 Let’s begin with the “why should you care” part of the question, shall we?
Though I do not believe in silver bullets, I do believe that the emergence of the micro school model is the most important macro trend in education since 1893 when our “modern” school system was designed. Now that I have your attention, allow me to share a few thoughts on what a micro school actually is… Last month I had the pleasure of addressing this very question on a panel at SXSWedu with Matt Candler of 4.0 Schools and Elliot Sanchez of Unlearn Education. Both have thought, written, and (most importantly) done a lot in this realm, and I strongly encourage you to check out their work. So first the obvious: yes, it’s true… micro schools are indeed small. But how small and why? We agreed on our panel that no bigger than 150 was about the right number, and that a lot of it has to do with Dunbar’s number. For those unfamiliar, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar in the 1990s suggested that 150 is the cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships — relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. Let’s be clear: this idea is as radical as it is old. Many of us are asking how schools today can be more personalized — more human. Less institutional. Less one-size-fits-all. One answer is to simply look in the rearview mirror! After all, before we set off in the late 19th century to build a school system for the industrialized age, the one room schoolhouse was a small (dare I say micro), relationship-driven community of learners. And while we’re at it, let’s be equally clear about another radically, old idea: that the learning relationships that matter most in a micro school model done right are those between the students. A smaller, relationship-driven school enables all humans (regardless of age) to be more human with one another — and to learn more from one another. Does this diminish the role of the teacher? Per my last blogpost, I’m all about the stunning colleague! However, this is another rear view mirror moment, as it takes us back to the two driving principals of a Thomas Jefferson education — that learning ultimately comes down to 1) the student putting in the work to educate themselves and 2) the teacher getting the student’s attention long enough and deeply enough for that student to get started and keep going. In fact, I would argue that the “sage on a stage” model where an adult with all the answers stands in front of the classroom to share said answers and discipline said class is responsible for diminishing the role of the teacher. Instead, the real stunning colleague is the “guide on the side” who asks great questions and builds agency in learners — who builds their desire and capacity to learn independently. Lastly, a micro school offers significant operational advantages. My friend, Beth Heaton Seling, put it well years ago: “New school design is anti-lean startup. You spend 18 months designing an untested, un-iterated school model and then — bang — you open a school that will be around for 100 years.” When 70 percent of the cost of most schooling models are tied up in people and buildings, it’s no wonder that for so many of the schools that say “it’s all about the students” — it just simply isn’t. At Blyth-Templeton Academy, we’re very proud to have embraced the micro school model and the level of learning, personalization, and community that comes with such a structure. Our focus on each and every one of our students is unencumbered and I know that if you have the opportunity to talk to our students and parents, you’ll find that this type of environment is having a profound impact on learning. That said, if you’re in and around D.C. this month, why not come pay us a visit and see for yourself at one of our upcoming events?! Not in D.C.? No problem! Here are some of my other favorite micro school models that may be closer to you: Thanks for reading — and for caring! Temp As our kids head back to school, I figured it was time for me to go back to blog! After all, it has been a while since my last post and I tend to do my best learning when I take the time to reflect and share. Inspiration struck last week during a fantastic trip to Toronto to spend a day with our phenomenal Blyth partners in Blyth-Templeton Academy (not quite “Where’s Waldo” but bonus points if you can find me):  This picture encapsulates one of the key takeaways of one of my favorite Harvard Business Review articles, penned a couple years ago by Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer of Netflix. The piece focuses on a PowerPoint deck that explains how the company shaped its culture and motivated performance — and has apparently been viewed more than five million times.
