Welcome to the show (2:27)
Cindy:
Thanks so much for being here, Kevin.
Kevin Bartlett:
Yeah, you're welcome. It's nice to be here, Cindy. Thanks for the invitation.
Cindy:
Oh, you're welcome here anytime. So I'd love to start by just kind of setting the stage for our listeners. What is the work that you do that you're most passionate about?
Kevin Bartlett:
tempted to say my marriage. And that would
Cindy:
Is
Kevin Bartlett:
probably
Cindy:
your wife
Kevin Bartlett:
be true.
Cindy:
listening?
Kevin Bartlett:
Well, it's not exactly work, but it's probably the most important foundation for all other work. I think just the things that I've tried to do that make a contribution to, I guess the big idea of reinventing education in a more systemic and more simple way. So that includes the big vision of what if you had one learning continuum and all kids move through it at their own pace in rational ways. So that's the CGC. How would you create a school that would be the home of that curriculum? So that's all the work I've done with leaders. How would you know what a good school looked like using it? That's the work I've done with accreditation. How would you lead for that? So that's the work I've done with the principals training center. How would everyone be included in that? That's the work I did in co-founding Next Frontier Inclusion, et cetera. So I guess the big thing, I'm not even in that sense, honestly, Cindy, without false modesty. proud of anything, but I guess what I've focused on, in a nutshell, is trying to bring simplicity and system to the learning game. And so I've worked on various elements within that and tried to connect them into one system. So it's that systemic thinking that, I don't know if I'm proud of it or not, but I can't seem to stop doing it. I'm kind of, I'm addicted to systems and simplicity. So it's that attempt to bring simple systems to schools, that's what I'd be most. proud of and that's what I keep doing.
Cindy:
I love that and I love your systems, so keep creating them.
Kevin Bartlett:
Thank you.
The problem with schools is that they are too efficient at the wrong things (04:33)
Cindy:
You kind of touched on this, but what do you see as being the biggest problems that our schools are facing? What are you solving for with your systems at the moment?
Kevin Bartlett:
Interesting. I just listened to a podcast by Sugata Mitra and he made an interesting point and it made me rethink some points I've been making. He said some people say schools are broken and I've heard myself saying that, but he was very wise about that. He said schools are not broken. In fact, they're incredibly efficient. They're just redundant. I liked Drucker's thinking in lots of ways. He said, there is nothing worse than doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. So schools are actually very efficient. They're not broken at all. They're very systemic in the way they kill off curiosity, use low-level grading systems to numerically sort kids for their future, killing off conversa... conversation in classrooms, even though it's our major meaning making strategy, killing off curiosity, even though we're born to be curious. So schools are very, very successful and very efficient and very systemic at doing the wrong things, I would say, honestly, and I believe that. Shall I give a few examples of that?
Cindy:
Sure.
Kevin Bartlett:
So, OK, I'll play with words as I like to do. Alice in Alice in Wonderland. could have been through the looking glass, I'm not sure, said, curiouser and curiouser. And it had a certain meaning. If we flip that meaning a little bit, we're born curious. We're born curious. And you would think because we become more curious as we learn more, that's something that inquiry-based educators realize after a while. Kids have more questions when they know something. So you'd think as kids went through school, they'd become curiouser and curiouser, but they don't. So. Schools in that sense are counter nature. We grew up on the plains of Africa as far as we know and language developed when we learned to cook food and we began to eat collectively and our societies became more complex. The brain grew to understand those more complex societies and we developed language. As Daniel Pink said, we're programmed to remember stories, not facts. So we're storytellers. Fullin said, we're all sense makers. and our best sense-making tool is conversation. But look at a regular classroom, probably not in the scores of people who are listening to this podcast. But rows of chairs facing in one direction. The message is, you can't talk to each other, but you can listen to me. We know that we learn through making connections. The brain biochemically learns through making connections. And yet we seem to fail. in our core work of giving the kids one connected learning experience, one continuum pre-K through 12. We're born to enjoy learning. We get a dopamine rush when we get something right. That's what gamers understand, game designers, get the level of challenge right, sort of the Goldilocks principle, not too easy, not too hard, just right, and kids will keep playing. Why? Because it's enjoyable when we get that little epiphany moment. that success moment. So schools are not though designed to give kids the right level of challenge so that they enjoy it. So I could give four or five more examples, but whether it's on inquiry and play, whether it's on conversation, whether it's on actually enjoying learning, whether it's on having a connected learning experience, schools don't do the things that we were programmed to do as human beings in order to learn. So again, I'll take it from Sugata Mitra. They may not be broken. I just think they're doing the wrong things. And along with a few other people, a lot of other people, probably a lot of people listening here, we feel compelled to try and do something about that. And yet the system, the system is organized against the transformation. Another great thinker, W. Edwards Deming, industrialist who really transformed Japanese industry after the Second World War. He was worth, you know, if anybody listening wants some inspiring quotes, just Google W. Edward Stemming quotations. He said, a bad system will beat good people every time. So the system is set up to be perpetuated. There's a lot of money in that system. There's a lot of money in testing. There's a lot of money in colleges. There's a lot of money in student loans. So the whole system is set up to preserve the status quo. And then there's a bunch of us out here who will spend our lives trying to say, you know, we could do this differently. And I guess the final point there, Cindy, is it's easy enough for me to sit here and criticize. but it doesn't do anything, it doesn't do any good.
