Innovative High School Models

Vanessa: 00:00

Hello and welcome to ChangEd, a podcast that lifts the curtain on educational change and brings you into the room with the people doing it. My name is Vanessa, and joining me in the studio are Aron, Joe and Noel, welcome. Thanks for coming today.

Aron: 00:13

Thanks for having us.

Vanessa: 00:14

Why don't you all introduce yourselves?

Aron: 00:16

Sure. My name's Aron Rosenberg. I was a high school teacher in Vancouver before I started grad school here in Montreal, and I've been involved in the NEXTschool team at McGill since 2017. When I moved to this city. I currently though, am doing my PhD in education, studying how high school students are impacted by their digital lives.

Joe: 00:35

My name is Joe Levitan. I'm an assistant professor and graduate program director at McGill University with a focus on educational leadership and policy. Before that, I was a middle school teacher and I co-founded two non-profits to work on educational change in the Peruvian Andes.

Noel: 00:49

Hi, I'm Noel Burke and I'm the, uh, co-founder and, uh, lead designer of a project called NEXTschool, which advocates the restructuring of the high school learning experience.

Aron: 01:00

So today, to get us all started thinking about innovative high school models, we wanted to ask you five quick questions to just get us started, get the ball rolling. We can each answer them, Noel, Joe, if you wanna jump in, jump in. But, uh, these are the five things that Vanessa and I were wondering about as we prepared the podcast for today. Question one, what does the word innovative mean to you? Let's start with Noel.

Noel: 01:28

I would say that it means constantly changing. So, a lot of people think innovation is something you do, and then it's done and dusted. I would say that it's, uh, constantly responding to and seeking change.

Joe: 01:41

That is a great answer, Noel. Innovation is a constant change. I find the word innovation to now be a little bit overused. And so it's an important word because it did have a lot of meaning for a while, and now it seems to be a word that we need to use to signal something. So it has a lot of political ramifications when it didn't before. And I, and I find that to be particularly interesting about innovation. However, the definition that Noel use is how I would use it in a serious sense.

Vanessa: 02:06

I would qualify that to say that it doesn't mean changes or new changes that are necessarily better, it's just change. I think a lot of people like to say, we're gonna innovate something to make it seem like it's gonna be an improvement, but innovations are not always an improvement, and I think that's important.

Aron: 02:24

I also think the idea of newness is important to bring up because I feel like a lot of people associate innovations with something being new. But a lot of innovations actually borrow from or lean on lots of older ideas. A lot of high school innovations come from Indigenous ideas or come from early European ideas like from Plato and Rousseau, and more recently from Dewey.

Noel: 02:45

Uh, and Dewey's back in Vogue 120 years later. Uh, but I was interested in, uh, Vanessa's comment about not all change has a positive outcome, but I would suggest that all innovation, uh, has the intent of positive outcomes, even though, they may not work out that way.

Joe: 03:05

Right. I would say the connotation of innovation is that it's a positive, it's got a qualitatively positive orientation. So if it's just change, change is just kind of value neutral. But I would argue, I, I would respectfully, uh, question that definition, um, and say that innovation has a connotation towards some kind of positive newness.

Vanessa: 03:24

Yeah.

Joe: 03:24

For change.

Vanessa: 03:24

I would agree with that.

Joe: 03:25

Even if it's not actually new.

Noel: 03:26

Well, certainly the Latin derivative of Nova in N-O-va, uh, has the connotation of newness as well, even though a lot of it is rehashed.

Aron: 03:36

Yeah, I know Marie batiste and another Indigenous scholar, Toulouse, they've both written about how they get frustrated sometimes when people frame these ideas as innovative in a new way, when they ignore the way that it might be borrowing from or leaning on lots of older Indigenous ideas. Question two, let's leave the abstract behind and get into the material. What makes a school innovative or not? What are some specific functions or features of a school that might make it innovative in your view?

Noel: 04:07

I would suggest, uh, moving away from traditional, uh, approaches to teaching and learning, whether it's, uh, scheduling, whether it's community service, whether it's, uh, different kinds of activities, uh, projects like STEM come to mind. STEAM is an innovation on STEM.

