Welcome to Transformative Principal, where I help you stop putting out fires and start leading.
I'm your host, Jethro Jones.
You can follow me on Twitter at Jethro Jones.
Okay.
Welcome to Transformative Principal.
I am so glad you're here.
I'm your host, Jethro Jones.
Transformative Principal is a proud member of the BE Podcast Network.
You can find a show for everything that you're doing in education@bepodcastnetwork.com.
Today I'm excited to have on the program Adrian Ireland.
He's an international educator systems thinker and author dedicated to reimagining the architecture of learning, and I'm really excited to talk with him because we both have some very strong beliefs.
And he wrote a book called Designing Different, where he shares the lessons, insights, and strategies gathered from years of navigating the complexity of educational reform.
Inspiring others to move beyond better and design the future of learning.
So Adrian, welcome to Transformative Principle.
Great to have you here.
Thank you, Jethro.
Great to be here.
Well, I'm excited to chat with you because this is something that I is so important that we.
about and give attention to design in schools, and I'm so glad to see that you wrote a book called Designing Different About it because I also wrote a book called School X, which is about designing the school experience for the people that are there, which is required to change every year because the people that are there change every year.
And those are things we just do things because they've always been done.
And we don't give a lot of thought to it.
And I have a story that illustrates this and I'd love to get your take on it.
we, I was in a school where, uh, we made some changes and the counselor was talking to the new kids coming in, and she said this phrase, she said, we used to do it like this, but now it's gonna be different.
We're gonna do it like this.
And I talked to her afterward and I said, Hey, why did you say that?
no reason for you to say, we used to do things differently because these kids have never been here.
They are going to do whatever we say we're telling them what it's like.
Why did you say that?
And she said, well, I, it's a big change and you know, everybody's getting used to it.
And I said, well, these kids aren't getting used to it.
So what you did is you inserted into their minds this reason to be nervous and unsure about something because you are not confident about it.
So you passed that on to them.
And she was like, I've never thought about it like that.
so, so what's your perspective on that interaction?
Yeah, I mean I think that that kind of interaction happens all the time.
Uh, not just in education, but 'cause we all come with our own.
Baggage, right?
We, we have our own history.
We have our own norms and systems that we grew up in.
Um, and then that's a big, uh, force that can keep us stuck in place, right?
What, what is normal, what our identity is, is linked to, um, and even what we feel competent in, even if that competence is maybe, uh, not serving us or, or our students.
So I think.
That happens all the time.
I see it myself.
And I agree, it's, it's hard to, to sometimes pause yourself in that moment, but it's, it's best to let people step into something new, uh, like it's the, like, it's normal.
Um, and not create that, that tension if you don't need to.
Yeah, it.
It's going to be new to them already.
They don't need something else saying, here's why this is weird.
Here's why this is difficult, here's why this is challenging, that doesn't help anybody to, to put those things in their head.
And yet we do that all the time.
And what's interesting is at this school we had, um, it was a seventh and eighth grade school and we had an army base that was right next door.
So.
A third of our students every year were brand new because of the army base changing out.
And so we had the seventh graders coming in.
So really it was more like about two thirds of our school were new every year, and so we could make all kinds of changes whenever we needed to because there wasn't this cultural, everybody's been here forever kind of a thing, except with the teachers, they had been there and so.
them, it was difficult to make changes, but for the people who were experiencing it, it wasn't, and it was so difficult to get them to see that it was worthwhile to look at things From the student's perspective, uh, would you give advice to someone about helping the adults who are in the building and have been there for a while?
How would you help them see the need to change and make some differences, different changes?
Yeah, it's, it's a great question.
Um, I mean, I have a pretty strong belief that people need to have small but significant.
Different experiences in order to start to shift their viewpoints.
I think sometimes we talk in the abstract a lot about, um, these big frameworks in like nirvana of if only we, we did this.
And it just seems like, uh, scary and a lot of work.
And I think if you can create these little sandboxes where.
Uh, you can create different architectures of learning, different types of environments where people can actually experience students.
Students they know in one context, actually being very different in another context, I think this is where I've seen the most powerful change happen.
Um, for example, I mean, coaches.
Are often quite progressive in their teaching.
For this reason, I've been a coach for a long time.
Um, I know a lot of coaches, I coach volleyball.