An introduction to the CGC (09:44)
Cindy:
And if I'm a leader looking to be more intentional about my culture rather than having just kind of an implicit culture, what are the kinds of questions I should be asking or the kinds of things I should be doing with my staff to get us all aligned?
Kevin Bartlett:
Well, I'll go even bigger than that if I may, Cindy. In designing the CGC as one pre-K through 12 learning system, we approached it using our favorite methodology, which is inquiry. So I like to think of leadership as fearless inquiry. And we came up with five questions. When I teach leadership, we teach a lot of leadership. One thing I say to leaders, we even experienced leaders, but certainly young leaders, is we take on a leadership position, we somehow think now we're supposed to have all the answers, and we panic about that. But here's the stress reliever, we don't need all the answers, we can't have all the answers. What is really useful is to find the right questions. You bring the right questions to your community, and then you lead the community towards consensus on the answers. and in so doing you're building a culture. So our five questions for creating a learning system, and they all have their place in the system, but I almost think the first one has been the most transformative, is what is learning? And honestly, Cindy, once you've had that thought, you can't really un-have it. And then I began to see that we needed to be a little more precise. So we... actually then went on to define the first of our systemic Ds. We have five Ds because I like alliteration and things like that and easy things to remember. So we said we're going to start with this question. What is learning? More specifically, what is the learning process? Because I see a lot of definitions of learning and honestly they have about as much value sometimes as the mission poster on the wall that people stopped looking at 10 years ago. Because simply saying things like we develop lifelong learners is true. It may be true and it may be it may be worthy, but it doesn't do much for you systemically. So we actually define the learning process. We said. We're going to look at what experts do in the world, in the real world. And we looked a lot at research, Princeton University Press, how people learn very simply. Experts in any field are experts in the ideas of that field and how those ideas relate to each other. So we said, okay, so we've got to build people who are good with ideas. Experts are always highly skilled in the skills of their particular field. And we certainly want expert human beings. And we said, how can we turn that into a simple system? We said, okay, then we're going to develop. Learners with deep conceptual understanding of ideas that matter, high levels of competency and key skills and strong positive moral character. People who are good with ideas, good with skills and good people. And then we said, so what, by the way, is a good question. So what? So now we have three Cs, conceptual competency character. It's a very useful model. But I liked what George Box, the physicist, said. He said, all models are wrong, but some are useful. Demi again said, if you can't describe what you're doing as a process, then you don't know what you're doing. And I love the simplicity of that in your face. If you can't describe what you're doing as a process, then you don't know what you're doing. So we thought, well, we're not very helpful to teachers if we just define these three Cs. We said. What is the process of developing ideas? What is the process of developing skills and character? And again, simplicity. For each of those kinds of learning, we developed a simple pedagogy. So to develop conceptual understanding, and this is not new, it's just maybe a new synthesis, but I suspect many of your listeners will be recognizing this as deep in their own psyches. You start by connecting to a kid's current concept. prior knowledge, prior ideas. You then build on that using forms of inquiry and other pedagogies, sometimes direct instruction, for example. So you connect, then you construct a deeper understanding, a better theory, a stronger hypothesis, until it's ready to share and share with others and get feedback. So we said, okay, we're gonna develop a simple pedagogy. When we connect, construct, and contribute, we understand that. And then we developed learning goals or standards for the whole curriculum that all begin with a stem. We understand that. And then we said, well, it's a different pedagogy for building skills. When you build a skill, provide models, deconstruct them with the kids. What does good look like? A good persuasive argument, a good penalty kick in football or soccer. Where do you stand against that? So you identify, analyze, and then you practice to close the gap. So then you can say, When we deconstruct, identify, practice, we are able to. And so we have a set of competency learning goals for all areas of the curriculum that begin with, we are able to. If you want to build character, put kids in authentic context, ask them to consider how to act, and reflect. And we become more. So three Cs, each with their own pedagogy, each with their own sentence stems, each with their own learning goals. And then we said, You know, they're always interacting. If I'm learning to play the violin, it may be more competency than concept, but it requires huge amounts of character to do the practice. So we thought, okay, this is how we learn as we go through life. It feels that way to me. Even in this conversation with you, I'm connecting, constructing, contributing. So imagine that as three spirals. Non-enquiry cycles, because a cycle implies you go back to the same place you started, but
Cindy:
Right.