Aron: 04:24

So, for our listeners who might not know, STEM is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. All interdisciplinarily joined together. What's STEAM?

Noel: 04:32

STEAM is where they, uh, discovered that they had forgotten the arts. And they put the A in to make the STEAM.

Joe: 04:39

All of the humanities are wrapped up into one word.

Noel: 04:42

That's right. Arts.

Aron: 04:45

And is that the only way that a school can be innovative by bringing different, um, interdisciplinary topics together?

Noel: 04:50

No, I mean, it can be innovative in any of a number of ways, whether it's the way they organize teaching, uh, whether teachers are specialists or generalists, whether people with expertise in the community can be used as teachers. Teachers can't be expected to know everything about everything. And so, you know, there's a wide variety of ways that particularly move away from teacher-centered, uh, teacher at the front of the room lecturing. I think, I think that's the major thrust of innovation over the last, uh, 20, 25 years.

Joe: 05:23

And I'd like to build on that. I think one of the interesting things, when Noel said traditional, I think that's a really important word to think about because traditional for one school might be different than traditional for another school, but the innovation would be making some kind of improvement in change on what has been done before that may not be working anymore.

Aron: 05:39

Uh, Joe, he's worked a lot in Peru, and so I was wondering is the cultural context important for determining what makes something innovative?

Joe: 05:46

Absolutely, because practices and content will be traditional in different places, depending on what the policies are, what the cultural context is, who the teachers are and everything else.

Noel: 05:56

And there's a difference, when you mentioned tradition, a difference between private and public schools. Private schools are very entrenched in tradition and ceremony and heritage. The public schools tend to see tradition as ceremonial, but not very philosophical, if I could say that. So public schools are fluid, but not solid on, uh, their direction as solid as private schools are.

Aron: 06:24

Question three. Noel, I know you did a lot of travel and exploration in preparation for the NEXTschool initiative. I was wondering, in your travel, did you see certain features of innovative schools that stood out to you?

Noel: 06:36

Yeah, I think the most common feature was the absence of boundaries, again, traditional boundaries. Uh, we saw in all of these schools that we looked at, the ones we visited personally, uh, we saw those boundaries of the classroom and the timeframe were, were very, uh, transparent. So, we saw as evidence students all over the building, uh, at various times and not bound by bells and 45 minute periods.

Aron: 07:06

Right.

Noel: 07:06

And it created an atmosphere of, I would say, happiness. People were very under stressed, very relaxed, very chill, if we could use that word. So, I think those two things stood out most about those schools was the absence of traditional "control type" boundaries. I'm doing air quotes.

Aron: 07:27

And Joe, what about you? What do you think is a 07:30] single or a couple important features of innovative schools that have stood out to you in your experiences?

Joe: 07:35

Having also traveled in a variety of countries, I think that the most innovative schools that I have seen are the ones that respond very explicitly and very thoughtfully to the context and needs and desires and goals and values of the community. I've seen some really interesting school models in Peru where there are rural community members who go two weeks to a school that's, um, a boarding school and then two weeks home and they continue to do their learning, working on the farm and working with their families while they are home, and then they go back and forth. And the outcomes that we've found from, from that particular model have, have been really great cause students have a really strong sense of identity. They're still connected to their community and they have learned in some really rigorous education to be able to not only be grounded in their identities, but also speak with people from other communities and other cultures.

Aron: 08:26

Very cool. I like that approach to innovation because the context specificity means that we, the four of us sitting here on McGill, we don't have any sort of absolute authority on what makes something innovative. Rather listening to the communities that you're working with is the key to determining what might be innovative in those contexts.

Vanessa: 08:43

Yeah, I think that's a really great way to summarize that. Question four?

Aron: 08:48

Question four. This is actually about the term innovative. So, we've touched on this a bit, but why do you think that term 'innovative' is used in educational context as opposed to other terms? Is it a buzzword? Does it still have meaning?