Um, and I think it's powerful to be a teacher and a coach because that same exact kid sitting in your science class, wasting all of his time being, um, from what your perspective is quite useless in that setting is maybe the star of that team putting in.
Hours before school, after school, working out on the weekends.
Um, and you just see them in this totally different light and it just, you have to ask the question like, what is different here?
Right?
Like, how is this the same child?
Um, and that leads to more interesting questions around, uh, design and different, like how different environments are set up.
Um, so I think making little pockets where people.
Can experience students differently, um, starts them asking, uh, questions that then can lead to, to change.
Yeah, I, I really appreciate that perspective because I've seen that also not being a coach, 'cause I never was, but that idea of giving.
Kids, an opportunity to be seen in a different light can really change how you perceive them and how they perceive you and how, um, they perceive the whole experience.
So you talked a little bit about architecture and mentioned that, but I want to get your thoughts deeper on that because you say that education has an architecture problem, not an effort problem.
And so many times when we're talking about change in schools, people get upset because they think what we're saying is that teachers are.
Not working hard or principals aren't working hard, and that's not the issue.
But, this goes back to the question about AI where a lot of people are saying like, I can have AI write this newsletter or write this parent email or answer this question, or whatever.
And the real question we should be asking is, should we be doing that task in the first place?
Because if we shouldn't be doing that task in the first place, AI is definitely not the right tool because it's just perpetuating this thing that we're doing over and over again.
And so it really is an architecture problem.
But I want to hear your perspective on that because that totally resonated with me.
Tell me more about that and explain it to our listeners.
Yeah.
Uh, an analogy I like to use is thinking about a bunch of people.
Swimming in a river, uh, everybody's swimming very hard, exerting a lot of efforts, students, parents, teachers, um, but often not moving in the direction that they want to.
Um, because the river is flowing in the wrong direction, um, in the flow of that river is determined by.
The architecture.
Um, and that means how you're setting up environments, uh, to allow for intrinsic motivation, curiosity, um, autonomy agency, all of these things, which we talk about a lot.
Um.
In education, wellbeing, social emotional development.
But we often talk about them and we like, uh, curricular ize them.
We put them into curriculum.
Like, let me, uh, let me give you a, a five lesson PowerPoint on, uh, wellbeing and then that will, uh, help your, your state of wellbeing.
Um, we have a, a tendency to do this and, and that's just.
Normal within our current paradigm.
That's, that's what we do.
Um, but a different architecture is really, um, shifting around the.
How schools are organized, um, what the driving outcomes are, what kinds of degrees of freedom there are, um, for choosing to be in a certain class.
Um, and there are real constraints, obviously, around shifting architecture, and we can get into that a little bit later.
Um, but yeah, it's, I, what frustrates me is when students and teachers, um, feel like they are.
Failing, giving their best effort, um, in a system that wasn't really designed for, for them to succeed or just for a very narrow band to succeed.
It defines success in education in a very specific, narrow way, like you said, and, and that idea of, you know, this is, this is how it works.
So if, if we need kids to learn how to act better at school, then we need to start doing lessons on it.
And.
Like explicit instruction is the answer to everything.
And while that's, that's great.
If you know exactly how you want someone to act in a given situation, then that is the best way to do it.
Like if you want kids to line up they're going out the door, then you teach them, you line up because we're gonna go out the door.
And if that's the most important thing, then yes, you can definitely teach that.
But it more important than that is.
We want them to be considerate and kind and respectful to the people around them as we are leaving the classroom.
that doesn't necessarily mean that lining up is the best way to do it, but that's the approach we take.
We say, what will, what will the best thing look like?
And then we make that the thing that we're trying to do, rather than saying, how do we want our kids to really act?
And what do we want them to really be like and who they are as people?
that kind of thing allows students to.
Learn in different situations.
How can I show kindness and respect to the people around me in whatever's going on?
And you don't teach that by saying, here's this specific instance in how you act.
You constantly talk and reflect and have opportunities for kids to engage with adults about that particular topic and give feedback and get feedback and understand how they could have done that better.
And yes, there are lots of barriers to that, but.
You don't, you don't teach someone by curricular rising everything.
Yeah, I mean, I think you often, we think you can get at something directly when really it more emerges from, from the environment.
Um, and I think one.
Yeah.
