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How A Time Machine Changed My View Of Education | Rob Steffler | TEDxGlasshouseChristianCollege


I’m titled by my top back to the future

of Education and if you thought there

was a link between the 1980’s movie

series and the u10 program that i’m

going to share with you today you’d be

absolutely correct essentially what i

want to share with you today is where

this College has gone in its attempt to

explore innovation and education and for

me this happened when i started at this

school in 2014 and i felt a call to

action to look at what education looked

like what the current system looked like

and whether we were doing justice to our

students um sir ken robinson i think

everyone would agree who is an educator

is a fairly inspirational speaker pretty

much anything he says you leave with

inspiration and encouragement to to

teach well and be the best teacher you

can be Allen November was someone who we

got to spend a day with at the college

last year he’s from the states and he

talks about students owning their

learning and he’s really interested in

students learning and assessment being

authentic and why he has Jacobs who was

probably the catalyst for the program

that I have the privilege of sharing

with you today she asked the question

what year are you preparing your

students for and I would guess that if

you told her next year she would

probably shake her head at you um you

can watch all of these people on Ted

they’ve all done TED talks and and Astro

tell is another one I haven’t been had

the privilege of seeing in person but

he’s just done a TED talk recently on

celebrating failure and it’s well worth

your time to watch that if we could get

our young people thinking the way his

team at the moonshot factory formerly

known as Google X think that I think

they’d be very set up for the future

that they’re going to face over the next

5 10 15 years and so I spent quite a bit

of time planning and putting together a

proposal for what we affectionately call

the DeLorean project I went to the boss

what I said what do you think this is a

crazy idea let’s push all their academic

subjects to four days a week and let’s

have students spend the fifth day in a

space that they might not be particular

always let’s provide some flexible

opportunities where they actually drive

the learning which students actually

have make the decisions around the

things that they’re going to learn and

and the things that they’re essentially

going to teach themselves and the key

was that we wanted to focus on 20

percentage of skills I think I

Australian Curriculum does a really good

job of defining their skills in what our

culture general capabilities I would

propose today that maybe our current

education system and the people who

write curriculum don’t give those Jenner

Cait general capabilities of the

creedence and the respect that maybe

they deserve and I think our program is

evidence of how important these skills

are our students in year 10 spend one

day a week and they’re being challenged

to collaborate analyze research design

innovate and communicate and most

importantly contribute to a world bigger

than themselves in the immediate school

community we had to come up with a

framework to talk about these skills and

so we used University of Melbourne

framework for 21st century learning the

only thing we didn’t have was a name and

it was through a passing joke in the

staff room at the end of 2015 where I

said to a colleague that I’d asked to be

on the team for this program when it was

in the news that Marty McFly in the

second movie Back to the Future had

traveled to 2015 I said to her maybe we

should just name it after the crazy

scientists in his time machine and she

looked at me and I looked at her and

there was this exciting moment of

silence and we knew we’d actually

stumbled across the name of our program

and the DeLorean project was born we had

to come up with a way to talk about the

projects and the ideas that these

students would create and drive with the

students themselves so they knew that

they were on track and so we created as

a team the DeLorean spheres and every

project that is running in year 10 in

2016 has to meet each of these fears and

so this was a constant go to frame work

for us in our conversations with

students now the thing we had to do on

the first day of school because the

first day of school in 2016 just

happened to be the day

of the DeLorean project on a Wednesday

we had to create a bit of a story and we

found different ways to do that but one

of the ways that we thought we could

create a bit of a narrative with our

students is to actually see if we could

get a DeLorean and we did we brought it

we heard there’s a guy who owns a

DeLorean in our local community and he

was willing to bring it in and it

skidded out with a flux capacitor and a

hoverboard and you’ll see Emmet brands

Einstein dog in the back seat and it was

just a great way to engage kids in this

idea and start talking about the analogy

of a mad scientist who in the face of