Kevin Bartlett:
enquiry spirals, always interacting, so the metaphor becomes a triple helix. So the DNA of learning. We also like metaphors. So our first question
Cindy:
Oh,
Kevin Bartlett:
is,
Cindy:
it's
Kevin Bartlett:
what is the
Cindy:
so
Kevin Bartlett:
most important thing in
Cindy:
elegant.
Kevin Bartlett:
learning?
Cindy:
It's so elegant. And it's something that was so missing because we've had success criteria. That's something that's been around for quite a while, knowledge, understanding, skills. But I think adding that sentence frame of the end goal was the first brilliant stroke. And then I think really unpacking the how-to of that because it's one thing to have this gorgeous list of success criteria, but then what? And then what has been what's missing? I think, so that's so cool!
The next step for transdisciplinary themes (16:59)
Kevin Bartlett:
Well, it's and there's a couple of other things to talk about that tick that same box of there was something missing and something disconnected. So so we answered the first question. What is learning with this triple helix of conceptual competency character? We build learning experts with deep conceptual understanding of ideas that matter. High levels of competency and key skills, strong, positive moral character. But then if you stay with the metaphor of the DNA and say, well, a DNA. in life doesn't live in a vacuum, it lives in a body, it shapes a body. And you can't learn in a vacuum. So what body of knowledge for these kids these days, wherever we happen to be, we're working in 20 different countries now, still ask the same question. We asked it a different way than I used a question I learned from David Perkins, of whom I'm a huge admirer. And his question was always what's worth learning? Just as simple as that. So first question was, what is learning and then what's worth learning? And we generated from the work of Ernie Boyer, who used the phrase human commonalities for big concepts that we all share that sit above any discipline. Don't remove the disciplines, disciplines add a lot to learning. But he said, we all work for example. We all send messages to each other. So we created this content framework of six human commonalities described in terms of conceptual pairing. So balance and purpose. patterns and principles, imagination and creativity, stories and signals, etc.
Cindy:
Can I ask you a question about that? Two questions actually.
Kevin Bartlett:
I have a hunch you're going to.
Cindy:
Okay, so one is there is some overlap with the transdisciplinary themes, but they are different. What are the differences there?
Kevin Bartlett:
Well, I'm worried of saying too much about anybody else's work, because the IB has owned the PYP for a long time now, but fundamentally they came from the same source. They came from Ernest
Cindy:
From Blair.
Kevin Bartlett:
Boyer, who wrote the basic school, and an educated person, who I tell you, if you want to see simplicity and elegance in thinking, just read the basic school.
Cindy:
Okay.
Kevin Bartlett:
So it's the same idea that we have disciplinary learning. We have opportunities for interdisciplinary learning, transdisciplinary learning, not the same things. But we can't just say that, we need something to create that, to make that happen. And an early example was the PYP program of inquiry. That emerged because we were in one of the planning meetings for the ISCP in a castle in Maastricht in Holland. And we'd been working for... Yes, I think we were living in the servants' quarters or in the motor. Right. Yeah.
Cindy:
That sounds about right, you're teachers, so let's bring it down a notch!