One element or critical ingredients, kinda like the elephant in the room within education is motivation and engagement, right?
Um, I think when we curricular size things, it looks great on paper and it seems like, oh, well we can move kids through this.
Um, and they will learn these key things that we want them to learn and a lot of the things we want them to learn are highly valuable and valid.
Um.
But if there's no motivation, it's like a car with no gas, right?
It doesn't matter how great the road is in front of you.
Um, if the car's not going anywhere, um, then you're not gonna be getting those outcomes that you want.
Um, so sometimes we, uh, neglect students autonomy, uh, at our own kind of peril.
So, uh, motivation is one of those, uh, buzzwords and, and things that people say that I believe gets pretty misunderstood and mischaracterized.
So can you talk a little bit more about motivation, what you mean by that?
Uh, yeah, so I mean, there's, there's a lot of forms of motivation.
If you go into.
Psychological literature, you'll see a million types of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and you will never find an experience where a student is 100% extrinsically motivated by something or 100% intrinsically motivated, right?
It's this really complex, uh, blend of these two factors.
I talk about it kind of as a, a tug of war between these two different polls.
And what's important is more, which side is winning that tug of war.
Because even when you set up something with extrinsic motivators, like grades being the dominant one in school, you're still gonna have students blending in, uh, intrinsic.
Motivations into that.
Like they're building more competency and so they're starting to enjoy the process.
Like they're in a, a team setting and they're, uh, feeling like they belong and they have good relationships.
Um, and so it's always a blend, but sometimes we, we do ourself a bit of a, a disservice by skewing heavily to extrinsic motivation.
And the, the damage of that, um, is one that it's.
Not sustainable in the long term, right?
So when you, when you leave school or someone stops supplying you with good reasons, um, you can't motivate yourself and function.
And the second one is it informs, uh, the story that we tell ourselves about why we do things.
Um, and so if you're in an dominantly extrinsically motivated mindset, um, you're always gonna be telling yourself the story of, I'm doing this.
For this other thing, which is outside of the experience itself, right?
It's not actually I'm doing this because I'm interested, uh, and you'll find if.
Without obvious extrinsic motivators.
People often default to the reason why they're doing something is because they like it.
Uh, because people need to tell themselves stories about why they do things right.
Um, but sometimes we give them too easy of an out, but by letting 'em say, oh, I'm doing this for the grade, or I'm doing this for, to get into Harvard, or whatever your, your end, end goal is.
Well, yeah, and, and right now I'm working on my doctorate.
And I have always wanted to have a doctorate and um, and that's something while I am completely frustrated and annoyed at the design of the system and how difficult and opaque and nonsensical it is, I am highly motivated to get it done and, and it is going to be accomplished sheer force of will because my motivation.
Is that high.
But it's not just intrinsic motivation because I've attached a deeper meaning to it that I would say a deeper spiritual meaning for why I am actually doing this.
And that a key piece of understanding that you can do incredibly difficult things that you don't even believe that you can do when it is necessary.
And, and if your own, uh, integrity and identity, um.
tied up in doing that thing that is necessary.
Even when you don't want to, even when you're uncomfortable, then you're going to have the strength to continue to do it.
And, and I love what you said about how we give them an easy out that it's for the grade and, unfortunately like that is a lot of what it is because that's the, the power, the carrot that the teacher has.
It doesn't have to be that way.
And a teacher can say things like, you want to get an A, here's all that you have to do.
And it's very, very straightforward.
Not necessarily easy, but everybody knows the grades are made up and, and no matter what class you're in, the grades are made up.
And so by understanding that and recognizing it from the beginning, you can say, as the teacher, here's how we're going to do this, and.
And get some buy-in, some motivation, some engagement from the students in doing all of those things.
And that's, that's a, think, a piece of low hanging fruit that most teachers, I think are afraid to actually say out loud.
Yeah, I mean, I'll, I'll add a bit of, of nuance to that as well.
I, I agree.
But I talk a bit about better versus different as these, these two kind of.
Destinations better being, more incremental shifts, different being larger architectural changes.
And I think one of the, um, problems with incremental changes kind of trying to kind of tweak and make things better is that you, you end up getting a lot of what I call false fails.
So basically good ideas which are implemented into, uh.
System architectures that reject them.
Uh, because systems are very complex.
They have a lot of interconnected parts.
