GOInnovate 16 - Reflections from Day 1

I was fortunate to take part in the first-ever Innovation Summit organized by the Greater Ozark's Cooperating School Districts (GOCSD) today.  Over 700 educators from across Southwest Missouri gathered to hear a keynote address from George Couros and share best practices from their districts.  As I reflect on the day, these are the items that stuck out to me.

1.  Compliance never develops creativity.  As educators, we like it when students are neatly following directions and completing tasks according to our specific instructions.  However, we must encourage students to step outside of those directions and tight structures if we want to develop creative thinkers.  Students need freedom to solve problems and generate ideas that are not teacher-directed.  How can we shift our expectations from the convenience of compliance to the chaos of creativity?

2.  We don't need problem solvers, we need problem identifiers.  We work hard as educators to teach kids how to solve problems.  Much of our instructional design centers around teaching students the skills to solve problems.  To do this, we tend to use problems that have already been solved by someone else - simply having students walk through steps that have been pre-determined.  If we want students to be highly engaged, we must teach them to identify problems that are meaningful to them.  Once they are identified, students will be excited to work through them and find solutions.  The result is highly-engaged students, participating in meaningful and relevant learning, and contributing to their community in a meaningful way.

3. Our job as educators is to inspire students to do things that inspire us back.  We generally don't do this through standardized tests and with students in neat rows facing forward.  We need to develop relationships with kids, find out what inspires them, and use it to 'light a fire' under them.  Once we do this, we will be amazed at how kids can inspire us back.

4. The PROCESS is more important than the product.  When we work with students, we tend to focus on the outcome - the final product of a project, the answer to a math problem, the final draft of the research paper.  But in focusing so intently on this final outcome we miss allowing students to make mistakes, try new ideas and methods, and explore on their own.  The product is easily measured, but it is the way that we get there that is where the magic of learning happens.

5. Learning is messy - failure is not fatal.  Thinking about the previous four points, it is clear that the learning process is truly messy.  Learning is not linear - instead it is a winding, unpredictable journey along which many mistakes and failures happen.  What is critical is that we continue to encourage kids through the struggles and help them to 'fail forward'.  It is only when failure becomes an endpoint that learning stops.

Thanks to George Couros (@gcouros) for the insightful and inspiring address today that encourages us to innovative educators.

For those of you that attended today, I'd love to hear your takeaways.  For those of you that didn't, what would you add to this list?