, is actually very little.

The world is saturated with schools. If you typed in local schools in a Google Search box, regardless of the city, state, or province you live in, I am certain you would receive well over a hundred hits. Many will have pedagogies that are watered down with taglines that do little to define what they actually do. Something to the effect of Empowering all students. Teaching Students to be Successful. The waters become even murkier when scrolling down to the schools mission statement. Here is the mission statement from the infamous Dalton School:

The Dalton School is committed to providing an education of excellence that meets each students interests, abilities and needs within a common curricular framework and reflects and promotes an understanding of, and appreciation for, diversity in our community as an integral part of school life. Dalton challenges each student to develop intellectual independence, creativity and curiosity and a sense of responsibility toward others both within the School and in the community at large. (1)