Inspirational Speaking - The British Oprah Makes Her Debut!

So it was always my dream to be the person doing the speech and prizegiving. At school, I would gaze longingly at the speaker and think - one day, that lectern will be mine!

Then, after I got back from Bulgaria, Johnie, the Deputy Head at Portslade Community College, made my dream come true!

I wanted to talk about success -what it actually means to us personally, versus the messages that the media, music and peer pressure provide us with. I explored how we identify our own definition, busted some myths about success and then shared my three secrets to create a life you love.

This is what Stuart, the Head, said in his thank you letter:

"You were inspirational! I know that the students, staff and parents were really impressed by your speech and many of them have commented to me personally on the impact it had on them."

What a dream come true! Perhaps I can be the British Oprah after all, maybe I do have a gift for inspiring others....


Here's the poem I used. It is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it doesn't sound like him to me.

Success

To laugh often and much
To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children.

To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends

To appreciate beauty
To find the best in others

To leave the world a bit better
Whether by a garden patch, healthy child,
or a redeemed social condition.

To know that even one life has breather easier
Because you lived

That is to have suceeded.

Gosh It's Been A While

Hi Everyone

Sheesh - how has it managed to be TWO months since I last posted!

We have had the final of our Design Thinking Challenge at BACA and I have to say, I was blown away! Not just by the quality of the ideas that the Year 7 finalists presented, but also with the way in which their behaviour and engagement changed, even to the point of them being entirely self managed.

As a group, when I did the first training for all 100 of them, I was not too sure that they were really taking much in. The teachers were also unsure about the format of the workshop and the lesson plans. Yet, as the weeks went on and my relationship with the students continued to build, it became evident that:

1. They had total recall and understanding of the design process ( at one point, a group of them reeled off the whole methodology, including prototyping and market research, to an astonished visiting consultant);
2. Behaviour and participation improved a lot more as the groups got used to working together and became invested in their teams ideas and their success;
3. That the combination of active reflection at the end of a class, the documentation of the process itself and interactive learning meant that the students were much more empowered to come up with their own solutions and celebrate their own successes, making the teacher's lives easier.

The classes then voted on the best idea to take forward, reducing the groups from 25 to just 5. I worked with these 5 groups on their final ideas ( changes to the uniform, how to improve school food, two anti bullying campaigns and how to improve behaviour in the classroom). By the time we did the presentations the students were managing their own time and preparations - making films, powerpoints, handouts, writing budgets, I was astonished! And on the day of the presentations, with an outside panel of visitors as judges, you could literally hear a pin drop so high was the quality of focussed attention.

The winning idea was an inhouse social club, run by Year 8 for Year 7, that provides a safe space for the frightened, lost or vulnerable new Year 7's called Help You When You Need It. The students will start running the club in the Autumn term of 2011.

Chief learnings for me:
Visual prompts are really important for focus
The better the students know you the easier they are to manage and
Never underestimate the value of affirmation and encouragement - I expect them to be excellent and so they are!

If you would like a design thinking curriculum piloted in your school please do get in touch.

Design Thinking Curriculum Pilot! Yikes.

In Which Erica Gets Very Nervous and 100 Young Designers Get Over-Excited.

Hello,

I had promised myself that I would blog at least once a fortnight, but as I have no idea if you guys read this or not, it becomes a bit challenging to make it a priority! No MATTER! Exciting work continues to spurt forth from TLP's little Ship St hub.

This week - Design Thinking - so you may have read earlier about Kiran and Riverside School. Well, I have been beavering away in the light of this inspiration and have come up with a pilot curriculum teaching Design Thinking Skills to Year 7's and enabling them to apply these to the design of chocolate bars, new machines, social deprivation solutions and much more.

I am always a bit nervous when it comes to the pilot of a new programme - I know, and teach, that one can only learn through mistakes and through trial and error, but nevertheless, the feeling of being exposed and vulnerable as a practitioner can be quite challenging. I so want to give my client organisation the highest quality learning resources, materials, plans, experiences and find it hard to accept that this only comes through the iterative process. Luckily BACA, the partner Academy I am working with on this project, understand this much better than I do and their fabulous teachers have done a GREAT job at helping me and the students adjust to this process!

Last week we ran our first workshop with the whole year group, taking them through the key concepts for design thinking:

FEEL - what is the problem like? How do people feel about it? How can you find out more?
IMAGINE - explore how life could be different, how the design could be improved, come up with ideas
DO - try it out in prototype, explore different ways of doing it
SHARE- celebrate and share your ideas with others.

This week the staff team took the students through the first part of the process - research methods. The kids did a great job of choosing an advert from a magazine and thinking about what research would have been done to produce that product. We looked at different methods of researching and how you could use social media to find out more about what people thought. We also started to develop a scrapbook on the design process, so the students will be able to document and reflect on their journey from research to concept and outcome.