all sorts of challenges persevered and

was able to travel through time not just

once but multiple times across the three

movie trilogy as we got to be the end of

of this first part of the program we

realized that these kids had some great

ideas and it was almost scary because as

facilitators we were going how do we

make things happen but that’s part of

the learning journey that we were on to

give you a quick overview because I

don’t have a lot of time so I’m trying

to pack a year’s worth of experience

into 18 minutes we have 90 year 10

students in 2016 of varying abilities

interests and passions and let me just

say one of the main things about this

program was that students were

encouraged to follow their interests and

passions and what we found is that if

they don’t then then then success is a

lot harder to achieve we have seven

passionate DeLorean project facilitators

DPS we like to call them their teachers

and we have 25 projects running from

social justice projects to business

startups to three projects I can’t

easily categorized and and finally six

projects that are science focus that

come from a partnership we have with the

University of the Sunshine Coast we’re

looking at over 200 curriculum hours in

in the you that we’ve spent on on this

program and one of the the poignant

experiences we had was an event that we

called the DeLorean shark tank where

students had done a lot of idea

generation and and really we challenged

them to think big and then what we said

is now you’ve got to pitch this to five

sharks

as in business people in the community

and those sharks were very honest about

the ideas that they saw pitch so for

some students the feedback was really

hard to hear and in fact some groups

dissolved after that because of that

feedback other groups heard some

feedback that maybe wasn’t particularly

positive and they just had perseverance

to carry on and other groups got great

feedback we actually had two groups

approached after the shark tank where

sharks offered further support in a

number of ways and currently we’re now

working towards our final event of the

year which we’ve called d-day our

DeLorean projects showcase in

mid-november where students are

challenged to share their experience one

of the things we very clearly says it’s

not about the end product it’s actually

about the process that these students

have been through and the experiences

they’ve had along the way that we’re

challenging them to share with us and

then of course there’s countless stories

of every project I can tell you 25

different stories and all of them all of

them are stories of success in some way

or another but I’ve got to pick a couple

and so I’d like you to meet the USC

DeLorean team and you’re actually going

to hear from four of these students um I

again took a bit of a risk with dr. Adam

Polkinghorne at the University of the

Sunshine Coast and I asked for an hour

of his time and I sat down and I just

gave it a shop I said this might sound

crazy but what do you reckon about some

mutants having the opportunity to do

some real life learning at the

University and he didn’t say no in fact

he was quite excited about the idea and

through a lot of work and effort we now

have seven students spending their

Wednesday’s working on real research at

the University of the sunshine coast at

Adams Animal Research Center each of

them are being mentored one on one by

one of adam’s PhD students and as you

can imagine the learning that they would

do would be absolutely phenomenal it’s

very unique and we’re really excited to

continue that in 2017 and beyond um this

is pantry mate Pancham 8 formed early on

they’ve stuck together the whole way but

they had a big idea and it was actually

Sophie in the bottom right hand corner

there that realized that all of the

interests in

fashions the group was sharing came down

to two things food and technology and

they came up with the idea of what and

the challenge of whether they could

create a smart pantry a pantry that that

will talk to your phone and essentially

mean you’ll never run out of food your

shopping lists could be created

automatically and you’ll never ask the

question when you’re in the shops

whether you need something because

you’re not um they’ve they’ve been

through two prototypes and and I’ve just

been told today that they’ve just

finished their third for at a time um

they found funding externally for some

of the cost of these prototypes which is

really exciting and and and they’ve

worked through a lot of challenge for a

long time they didn’t get any way they

said the hardest thing they’ve had to do

is work as a team and I’m talking and

aside from that it was just not getting

anywhere having the tenacity to continue

with the idea this is Caitlin and I want

to talk about two more students Caitlin

and Jade and the reason I want to talk

about them is because they are a good

example of us making a really big

mistake both Caitlin and Jane and

believe me we made a lot of mistakes

both Caitlin and Jade were told no

something that that I would really have

not liked to do and but they were told

