What’s the difference between the job to be done by a Milky Way bar and the job to be done by a Snickers bar? And what does that have to do with schools? As it turns out, a lot, according to Bob Moesta. The author, professor, innovator, and founder of The Re-Wired Group joins New View EDU to outline how reframing our thinking about the jobs to be done by our schools can transform the way we approach hiring, retention, admissions, and student engagement.
Bob sits down with host Tim Fish for a candid conversation about his journey from a struggling student with dyslexia, to an entrepreneur and innovator whose work helped contribute to the famous Betty White Snickers ad campaign. Bob shares that in his view, dyslexia was a gift that helped him unlock his superpowers—if he couldn’t fit into the traditional educational system, he would have to learn to harness his divergent thinking to do something new and different.
One of the strengths Bob says he has cultivated through his life experiences is empathy, and through that empathy, he developed a keen ability to tap into the emotional experience inherent in every customer journey—including the relationship of a family to a school. Starting from the premise that we choose products and experiences for their emotional value to our lives, Bob maintains that in the world of independent schools, we often think about that value all wrong. While schools may say they’re offering perks like small class sizes or state-of-the-art facilities, and parents may list those as reasons they’ve chosen the school for their kids, Bob says the real motivators are very different.
How many of us have taken a history class? But what about a class on the future? Or a class on how to navigate ambiguity? These are the kinds of educational experiences Lisa Kay Solomon urges educators to design for students to prepare them for an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
Lisa—former co-host of New View EDU—returns to join host Tim Fish for a discussion about the importance of teaching futures thinking. Building off her work at the Stanford d.school and her popular course “Inventing the Future,” Lisa shares ideas and examples of ways educators can incorporate a future-focused mindset into classrooms, both K-12 and beyond.
Arguing that the first time we learn to deal with ambiguity and multiple potential outcomes should not be while we’re in the thick of a real-world crisis, Lisa points to the many ways in which futures thinking intersects with strategic planning, school leadership, and preparation for life. She shares that the work of a futurist is not to predict the future but to scenario plan, anticipating many possibilities and constructing rich narratives and responses to each.
Create bravely. That’s the mantra of twin brothers Peter and Paul Reynolds. Together, they have built a life of service to others through creativity as authors, illustrators, designers, educators, bookstore owners, and digital media executives. They share a passion for inspiring others and helping people find their path in life through creativity, kindness, and what they call “hard fun.”
Peter, left, and Paul join host Tim Fish to talk about how their shared work has led them to become deeply involved in schools, both through working with students and through founding initiatives to uplift and support educators. Starting with their background, the brothers share how their civic-minded parents raised them with the mindset that even when it feels like the world is falling apart, we can make things better by remaining hopeful. That early inspiration led them to look for ways to improve the world through everything they do.
Much of the Reynolds’ work has centered around the importance of storytelling. Peter is an award-winning author and illustrator, perhaps best known for his book The Dot, which has inspired educators everywhere through the annual International Dot Day. Paul helms FableVision Studios, a multimedia production studio in Boston specializing in educational game design and mission-driven digital media projects. Together, the brothers own The Blue Bunny Books and Toys and founded The Reynolds Center for Teaching and Learning. All of these projects, as well as many others, stay true to the ideal of “creating bravely” and “dipping things in story.” Both children and adults, the brothers say, reap the benefits of encouraging messages delivered playfully.
Well-being. Engagement. Belonging. These three values are the “trifecta” of attributes for healthy and productive learning, according to this week's guest. But how do we design learning environments that put the focus on that trifecta, without diminishing the educational achievement, challenge, and rigor we believe our students deserve?
Denise Pope, the co-founder of Challenge Success, returns to New View EDU to help host Tim Fish unravel the tricky issues around creating climates of care in our classrooms while also upholding academic standards. First and foremost, Denise says, we must stop thinking of “building community” as a box we’ve checked when everyone in a school is nice to each other most of the time. True community-building, in a way that will benefit students long-term, is a process of teaching students to work with others in meaningful ways despite different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. When students feel needed as part of a group, and see the value each person brings to the work, then the pathway to an authentic sense of belonging opens.
Denise shares several examples of how Challenge Success works with schools to help them make small, incremental changes that infuse school with joy and ambition and help them pursue the trifecta of well-being, engagement, and belonging for every student.
“Knowing what we now know, we can no longer do what we now do. To do so is educational malpractice.” That provocative statement, by Stephanie Pace-Marshall, is one of the principles that guides this week's guest through his work redesigning education for the modern era. In this episode of New View EDU, globally recognized writer, filmmaker, and school designer Sam Chaltain asks listeners to consider how the world has changed since our school system was designed, and what educational “sacred cows” schools need to dispense with to keep pace with the rapid evolution of society.
Sam and host Tim Fish tackle these questions and more, starting with a list of the many practices Sam believes are no longer suitable for today’s students. Time-honored systems like age-based groupings, discrete subject areas, 180-day calendars, and even grades are all up for scrutiny. Sam posits that the purpose of school no longer can be strictly about content acquisition and retention—that the real work lies in helping each individual student identify their personal strengths, interests, and potential path forward in life. To do so, he says, may involve teaching traditional content areas like chemistry or history…or may not. Whatever we choose to teach, Sam’s goal is to pursue the “conditions for epiphany.”
We know we need to redesign our schools to reflect the future our students will inhabit. Issues of mental health, well-being, mattering, and social-emotional growth are emerging as vitally important challenges to solve—to say nothing of the continued need to provide a high-quality, rigorous, and academically sound education environment. But while we may understand why an overhaul of our practices is essential to success, the big question remains: How?
Renowned education thought leader Jay McTighe returns to New View EDU to help provide some of the answers. Jay and host Tim Fish engage in a deep, tactical, and logical conversation about how school leaders can identify the goals they’re pursuing and utilize a design process that provides clear outcomes. Offering the premise that “rote learning of factual information is an insufficient preparation” for an ever-changing, unpredictable future, Jay encourages educators to instead focus on providing a framework that will help students apply concepts and skills to unknown challenges.
Elaborating on this concept, which he refers to as “designing for transfer,” Jay proposes that schools should think of curriculum as a series of transferable skills that build upon one another—not ignoring content, but using it to illustrate the biggest ideas students will need to help them build their toolbox for the future.
We all want our students to excel. In many ways, schools are set up to foster achievement—to help students reach their potential, strive for great things, and move on to success after graduation. But focusing on achievement can create a culture that quickly becomes toxic to kids. Where do we cross the line, and what can we do about it?
In the Season 6 premiere, Jennifer Wallace, bestselling author of Never Enough, and NAIS President Debra P. Wilson join host Tim Fish for an in-depth discussion of the research surrounding the damage achievement culture is doing to American students. They talk about what Jennifer uncovered through the process of writing her book that may be helpful to educators and parents. After learning that students at highly ranked schools in the U.S. were officially classified as an “at-risk” group, with higher rates of clinical depression, anxiety, and substance use than their peers, Jennifer probed to find out more about the factors that led to this trend.
The good news is that there are steps we can all take to reverse these troubling findings. Jennifer, Debra, and Tim discuss the importance of creating environments that support “mattering”—the idea that a healthy relationship to achievement can grow through allowing students to find places where they feel needed and valued and are motivated by a deep connection to the task.