Kevin Bartlett:
Well, here's the thing, Cindy. In those days, I'm gonna sound like Monty Python in a minute, we had to come physically together to work. There was no online working. So schools were paying to send their teachers to design this common curriculum. And we reached a point where we had a set of concepts, a set of questions driven by those concepts. That's a whole other story how those came about. But we had no content. And some people said, oh, the schools can do the content. And I just think, listen, people have been coming with us to us for years. We can't hand one of the biggest problems back to them.
Cindy:
Yes.
Kevin Bartlett:
So I said, look, honestly, in desperation, I said this. We all teach projects on topics or something. Grab these post-its, and for every single title taught in your school, put it on a post-it and stick it on the wall. And we ended up with a, I remember, it was a mirrored wall with 100 and something post-its on it. And I literally put them in a plastic bag and got on a plane back to Namibia, where I was head of Wintek International School. And I thought, great.
Cindy:
Now what?
Kevin Bartlett:
Next time we meet, I've got to come back and have a proposal for how to organize content for international school kids. And honestly, in one of those odds-en kind of moments, I had just read Ernie Boyer's article called An Educated Person, where he mentioned human commonality. And I thought, I wonder if there's a link. So I sat down and created the transdisciplinary themes. based on Boyer's work, but very significantly different. And then literally with my colleagues in Windhoek, we put six charts on the wall with the titles and we took all the post-its to see if they could be organized using themes. And that became the first ever model. I think they called it the Windhoek model or maybe a model, but you'd have to dig back into the annals of IB history, but. We actually did it up to 10th grade because, and I don't want to get too much into this thing because I'm going to sound critical, but there is no educational reason to have a different program for different ages of children in terms of learning definitions, themes. So, um,
Cindy:
Well,
Kevin Bartlett:
so
Cindy:
at
Kevin Bartlett:
because
Cindy:
PYP,
Kevin Bartlett:
we,
Cindy:
news is the same theme descriptors, but they give them a different title, which is interesting.
Kevin Bartlett:
So that's a whole other story about what you call a continuum, but I probably shouldn't go too far into that story. But, and it held up pretty well, it held up pretty well. And then, you know, 20 or 30 years later, still grappling with things like transdisciplinary learning, I found it more compelling and more useful. to actually use a concept that became a pair of concepts for grouping content knowledge, with the idea that we all as humans seek purpose and balance in our lives. We all as humans look for patterns and principles to explain the world to us. We all as people send stories to each other in different languages for different purposes. But then the real elegance and the power of those commonalities came to the fore. relatively recently. Again, I wish I could have my ideas in the correct sequence, but you know, they come when they come. I then met Jay McTighe, and we've been talking to each other for a couple of years now, very informally, Saturday mornings, just two geezers in international education who can't stop thinking. We talked about a whole range of things. And one thing we talked about was transfer calls and the idea of the portrait of a graduate. A lot of schools have that. And I was always looking for simplicity in system of course. And after quite a long while, I actually thought, hang on, seems to me that the package of transportable gifts, so let's call them a kid, takes into the world, are not necessarily going to be a math outcome and a science outcome, because that's math and science. It seemed to me that they were going to be skillsets, capacities, drawn from conceptual understanding, competency, character. that would almost necessarily pull from different disciplines because they were going to be applied in a transdisciplinary world. So I just thought, wait, we have six transdisciplinary content organizers called the human commonalities. What if each one of them gave rise to one transfer goal? So if a child studies balanced purpose, well-being, spiritual well-being, physical well-being, and is well-guided and well-counseled, from the age of 2 to 18, we would hope to nurture them into being a balanced person. If they're constantly looking through logic and mathematical and scientific reasoning about how things work and learning about causation and why things happen, they would evolve into a rational problem solver. If we're giving them lots of opportunities to stand up in public, share their work, add TED-Ed into co-curriculars, we're helping them become a compelling communicator. So rather than a profile which is a list, a rather mixed bag of things,
Cindy:
sits on the side.
Kevin Bartlett:
and sits on the side and themes over here and units over here, we said it's just one system. So the top of the system is the portrait of a graduate with its descriptors. drill down one level and you see the six human commonalities. Those six human commonalities sit at the top of a matrix with what we don't go with grades so much as bands and now I'm calling them progressions on the side. So in the K through 12, in the entire progression, we have spiraled inquiry-based modules organized under the commonalities which themselves gave birth to the portrait. So then you become intentional about building towards that portrait, because every module you teach contributes to, in an intentional, identified, branded, logot way, if you like, ah, right here they're becoming a compelling communicator. Stick that on that module, that kind of thing.
