A Master Class with Pixar, Part 4 - Hindsight is Not 20-20

We've heard it a thousand times.  Hindsight is 20-20.

Edwin Catmull.  Photo by Deborah Coleman, Pixar

Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, disagrees.  "Hindsight is not 20-20.  Not even close.  Our view of the past, in fact, is hardly clearer than our view of the future" (2014, p. 177).

Catmull describes the cat who no longer sits on a hot stove - but no longer sits on a cold one either.  We tend to over-generalize our learning experiences.  We also have selective memories.  "And we do not always make the right selections.  We build our story - our model of the past - as best we can.  We may seek out other people's memories and examine our own limited records to come up with a better model.  Even then, it is still only a model - not reality" (Catmull, 2014, p. 178).

How many times have we defended the Professional Learning Community process against the past?  Education does have a reputation for being a swinging pendulum.  However, I think Catmull is right in that we keep the memories that reinforce our story. 

I was talking to a veteran teacher about SMART goals, and she made a reference to how "we were doing this thirty years ago."  Her model of reality is that of the reform-weary veteran.  I do not agree with her assessment.  Goals and objectives might date back to Madeline Hunter, if not earlier, but education was famous for having a fixed-time paradigm rather than a fixed-learning one.  Phil Schelecty said that "it used to be that dropouts weren't a problem.  They were a solution.  School ran fine if the right kids dropped out."  Perhaps my hindsight is faulty, but I don't recall that once upon a time, schools were committed to all kids learning at high levels, and provided time and opportunity if they didn't hit the mark right away.

We also suffer from poor hindsight in matters of student discipline.  I often find that punishment proponents have a "heads I win, tails you lose" approach to evaluating the effectiveness of punishment.  If a student is punished, and behavior improves, the cause is attributed to punishment.  If the student doesn't improve, the cause is rarely attributed to the failure of punishment - it is usually attributed to the stubbornness of the student.

What if we took Catmull at his word and acknowledged that our hindsight is faulty?  Wouldn't that change the tone of our school improvement discussions?  Imagine a school improvement presentation that opened with the power of the magician.  Illusions work because our brains fill in the gaps.  We do the same thing with hindsight.  When we acknowledge that everybody's hindsight is faulty, we can have productive conversations about the good old days.  Better yet, we can put the good old days to rest, because we are not moving backward in time.  Today's students don't need yesterday's solutions, and we don't know what tomorrow's solutions are.  All we can do is tap everybody's ideas to maximize creativity, because the future hasn't been made yet.

References
Catmull, E. and Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, inc.: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. New York, NY: Random House

A Master Class with Pixar, Part 3 - Using Creativity and Progress to Sell the PLC Process

Who wouldn't want to work at Pixar?

Ed Catmull, Pixar's co-founder, tells us "...we value self-expression here.  This tends to make a big impression on visitors, who often tell me that the experience of walking into Pixar leaves them feeling a little wistful, like something is missing in their work lives - a palpable energy, as feeling of collaboration and unfettered creativity, a sense, not to be corny, of possibility" (2014, p. x).

The Professional Learning Community literature is replete with articles, presentations, and books about motivating reluctant educators.  What is Pixar doing that schools are not?

School improvement must become creative work.

America has a long tradition of educational crisis - real or imagined.  From Sputnik to the Common Core State Standards debate, our educational system is defined by a swinging pendulum of policy and a stalled car of progress.  Student achievement has remained stubbornly mediocre through all the tempests.

No more.  We must issue a clarion call, and arts educators must take a leadership role, because only creative problem solving will overcome educational inertia.  

Catmull teaches us that "If there are people in your organization who feel they are not free to suggest ideas, you lose.  Do not discount ideas from unexpected sources.  Inspiration can, and often does, come from anywhere" (2014, p. 316).

I suspect that arts educators are among the silent geniuses of their buildings.  The arts are engaging and effective.  Students connect to school through the arts.  They find their niche and their voice.  And yet, this is not mere entertainment.  Arts educators teach valuable knowledge, skills, and dispositions.  Students become skilled in a medium.  They learn persistent problem solving.  They learn confidence.  However, because they do not teach math and English, they are not always welcome at the curriculum table.  The fact of the matter is that the "core" subjects would do well to emulate the arts rather than the other way around.

Some schools are turning the tide.  Milwaukee realized that it cannot teach empty chairs, so it decided to return the arts to its schools.  Check out the NPR story at http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/06/23/323033486/to-boost-attendance-milwuakee-schools-revive-art-music-and-gym. (Misspelling of Milwaukee is in the actual URL).

