WHAT ARE INNOVATIVE SCHOOLS DOING DIFFERENTLY?

As part of my professional development plan, I visited seven schools in the San Francisco Bay area to explore what innovative schools were doing differently last week. This trip was inspiring and helped me refine my vision of educational innovation and what schools could look like.

Defining Your Values

We met with Stanford's d.School K12 Lab Director of Community and Implementation, Laura McBain. She encouraged our team to determine what problem we were trying to solve and allowed that to drive our innovation. Through reflection, I decided that my goal was to break away fr the traditional educational system and be a futurist! It is the only way to prepare my students for the post-university experience.

Human-Centered Learning

Another common thread throughout many schools is a focus on human-centered teaching and learning. In the schools we visited, this manifested itself in offering fewer periods per school day, a dedicated focus on mentorship through advisory, and flex time that allows a student to select what they needed that day- extra support, movement, activity, or club- and a focus on the student's ability to make positive change in our world. Most school administrations seemed to lead with inquiry instead of judgment and were empathy based.

Project-Based Learning

Most of the schools visited reframed their days to allow for math and PBL blocks. In most cases, the PBL blocks integrated literacy, social studies, science, and the arts. Several schools were moving away from standards-based learning to outcomes-based learning. Avenues: Silicon Valley was by far my favorite school on the visit. Each day their students had a math block, a PBL-themed block, movement and wellness, flex time, and mentorship. The 6-week themes were outcome-based, and Fridays were set aside for Experiential Learning Opportunities. Each theme concludes with a showcase and then a student reflection on the overall experience.

I am excited that this opportunity came while working on my doctorate and taking a class on Educational Technologies and Design at Illinois State University. We will redesign a learning experience, and I plan to integrate many of my takeaways from this experience. While the visit focused on schools within and around Silicon Valley, I saw the purposeful use of technology, with few overt, extravagant uses and many activities that did not include technology. Many times educators confuse innovation with technology. In 2020, I shared John Spencer's Vintage Innovation with my faculty as a recommended read for winter break to help them understand innovation happens in many ways. It doesn't require the newest technology tools, but provides an opportunity for blending the old and the new.

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Schools Visited in January 2023

Design Tech High School | Redwood City, CA

Nueva School | San Mateo, CA

Latitude High School | Oakland, CA

Metwest High School | Oakland, CA

Avenues of Silicon Valley | San Jose, CA

Campbell School of Innovation | Campbell, CA

Stanford d.School | Stanford University