Cindy:
Yes.
Kevin Bartlett:
So, finally,
Cindy:
It was so
Kevin Bartlett:
one
Cindy:
lost.
Kevin Bartlett:
connected system.
Cindy:
Somehow that got lost, I think, for so many people in the PYP. And I'm sorry to keep coming back to it, but that's kind of how my brain works, was that we had the transdisciplinary themes. And so many times people just select those and don't ever drill into that. But why? And but who are we creating? And what are they going to do in the world? And that's the whole point of those themes. So you've done that so elegantly to make those connections.
Kevin Bartlett:
That's exactly right, Cindy. The human commonalities, in fact, we have documents that map it that way. The human commonalities sit under a column that says the why. Because we all seek to, we all, we all, all of our statements, all of our short descriptions that we all, and therefore we need to be able to. And so, the work we've been doing is, in a sense, the same pieces in the kaleidoscope. but one more twist, and suddenly they each find their place. And a lot of my work has been wrestling each really obdurate design dilemma to the ground. What about these and where do they fit? And honestly, it's constructivism. You talk to smart people like Jay, and he's super smart, and at some point there's that, oh wait,
Cindy:
Yeah.
Kevin Bartlett:
know what, if we did this, and then things fall into place. Now the missing piece has been, but I think Jay is gonna. help us enormously with that. He's going to join us soon, so I don't want to speak for him. But the idea that within each of those modules, or selected ones, are alternative forms of real world assessment that will provide evidence that child is becoming the compelling communicator,
Cindy:
What does it look like? Yeah.
Equity and diversity (28:26)
Kevin Bartlett:
the rational problem solver. What does it look like when the kids have to provide evidence of that learning? So... So in a way, you could distill out the questions of learning design into those ones we have. These are our latest responses. I'll just finish the five Ds because another big question is, okay, so now you have this elegant, complete learning matrix. Leads to the portrait in very connected ways. The assessments are lined up, but not all kids learn in the same ways. What about neurodiverse learning? I co-founded the Next Frontier Inclusion and then had to focus more on the CGC. So at that point we built in the third D, which is diversify. And the key question for that is how do all learners access learning? How does everybody access learning? I would add now in the light of the very strong and necessary movements in equity, for example, how do all stakeholders access learning?
Cindy:
Yes.
Kevin Bartlett:
How do all teachers access opportunity, etc.? So we built systems for differentiation and inclusion, but we're also working, we're beginning to work closely with people we hugely respect, Lee-Ann Jung, a friend of mine, Crystal Solomon, another friend of mine, Kristen Pelletier, because honestly they have far more expertise than I do in inclusive practice. So doing that in partnership. And then the final two questions, how do you teach towards that system? How do you teach in that system? So, but instead of saying how do we teach towards learning, we said how do we build learning cultures? And that's where you go back to, I call this
Cindy:
the
Kevin Bartlett:
a
Cindy:
culture.
Kevin Bartlett:
human learning to culture building. So what are our beliefs and values? How do we translate those into learning principles through processes of storytelling? How do we turn those principles into norms of practice? So we have common agreements about practice for our classrooms. So we intentionally build learning cultures with the faculties. For example. the purpose principle. We believe that learning is making meaning, that everybody learns more clearly when they know the why behind what they're learning. And then practices. If we believe in that, so our learners are able to articulate the reason behind what they're learning in the classroom. Because teachers are able to convey a compelling reason behind everything they're going to teach. So an actual system... of personal beliefs turned into shared values expressed as learning principles translated into norms of practice. The common language is provided by the three C's and we teach that directly to students and parents through a whole range of workshops. Because another of my obsessions is bringing parents back into the learning loop because I think they're severely disconnected from learning. One of the strongest ideas now is for every exhibition of learning, the learning playbook. which contains within it ways to start a conversation with the children about this exhibition. Because I don't think parents have a learning language, Cindy, they want to be part of things, they don't know how. And we live in a WhatsApp age where people want things simple. So we've set out to create a culture with a shared learning language provided by the definition of learning. We run a lot of very simple workshops for parents which are not information sessions followed by Q&A. They're inquiry sessions that build relationships. Fullin said, information without relationships is never knowledge. So when we work with parents, we don't hold information meetings. So for example, I worked with a school called Mine in Ecuador. The invitation read, if mine is the answer, what was your question? And parents come in and they sit in teams and they answer those questions. I know that the next question was. What did you never get in school? Do you love to give your kids? The next question was, here's what we'd like to give your kids. What do you think? And we share the portrait with them. What do you think of this portrait? Do you want your child to be a compelling communicator, a balanced person? So, closing the gap between all learning stakeholders because as Margaret Wheatley said, it's only a culture if everybody buys it. And
Cindy:
Right.
