HMW have fun?

 

Lately, our iDL team, and I'd wager to say our student designers as well, have been having a lot of fun. Having fun, whether professionally or personally, is SOOO important and infectious. One of the keys to having fun is having a good team to work alongside. Our iDL team is fortunate to have become not only a team, but a team of friends.

C.S. Lewis explored the friend-bond, known in Greek as philia, in his writings entitled "The Four Loves:"

“Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."

As a team collaborating to build and fly this airplane known as Impact Design Lab this year, we have already had a lot of fun, and I think that our friendship has arisen much in the manner described above..."I thought I was the only one!"

We have already had so much fun as a team this year from planning the course, attending conferences, visiting and connecting with stakeholders and partners, blogging, proposing presentations, participating in tours, imagining excursions, to---and let's not forget-- teaching and co-teaching the course. (Not to mention all the bike rides, races, time trials on foot and on wheels, text threads, Slack chatter, coffee drinking, and meme creating.)

Last week offered us an opportunity to have fun with the greater community and share some of our well with others outside the team.

First, we invited others on campus across all divisions to join along as we "slow read" the book The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators  (Christian, Dyer & Gregerson, 2011). Monday was our first meeting filled with introductions, tunes, laughs...and lots and lots of snacks (thanks, Kevin). That was Monday.



On Tuesday, we were invited to participate in a School Reimagined event hosted by our accompanying consulting organization, Mount Vernon Ventures. A large cohort from a regional school visited our campus with a desire to redesign their middle school curriculum to incorporate more competency-based education ideals, such as building student agency, authentically assessing learners, and overall making school more reflective of real life.

The morning was spent on learning walks around campus, with visitors visiting learning spaces, taking note of the fact that the school was experiencing a normal day, therefore, what visitors saw could be messy, imperfect, and perhaps not very innovative. (Our Head of School Kristy Lundström clearly said as much in an introductory and welcome address to our visitors. She continued by saying that the benefit of the school visit is as much about our growth as it is about the visitors growth.) 


The afternoon was spent in learning stations driven by participant interest. We voted with our feet to stations devoted to self-assessment and reflection, design thinking, CBE, among others.


In reflection at the end of the School Reimagined day, we invited participants to reflect on what they had seen via the visible thinking routine "SEE THINK WONDER." One piece of feedback received was from and "admitted skeptic:"

"I am typically the cynical guy. I showed up thinking I wasn’t going to learn anything… listened to the morning presentation and heard a bunch of buzz words… I have to say, I am so incredibly impressed and changed. You all are doing the work and practicing what you preach. I can’t wait to take this back to my students.” 


Wow. 

That comment brought unexpected tears to my eyes as the realization dawned on me that, through our efforts, we had empowered another educator--another GROUP of educators-- to continue reimagining how education might pivot to be more reflective of real life...because:

mountvernonschool.org


Our website home page proclaims that your child should love school. Doesn't that mean we should have some fun?? We are only through Tuesday at this point; let's continue our march through the week.





On Wednesday, I got the opportunity to assist in equipping the students in our student leadership program, the Junior Prefects, with the skills necessary to tell MV's story to prospective families visiting on the first of four Admissions Open Houses. Using the tools and mindsets that we are learning about and employing in iDL, the Junior Prefects discovered that they were already well-equipped to tell the story of how MV impacts them to families. 



And you know what? The Junior Prefect Ambassadors knocked it out of the park. It was so FUN hearing the kids tell the story of THEIR school. That was Thursday.


By Friday, who needed more fun? We had already been flying high all week, but somehow, we managed to get another boost on Friday. Our proposal to present at a national conference about our class, Impact Design Lab, had been accepted! In late February, we will talking about all the fun that we've been having imagining, designing, iterating, and facilitating this class.

Additionally, we had launched into our second round of design challenges, this time with real-world ways to impact our school in areas such as student life, teacher appreciation and accessibility. Kevin had collected three briefs from around campus in video format, and then we presented them to our student designers who then selected which "door" to walk through. We were now en route to "design a better world" starting right here in our middle school.

In a reflection after our first work day, one student designer expressed that his "ROSE" was that he loved how they were tackling REAL problems.

HMW have fun? I think this sticky note says it all:


 What are some ways that you are having fun, either professionally or personally?

Share with us on Twitter:

@TheMVDesignLab 
#impactfromthemiddle

Kevin Day @knowKMD
Todd Wass @toddw42
Ryan Welch @welch79


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