Defining Innovation

                  

I was asked to say a few words to the Board of Trustees about myself, my position and my work so far. After the presentation, I took my notes and build them out into a longer, more reflective piece that helped me center my thinking. Here it is. 

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Thank you, it is a pleasure to be with you all today and an honor for me to be serving as the school’s first Chief Innovation Officer.

Before I take a stab at defining innovation, I wanted to share a little bit about me.

I was born in New England, raised in Kentucky, went to school in Chicago school and have lived in Southern California since 2001. That means I know how to sail, I can play basketball, I know what it feels like for the inside of your nose to freeze, but now I put on a puffy jacket whenever it drops below 70 degrees.

I received my BA in Radio, TV, film and I have an MA in Educational Technology. I have worked as a firefighter, an outdoor education/PE teacher, a history department chair, a technology integrationist, a middle school director and assistant head of school. I am also a wife and the mother of a spitfire of a seven-year-old daughter who reminds me every day how little I really know.

I preface my presentation with this introduction so you have a better idea of what brings me to this type of work in education, and the lens through which I see the work.

I am interested in a lot of different things. I believe that insight, creativity and new ideas come at the intersection of disciplines and are born of complexity and seemingly mismatched experiences. I believe that chance favors the connected mind and the connected educator.

I also believe that change is a constant. As Eric Shinseki said “If you dislike change then you are going to dislike irrelevance even more.” With a growth mindset and curiosity, people and organizations will continue to “know better and do better,” to paraphrase Maya Angelou.

Finally, I subscribe to the Stanford D.School’s saying that “Duct tape, empathy and radical collaboration are tools for changing the world.” Change takes real work, it requires rolling up your sleeves and getting things done. But that change has a better chance of being innovative when you’ve taken the time to build relationships, find understanding and work alongside a team with a diversity of experience and opinion.

So on to my working definition on innovation, re-mixed from a series on definitions I have seen or heard.

“Innovation is executing an idea which addresses a specific challenge and achieves value for both the students and the school.”

In other words, if you have many great ideas you are creative, but if you are able to execute the ideas which bring value to students, that is innovation.

Now it always feels good to have a definition that sounds all neat and tidy, but in practice and in an organization (especially a uniquely human organization like a school) the reality is much, much messier.

Innovative work looks like this “Design Squiggle” by Damien Newman.

With that understanding, I see the work of the Chief Innovation Officer as that of building capacity and building a culture of iterative change. Innovation is a process, not a product. It is a journey, not a destination.

Along that journey I hope to:

1.     Frame challenges correctly – Identifying the problem to be solved is often the hardest part of the design/innovation process!

2.    Communicate a clear focus – Human beings can only hold so many things in their head at once, and it is often less than we might imagine. Too many initiatives can be worse than none at all.

3.    Connect the work to the rest of the school – In order to have buy in, you have to have relevance. Constituencies have to see how the work is benefitting students.

4.    Balance iterative change with disruptive change – You can go too fast and you can go too slow in this work. As consultant Robert Green put it, as a leader you need to continually move between “the balcony to the dance floor.” In other words, this position needs have “its head in the clouds” but also “get stuck in the weeds” in order for innovative change to be successful.

So that’s the 10,000ft view of me and my thinking to this point about the Chief Innovation Officer role. What does that look like on a daily basis?

First, it is technology. Right now, I am spending time getting to know the IT team and better understand the current infrastructure, hardware, software and information systems in place at the school. I am managing the technology budget and examining our three to five year technology plan. This is the bedrock from which we can build innovative education technology initiatives and technology education programs. There are already pockets of outstanding work being done in the areas of ed-tech and tech-ed, and the advantage of a position with a K-12 lens is the opportunity to give these programs and people the coordination, connection and/or acceleration they need and deserve.  

But my work is much more than technology. As researcher Michael Fullen puts it “Learning is the driver, technology is the accelerator." The entire educational ecosystem is a part of innovation -- program, pedagogy, assessment and professional development.

Program: Are there more opportunities for interdisciplinary work? Should we consider adding or removing subjects or courses? How can we achieve depth of study over breath of study in ways that promote student choice and agency?

Pedagogy: How can I play a role as instructional coach? What research informed teaching strategies are not yet widely known or implemented? What assumptions must we question in order to better personalize instruction for each learner? 

Professional Development: How can we give teachers more voice and choice in their learning? How might the PD we offer model effective and innovative instructional strategies? What growth opportunities best support the needs of our faculty?

Assessment: How do we know that students have learned? Where can we find evidence of learning beyond test scores and AP exams? What role does Wiggin’s backward design play in how we build our lessons, courses and program?

Ultimately, innovation comes down to mindset and a willingness to learn and try and grow. It takes time and patience and endurance. The business of schools is messy and beautiful and hard and so very human. But as Horace Mann said “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”