Though challenging, if forced to choose a favorite of the 124 slides, I’m going with slide 20 with the headline: Great Workplace is Stunning Colleagues. Or, in Patty’s words from the HBR article: “The best thing you can do for employees — a perk better than foosball or free sushi — is hire only “A” players to work alongside them. Excellent colleagues trump everything else.” I can honestly say that my greatest joy in building Blyth-Templeton Academy is working with my excellent colleagues. And with appreciation for, yet deference to all my ed-head friends who are cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs about "disrupting" K-12 education, I believe in my heart that the killer app in 21st century learning is the same as the killer app of 19th century learning: the stunning colleague. It’s hard to believe that eight years have passed since Clay Christensen, Curtis Johnson and Michael Horn penned Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Education Will Change the Way the World Learns. Equally hard to believe is that most overlook the fundamental concept that disruption is usually fueled by non-consumption. In other words, most disruptive innovations begin with addressing a portion of the market that cannot consume a good or service absent said innovation [eg. many people in the 1950s couldn’t buy radios until Sony made them affordable and accessible (more on this example here)]. But who are the non-consumers in K-12 education? Whether though traditional schooling or homeschooling, the resounding majority of kids are consuming education. This is precisely why we at Blyth-Templeton Academy like to ask a different question: who are the non-consumers of educating? And we see a huge opportunity to target those currently not consuming teaching! After all, for many potential stunning colleagues, teaching necessitates a full-time commitment and a relative pay cut. However, Blyth-Templeton’s block teaching approach (a focus on two academic subjects each 10 week term versus taking seven classes each day for the entire year) enables us to not only hire stunning full-time teachers, but equally stunning part-time teachers as well (eg. the stay at home parent or PhD candidate for whom teaching full-time for an entire year is untenable). So my final question for you today shouldn’t be a surprise: Are you a stunning non-consumer of educating? If you are, perhaps you should join us?! Perhaps you should teach full-time or part-time with us in Washington D.C.? Perhaps you should apply to become the Head of School for Blyth-Templeton New York City (slated to launch in the fall of 2017)? Perhaps you should refer someone who should?! Needless to say, I can’t wait to hear from you. Stay stunning, Temp Last week I spent a day in my native Chicago and had a phenomenal lunch with Victor Saad, founder of Experience Institute, along with several of the organization’s team members and alumni. As the name suggests, they are essentially challenging young adults to design their own education through experiences around the world. But like so many things, you need to know the story behind it — in fact, I urge you to take two and a half minutes right now to get to know Victor’s incredible story:  Timely inspiration for a Leap Year — not to mention the fact that I’m writing this on Leap Day! Victor not only took a leap himself by taking on 12 apprenticeships in 12 months, he has now created a DIY Leap Kit, a three-month Leap Semester, and a 12-month Leap Year Fellowship.
Now, many of you might be thinking that experiential learning is nothing new. And that’s really the point. Prior to the institutionalization of schooling, arguably all learning was experiential. Not too dissimilar from the fact that organic food is nothing new. After all, prior to the industrialization of food production, ostensibly all food was organic. In fact, Wikipedia reminds us that “for the vast majority of its history, agriculture can be described as having been organic; only during the 20th century was a large supply of new chemicals introduced to the food supply.” As I spent that evening in Chicago at a sold-out screening of the wonderful documentary Most Likely to Succeed (a must-see per a previous blog post), I was reminded that it was ten high school and college leaders known as the Committee of Ten who gathered in 1892 and unanimously agreed that "...every subject which is taught at all in a secondary school should be taught in the same way and to the same extent to every pupil.” A standardized, one-size-fits-all approach that was developed in and for an industrialized age yet has been largely sustained through today’s information age. I love the way that the film’s director/narrator, Greg Whitely, frames it: “Over 100 years ago the United States went from one-room schoolhouses to the robust, industrial model we have now. It was a transformation that was nothing short of miraculous. Perhaps it’s time for another transformation?” Perhaps organic is to 21st century food as experiential is to 21st century learning? Or more importantly, as Ted Dintersmith, Most Likely to Succeed’s executive producer, challenged us to ponder in a Q&A session after the screening: If you were a member of 2016’s equivalent of the Committee of Ten, what learning objectives would you propose today? What would you want future high school graduates to know, and/or be able to do? Maybe that’s missing the point? Perhaps the experiential learning opportunity isn’t to answer for others as the Committee of Ten did, but to answer for yourself — to become your own Committee of One! I for one agree with Victor and his Experience Institute colleagues that “there's never been a more important and available time to reimagine how you learn. This is your chance to think differently about education — to make it something you create, not just consume.” So what will you create? How will you leap? Or in the WonderLab vernacular, how will you use your gifts in a way that brings you joy and serves others? Moreover, as we say at Blyth-Templeton Academy, how will you use your city as your campus? Please do let us know, and in the meantime, happy leaping! Temp  I hope this finds you rested and well in the wake of Thanksgiving, and prior to a phenomenal remainder of the holiday season. Mindful of the time of year, I thought I’d get out ahead of the rapidly approaching New Year’s resolutions gauntlet.