This part's pulling on this part, um, in a, a false fail I've seen a lot in schools is when schools decide to take a bold stance on reducing the importance of grades without making any other structural or pedagogical changes, uh, to the rest of what they're doing.
And so you've removed this.
Very important, extrinsic motivator.
Uh, but we haven't replaced that with kids doing like authentic contribution, valuable work with authentic audiences, something to fill that motivational, um, void if you will.
So I've seen that play out a, a few times in, in different school settings.
So I think we, that's why understanding kind of the overall system architecture is so important because that gives.
Uh, so many people, ammunition to never make a change ever again, right?
You're like, and it's a great idea, and it's backed up with evidence and it's totally valid and it flops really hard.
Um, so we need to be careful about the types of changes that we make.
And part of the issue there is seeing the failure as the be all and end all right, and, and not recognizing also all the lessons that were learned through that process of whatever you were doing.
Because even if that's what you did, like let's say you just said, okay, grades no longer matter and.
We're not doing anything.
We're not changing anything else.
We're just saying grades don't matter.
Like that would be a ter terrible idea.
schools have done something similar to that.
You do have to put something else in there.
But even if that does fail, then you still have lessons that you can learn from that.
And that's part of designing your school appropriately is saying there's, there's no such thing as a failure, uh, for students or for us in things we're doing.
Because, uh, it is that cliche thing, the first attempt in learning, right?
And, and if you see it as that way, and this is part of the architecture problem, is that schools are not actually places of learning, even though they should be.
But if they were, then we would see everything that we're doing as an opportunity to learn and improve and grow.
And we just don't see it that way.
But I want to go back to something that you said, um, 'cause you, you started saying like.
Make these changes without making structural, uh, adjustments.
So how can somebody look at their school and start to see what the architecture is of it and say, this is, this is why something would, would not be successful.
How do you start down this path of, 'cause you really have to look at it differently, right?
So how do you go down this path of, of looking at it differently than how we've always looked at it?
What's your advice to someone who's new to this?
Yeah.
Um.
So I'll start with two points.
I'll talk a bit about some of the design principles that I think help to, to guide thinking.
Uh, and then I'll also give some more granular examples of good architectures that already exist in schools, because even within a single school, there's a lot of variety of architecture and some of that architecture is actually.
Quite good for learning.
Um, so a few design principles that I think can guide architectures in a good direction are, um, authenticity.
So basically having, um, learning in con authentic contexts, authentic processes, so students, um, doing, uh, kind of.
I forget the book, A different book that I read called like the, the whole game at the junior level.
Um, and this is kind of like if you have a basketball analogy, um, like when eight year olds play basketball, they still play.
The full game at a smaller level.
Right.
Um, and that's what makes it engaging for them.
But if you look at actually how maybe a science or humanities class is run, um, the sporting equivalent would be, we do drills forever in never play the game.
Right?
So thinking like, what do actual scientists do?
Why are they, um.
Investigating different problems, how are they contributing to society and letting students play that full game at a smaller, more simplified level.
Um, so often, yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
here real quick because I was talking to some guys yesterday about, um, training people in a different way for, for a high level job that basically requires a PhD and I, and I asked, why don't you just.
Bring that person on and start training them to have a PhD level over time.
You're sending them away to train at a university for eight years to get this PhD. Bas bachelor's and PhD. almost said bastards.
That's funny.
I was a little Freudian slip.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
getting, getting a, a bachelor's and a PhD and you're sending them out to, to get this knowledge, why don't you just bring them on and train them in this way right outta high school and say, Hey, we're gonna invest in you and have you work here, and maybe you're going to be doing some lower level stuff, but we want you to have this PhD level.
Uh, education and, and then just give that, like, work with the university if you have to.
But, but give them that education on the job because that's what they're doing anyway.
So part of that is there's a filtering mechanism with the going to a university and taking the program there.
And, and you can have some, some information about that.
But really they're gonna be, have to be trained on the job when they come back to the company.
So why not just if you, if you're investing in these people for that long anyway and you're waiting for these people to come that long anyway, why not have them come?
then it changes the dynamic of what they're learning.
Because when you say, like the thing we were talking about is organic chemistry, you have to learn organic chemistry because we are doing an experiment.
Developing something tomorrow.
You have to go home and learn all that stuff to make sure that you're ready.