no for a couple of reasons Caitlin was

told no for two reasons one she wanted

to work as an individual and two she

wanted to speak to middle school

students about anxiety and depression

around the the local community and we

said there’s not the one working as an

individual doesn’t align to collaborate

and two there’s no way that someone’s

going to let a u-turn student in to talk

about something like that with young

people and so we said no one of the

things we’ve asked student students to

do with this project though is to be

really honest so Caitlin came to me at

the end of the first term one she’d been

told no chi that said the saddest thing

for me is that you didn’t give me a

chance to prove myself and we had to

reflect on that and go you know what

you’re right we didn’t so we actually

came back in to turn to and we said okay

here’s your chance now this photo I’ve

cut this photo was taken a couple of

weeks ago I’ve cut it off because the

rest of the photo shows

success it was taken on her way to speak

to 90 year 8 students at a State High

School in incarnate or local community

as of today she’s spoken to over 300

middle school students about an anxiety

and depression she collaborates with at

least two qualified psychologists to

make sure that her content is not only

valuable but it’s correct so on all

facets she proved us wrong she’s

received a public apology from me on

numerous occasions which I’m sure she’s

very excited and happy that and it’s

just a great example of being flexible

to give students the ability to show

that they can achieve something when

most adults would think it’s not

possible jade is another one of our

beloved delorean students who is not

backwards about coming forward and we

love that about judge she will tell us

how it is and that’s exactly what she

did when she started the delorean

project jade was not happy about this

idea and so rather than me tell you

about it I want Jake to tell you herself

and I’ve done it a quick interview with

Jade so she’s going to tell us about her

delorean experience when it started this

year um I didn’t really like the idea of

it because I was like just forcing us to

do something that we’re not really

passionate about all that is it going to

be successful because I didn’t think it

would work sounds like we’re only like

14 and 15 year old so it’s not going to

work and it’s just it’s just a waste of

a way to say I really thought we should

just do another subject and kind of have

another fun year in a sense and so the

first semester of doing a project that I

really was a passionate about was yeah

pretty boring I didn’t really enjoy it

at all what I was really just wanted

Wednesday to be over the unity a box now

this point it’s probably worth

mentioning that Jade is the principal’s

daughter and I don’t know about you but

if you’re trying to create a new program

that’s innovative and different it would

be kind of nice if the principal’s

daughter was on board so that when she

went home and talked about it the

principal was hearing good things um

however this was reality for us we

wanted honesty and so Jade was honest

with us now she was also very mature and

her responses and she worked with

and and I’m very happy to say that today

things are very different for Jane but

again I’d like her to share that with

you so she’s going to do that now after

the shark tank experience and I left the

group that I was in but I wasn’t really

passionate about it all and I sat down

no it’s like if I’m going to make this

worthwhile I’ve got to do something that

I’m really passionate about so i went

into the shark tank thing with my idea

that I was passionate about and to see

in their thoughts because I wasn’t a

hundred percent on it but I just wanted

to see if it could be something and they

told me it couldn’t be anything but they

loved my passion for it so I created a

website where i put up a bunch of blogs

and I do like religion ethics or sunday

school lessons that are available for

purchase I just received thousands of

views and gotten like I think it’s I’d

actually know how many thousand but

there’s a lot of like subscribers and

views and stuff and it became a like

popular thing and people were becoming

more interested and I kept on getting

feedback I have six different mentors

from a couple of them are in Western

Australia so that means like I skype but

I email a lot with him and then I’ve got

two in Brisbane and one with the school

and one with my church and so I just

talked to them a bunch and I get them to

look at all my work and I was sitting

there with my blog and I was like how if

I’m gonna build this I need to like find

someone that is in the industry in a

sense and I was like but who’s in this

industry and I’m like oh hey I love

waking up and reading you version and

I’m like why don’t I just try and get in

contact with them you version is an

online bible app which goes and they do

trackers and they have four different

versions of the Bible and they’re like

hey we read some of your blogs and we

actually think you’re really keen and

