unframed a concept near and dear to all
of our hearts and that’s schools and and
think a little bit with you starting
with your past I’d like you to think of
your favorite childhood learning
experience conjure that one in your mind
think about where you were who you were
with what did you actually learn then
how are you feeling at the time and were
you in school how many of you chose a
how many chose a memory where you were
not in school that appears to be a big
majority so I wonder why it is that many
of our most memorable times in life are
outside of school and not in this guy
happens to be in school he’s doing an
experiential education trip and I bet
it’s one of his big memories now that
he’ll take with him perhaps for decades
or the rest of his life he’s completely
tuned into that moment right now and
experiencing some new learning where
he’s engaged with all of his senses
and he’s thinking about what he should
do and avoid and be a part of in that
moment thirty years ago I decided to
become a teacher
not just any teacher I didn’t want to be
one that propagated the status quo
because frankly I wasn’t all that
excited about the education that I’ve
gotten I had some great teachers growing
up and they were certainly an
inspiration for me but I chose to become
a teacher because I wanted a revolution
I wanted to change schools as I had
experienced them because I saw
potential in them and so it sought out a
graduate program where there were
revolutionaries like these these were
the ones that we studied and they were
preaching something that was very
different from the kind of school that I
had experienced they were talking about
democratic classrooms and democratic
schools they were talking about
empowering students to make decisions
about their own learning they were
talking about play as being one of the
main avenues and motivators for children
and they were talking about the impact
on society of service learning that
wasn’t what I had experienced but when I
became a teacher
I started going forth into the world and
trying to find those kind of schools and
advocating for the kind of things that
those mentors had taught me Sir Ken
Robinson is one of the famous TED Talks
of all time and he talked about how
creativity in schools was absolutely
vital because they had been formed in
the generation of those futurists that I
just mentioned in the likeness of a
factory not of the caring institution
that would energize students would
discover themselves so why is that why
did these factories of the 19th century
that were maybe appropriate at the time
why did they not get upgraded in the
hundred and fifty years that followed
and why did the school that I attended
and the mostly adults from this room
attended feel that way at the core I
wanted to explore that and try to
reimagine what school could be and that
was what I set forth to do in my career
but I found lots of resistance to these
ideas it’s not common for its school to
embrace a different philosophy and again
I wondered why that was so I I thought
to try to find a place where I could
reimagine school and I’ve had a
wonderful career
on several continents in many different
countries many different kinds of
schools as well we I think have done
some really wonderful things things for
children over the years and then I
arrived here in Jakarta and I’d like to
tell you about this case study that just
has been this is kind of a special
school it’s got about 65 nationalities
of students about 26 nationalities this
faculty it’s a very diverse population
and the United Nations day is quite a
celebration here in my first year here
though when the school was turning 60 it
made an amazing decision that was that
if wanted to recreate itself it’s not
what an accomplished school usually
chooses to do and that’s one of the
reasons why they don’t change all that
rapidly but this school was willing to
put everything on the table its mission
is reduced vision its future its
curriculum it’s everything so we held a
summit we brought and invited the entire
community together they all had input of
various sorts and about 150 people came
for a weekend that we called the dreams
from it and that dream summit was where
we actually put the entire idea of the
school on a whiteboard and said let’s
create it together we used a philosophy
called appreciative inquiry which is the
branch of positive psychology and it’s a
theory that says organizations should
start when they’re looking to change
with their strengths identify those
pillars on which you can build for the
future and this school has a lot of
strengths so we identified those and
then we we dreamt about the future in
the school that we wanted to be and so
we put those dreams together as a group
and we acted the amount we paid special
attention to our Indonesian staff to our
alumni to our students to our board
members to our community members who all
had something to say about the school
that they wanted to
create it was a big leap of faith but
that that image of the school that we
should become became increasingly clear
as the weekend went on it was acted out
it was danced out it was dreamt about
and ultimately everybody wrote their own
vision statement and then we put them on
puzzle pieces and then we put those
puzzle pieces together and then we
looked at all the words that were
created there and we looked at what left
out and this is what left out a brand
new mission statement vision statement
set of values and ultimately later from
learning dispositions as well so it was
a recreated school look great on paper
it looked a lot like what the people
that I studied were espousing and
graduate school this to have a school
that’s focused on passion and
inquisitiveness from creativity and
learning to be best for the world not in
the world before the world so that
service and public purpose is really at
the core of what this learning is about
that’s his school the likes of which I
hadn’t ever seen but it was the one that
just said that it wanted to become and
then the value those were great too they
did there was seven of them and we wear
them around our neck each day on a
lanyard and there were two that are kind
of unusual five I think many schools
have but they’re two that are unusual I
have not seen before balanced and at
three letter word called fun that fun
one has been invoked like you wouldn’t
believe
or maybe it would believe it students
remind us that lessons are not fun