Noel: 09:00

Maybe going back to our earlier concept of newness and avoiding the hard change word, innovative is a softer approach and it tends to celebrate the individuals that are involved in the change process. Whereas change has a connotation of externally imposed or interjected. Innovative is, you know, has a sense of more of a, a participatory, uh, collaborative notion. So that's just a personal opinion. I mean, change is, is a scary word for people.

Aron: 09:34

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's interesting to note that these terms all have different connotations for different folks. And so, Noel, the leader of this NEXTschool initiative, for you, the idea of innovation really is something that is exciting and positive and has all the, the best parts of change without that hard, 'ch' word.

Noel: 09:50

Yeah, but we still can't avoid it. I mean, you, you can dress it, you can dress it up, but it still means, uh, change. And so, um, innovation, uh, tends to be more flexible as well. So allowing people different entry points or doorways to change that we've discovered over the, the project and the failings of the, the early stages of the project, were based on pre- assuming what those changes would be. And so that was more of a perceived as change. Whereas, uh, our approach the second time around is to encourage ownership in the, in the change process and encourage people to, uh, execute changes themselves. And, and innovation, I think is a, is a wider doorway to go through than change.

Aron: 10:36

Nice. Yeah, that sounds like it aligns with Joe's, uh, view that he expressed earlier about change being context specific.

Joe: 10:42

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, a non-academic history of these words I think is, could be helpful here too, because the idea of school improvement is also about change, but that has a really icky connotation because of what has happened in historical policy in in the global north when it comes to school improvement policies and practices that are usually very top down, like Noel said. Where school improvement would be firing all of the teachers and the principal and hiring all new teachers and principals to take on this new school and it really disrupts the community. That has happened in the US a number of times. Uh, and so that history makes that kind of word have this connotation. And even if you don't necessarily know that history specifically, that connotation kind of starts to carry with it within the zeitgeist of the, of the cultural knowledge that we have. Innovation, historically, has been kind of this word used in engineering and other kind of, uh, creative endeavors that has a, you know, kind of a fairly positive connotation still. It's like, oh, like we have a suit, let's innovate on that suit and make it cooler. And that's a positive connotation.

Aron: 11:44

Right.

Joe: 11:44

And I think those kinds of historical cultural trends do inform what we mean. Change is still value neutral. It's like Noel said, it's a hard "ch", like change is, it could be something good, it could be something bad. We don't know. So change is scary. But innovation's got that positive...

Noel: 11:59

Yeah

Vanessa: 12:00

Mm-hmm

Noel: 12:01

We thought the challenge, at the beginning, was getting to someplace different, getting to move forward, and, uh, we discovered in conversations with people and their reaction, uh, to what we're putting on the table, that, uh, their apprehension was moving away from comfort level and the things they were familiar with. And that's the big challenge of, of change. Innovation, as Joe just mentioned, also connotates the notion of creativity. School improvement suggests that you're not doing something that needs improving on, and change doesn't suggest creativity. I think innovation, you know, as we, as we unwrap this, innovation becomes really a lot more about, uh, design and creativity. And I think that's an invitation to collaboration.

Aron: 12:46

An invitation to innovation.

Noel: 12:49

Yes.

Aron: 12:49

Very nice.

Joe: 12:50

Nice alliteration.

Aron: 12:54

The fifth question we have for you is, can any school be innovative?

Noel: 12:59

No.

Aron: 13:00

Why not?

Noel: 13:00

That's the short answer. The short, the short answer is no. Well, you need a whole lot of factors. And it's working at different power levels, I would say: at the classroom level, at the school level, at the school board or the private school, the board of governors level. And what's difficult is synchronizing all of those, uh, influences to be, uh, productive in the change process,

Aron: 13:24

Right.