Three things teachers might find useful when introducing research:

1. Investigate how much students know about what research is and what it could be used for. Make sure you contextualise this in their areas of expertise - what research might you do on your favourite football team? If you were designing a new game to sell at Christmas, to find out more about your family history?

2. Use visual cues - all around us are products that are "designed". Invite them to tell the story of how a particular product or tool came into existence.

3. Documentation - in Riverside I saw how very useful it was for students to embed their learning by documenting the process- its sort of like science experiment write up meets storytelling meets journal. Using a scrapbook, or a wall in the classroom helps them to embrace the journey of their work toward a goal or an output and makes fascinating viewing for a school visitor.

Next week is analysis ....I will keep you posted!

Design Thinking in Education Pilot

Hello All!

Well, with the inspiration I received from Riverside school and my passion for life skills based learning, I have been invited to pilot a 6 week design thinking programme for Year 7's at a local academy in Brighton.

We had our first teacher training session this week, exploring the draft curriculum that the core skills teachers will follow. I am very lucky in that BACA, the Academy in question has a 4 hour slot each week for core skills (humanities, PSHE, citizenship) and so we have 6 weeks of 4 hours to focus on design thinking - unheard of in most UK schools!

The six week programme introduces the idea that young people can take a design led approach to thinking through any project, problem or challenge and create their own sustainable solutions to it. The programme will take the students through:

Research methods
Identifying your "user" and their needs
Analysing your information
Coming up with a "user spec" for the innovation
Using thinking skills to innovate
Identifying the ideas you wish to pilot
Planning for a pilot
Piloting and refining and then sharing your ideas.

In this case, the young people will be challenged to find ways to make being at their schoola more fulfilling and positive experience for the new Year 7's. This is crucial as the Academy has taken over a school in one of the most deprived areas of the country with high levels of long term unemployment and low aspiration. The Year 7's are the first children who will spend the next 7 years in this environment - and they need to take responsibility for shaping how it feels and operates.

The first workshops for students take place on the 3rd May. I will be introducing the idea of creating a culture and the whole process of design thinking. The whole team is both nervous and excited - this is a pilot for us too!

Please keep an eye out for more information about the pilot. If you'd like us to come to your school and help create a really engaging curriculum, please do get in touch - our specialist areas: personal development, careers, enterprise and life skills.

More on Thomas Moore and others

Hi Everyone,

So today Ian and I got to interview Thomas Moore. Thomas has written around 20 books on the soul and its role in modern life. He has a background in psychotherapy and spent 13 years as a Catholic monk. He has a wonderful still, strong presence and so much wisdom to share.

Some of my favourite ideas from today:

1. Teachers deserve to have supervision and reflection - to offload, to improve practice, to avoid transference with their students.
2. It is important to distinguish between training and skills so you can get a job and education, the purpose of which is to teach you how to live.
3. The soul is the unique essence of who you are - your point of view and unique skills and perspective.

The video will be online soon - so keep a look out.

Another very inspiring talk last week with Sir Ken Robinson - who is just wonderfully witty and articulate. He was talking about finding your passion and your element... uncovering your latent talents.

And then on Thursday I met Gok Wan at the Education Show....

Feeling very excited about such enriching conversations. Hope to interview and film at Summerhill School next - very fortunate to get to learn so much from such inspiring environments and share it with others.

Current Riverside Projects

1. Internships - the 10 year olds have developed their CVs and covering letters and have been interviewed for a range of opportunities including graphic design, architecture and journalism. Dev's article on Sports Day was published in the Times of India today and he has another print deadline for 12 hours time!

2. Composting - Year 3 are developing their own compost - exploring the difference between aerobic and anerobic composting and the use of organic matter. They will be planting trees in this compost later in the term.

3. Year 1 are looking at the digestive system. They explored how it is that pizza turns into poo and today they put some food in a blender to see what happens when it all gets mashed up. They will be mapping the journey of food over the next few days.

4. Guest kids from the local school are learning IT skills - they do not have computers at their school. They have developed powerpoint presentations and today learned how to put these on a pen drive and transfer them to a different computer.

5. Year 2 are in art class. They are doing self portraits using mirrors to examine their own faces. They will then do a goethian observation of what they notice and what they like and why.

6. Tara m'am taught physics today using a pendulum suspension to explore how friction, resonance and gravity work. I have never seen a science class so gripped - ages - 7-11.

Design in Education Conference 2011

Hey there,

Just deivered a workshop as part of the Design in Education conference Kiran and the Riverside Team have organised.

Design in Education offers an opportunity for both students, practitioners and educators to make use of design systems to explore making education more meaningful and effective. There is a four stage process which goes like this:

1. Feel

empathise with the users - talk to parents, listen to students, try to get into the shoes of everyone concerned and find out what their needs are.

2. Imagine

How would we like this to be? how could we make it work better to get more needs met? This could be about classroom design, curriculum design or lesson planning.

3. Do, Do, Do

Prototype, experiment, try things out, ask what if, have a go, reflect and try again

4. Share

Share your findings, reflections, achievements with others.