Evidencing learning (32:53)
Kevin Bartlett:
then the final question demonstrate how do learners provide evidence of their own learning? And that's where we're working very closely with Jay McTie on what we're calling the balanced assessment system. It's gonna be five webinars and then a face-to-face conference in Brazil. We didn't wanna call it a conference. I often call those things conversations, but it felt different. So it's actually called Construction Site Number One, Brazilia, Brazil, it's in Curitiba, not Brazilia, sorry. So Jay and I are working on an alternative model for assessment. We're not naive or optimistic enough to think that testing will go away,
Cindy:
Right.
Kevin Bartlett:
but it doesn't have to be the only way that kids show what they've learned. So we designed a system that's principle-based, heavily reliant on evidence, learner-centered, very intriguing, we're very excited about it. It's difficult work, but it's really coming together. And as always, principles help. But I'll leave that to Jay to come in and join us and explain those things. So define, design, diversify, deliver, demonstrate. One learning ecosystem, pre-K through 12. Everybody agreeing on how people learn. Creating a set of learning principles. Creating a shared set of practices. And then practically. we provide a whole matrix of well-designed learning modules, because there are other questions, you know, should teachers write curriculum? And I always think that's the wrong question. I'd prefer to say, which bits of curriculum should teachers write?
Cindy:
Great.
Kevin Bartlett:
Because if you want continuity, clearly if everybody does their own thing, you may have great teaching going on, but you won't have a continuous experience with kids. Anyway, I'm asking myself the questions now and that's not really my job.
Cindy:
Oh, I was asking about the units themselves. Are teachers given those in the CGC or are they still mostly creating those on their own?
Kevin Bartlett:
It's really up to them. We have a bank of really good modules. We share them across all the schools. We work within Toddle now. That helps because it's a great platform. So what we do is we provide a connected, spiraled set of, let's say, science modules because by doing that, we know that every child has the opportunity to encounter the key concepts of, say, physics, biology, chemistry. in a planned way as they move through the progressions of emergent learner, exploring, evolving expert. Honestly, what we've actually found, and this is through practice, I have to stress, I'm very much a practitioner. I never leave schools. We just spent four years at Escuela Internacional San Pedro in Honduras. We're about to spend, I don't know how many years, we're moving to Aipe in Panama. So academia Interamericana de Panama. As a side issue, I really enjoy working across languages and I really enjoy working in schools populated by local teachers. I think there's a whole mythology about native speakers. I was just responding on LinkedIn to some thoughts about that. So where practitioners and what we found is when we ask teachers, if you want to know what teachers want, ask them.
Cindy:
Yeah.
Kevin Bartlett:
So I like... That's why I like having teachers as permanent colleagues. We held a very large meeting in San Pedro Sula, and we said to teachers, here's the goal. I should say as one aside, when we work with schools, and that's all we do work with schools, we really push schools to rethink goal setting. I'm just not a big fan of every teacher having to sit down and write a stack of personal goals every year. We have a facetious way to think about it. And it's not my thought, although I like it. It's my, the co-founder of the original co-founder of CGC. He used to call teacher goal setting letters to Santa. You know, so every year you sit down, you write your letters to Santa, you send them off to the North Pole. Nobody replies, nobody gets back to you. But it's Christmas again, time for letters to Santa. We've had huge success, Cindy, with the collective impact goal, where all teachers work towards the same goal. That means you can talk about it, compare successes, feature it in every faculty meeting, build the toolkit around that goal. It just makes more sense. It also slows schools down and gives them some breathing space. The research into human organizations, handy and ake and understanding organizations, old piece of research, schools and hospitals, the two most complex human organizations. Part of our why is to bring clarity to complexity, to turn silos into systems. Well, one way to bring clarity is have shared high impact goals. You have to understand what an impact is as compared to an output. An impact is the change we want to see in our kids. An output might be a tool or product. Most plans, if you look at them, will have another thing. We say we'll have this impact and we'll have as few things we do as possible. So, collective impact goals, everybody working together on them. And so we had a collective impact goal. First one was every student will get fluent and confident in the learning language in order to be able to self-regulate their own learning. The second year, every teacher will become highly skilled at offering that kind of learning because we will design, deliver, reflect upon, and modify. one inquiry-based learning module. Now these are often schools where inquiry-based learning has not been the norm, with no disrespect. There has been a fair amount of textbook and worksheets. So for everybody to write one of those modules was a real achievement, and honestly, every school I've worked in has achieved it. That's another thing with goal setting. How often can you say, we seriously all achieved
Cindy:
We did
Kevin Bartlett:
that?
