Simplicity is so underrated

"Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.” 
― Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

In my 10 years+ plus of teaching experience, it has felt as if we've been always resorting to complexity to come up with answers. We’ve complicated schedules and curriculums in the name of learning without realizing that we could have framed the problem differently.

That’s why joining the Innovation Academy (IA) has been a breath of fresh air. Simplicity lies at the heart of this program.

Real projects= culture of excellence

A soccer team would have no reason to be if it were not for the real games. These push players to train hard during the week because they understand that the drills and skills will allow them to achieve mastery. When people see the value in idea, no matter how challenging it may be, they will want buy in. 

Education should be no different; it should provide avenues for students to have their work gauged in a real-world context.  And that’s the IA’s ethos.    

Students interviewing Raul Cachay editor from Cosas

In the grade 10 cohort, students are creating a professional magazine featuring 11 great organizations in Peru. They have taken full ownership of this project: they’ve gone on field trips to interview CEO’s, they’ve reached out to publishing companies and put forth a lot of time and effort to get this right.

Real projects shift the focus away from the grade. In this context, the students care more about the audience. Will their target audience find their magazine useful and up to standard? This is the benchmark students go by.  

One can put in the hours trying to devise elaborate unit plans, but unless the audience is an authentic one, there won’t be the conditions necessary for students to push themselves and create work of excellence. It’s as simple as that. 

Blend them like a smoothie 

By having 4 different disciplines join forces, teachers can easily align the skills and concepts to meet the students’ needs.

The Logo of Break Through, the magazine

So going back to the magazine, students know that they must first master the skills and concepts necessary to create a product of value. Therefore, they learn how to use colons and semicolons correctly, learn about the overarching characteristics of great organizations, so that they can synthesize information properly, and use programs such as Photoshop and InDesign effectively. 

This is pivotal especially if one considers that many of the skills and concepts are common in different MYP subjects. So rather than being covered excessively and superficially, skills and concepts are being learned purposefully.

Purpose

As Corey states the IA’s purpose is to help students find theirs.  This simple yet powerful idea helps drive this program.  We believe that if students understand who they are, they’ll be able to reach their full potential, academically and personally.

Too often, students come out of high school with good grades, but lacking reflection and self-awareness. I cannot but ask myself, what’s the value of a grade, if people still lack identity and purpose? 

The fact is that the IA does not only give a purpose to the students. In the IA, I've found my niche; in simplicity, I've found my happiness. 

That Number

Photo by Mr. TinDC

So yesterday, I told my kids in the IA that we’d be crowdsourcing grades. I frankly expected it to be a piece of cake for students because, let’s face it, in the last two months we’ve been throwing all sort of design challenges at them, and they’ve always responded with great resilience and courage. However, this time, something was different. The same kids who had fiercely taken on complex and unfamiliar challenges, were now staring at me somewhat terror-stricken.

The idea was simple enough. Students would look at their growth chart, which outlines the essential skills and concepts, and would then be grading themselves for each of the 4 disciplines using post-its. The post-it would then be stuck to the board and peers would give each other authentic feedback. This would allow students to call on each other if they decided to rate themselves too high or too low.

Is this idea so preposterous? After all, we’re always pushing ourselves to have a growth mindset. Wouldn’t peer assessment be a perfect avenue for us to reflect and become self-aware? As one of the students, Cristobal, put it, years of brainwash cannot be undone in 2 months of IA .

Aha, grades.

When I asked them for feedback, students explained that while they’d welcome the opportunity to nominate those students who have achieved high grades, they’d feel rather uncomfortable shaming others.

As I continued to prompt students, it became blatantly clear that they did not want to confront each other on grades. Even though these students give each other formative feedback all the time on skills and content, they were terrified of giving each other a number.

But why that number?   

When I went home I kept on trying to wrap my head around this. These students see grades as a stigma because they identify themselves with that number.  Sadly, in traditional education grades are really used to sift students into different categories-categories that are virtually impossible to break free of.  

So should we really blame students if they feel so anxious about that number, especially when that number is closely tied to their identity? This is the biggest deceit we instill into kids and now I’m putting it onto my students to help me try to shift their mindsets.

Any ideas? 

PS. Thank you Corey for the help with this post

Think like a hedgehog

The Fox is often portrayed as being crafty and resourceful; when faced with daunting challenges, it will always look for ingenious ways to overcome them. Yet, in its pursuit of the hedgehog, its ingenuity is no match for its prey’s self-awareness. Irrespective of the fox’s elaborate strategy, the hedgehog will always resort to the one thing it knows best: the hedgehog will ball in and fend off the fox.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins uses this metaphor to explain how great companies prevail. Like the hedgehog, great organizations know themselves well; they have an uncomplicated and direct approach that drives their strategy.  The hedgehog concept evolves around these 3 circles: 

While we were discussing this chapter in class, one of my students, Valentina, asked me if the Innovation Academy had a hedgehog concept. For the days that followed, I couldn’t stop thinking about this question. However, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Even though, the IA is still in its early stages, it certainly has a clear hedgehog concept:  

1. Why is this program s0 effective?

In the context of education, it makes more sense to focus on effectiveness. The IA allows us to be effective because we can offer real-world projects where students have a voice and choice. Moreover, the transdisciplinary approach of this program allows them to make overarching connections and create work of value. The very nature of the program promotes a culture of excellence.

2. What is the IA's engine of growth?

Traditional educational systems gauge their success based on the test scores. In the IA, however, we’ve shifted the focus on the student: the program empowers them to understand who they are and what they want out of their life. This is the purpose that drives all of our efforts because it’s the building block for self-awareness and meaningful reflection; after all, if these students are to create their own hedgehog concept in the future, they will have to know themselves first.

3. What are we passionate about?

Corey, Bill and I are deeply passionate about this program because it gives us autonomy, mastery and purpose; we are willing to put in the time and energy because it fulfils us. 

Simplicity is often underrated because it’s uncomplicated and straightforward, but in reality it takes a lot of skill and forethought to break down abstract ideas to their core elements.