First, by way of reminder: res·o·lu·tion /,rezəˈlo͞oSH(ə)n/ noun 1. a firm decision to do or not to do something. "she kept her resolution not to see Anne any more" synonyms: intention, resolve, decision, intent, aim, plan 2. the action of solving a problem, dispute, or contentious matter. “a satisfactory resolution of the problem” synonyms: solution to, answer to, end to, ending to, settlement of, conclusion to Second, two simple but powerful questions to fuel your New Year's resolution:
While you're thinking of your answers, let me give credit where credit is due... Seth Weinberger is a friend, former boss and mentor who recently put Hackstudio in Evanston, IL on my radar. Hackstudio is a place where kids come together with their supportive peers for two hours every week to learn how to succeed by being who they are. It’s built around a program where kids define their own projects from scratch, work to get them done and learn who they are by confronting the obstacles they encounter along the way. I had the pleasure of visiting Hackstudio last week and comparing notes with the co-founders, Mike Meiners and Randy Blaugh. Upon reflection, I’m not too proud to admit that they are doing WonderLab better than WonderLab has been doing WonderLab! Why do I say that? The short answer is that they've been getting better traction. The longer answer is that we've talked to a lot of past, present and potential WonderLab Families since my July blogpost in the hopes of developing a more scalable, sustainable model. Many of the ideas that emerged (peer teams instead of 1:1 Mentor Guide sessions, a quarterly commitment vs. monthly memberships, more open space, clearer messaging and marketing) are pillars of the Hackstudio model. In fact, the importance of better marketing brings us back to our friend Seth Weinberger… It was nearly two years ago to this day that we were about to launch WonderLab and I was getting Seth’s feedback. After he took it all in he wisely concluded: “Temp, I don’t know whether WonderLab is going to succeed. I hope it does, but it’s always difficult to start a new product or service that people don’t know they need yet. This will be won or lost on good marketing.” A big part of the beauty of Hackstudio’s programmatic approach is in its simplicity, and in turn, its clear and compelling messaging. It’s about figuring out what you want to do, defining done, and then getting to done. It provides “a structured, supportive environment that builds one of life’s most important skills: the ability to achieve one’s goals” — something that a rapidly growing number of people know they need now more than ever in an increasingly complex and dynamic world. So my New Year’s resolution is to incorporate this powerful simplicity into WonderLab’s model. Our definition of done is to one day launch a new and improved, scalable and sustainable WonderLab. Our supportive peers are not only our new friends at Hackstudio, but also old friends here in Austin at the numberlab, The Spark, Acton Academy, Khabele + Strong Incubator, and other like-minded organizations. Needless to say, we'll keep you posted! So what do you want to do in 2016 -- and what is your definition of done? As for supportive peers, you know where to find us! Temp  Considering that this post marks the official transition from the WonderLab blog to the Templeton Learning blog, I think it’s only fitting to begin by answering the question that many of you are likely asking yourselves:
What the H-E double hockey sticks is Templeton Learning again?! Simply put, and per our new website, Templeton Learning is the umbrella organization that oversees WonderLab and our Blyth-Templeton Academy joint venture. But those that know me well—and/or have been reading this blog for the nearly two years that I’ve been writing it—know that simple questions and answers are not my forte. Thus, I’d like to propose a more complex question: Why is Templeton Learning? Why is Templeton Learning? Because we believe that there is no more important work than building high quality, highly accessible K-12 education models for 21st century learners—and we believe that doing so will take many decades of sustained effort. Why? To wrestle with big questions like these:
Why? To dream new answers to these big questions; to build sustainable solutions fueled by these answers; to share and scale these solutions; and ultimately, to refine and repeat them throughout the U.S. and eventually the world. It goes without saying that we cannot do this alone. That is why I couldn’t be more optimistic about this moment in learning, nor grateful for the many like-minded initiatives such as:
Undoubtedly, it will take you. Which is why I couldn’t be more grateful for your time, your interest and your ideas that I hope you will share at [email protected]. Sincerely yours (and a very Happy Halloween), Temp  Years ago I was surprised to see Dave Levin, the co-founder of KIPP and a hero of mine, had disembarked an airplane without his laptop. When I inquired how someone working as hard as he was could survive a long flight without being plugged in, he responded with a query of his own: “When else would I have time to think?”
Today I’m violating the Levin Rule; tapping out this post aboard what has been my usual commute every two or three weeks — a flight between Washington D.C. and Austin on a Southwest 737. That said, I’m pleased to report that I actually have enjoyed some good time to think on the many flights since my last blogpost. As many of you know, I’ve been spending quite a bit of time in D.C. working to help launch Blyth-Templeton Academy, a new, independent high school model born from the question: What could/should a 21st century U.S. high school do for students, and what should it look like? Which leads to the first of my three updates… I’m thrilled to announce that Blyth-Templeton Academy opened its doors to seventeen phenomenal students and their families on Tuesday, September 8, 2015. I’m even more excited to share that having just visited the school in its fourth week, that we’re off to an incredible start — building an institution worthy of our students and their potential. In my brief remarks on that opening day, I posed a question to those founding families and students: What are your gifts, and how can you use them in a way that brings you joy and serves others? I then suggested to them that it was indeed a gift to have such a school and community in which to explore that question — much less to be guided by talented, empathetic educators for whom their answer to that question was teaching at Blyth-Templeton Academy. Perhaps that question sounds familiar? I’ve actually posed it several times before in this blog, as this question is at the core of WonderLab’s methodology for students to dream a big idea, then do it, share it, and iterate it. Which leads to my second update… I’m equally thrilled to share that Anna Smith, WonderLab’s wonderfully talented Director of Programs, has packaged the WonderLab approach into a school-based quest that Blyth-Templeton Academy students are currently piloting. It’s certainly still early innings, but we’re getting tons of great feedback on the viability of the school partnership channel. Anna has also been busy channeling one of her heroes, game designer Jane McGonigal (if that name doesn't ring a bell, I encourage you to join the nearly four million people who have watched her TED Talk “Gaming Can Make a Better World”), and building a beta version of a game-based WonderLab quest for homeschoolers or those in traditional schools to use in and/or out of the classroom. At a Templeton Learning board meeting in a few weeks, we intend to determine whether the school-based or game-based strategy offers the most viable path forward for WonderLab. Which, in turn, leads to my third and final update today… My next post will come to you from Templeton Learning. After all, Templeton Learning is the umbrella organization for both WonderLab and Blyth-Templeton Academy. We think this makes sense given the alignment between the two sub-entities and the fact that so much of what we’re learning — not to mention dreaming, doing, sharing, and iterating — is tied up in both entities. Time to stow the laptop, unplug, and think. Back soon and best in the meantime, Temp Per my last blogpost, we have spent the last month and a half reflecting and conducting interviews with the wonderful Parents and Learners that we've talked with or worked with to date with the goal of continually building a better WonderLab. We set out to walk our talk --- aligning our query with the same WonderLab Venn diagram that we use to help guide our Learners:  What are we, WonderLab, good at? What do we, the WonderLab Team, love? What does the world need? What can we be paid for?