I believe educators want all students to learn at high levels, but they play the blame game when they become disenfranchised.  Creative organizations avoid this.  Catmull teaches us that "If there is more truth in the hallways than in meetings, you have a problem" (2014, p. 317).  Let's re-frame our work as creative problem solving and marshal all our resources.  According to Teresa Amabile, steady progress  on meaningful work is what really motivates people.

Tomorrow's problems won't be solved by yesterday's answers.  Creativity is required.  Arts educators, let's lead the charge to bring creativity to the school's meeting rooms and let's empower our students to be creative so that we may hand them the torch when our time has passed.

References

Amabile, T. and Kramer, S. (2011). The progress principle: Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press

Catmull, E. and Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, inc.: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. New York, NY: Random House

A Master Class with Pixar, Part 2

One of the big ideas of Professional Learning Communities is that a collective effort is required to create a system that guarantees that all students learn at high levels.  Another big idea is that PLCs measure their success with evidence of learning rather than good intentions.  This inevitably results in a focus on data.  This is all well and good, but educators must not lose sight of the power of collaboration to unlock creativity.  As the school's resident experts in creativity, arts educators can play an important role in unleashing the creative power of students and fellow educators.

Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull writes poetically about the whimsical atmosphere at The Steve Jobs Building, but he also claims that the atmosphere is not what makes Pixar special.

"What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it" (2014, p. x)

Does your PLC have this level of persistence when solving problems?  If not, it's time to light a fire.  We need this level of cooperation to make films and raise barns.  Surely we need the same kind of collaboration to educate our children.

Catmull teaches us that we need to value our people in order to develop this kind of teamwork.  At Pixar, "We start from the presumption that our people are talented and want to contribute.  We accept that, without meaning to, our company is stifling that talent in myriad unseen ways" (2014, p. xv).

What a powerful statement!  Does your leadership acknowledge that the school system stifles your teaching talent?  How could schools tackle this problem?  Catmull believes that "When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles, and hierarchy are meaningless" (2014, p. 4).

Does your school have brilliant educators who seem to have no voice?  What is the human cost of that silence?  Arts educators understand the power of the round table as a symbol of collaboration.  We need to take a leadership role in breaking down the barriers that leave great ideas in the drawer.  Our students deserve no less.

References

Catmull, E. and Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, inc.: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. New York, NY: Random House

A Master Class with Pixar, Part 1

Pixar is responsible for some of the most creative film making in recent history.  Pixar's co-founder Ed Catmull recently released a book about developing creativity and nurturing creative cultures.  The book has won praise from authorities such as George Lucas and Jim Collins.  Bob Sutton calls it "the best book ever written on what it takes to build a creative organization."

As always, the challenge for arts education PLCs is bringing expert wisdom to the classroom level in a way that impacts student achievement. As Rick DuFour often says, the purpose of school is learning.

On the first page of the introduction, Catmull describes The Steve Jobs Building:

"It has well-thought-out patterns of entry and egress that encourage people to mingle, meet, and       communicate...the unifying idea for this building isn't luxury but community.  Steve wanted the building to support our work by enhancing our ability to communicate" (2014, p. ix).



If Pixar needs collaboration in order to produce a movie, how much more important is it that educators collaborate in order to educate our children?

One of the things that makes Pixar's work effective is the authenticity of the collaboration.  Informal communication is part of the design.  Contrast that with the structure of many PLCs - formal meetings, agendas, mandatory written reflections, reprimands for tardiness to meetings, and so on ad infinitum.

To the extent that we can be more like Pixar and less like a Senate hearing, to that extent we can develop creative solutions to our students' most important learning challenges.

References:
Catmull, E. and Wallace, A. (2014). Creativity, inc.: Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. New York, NY: Random House.

The Flipped Bandroom

Flipped classrooms have been getting a lot of attention in the last few years.  The idea of posting lectures online in order to free up classroom time for discussion and support makes a lot of sense, and many teachers are reporting good results with this model.

Flipping a performance class is somewhat different.  A lecture is basically the direct transmission of information from the teacher to the student.  Many directors function in the same way:  "Clarinets, you need to play louder at letter B.  Trombones, A-flat is played in third position.  Saxophones, staccato means short.  Play the notes short."  And so on, ad infinitum.

However, directors respond to the ensemble's performance.  Posting rehearsal instructions on a video would be meaningless.  So what's the connection?

