Innovation. Leadership Activity. Thinking Dispositions. Rhizomatic Learning.

I’ve been thinking about innovation, and unpacking the meaning of this oft-used word.  

Is it a mindset, an activity, a work ethic? Or is it a thinking disposition? Perkins, Jay and Tishman suggest that a thinking disposition is composed of three elements: abilities, sensitivities, inclinations.

We can recognize that innovation has much to do with the ability, sensitivity, and inclination to tinker. It is a thinking disposition that plays with existing ideas, tweaks them, makes them new.

Innovation is also connected to the capacity for imagination, for creating mental images. This kind of insight or vision is the essence of discovery, and what Proust calls “seeing with new eyes.”

What does innovation look like in a dynamic, organic, living, breathing culture of learning that is a school? Is it top-down, a mandate to innovate? Or bottom-up, beginning with the tech team, who entreat us to try new applications, new ways?

Or is it the “long middle,” a wonderful phrase that gamer-high school English teacher-turned novelist Adam Ross uses in the brilliantly constructed (like a Mobius strip) Mr. Peanut, to describe the middle of a novel. Surely there is a long middle to every school year. 

Perhaps innovation is happening all the time, but goes unnoticed because innovation isn’t a discrete event, it is a way of seeing. And a way of being.

It is an activity, an ability, a sensitivity, an inclination to try something new.

Stanford’s Tina Seelig calls it “an extreme art.” Jonathan Martin captures the essentials of Seelig’s NAIS10 presentation on Innovation as an Extreme Sport.

Innovation: a way of being present, fully engaged, open to sharing.

A space where ideas and activities flow  in conversations that are immediate, spontaneous, continuous, ongoing. Just like a class, which ideally is a community of practitioners. An egalitarian model for creative, innovative, visionary, transformative activity.

Recently my 10th grade lit class finished close reading and analysis of Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child (1988). Ben is the monstrous fifth child, oversized, different, prone to violence. The text describes Ben as a “genetic throwback,” a “monster,” a “troll”, a “goblin.” Students, however, saw him as misunderstood, isolated, and unloved. The novel ends as Ben leaves home to join his friends on the streets as a gang member.

I divided students into teams to probe the following questions.

How do we reclaim the “monstrous’? Can education do this?

PROBLEM: A 19th century novel would kill Ben off. A 20^th century novel sends him into the world, where he becomes a social problem. Perhaps a group of monks or a charity or a social service organization will pick him up; most likely he will end up on the streets, or in prison. But it’s the 21st century, and you are idealistic about education reform. About designing new schools and programs. Unlike the Lovatt family, you recognize that Ben is your responsibility.  

TASK:  Develop a program to support Ben and educate him to be a contributing member of society. Discuss, design, and create a program and curriculum for Ben.  What will you teach him? What does he need to learn and know?

Students had two weeks to work on the project and organize a presentation. There were a number of mini-lessons. On backwards design — to formulate goals for Ben. On action research — to become informed about existing programs. On effective presentation skills — to make a compelling case for Ben’s humanity, including Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen and Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 PowerPoint rules. On ways boys learn — Penn State’s Dr. Alli Carr-Chellman’s TedxTalk on Gaming to Re-engage Boys in Learning.  

The most interesting part for me was observing the students self-organize, delegate tasks, make lists, develop systems, engage in action research. They were discovering ways to solve what social scientists call a wicked problem. 

They were engaged in leadership activity.

John Diamond  of Harvard’s Grad School of Education uses the metaphor of a plane’s cockpit to convey that leadership, instead of a fixed position, involves the fluid activities of many people.The distributed leadership perspective is a conceptual frame, an integrated view of an activity system that is as collaborative as a cockpit, where a “constellation” of actions, behaviors, dispositions, situations, and contexts contribute to keep the plane on its trajectory. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to apply this metaphor, this model, everywhere in our schools?

It should be easy. Within a school, there are so many activity systems. Every class, club, team, meeting, conference, is a community of practice.  The NYSAIS motto underscores that “Knowledge is in the group.” Learning is a collective activity.

We need to shift the paradigm from individualized learning to collaborative networking. Students relish being given opportunities for problem-solving, divergent thinking, negotiating differences. This is the rhizomatic process of learning, a term coined to reflect a process of knowledge and knowing that is evolving and flexible, and exemplified in wikis.

This is how to un-school school.

By opening doors, making them portals, we can shift the concept of leadership from that old paradigm of the single charismatic person to the group. From that one person in the seat (the student, the teacher, the division head, the principal, the supervisor, the head of school)  —  to all of us, to every member of the community.

Walk-throughs for everyone. Check-ins. Informal conversations.  Innovation just in time, anywhere, everywhere. This is real professional development. It’s called everyday learning and sharing.

Because a school is a collective enterprise, a community of practice. Every day. Day by day.

And yes, knowledge is in the group.