So what did we learn?! We learned that WonderLab is really good at engaging kids through deep listening fueled by genuine empathy. So many of the conversations that we had ended up with a refrain perhaps best captured in a conversation that I had with a WonderLab parent last fall: “I didn’t quite understand what this was when we signed up. By my daughter’s storytelling of what she was doing at WonderLab, it became clearer. It was one-on-one. You were asking her questions like a grown-up. Her opinions were taken very seriously --- and she totally responds to that.” The good news is that listening empathetically is something that we (the WonderLab Team) love. The challenge is that our current model is neither scalable (that which the world needs) nor sustainable (that which WonderLab can be paid for). Why? Because this deeply human exercise of listening empathetically one-on-one is relatively difficult to scale and expensive. I love Princeton University President Chris Eisgruber’s explanation (see “The Changing Landscape of Higher Education: MOOCs, Money and the Future of Liberal Arts Education”): “What Princeton offers… is intense and unrelenting engagement… and engagement is expensive. Engagement is essential to learning, and, in general, engagement is expensive. It is expensive because it turns on putting students in contact with faculty members in as close to a one-on-one relationship as you can get. So engagement drives labor costs, and labor costs are what make education expensive.” I can honestly say that I knew this when starting WonderLab. In fact, I was actually in the audience when then President-elect Eisgruber spoke those words, nodding enthusiastically. That said, I thought our part-time Mentor Guides and modest physical Lab would provide the right mix of engagement, scalability and affordability --- and I now readily admit that I was wrong. So what's next?! Again, walking our talk, we’re pivoting. We are trying to find the right questions that might lead us to the best answers. And ultimately, we will find another way. What is a scalable and sustainable delivery mechanism for WonderLab to motivate people to love learning? How can we build a model where caring individuals listen empathetically to engaged WonderLab Learners in a group setting? In schools? In existing after school programs? Outside schools? In homeschool settings? How we can use technology as a tool? How can we do so in a way that frees up the humans to be more human with one another? Late last month we suspended our current Lab-centric, one-on-one model, and at a Templeton Learning Board meeting last week, we determined that WonderLab will discontinue this model to focus our energies on developing a new way to package the WonderLab curriculum and methodologies for like-minded schools and/or homeschooling families. Luckily for us, Blyth-Templeton Academy’s upcoming launch in Washington D.C. this fall may provide an opportunity to pilot a school-based WonderLab offering, and some of the phenomenal homeschooling families that we’ve worked with in Austin to date have expressed interest in piloting a homeschooler-centric offering. There is no shortage of work to be done in the next couple months, and though we’ll be busy learning by dreaming and doing --- walking our talk yet again --- we’ll keep sharing! Thanks for reading, and thanks to all those who have provided the ideas and insights that have gotten us this far. Sincerely yours, Temp  Ben Wallersten is another member of the great Team launching Blyth-Templeton Academy in Washington D.C. that I mentioned in my last post. This month I have him to thank for inspiration, as I've been thinking a lot about something Ben and I first talked about years ago: Flintstone Vitamins.