Noel: 13:25

We found at the beginning that we focused too heavily on the principal's interest in moving forward, uh, leaving sometimes the staff behind. Sometimes not informing the board. I don't think any school can be innovative. We, what we've found is in the two schools we're currently working with, one is a small high school, about 250 students, and change is very present and very easy to mobilize in a small staff. So, there's 16-18 teachers, it's much easier to mobilize that than in a large high school with 60, 70 staff members. So, yeah, it, it, it works at multiple levels. Uh, what we found when we looked at, uh, schools internationally was that the most successful innovators were new schools. And so our, one of our biggest challenges is what I refer to as, uh, changing the tires on an airplane while it's flying, uh, changing schools that are entrenched in those, uh, traditional structures and organizational norms. So. there's two things at play there. One, an innovative environment, whether it's a new school or a school that's very interested in change and, uh, secondly, this kind of multi-level synchronization, which is extremely difficult. You know, just our conversation about change and innovation, there's four or five definitions that we've played around with over 10, 15 minutes. When you say NEXTschool, to use an example, is a structural change, well, what does that really mean? And when we start talking about things like scheduling, uh, you're really attacking the, the kind of gatekeeper, the security system that maintains, uh, the status quo.

Vanessa: 15:07

Yeah. I'd like to push back a little bit on the fact that any school can't be innovative. There are innovative things that you can do. So maybe your whole school can't...

Aron: 15:18

Change the schedule...

Vanessa: 15:19

...change the schedule, or maybe you can't make sure that all the moving parts are aligned. But in looking at innovative high school models, there are things that people can do individually to kind of maybe move towards a school being innovative. So it's not kind of like, oh, you can't be an innovative school. Sorry. It is accessible to people to start turning these really heavy cogs.

Aron: 15:42

And I think we've seen this in a lot of the schools we've been working in, that innovation is happening. It's the question of whether it's happening in the same way that we're envisioning it, but teachers are often doing amazing, exciting, interesting new, uh, old things that make the students learn in different ways. And I think that, as Vanessa said, innovation is on different scales is happening, but it's about harnessing innovations that might lead to the outcomes that we're looking for in terms of student engagement.

Joe: 16:09

Well, and I think if it's sustainable or not. So, one of the challenges with individual teachers doing individually cool things, which just happens all the time, like you said and there are a lot of great teachers out there, is that when that teacher leaves, that practice leaves.

Aron: 16:22

Right.

Joe: 16:22

And when we're talking about school innovation, that's a different question. And I think that that's, uh, I think that's an important question because when there are individual teachers who do great things and students really respond to that, that's, that's essential, like, that's the core of teaching. However, when there's a wide variety of practices and things, and there's some really great stuff happening, some really terrible things happening, students are often more affected by what is limiting their ability to engage and, and maybe harming their wellbeing.

Aron: 16:51

Right.

Noel: 16:52

Yeah. I think Joe's hit it right on the head there, that, uh, yes, innovation is occurring all of the time. We have an old expression in the teaching profession, there are teachers who have taught for 20 years, and there are other teachers have taught one year 20 times. But the thing about, uh, NEXTschool to contextualize, my, my comment was that we were looking for systemic and sustainable change. So, frustrated at all of those innovations that never outlive, uh, the teacher in the case of their own teaching practice, or the principal in the case of, uh, of the school's, uh, structure and, and organization and philosophy. So yeah, when I say, no, not all schools can be innovative. I'm meaning those ones that can't sustain it over time.

Aron: 17:36

Right.

Noel: 17:36

Yeah, for sure.

Vanessa: 17:37

Yeah, I think that's a really important distinction.

Noel: 17:39

Yeah, and innovative teachers get very frustrated in, in those setting. You know, one of my biggest peeves is around the constant rotation of, uh, administrative staff in, in high schools. It is a killer of innovation because, you know, the next person comes along and says, oh, I'd like to do STEAM or STEM just to stay on on the acronyms. I'd like to do STEAM or STEM, and, and teachers are going well, you know, and that's really nice, uh, developing an innovation like that occurs over a five or six year period. Are you going to be here in five or six years? And the principal can't really say yes...

Aron: 18:11

Because in Québec, principals are usually at a school for around five years. Is that correct?