An example:

How can we make lessons more interesting?
1.
Ask teachers where they feel students are disengaged and why.
Ask students why lessons work or don't work
Ask policy makers and examiners why they design education the way they do.

2. Explore how you could innovate to build a more interesting format.
What are others doing?
What would be fun to try?
What have you seen work elsewhere?
What is really out of the box?

3. Do, Do Do

devise some plans and try them out.
reflect on how they go and get feedback and try again

4. Share

Ask others to observe, give feedback and try out what you have created.

Kiran will be part of our conference programme, sharing her insight on person centered education - please visit www.thelifeproject.co.uk/conferences for more info.

Top Ten Tips From Riverside

Rigour...Relationship....Relevence ....Three Common Sense Notions from The Riverside School.

I continue to be hugely impressed by the Riverside approach.... here's some tips for other enthusiastic educators on how to adopt their style. www.schoolriverside.com

1. Reflection and checking understanding - every day "close the loop". Let the students express, in their own words, what they have learned. Next morning, make sure you recap.
2. Teaching as Learning - ask them to explain their learning to the rest of the class or to their parents - parents then send in detailed feedback about what their child has learned.
3. Involve the parents - in getting feedback, coming on school trips, keeping them in the loop on learning topics - this expands the number of stakeholders.
4. Use a variety of learning languages - e.g. Year 2 are exploring their characters - they have found new adjectives in the dictionary to describe themselves. They then made a visual colour chart to demonstrate the amount of each characteristic within their personalities. Then they got into groups and made a chart for the character of the group. Today they are making sandwiches reflecting character traits, using a range of food and mapping their tastes to each characteristic e.g if i am strong i need a strong taste like pickle.
5. Share WHY you are learning something - find a "hook" that explains and gives context before learning starts e.g. If you are learning about weather, show the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth
6. Learn using interactive methods e.g. Shadows - trace around your shadow with a chalk, how does the shadow move and change and why does it move that way?
7. Report findings in a variety of formats.
8. Use buddy pairs - each year group works to solve problems working with students 3 years younger than them. This develops responsibility, communication and partnership.
9. Design for Change - have the children develop and implement their own solutions to social problems using a design framework.
1o. Encourage mistakes, prototypes, experiments...amongst both staff and students.

At Riverside Today

So I am at Riverside School in Ahmedabad, Kiran Sethi's innovative school has just celebrated its tenth year. The school's emphasis is on practical, real world, interactive education that meets the needs of the whole child.

The day starts at 8am and so far:

Grade 5 are having interviews for local internships - they have written their CV's and covering letters and are being interviewed by an independent visitor
Grade 6 got into a discussion about the value of a President and a Prime Minister in the delivery of legislation in the best interests of the people
Grade 9 are choreographing a routine for their performance at assembley next week to the music of Amelie ( all boys included!)
Grade 3 are embellishing a tale using their understanding of what the components of a good story are and

I am off with Pre - Kindergarten are off to the zoo.

The vibe here is very relaxed and joyful. When kids are asked to get on with something they quite happily do and are even unsupervised in later years, much like Graeme Whiting's Acorn School in the UK.

Indian Adventures

Hi Everyone

Greetings from Ahmedabad, in Gujerat, India!

I have been out in India now for five weeks, having delivered workshops to around 350 students and 400 adults. These have ranged from 21 year old automobile deesign student to ten year olds wanting to find their skill set and direction. Clients on the adult front have included Tata consulting and Synergy Electrics.

It has been fascinating offering interactive soft skills programmes here - the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

People feedback that:

1. They really enjoy interactive ways of learning
2. They love the practical tools as they can immediately make use of them in their lives
3. The informal education style makes learning a lot more fun than the traditional "chalk and talk" or " mug it up and chuck it out" forms of rote learning.

My aim being over here is to explore the market for alternative educational approaches and to offer schools, Universities, NGO"s and businesses an opportunity to try out the tools and seminars I have designed.

For the next week, I will be based at Riverside School, providing workshops and coaching for teachers and presenting at the Design in Education conference on the 12th and 13th. I have met with Kiran Sethi, the very inspiring Head here and will be giving you the full low down on their radicaly, interactive and person centered approach to learning. Kiran is one of the experts sharing their wisdom on our films in preparation for The Soul of Education conference, so keep an eye out for that here!

The key points on Riverside, as described by the students:

1. Segregation of play areas for each year group to meet their needs for safety and freedom
2. Self created student led projects including furniture designed from bottles and bespoke personal training programmes
3. Learning demonstrated by various forms of informal assessment including skits, presentations, projects and other creative methods
4. No school uniform and a school co-designed and built by the children, for the children, that resemble their home environment.
5. Focus not just on knowledge, but understanding from which innovation is encouraged.

In ten years the school has gone from 30 kids to 300.

Oh and I was in the paper today, together with 100 kids at the British Library!

Keep in touch!