they didn’t know I was in your tents you

doing that at all and they were like yep

we’re happy to sponsor you never knew

that something like Sunday school or re

and you know a Christian blog that I’m

passionate about I really didn’t think I

would be successful at the beginning and

that’s awesome the James being very

humble about herself her stats I can

tell you about the stats ah she has had

over 9,000 views on my perspective coke

she’s had seventeen hundred subscribers

email subscribers she’s head sponsorship

is when her

multiple members in this nation and in

America she’s being published externally

which is really exciting one of her

blogs is being published and she’s made

today about for just over four hundred

fifty dollars selling educational

religious religious education resources

Sunday School lessons and that’s all

gone to compassion Australia which is

the again the epitome of real

contribution in our eyes and

interestingly enough some of these

students at a high school in the United

States Oceana high school in California

emailed her and asked if they could

create some posters about her website

and so she’s now getting some notoriety

in a high school in California and

starting to get subscribers through

people promoting her work so for us a

huge win and for Jane something that I

don’t think she ever expected out of a

project that she at first really didn’t

see the value of I’m really keen for the

year almost to be over not so much that

I get out of DeLorean like I thought at

the beginning but so that the projects

my project now for haces program

facilitators that’s about as good as it

gets where students want to continue

their work not because it’s a project or

a program at school but because they

value it and I see they see they see

value in continuing it so Jake thank you

for letting me share your story and and

being honest with us because it’s made

our program much more I think valuable

in itself morphing educational mindset

so I can honestly say that the last 12

months for a bit for me has been the

most transformative months of my almost

15-year career by far it’s taught me a

lot about about teaching and what I

thought teaching was and what it what

may be what it isn’t maybe what it

should be um we’ve found out very

clearly that students are not

comfortable in this sort of context um

they they don’t understand yet that

failure is good that risk-taking is good

and that roadblocks are good that’s been

a real challenge and so we need to start

to cultivate the great and the tenacity

that’s required to overcome roadblocks

and endure

failure because we know that failure

leads to success I’ve learned that

learning should be way messier than then

I than I thought it would and that I

thought it needs to be it should be

adaptable and open to change this

program is the epitome of the process

being far more valuable than the product

and it’s taught me that teaching in a

silo is just not where we should be and

so I’ve called it out of the silo and

onto the stage I’ve haven’t had the

privilege of teaching in front of six

other passionate staff members at the

college and and my strength so I’m able

to to use but when when my weaknesses

are apparent and there are many my

colleagues stand up and take over and

we’re able to partner and and teach on a

whole new level that traditionally we

just don’t do and so to me this should

happen more often as often as it can

it’s okay not to know the answers either

i’m not i don’t know most of the answers

to most of the questions that these

students ask so it’s the idea that the

tip the teachers the font of all

knowledge is absolutely untrue in my

opinion and the most exciting thing for

me is that those general capabilities

those 21st century skills it shown us

how important they are and what’s

exciting is that based on our experience

and the delorean project is that we’re

now exploring what we’re doing in

traditional subjects in an hour other

curriculum to I guess leverage these

skills and make our make ourselves

relevant to the students that we’re

going to be teaching I want to finish

with a quote from Winston Winston

Churchill I admire and respect those

speakers that I talked about it at the

beginning of my presentation I think

they’re amazing people who inspire a

whole lot of teachers and professionals

around the world but sometimes you leave

a speaker speaker like that and you

don’t necessarily get the practical

tools to do anything about that

inspiration and so I guess my

encouragement and talking to you today

is that we should be sharing these

stories that we should be willing to

take risks especially if we’re educators

in positions of leadership I think we

owe it to our students and to preparing

them for the future to take those risks

and be open to changing the way that we

do education I don’t think anyone would

disagree that Winston Churchill got

things done he said well done is better

than well said I encourage people to be

well doers at once they’ve heard the

well sayers thank you [Applause]

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