And it's not just for tomorrow, but for, you know, here's, here's how we're designing this study.
Here's how we're setting up this experiment.
You have to go home and understand all those things leading up to that, and that it's not just about.
know, having that information there, but you have to learn it and learning it in the moment where it actually is going to matter is much different than learning it in a textbook where you're not sure if you'll ever use this in the future.
So that piece of like real, uh, I think the word uses authentic learning.
really does matter and there's no reason why you couldn't do that.
It, it would definitely be possible, but you would have to change your approach about how you look at educating your future workforce.
But that can work across all sectors also.
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of that, that thinking.
It can go down into the K through 12 space as well.
I think we, we divorce kids from the quote unquote real world, um, artificially, and we tell them to wait until they graduate university to do anything of value in the world.
Um, and that's
Maddening.
a little bit insane, uh, because.
Kids at most ages are very capable, if motivated and engaged.
Um, they might be tackling smaller problems.
But, um, like imagine if your job had no purpose beyond, uh, just getting to some, some next rung.
Um, it's not a motivating stance.
Um, and not letting kids make authentic contributions is.
Is, uh, really, really problematic for, from a motivational standpoint.
Um, because people, even if the contribution is like cleaning the classroom at the end of the day, like that is a, a valuable contribution.
More people can see, like their efforts are, um.
Helping the community, right?
Um, it doesn't have to be these grandiose projects that people propose like, we're gonna, um, solve the, the water scarcity problem in like Saharan Africa.
Um, you're probably not, you have no understanding of that context.
Um, it can be much smaller.
Um, one of the other principles is mutuality.
So this idea that we are.
Connected.
So this is kind of an an architecture design principle.
Um, that your actions matter towards my actions.
And I think sometimes we, we have collaborative projects in schools which actually don't force this sense of mutuality, right?
They don't have to collaborate.
They can easily do it totally independently.
Each or one person can do the whole thing.
Um, and there's really good, um, learning.
Uh, experience design.
I'll give you a few examples which, which force this sense of mutuality.
So one that I've seen at my school, we run a, a school newspaper as an elective class.
Um, and it's run by an amazing teacher then here, uh, ages, and she splits the class into different roles.
So you have things like.
Editors and people responsible for different sections and graphic design and photojournalist.
Um, and by making them interdependent on one another and making them all care about this authentic real output, which gets published and has a real readership, it has staff read it, parents read it.
Um.
Um, they start holding each other accountable and instead of the, the teacher, um, yelling at kids who haven't done their work, it's students yelling at each other, uh, for missing deadlines.
So it's, it's a small tweak, right, in how you design that, that learning environment.
And there's reasons why it's a difficult week, right?
Because like from an assessment perspective, like how do you know exactly what one person did and what another did?
And if they're not having the exact.
Same experience, then how are we assessing them, uh, against similar criteria and kind of some of these rigid structures that, um, are a little bit imagined in some ways, which, which have us trapped.
Um, but it's, it's a powerful shift.
Um.
Well, and and the amazing thing about that example is that it really does get to the kids having ownership of something also.
And that's really what the authenticity is about, is having ownership for something.
Because of the things that I always say is if the teacher is the only audience, then it's meaningless except for the grade.
But if there's any other audience, like even if it is, need to write a letter to your parent and you know, once you finish it, take a picture of it and submit that, then it's not about you.
Like, it's not about you doing that for the grade, it's about you writing the parent a letter and, and there's a different thing there.
And what that allows is for this flexibility of.
Of grading criteria and options and what that looks like, uh, that you may see things that you haven't even taught.
You know, for example, a kid could use ass simile in there, uh, in that letter, that that helps you understand that they get that idea of what ass simile is, and then you don't, you now know that they understand the thing that you're trying to teach, and you can see the errors that they make in spelling and grammar and all that kind of stuff.
And those kinds of things become much more valuable and valuable to the student also, that they have an opportunity to write a large to their parents, which some of them likely have never done, and others that might be a regular thing.
And so they use something that they've written recently and, and that, and that's another thing is there's no problem in using.
Other evidences for what you're learning that are not the direct explicit assignment.
So I love that school newspaper example.
And that's something that, that I think every school should have a newspaper and that it should be a, a, a process that is run throughout the entire school so that everybody has an opportunity to write for it or contribute to it.
some way.