I was complaining to him that post-secondary education entrepreneurs whose student and customer are often one in the same have it relatively easy. After all, in K-12 you have parents and kids who often have different needs and motivations. He knowingly smiled and replied that like many K-12 education entrepreneurs I was seeking the learning equivalent of a Flintstone Vitamin — something which parents love because they are good for their kids and that kids love because they are delicious. First of all, when we launched WonderLab we knew that it was harder to sell vitamins than aspirin. Most human beings are more reactive than proactive, and many parents and kids alike often sign up for tutoring in the wake of a bad grade to make the pain go away. But we believed then — and still believe -- that the bigger opportunity is for kids to be proactively and genuinely motivated to love learning. For learning to be delicious! However, motivation is a tricky thing that is both intrinsically and extrinsically fueled. I truly believe that hard-wired into the DNA of every parent is the intrinsic motivation for their child to thrive. But there is also the extrinsic motivation among parents for kids to thrive in the eyes of other friends/parents, as their children's achievements (games won, awards, college acceptances, etc.) become a proxy for good parenting. At WonderLab we believe that all kids have an inspired idea in them that will change the world. Put another way, we believe that hard-wired into their DNA is the intrinsic motivation to love learning about something. But of course, the extrinsic motivations get tricky when kids transition from early childhood where parents and teachers are the authority figures to adolescence when concern for peers' opinions takes over. I'm thinking more about this these days because -- as crazy as this sounds -- WonderLab is yet to build the best vitamin that we can build. But I'm heartened by the fact that the first Flintstone Vitamin didn't work very well. They basically took a vitamin and coated it with sugar, only to realize that kids were smarter. Kids would simply suck off the candy coating then spit out the tasteless vitamin. Thus, model 2.0 fused the vitamin and the sugar together. In the month to come, we'll be taking stock of all that we've learned to date, as well as interviewing past, present and future WonderLab Learners and Parents, in the hopes of continually building a better WonderLab. Needless to say, we'll keep you posted on our progress!  David Brooks’ phenomenal op-ed a couple weeks ago entitled “The Moral Bucket List,” adapted from his new book The Road to Character, is a must-read if you missed it.
He writes thoughtfully about people who radiate “an inner light” and attempts to understand “how deeply good people got that way.” Brooks observes “that wonderful people are made, not born — that the people I admired had achieved an unfakeable inner virtue.” An authentic goodness. I’m grateful for Sam Blyth, a friend and colleague with whom I’m proud to be part of a team of wonderful people working to launch Blyth-Templeton Academy, a quality, affordable, private high school that opens this fall in Washington, D.C. Sam not only forwarded me the Brooks op-ed, but he also did so posing the following, powerful question that captures the essay’s essence: “What kind of adventures produce goodness, rather than build résumés?” I believe that this question gets to the heart of a key tension — one that is far from new, but is coming to a head like never before in an age of increased population, transparency, and in turn, college selectivity. To reword Sam's question: How do we encourage and enable young people to follow their hearts and do extraordinary things — yet do them not as a means to an end, but to do them with authenticity? I say this question is far from new because I recall a time in my increasingly distant past when many of us were encouraged to do more community service and other “good” things in order to round out ourrésumés/college applications. Interestingly, more and more colleges are beginning to promote what their students have done orcreated — not their SAT scores. See Boston University’s “Interesting Student Facts” as a case in point. But are these students doing and creating authentically? Does it matter? At WonderLab, we think it matters a lot. Which leads me to Gage and Robby. In yesterday’s WonderLab Learner Exhibition, they both presented their work to an audience of family and friends. Gage is on a mission to design — and one day build — a children’s museum like none you’ve ever seen. Robby is designing/building a Rube Goldberg machine that is as unique as Robby himself. Both are working on these projects because a trusted, caring adult — in this case, Anna Smith, their WonderLab Mentor Guide — began a line of inquiry that is at the heart of what we do here: What motivates you to love learning? More specifically, she asked: what are you good at? What do you love? What does the world need? What might you get paid for (eventually)? Where do your answers intersect? In the end, might these inspired projects build their résumés? Sure. That said, I assure you that the results of a straw poll that I took in the wake of the event revealed that not a single person fortunate enough to have attended yesterday’s Exhibition doubted their authenticity and/or their goodness. These are the kind of adventures that produce goodness, and these are the kinds of kids developing their inner light. Perhaps you'd like to refer a Learner who should join them? |
AuthorTemp Keller, Templeton Learning Co-Founder and CEO Archives
June 2017
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