Noel: 18:15

No, uh, unfortunately not. Uh, about two or three is..

Aron: 18:19

Wow..

Noel: 18:19

I would say it's the average rotation. It's terrible.

Aron: 18:22

And that's an intentional choice on the part of the Ministry of Ed here?

Noel: 18:25

Uh, no. It's, it's at the school board level. To talk about systemic and sustainable change, I find a significant absence of mandates for administrators when they're assigned. You know, in the corporate world, uh, you're given a mandate, uh, or in the political world, you're given a mandate. Here's the project or the philosophy that you have to put forward and you invite people to apply for that and express how they're going to achieve these, uh, goals and give them a mandate to achieve it. It's very loose and, and unstructured. How, how it occurs in most of the cases is, oh, I think Joe will be able to clean up this mess. Or I think Vanessa has really, you know, she's a really into STEM so we'll put her in a school that wants to be, uh, STEM. To give you an example of one of the two schools we're working in, they decided that their teaching approach would be, uh, project-based learning, which is really, uh, you know, situating the learning experience into the solution of a problem - water conservation, or whatever you want to use as a, as an example. Well, they dove so heavily into project-based learning that it became an end rather than a means.

Aron: 19:33

Right.

Noel: 19:34

Right? So, it became, oh yeah, we're doing project-based learning. Without answering the question, why, why are we doing it? And how does this improve, uh, the learning experience of students?

Joe: 19:43

Yep. And the, and the policy. Sorry to jump in, but I think this is a, what Noel's saying is really important because this really does inhibit innovation and change. So there's a implicit assumption that schools in and of themselves are working and you just need managers to plug and play. And so even though that's not what people say in the school boards, that's what's, that's not, is what's happening in the discourse around schools. When we look at the policy and how it's enacted, it's two years. No mandate. Go into the school, you're professional, manage, don't lead. And then we're going to move you around and, and that's usually what happens. And so that does sustain just basically whatever is the baseline for the past 50 years or for however long the school board has existed, whatever baseline they started with gets maintained implicitly even if they're talking about STEM or STEAM or whatever, innovation, because there's no practices that are systemic, systematic, and sustainable.

Aron: 20:36

Yeah. If there's any policy makers at the school board level listening, this needs to change. Those were the fast five questions for today's podcast.

Vanessa: 20:47

That's right. And for our listeners, in coming episodes, you'll hear a little bit more about project-based learning, which Noel touched on briefly today. So, keep an eye out for that episode. Tune in to ChangEd every third Friday of the month for more content on educational. Next time we'll hear from Aron, Joe, and Ellen about design thinking. You've been listening to Change Ed. My name is Vanessa Gold and I'm your host. I'm a PhD candidate and part of a research team at McGill University interested in educational change. Each of us brings diverse experiences and expertise to an ongoing investigation of this topic with an a current school change initiative being piloted in Québec called, NEXTschool. You can find more information about this initiative and the work our research team has done on our website at www.nextschoolquebec.com. Part of our goal in producing this podcast is to share what we're doing and involve you, our listeners in the research process. Speaking with members of our team, other academics, experts, and practitioners amongst others, each episode explores one of many complex facets of educational change. You can expect topics like how to lead change, getting past inertia, the politics of change and people's lived experiences of school change as it happens - all within, but not exclusive to the NEXTschool context. Spearheading the initiative Noel Burke. Dr. Lisa Starr is the principal investigator of McGill's research team, and Dr. Joseph Levitan, Dr. Lynn Butler-Kisber and Dr. Bronwen Low are co-investigators. Five graduate students round out the research team, including myself, Ellen MacCannell, Aron Rosenberg, Anna Villalta, and Natalie Malka. You'll be hearing from all of us as we explore the tricky and important work of making schools better for everyone. This podcast and our research about NEXTschool is funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Changed is produced by Vanessa Gold. Music is by Neal Read, he's at https://nealread.ca/. A transcript of today's podcast, citations, and additional information are on our website, www.nextschoolquebec.com. Thanks for tuning in. We're looking forward to engaging with you.