In both lectures and traditional rehearsals, the teacher owns and transmits the information.  Flipped classrooms put more responsibility on the students to do the thinking and the problem-solving.  Can we do that in a rehearsal?  Absolutely!

Let's take expressive markings.  Directors rarely ask students about the mood they are trying to portray and the effectiveness of different expressive techniques to achieve that mood.  Is the music playful?  What effect does note length have on that mood?  Are we playing softly enough to achieve the misterioso marking the composer indicated?  How fast is too fast for maestoso?

If I had a TARDIS, I'd go back to my classroom and have students make more creative decisions.  I wonder what would happen if I assigned students to take an unmarked melody and add expressive devices to achieve an effect of their choice.  Daniel Pink reminds us that autonomy is a major driver of motivation (http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation).  Is there any reason we couldn't ask our students to select a mood and select the musical means by which to achieve that mood?

The flip occurs when we ask questions rather than give answers.  Start with the aesthetic goal and move toward the technicalities rather than the other way around.  Start with why, and let the students work through how.

For more on starting with why in all aspects of leadership, check out Simon Sinek's great TED talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

Should You Hold Your Next PLC Work Session at Starbucks?

This is the fourth in a series about collaboration and PLCs.

Ideas are fertile.  They need to interact in order to be fruitful and multiply.

Steven Johnson's remarkable TED talk (http://www.ted.com/playlists/20/where_do_ideas_come_from) highlights the importance of collaboration in the development of great ideas.  It has been said that artists are most creative when writing their autobiographies.  We love the story about the genius who experienced an Eureka moment.  We love the story about the muse whispering into our ear.

The problem is that it is very likely a myth.

The coffeehouse culture spawned much of Western civilization's greatest thinking during the Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical eras.  The combination of the stimulating beverage and the even-more-stimulating environment of the coffeehouse itself yielded a cross-pollination of ideas that propelled Western civilization forward.  This phenomenon was so powerful that Bach himself wrote a Coffee Cantata.  In order to maximize our creativity, our meeting places need to look less like this:

And more like this:

Richard DuFour writes about a loose/tight culture where administrators are tight about results but loose about how they are achieved.  Unleash the creativity of your PLC by shelving the time clock and looking for results - no matter how those results are achieved!

Common Core or Not, the Arts Have This Covered!

Maybe I should have titled this post The Swinging Pendulum.  Anybody who has been in education more than five years knows what I'm talking about.

The old news is that everybody was jumping on the Common Core State Standards bandwagon.  Today, Indiana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma have repealed the standards, and legislation is pending in many states.  Whether or not you like the standards, it is clear that the debate is increasingly political rather than educational.

Educators have to rise above the politics.  PLC Question #1 asks, "What knowledge, skills, and dispositions do our students need?"  The Common Core may answer some of these questions well.  Certainly, many of our state and national standards documents answer this question well.  We had high-quality curricula that answered this question well before the standards movement began.  Plato answered this question well.

Regardless of where your state lands, arts educators can be confident that our best practices will support any initiative that is delivered from your capitol steps.

The College Board created a comprehensive alignment document that is a must read for all arts educators (http://nccas.wikispaces.com/file/view/Arts%20and%20Common%20Core%20-%20final%20report1.pdf/404993792/Arts%20and%20Common%20Core%20-%20final%20report1.pdf).  There are dozens of charts showing the alignment between the arts and the CCSS, but a few highlights are worth pointing out.

The arts use at least four major creative practices:  imagining, investigating, constructing, and reflecting.  These practices are found everywhere in the English Language Arts standards.

The arts require students to make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.  They require students to attend to precision.  These expectations are cornerstones of the CCSS for Mathematics.

Indeed, if you expand your definition of "text" to include non-verbal communication, the arts cover virtually all of the English Language Arts standards.

It is essential to point out that the arts do this without abandoning their intrinsic and unique value.  It's simply a fact that the arts naturally teach the kinds of processes that ELA and mathematics education hope to achieve on a wider scale.  Those are strong words, but I believe them.  The arts do not have to move towards the core - the core has to move towards the arts.

Arts educators - stand firm and stick to the center.  Your best practices meet any initiative that comes down the pike.

References

Charleroy, A. (2012). The arts and the common core: A review of connections between the common core state standards and the national core arts standards conceptual framework. New York, NY: The College Board.  Retrieved from http://nccas.wikispaces.com/file/view/Arts%20and%20Common%20Core%20-%20final%20report1.pdf/404993792/Arts%20and%20Common%20Core%20-%20final%20report1.pdf

TED Talks and Creativity Mythology

With almost 8.5 million views, Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius) is among the most popular TED talks of all time.  Gilbert is a best-selling author whose works include Eat, Pray, Love.