Cindy:
it!
Kevin Bartlett:
We did it. So then we asked the teachers, we said we've got I like alliteration. We said we've got four resources, time, teamwork, training, and tools. How
Cindy:
You and your alliterations.
Kevin Bartlett:
can we use those to help you achieve this goal? It was very simple. They said a model to work from, time to collaborate, and an expert in the room with us. So we were able to create collaborative planning time, models to work with, and we were able to be in the room with them. So. To give you an example, going back to Monty Python, we generated a module called, What Did the Romans Ever Do for Us? From The Life of Brian. And it's about the enduring impact of earlier civilizations. So we went from doing the Romans to what did the Romans ever do for us? We took that to a third grade team, really great team of teachers here in Honduras, and we said, here are the modules that we're going to start with because we know we need this because they connect into a whole curriculum. How do we make, which one would you like to work on? And how do we customize it for you in third grade in Honduras? They created a brilliant module called What Did the Mayans Ever Do for Us? It led to two or three themes, one of them being when civilizations fall, are there patterns we can learn from? Turns out there are very significant for our civilization because one of the patterns is two common features are socio-economic stratification and environmental degradation. Pause for thought. What our teachers told us was, give us a model and the freedom to totally customize it, give us time and give us someone there if we have a question. Honestly that's all they needed. I started using that particular Mayan module as my teaching module in the And it was their first attempt. If you provide teachers with enough structure and common sense, there's a whole myth about resistance to change. I've never found teachers particularly resistant to change. I think they're resistant to change. It doesn't make any sense. They're
Cindy:
That's me all, are ya?
Kevin Bartlett:
resistant to, what, another change? We haven't finished the last one yet. So in terms of do teachers write? modules and they can if they want to,
Cindy:
they
Kevin Bartlett:
they become,
Cindy:
have a strong base to pull
Kevin Bartlett:
but
Cindy:
from.
Kevin Bartlett:
they have a strong base to work from. And then that's up to them. So I'm very, very strong on schools framed by principles, not constrained by rules. So rather than saying you have to use these, these are really good models, but you make it your own and customize it and we'll help you and we'll give you enough time and we won't give you 10 other goals the same year. So, and then I guess the final thing I would say is The modules themselves are fairly, I think, common sense. We have five sections. Why are we teaching this? What will they learn? How will we know they've learned it? How will we teach it to them and how did it go?
Cindy:
Cool, simple.
Kevin Bartlett:
At which point I look to the other gentleman on the screen and say, hand on heart, built on the shoulders of giants, because honestly, for our evidence section, we use, I always hope I've got his permission, but we use mostly,
Cindy:
I'm gonna go.
Kevin Bartlett:
We use mostly UBD strategies like grasp tasks. But what I'm hoping for in our next months together in the balanced assessment system, Jay has the most brilliant simple idea about assessment frames. So I'm hoping that's gonna enrich our work.
Cindy:
Love it.
Kevin Bartlett:
So those are the kind of the same journey, Cindy, but 25 years more thinking about particular dilemmas and things fall into place and I would like to think. Obviously, I'd like to think better ways, but certainly I think you can see more connected, more elegant ways. That's been the evolution of the work and it will continue to evolve hopefully. And I'll keep doing it until I fall face down in a school somewhere.
Cindy:
Well, your system changed my life for the better. And it's been such a pleasure to learn about the CGC and to see your thinking just going further and making these connections and just to talk with you about it is such a dream.