And yes, it can be one class as an elective, but there are ways to open it up and include student writing in that, and student other creations in that as well.
Just like every school should have a YouTube channel and every school should have a social media account.
And those provide lots of opportunities for students to be engaged and do the, the things that they need to.
Excuse me.
so there, there's one other design principle that you mentioned, which is complexity.
Tell me about that one.
Yeah, complexity, probably the, the most difficult one to conceptualize and write about.
Um, obviously a, a hybrid between simple and complex.
Um, the idea is how do you design systems and architectures, which are themselves simple, but are able to kind of.
Bend and handle a complex reality.
Um, I'll give you my favorite example to help clarify what is a very, uh, confusing concept.
So if you, A great example of simple complexity is actually the English alphabet, um, 26 letters, which can be stacked and combined in different ways to represent over 180,000 different objects.
Feelings, conditions, um, compare that to something like, uh, traditional or, uh, Mandarin Chinese, where it's not a very simplex system.
It's more complexity, matching complexity where people have to memorize tens of thousands of.
Distinct characters, which each map to something else, there are patterns within it, which makes it a little bit simpler.
Um, but as a system it's much more complex.
So when you're, um, designing system architectures, it's something you really have to keep in mind because everyone has a very limited, um, mental capacity.
Right.
We can't.
To handle that much change.
We can't handle that many, um, new things.
Uh, a great example of this, I don't know if you've heard of, uh, avenues World Schools, um, has a lot of campuses around the world.
They have an online school, um, give them a shout out.
They, they have what they call the avenues, world elements, so it looks like a periodic table of elements, but it has basically.
Around 50 things that they've defined.
These are outcomes that they want, um, students to have.
Could be more like character or skill sets, like persistence, creativity, critical thinking could be big conceptual understandings.
Um, and what they're starting to do with that is that the older years letting students define their own projects and learning experiences as long as they are, um, grounded in those elements.
So the student would have to, um, pitch their project and justify them in terms of the elements, and they've built a shared understanding of those elements, what success in each element looks like.
Um, so that's an example of a reasonably simple system able to support almost an infinite number of learning experiences.
I love that.
And that was the avenue is something that I just recently learned about.
I don't even remember where, but I remember seeing, um, that and thinking, oh, that's a good way to.
To bring that in.
Really, really fascinating, um, stuff that they're doing.
So definitely suggest checking that out.
Uh, one of the things that I talk about all the time is asking the question, can we make this more simple?
Can we make this more clear and more basic?
And, and by doing that, you have to have the flexibility to go into complex arena.
But at the very basic level, as you're just starting, it has to be.
Simple.
And you mentioned the idea of, uh, playing a basketball game, playing the, the whole game at a junior level.
And, and that looks different when the kids are feet tall, but they're still shooting at a basket.
That means the basket's lower in soccer.
That means the, the goals or the field is, is smaller and they're not running quite as far.
And the coach is out there.
But they're still playing the whole game and they're doing the whole thing and, and they're just doing the simple parts of it.
So they're not designing plays just yet.
It's basically everybody just goes for the ball and tries to get the ball and the goal.
And, and that's a totally fine approach to have, but it allows for it to become more complex as time goes on.
And, and as much as possible, we need to bring those systems in, especially, you know, talking about student behavior.
Also, my discipline philosophy was.
What is the smallest thing that I can possibly do to get this kid to change their behavior and make the right choices in the future?
if I have to do some big complex thing to make it happen, then that's just gonna be a ton more work on my part.
The kid's not going to be bought into it, but if I can, if I can have a look and look at the kid and they change their behavior.
Then that's really powerful.
That's great.
So that look is enough to get them to change their behavior.
But also if I just stop at that simple thing, then they may have changed their behavior because I gave the look, but they don't know why they did it.
So a, a more complex conversation needs to happen and that's an essential part of it.
So I love the complexity idea.
I think that's, that's really good.
Um, anything else you want to
Um.
that complexity?
Yeah, I mean, just one thing came to mind when you were talking about the, the soccer example and, and I think a valuable question for every school to ask themselves.
This is like very foundational is what comes first, passion or competence, right?
I think we default to designing for competence.
Um, and then we think if we hammer kids and they get competent enough, then maybe.
Um, they will become passionate later and that will be the field that they enter.