enough the homework wasn’t quite as
singulate as it could be it didn’t
really get my creative juices flowing
this could you rewrite that assignment
for me it also had kind of a sleeper
value here and this is a value that many
schools hold in its respect and what we
ended up doing is respecting every
one of the learners in our community
through this process through the process
of recreation of ourselves but also the
day-to-day mess of gist we wanted to
make sure that the voices that make up
our community are are listened to but
they have the ability to express when
they can go co-create the learning
that’s happening every day we wrote some
plans called destiny plans that really
held us to account a lot of great ideas
like the vision statement that we had
can float in the ether or gather dust on
a shelf and that wasn’t the case here
because we wrote these and we held
ourselves accountable today this is a
message I got a couple of weeks ago from
a parent she’s from Italy and she said
my daughter every day has the energy and
good feeling at the bath school so I
wonder how just transfers this passion
for learning onto the kids in general
it’s not so common in normal normal
schools sometimes I wonder we need more
of these schools just has to be a
project to show the world a good
practice to put in on a box and share
with the world really so can you put the
school in a box can you export that
product of to another one somewhere else
in the world or maybe down the street
and I would say both no and yes no you
can’t recreate another school because it
reflects its surrounding culture it
reflects the community that it’s a part
of but there are principles that do
transfer that can be exported and should
be so what’s the key to untrain school
or unboxing school and making it spread
around the world and perhaps create the
kind of school that we’d all like to
attend I spoke with a friend named Yong
Zhao who is an educational future
and I was with him at a conference when
I was over with him at lunch and and he
was talking about the schools of the
future as we all were when having a
great time and I said you moved from
China to the United States and I’m
wondering how he selected a school for
your own children what were the criteria
that you used and he said they should
have a talent show so talent still was
that and he said well you need to have a
stage like this where students will
stand up and try things and fail and
fall down and learn from that and
develop the confidence over time that
they have something important to say
we actually have talent shows all around
our school and it’s a frequent thing
it’s it’s not just the formal stages but
it’s informal ones too and we provide
opportunities for students to display
their learning Tony Wagner called to
play passion and purpose are the three
things that should characterize the
learning of the future contemporary
learning
I like those green peas and it helps
them form the next one which is
personalized learning essentially the
factory type schools of old where Daleks
of learning were doled out to each
student in the same degree at the same
time with the same exam on the same day
for students who are absolutely not the
same why is that why do we do that don’t
we have the means to personalize and
really get to know each student really
well and to adapt that curriculum a
little bit I think we do in kindergarten
class where my wife teaches they asked
us the students for age five and six to
redesign their own classroom redesign
those learning spaces that would work
best for you and this this little guy
came up with a reading loft with music
learning spaces are adapting as well
this was a former book closet and was
converted to a really adaptable flexible
space that’s inviting to children where
a lot of different sorts of learning can
happen and here those Legos pop up again
robotics is sort of taking off all over
schools elementary middle and high we’ve
got a lot of that going on and lots of
technology is being created by our kids
so it’s not just them using those
powerful tools but they’re creating them
too and our teachers remain the key
they’re not being replaced by robots
they’re not being replaced by anything
at all in fact their role is more
important than ever and we need to
feature them and bring them along and
treat them as the individual learners
that they are all stuff and tailor the
kind of program that we offer to them
and then we need to hold ourselves
accountable we need to measure the kind
of learning that we are interested in in
our school and we need to do that in a
systematic way that’s not something that
schools are good at but we’ve taken
those powerful words that we generated
in the summit and we’ve tried to figure
out whether we’re actually doing that
and so we got some support from Jim
Engle L’Engle and from Damien pebble and
people at the university level who know
that you know how to pose these kind of
questions and measure them this is Sonya
who is one of our students and is a
brilliant film maker and you should
check her out on SoulPancake because
he’s now making her living that way this
is an example of the kind of learning
that we’re talking about one that we’re
also seeing on this stage today by many
of our talented students and that’s
sharing the learning on a global scale
not just keeping it to yourself and
that’s in keeping with our mission to be
best for the world I love this poster
learning to learn
it was the afternoon and everybody was
playing so to wrap it up there the three
elements that I think that we can put in
a box from gist and perhaps give it to
the rest of the world is respect every
one of the learners that you have in
your community and ask for their active
opinion about how to create that
learning experience of the future and
then provide them a real opportunity to
shape that school that that guidance
those words that will be so key to your
development in the future also to use
the modern tools that exist in this day
and age and make sure that you’re
incorporating them as much as you can
because that’s a really exciting space
right now there’s a lot being creative
with big data and with cool tools
they’re going to help us to figure out
how to personalize our learning all the
more but at the end of the day here’s
what we’re hoping for another
three-letter word joy we want the
learning experience by every student in
our school and in every school in the
world to be joyful thank you very much [Applause]