Gilbert returns to the ancient Greek idea of The Muses as the source of creativity.  In this model, creativity is divinely inspired by The Muses, and our human form serves as a vessel for this creativity.  If you're not feeling particularly creative today, it simply means that your muse isn't inspiring you.  The rough etymology of "inspire" can be construed as "to breathe into," and that's what the Greeks thought The Muses did - they breathed creativity into our mortal flesh.

This makes for great storytelling, but terrible arts education.

A close listening to Gilbert's talk makes it clear that she is using the concept of The Muses as a psychological shield against writer's block and fear of failure.  It's comforting that you may not be personally responsible for any lack of creative success you are experiencing.  But if this concept is taken to its logical extreme, the human element of creativity diminishes to the point where one wonders if the development of knowledge, skills, and dispositions matters at all.  Gilbert's talk may be useful therapy, but it leads to pedagogical bankruptcy.

I think David Burkus would profoundly disagree with Gilbert.  In his book The Myths of Creativity, he describes creativity concepts such as eureka moments, expert knowledge, incentives, brainstorming, and exposes the myths behind popular perceptions of the creative power of these concepts.

Rather than relying on mythology, Burkus relies on creativity research. According to Teresa Amabile, creativity is influenced by four elements:

1. domain-relevant skills,
2. creativity-relevant processes,
3. task motivation, and
4. the surrounding social environment.

We can influence these factors through education.  Domain skills can be taught and learned  Creativity processes can be taught and learned.  We can develop the dispositions needed to help motivate students to complete tasks.  We can influence our educational environment to promote creativity rather than stifle it.

We know that our society is crying out for enhanced creativity.  We must work hard to advocate for the unique power of fine arts education to fill this need, even if it means questioning one of our favorite authors.

References

Amabile, T. (1996). Creativity in context: Update to the social psychology of creativity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Burkus, D. (2014). The myths of creativity: The truth about how innovative companies and people generate great ideas. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Collaboration 2.0 - Never Have Another PLC Meeting!

This is the third post in a series on collaboration.

I call it the Law of Imbalance:  we feel a benefit from calling a meeting, but not from attending a meeting somebody else has called.

Most of us feel like we can either have a meeting or get work done, but not both.  Meetings interrupt the flow of the day, chopping it up into bits like a food processor.  We are robbed of the time necessary to get into a focused state of productivity.  Jason Fried makes this point eloquently in his TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried_why_work_doesn_t_happen_at_work).

Al Pittampalli, author of Read This Before Our Next Meeting, is careful to exclude conversations, group work sessions, and brainstorms from what he calls "meetings."  I think this is brilliant, because sometimes we do need to talk, we need to work together, and we need to leverage each other's creativity.

A culture of celebration is essential to PLCs, so I'd add celebrations to this list of non-meetings.

Richard DuFour might agree.  He is very careful to define collaboration literally - it means "co-laboring," or working together.  In his books and keynote presentations he is constantly warning educators to stay focused on the right work - high levels of learning for all students.

Pittampalli outlines seven principles for what he calls Modern Meetings:

1. They support a decision that has already been made.
2. They move fast and end on schedule.
3. They limit the number of attendees.
4. They reject the unprepared.
5. They produce committed action plans.
6. They refuse to be informational.  Reading memos is mandatory.
7. They work only along a culture of brainstorming.

Conflict and coordination are hallmarks of the modern meeting.  

We expect conflict about the decision that has been made, and we expect that the decision is open to modification based on that conflict.  Otherwise, there is no purpose to the meeting - a memo will do.

We expect coordination to execute our action plans.  As the DuFours frequently say, clarity precedes competence.

When was the last time you attended a meeting with this level of focus?  My answer would be "maybe never."

Educators have a lot to learn from the final principle.  We need to separate the old-fashioned meeting mentality from productive group work.  Google has transformed traditional meeting spaces into "war rooms" that maximize the generation and recording of ideas.  Check it out at 

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028471/google-ventures-your-design-team-needs-a-war-room-heres-how-to-set-one-up.

You can read more about the principles of modern meetings. at http://modernmeetingstandard.com/.

Successful PLCs don't meet - they work.  Be sure to maintain this distinction.

References:

Pittampalli, A. (2011). Read this before our next meeting: The modern meeting standard for successful organizations.  Do You Zoom, Inc.