Um, but I would argue more likely, um, for people who are very high performers in a given field, it's that passion comes first and then competence follows, um, the kind of in like an intertwined dance as they move up and down.
Um, but I think it's, it's a valuable, really foundational assumption to, to question.
Well, and the other part of that, Adrian, is that.
We can't, uh, teach passion, right?
We can't have that one of our curricular measures.
We can't measure that as easy as we can competence.
And so we go towards the easier thing, not necessarily the more simple thing.
And I, I believe that it's actually a combination of passion and competence, which as you mentioned, they intertwine later.
And I don't know that you can really say one comes first over the other, but you know what helps you be really passionate about something.
Being excellent at it.
Like that certainly helps.
You know what really helps you being great at something, being passionate about it because you care more.
And so like, they're very hard to, to disentangle from each other, but they're so important to ask that question.
I, that's what I think the key is.
Yeah, but, but I mean, just if I can like, think about the, the curricular.
I agree completely.
Think about the curricular design, um, of most schools, this kind of mile wide inch deep, um, you're.
You're keeping students in a perpetual, novice stage.
Right.
But like everything is new all the time instead of going deep.
And so you're not only is it not set up great for passion to develop because of reasons of like, autonomy and choice, um, it's also not set up very well for competence to develop, um, which is, uh, I agree.
Like an important ingredient.
Right.
Well, and that was the point
Okay.
that I was getting to is that if somebody really wants to go deep into, for example, a math.
Before they get to whatever grade level that is offered at, then they, there should be flexibility for them to get there, so often there's not, you know, um, algebra in eighth grade or seventh grade is one of those things.
There are a lot of math teachers who are like, it's just not possible for kids to do algebra in seventh grade.
it's like, we all know that's baloney.
And yet.
It's just more difficult to have an algebra class with seventh graders in it than it is to only have eighth grade algebra classes.
And, and that's really what it comes down to, that it's not that it's impossible, it's just that.
It's more convenient and easier and better for the schedule and better for the teacher's classrooms and all that to have just one group of kids in there.
But everybody develops in every way at different stages.
And so if a kid has a, a proclivity towards something, then there should be flexibility to allow that and not having to wait to get to something until you are a certain age.
Even if you are ready to handle it much earlier.
For example, when I was a second year teacher, I had a student named Kayla Armstrong in my class, and she was amazing.
She's, uh, an adult now.
I wish I knew where she was.
I say her name so that she can say, Hey, this is where I'm at if she ever hears this.
But, um, but Kayla was awesome and she, she was super smart and super ready for way more than I could teach her in school.
And so I said, look, I don't have.
Like, I don't have a curriculum to teach you what you really need to know, but I know that you're already interested in Victorian literature.
So you choose a way that you want to demonstrate that you are learning and growing yourself this year.
And as she put together her this, this whole project, she read, um, uh, uh, Emily Bronte and Jane Airbooks and talked about how they related to each other and how they were connected and all this kind of stuff.
And it was, was, it was great.
Um, and I was really.
Impressed with what she was doing, uh, because she understood it well enough that she didn't have to wait for me, to be ready to teach her those things.
She went out and did those, did those herself.
And, and that is an important, um, I think that I said Jane Eyre and Emily Bronte, but Jane Eyre is a book written by Emily Bronte, so I
That's, it's all right.
I'm, I'm, I'm not an English major, so I'm not gonna catch that.
Um, I mean.
Jane Austin.
Excuse me.
So I, I apologize.
Wanna make sure I got that right.
Jane Austin.
Not Jane Eyre.
Jane Eyre is the book.
Jane Austen is the author.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, you, you touched on scheduling whi, which I, I do a lot of work with in my, my current role, and I'm sure a lot of principals, uh, listen to a podcast called The Transformative Principal.
Um, and a lot of them, uh, are also heavily involved in scheduling, and I think it's a really important leverage point.
And it says a lot about.
What you value and what's possible within your school.
I spent hundreds of hours last year reworking our, um, grade six through eight programs so that we can have what we now call interdisciplinary learning blocks.
So basically a very.
Structured, consistent, um, block of classes where different subjects can come together, um, at different times if they want to flexibly, um, to give those different like cross-disciplinary experiences and, and why I think that's important.
And everyone's like, well, why do you like interdisciplinary learning so much?
