Yes, I am always thinking ahead, having the CSF “Strategic” strength. Also, one must have an almost crazy sense/amount of optimism to have this strength and stay in the field of education where institutional progress is typically very slow and out of the box thinking can be really threatening. In public schools your customer grows up and moves on every year. New ones come to replace them. Innovation is typically a push from without. In many independent schools the reverse happens: the customer is growing up and moving on, but innovation is the result of maintaining the “brand” of the school while concurrently meeting the needs of a changing student pool. It’s more like business, where you have a shared enterprise.

If you don’t look to the future and work both backwards and forwards, I think it can be very difficult to have the opportunity to use what Marty Seligman calls “Command Intuition.” This is the ability to make decisions that integrate everything you have learned or experienced and practiced to successfully face a problem with which you have no prior experience, even something you never imagined. This is not a concept that has been researched in school/teacher leadership, but I think it is relevant as the world of education must step up its pace of change and response—There is no choice.

You asked if I have other ideas? Do I! (I have “ideation” as well). I also think that measuring success is very important. We need to expand what we measure and value as “success” and decide that maybe it is not all about math and verbal competencies, or test-taking skills. Next month I will be at a conference that brings PP researchers and educators together. I am very excited about seeing how we can partner our interests and applications. I know from years of working with kids, even in places where we all had nearly identical training or where I was the trainer, that not all teachers are the same. I’d love to find a way to match kids with the teachers they need.

Re: the SAT. Does it measure effectiveness of a person’s education? I’d say maybe, and not for everyone. I work with kids who are brilliant thinkers, but they are not fast test-takers. They cannot compete with the perfect score test-takers, but the quality of their output is often creative, innovative and original. They often have self-regulation in spades and are excited about hard work. (How many teachers would love to have those kids in class?) They persevere and are dependable. If you focus on achievement test scores, you’ll miss this. But we know that in life, these “marshmallow waiters” (instead of eaters) succeed! Another thing to remember is that not everyone needs to go to college, though that is what we are trying to turn high school into: all college-prep, all the time. Students are missing out on technical and entrepreneurial training opportunities. Organizations like Junior Achievement (JA) fill the gap in some communities.

So many more ideas…a lifetime left to work on them 

Thanks for writing!

Very interesting article. It’s almost like you’re thinking ahead - what can schools do to fast forward to kids later going to work - what skills will the kids need? I hadn’t heard of Gardner’s Five Minds - that sounds interesting. Ethical seems especially important given what we’ve seen in business in the past few years.

Your discussion of strengths vs. competencies in schoolchildren reminded me of Margaret’s discussion of strengths vs. competencies for businesspeople.

Measuring success is a topic I am very interested in for psychology in general. Since you say schools vary so much city to city, etc., I wonder what other measures of success are possible - measures that really measure effectiveness of schooling. To me outside the school system, the SAT still seems to be a good measure. Do you have other thoughts?

Senia

Nice to hear from you.

I wonder what would happen if schools figured out (with the help of PP) that happier students and teachers have better attention spans, minds more open for learning, and are more creative and integrative thinkers. We need to show that those outcomes of positive emotion have other desirable outcomes, like increased achievement, lower school violence, etc. Is your school interested in research?

The extended school day pilot is new. The communities who are trying it are comparing their MCAS scores (the test for that state) to other schools with similar demographics to see whether the longer day, expanded offerings, more individual help and more balanced work/play time correlate with achievement. To even try this out these schools got state grants $$. If it works, more schools will likely try it. That’s when things get tricky.

My question is whether we can do one better and create happier places, too. All learning is not cognitive, of course. The interest in the emotional side of psychology has been renewed since fMRI studies have shown emotions preceding thinking. There is lots that PP doesn’t know yet. Wouldn’t it be cool to find out what non-cognitive, non-teacher, non-curriculum things matter, too?

I applaud you for sticking with teaching for a long time. I know how frustrating it is when you know things could be better and instead they seem to be going the other direction. Don’t give up–We need you