Um, and it's actually because.
I like project based learning and because really good projects don't neatly fit into disciplines.
Um, and what happens and what I've seen happen year after year is a teacher will have an amazing idea for a project.
But there's no structure that allows them to blend disciplines, and they can't justify the amount of time it will take to do the project because maybe only like 30% of it is science.
And then a lot of it is like geopolitics and then it's like, uh, humanities or MA math or um, any blend of things.
Right?
And so what happens is.
It just gets tossed out because, because you can't justify the, the time commitment that it would take, um, to do justice within your discipline.
Um, so scheduling is, is big.
It's a, it's a big lever.
It's one of those architectures which always needs to be kind of revisited.
Yeah, I, I did some cool things with, uh, scheduling when I was a principal and I encouraged people to go on my, uh, on my, on Transformative Principal dot org and search for Synergy and RTI, episode 100, whatever that one was.
Uh.
scheduling, I think is what it is.
But, um, look those two up because we did amazing, awesome things with our schedule that, uh, to exactly what you're saying, we took, when teachers had English class or math class, felt like all they could do was the, the, uh, standards assigned to that class.
And so when we took that away from them.
It took off the pressure, but we had to take it away from 'em because if they were in their math classroom, they had to do math.
So we created the Synergy time.
That was an hour and a half, twice a week, where they didn't have
Mm.
content area connected with it because it was Synergy and so, which was just a name we made up.
And then during that time, they could do whatever they needed to, to meet the needs of their kids based on the, the projects that they were interested in, the things they were doing, and.
became a really powerful time where kids learned way more than they ever would have in
Hmm.
classes, which again, look for synergy.
I've got a bunch of podcasts about it, and it was.
Amazing.
So my final question for you, Adrian, is, and we didn't get to everything by the way.
Um, so definitely go check out his book, uh, which is called, uh, designing Different, uh, because, uh, you gotta check it out.
It's good.
Uh, you should definitely read it.
Um, my last question is, what is one thing that a principal can do this week to be a Transformative leader like you?
One thing, I'm sure you'll edit out this long pause.
No, I won't.
Just kidding.
your answer better be simple,
Yeah.
It better be
simplex.
Um.
I think there's, there's two main levers that, and you've touched on both of them anecdotally.
Um, one is.
Audience.
So expanding audience.
I think making a decision this week, that next year we're gonna have, say, two official public exhibitions of student work, where community gonna come in, students are gonna showcase work.
Um, that can be really Transformative for the entire community.
And the other thing, um, which you touched on.
I just said one
Oh, sorry.
Okay.
so
That's one thing.
you do a a bonus second
Okay, perfect.
thing is make a decision that we're gonna have official expositions of student
Correct.
Yeah.
In the, in the second is, uh, creating what I call like sandboxes or spaces of possibility, um, similar to that hour and a half, twice a week that you talked about.
Um, at my school we have, uh, something I've designed called Project Week, which is a collapse week.
At the end of the year, um, very last week of school, report cards are in, uh, normally the year is just dying a slow, slow death, um, into the summer.
So we've recaptured that time.
Kids are off timetable, they're in 30 plus different projects, entrepreneurial stuff.
Um, and it's a place for us to test.
Different architectures in a really low stakes environment where teachers don't feel pressure to like perform or hit outcomes.
Um, and every school has a little bit of time like this, right?
It's not, uh, it's not go, go, go all the time.
So kind of think of where that low impact time is and try to make that your, your testing ground would be one of my
Uh,
tips.
Great.
We didn't even get into the power of starting school appropriately and designing that experience for the first week of school.
of doing that for the last week of school and making sure that.
All of the time you're spending in school is valuable and worthwhile.
So, uh, there's so much more that we could talk about there.
Maybe I'll have to have you back on again.
Adrian, this is great.
I wanna remind everybody to check out the, uh, the book Designing Different.
There's a link to it in the show notes at Transformative principle.org and, uh, any other place people should go to follow you, Adrian.
Um, not a big social media person, but you could find me on LinkedIn.
Excellent.
We'll put a link to his LinkedIn in the show notes as well at Transformative principle.org.
Adrian, thank you so much for being part of Transformative principle today.
It was great to chat with
Yeah, it's been a really fun conversation.
Thanks, Jethro.
I.