WSJ: Schools As ‘Maker Spaces’

In the WSJ’s The Future of Everything section on Saturday April 21, 2018, I noticed an article titled “Schools As ‘Maker Spaces” by Leigh Kamping Carder. The article is brief, but it does point to several important ideas when it comes to introducing creativity to elementary and middle school students.

1. “…cues from Silicon Valley’s startup incubators.” A better model than a startup incubator may be a research laboratory where experimental skills are nurtured. Students should pick up skills which can be reproduced and improved over time. A laboratory may capture a youth’s imagination more vividly than an incubator.
2. “…flexible work groups.” This is definitely worth exploring further. Flexible workspaces as well as collaboration groups are primers to creative productivity. One could also extend flexibility to the work styles, communication channels and oversight. Encourage divergent thinking.
3. “Maker Spaces.” At Stanford, we have the d.School, Product Realization Labs and the create:space. They’re spaces which provides nodes to creative activity. Within each node are sub-nodes which include the equipment (a 3D printer was mentioned in the article) and other tools necessary for the activity. How are these nodes being connected?
4. “Educators are still learning how students can best benefit from such spaces.” Let the experimental design begin.

WSJ: District Drops Plan to Name School After Blackstone CEO

A page A3 article titled “District Drops Plan to Name School After Blackstone CEO” by Tawnell D. Hobbs appears in the April 13, 2018 of the WSJ. I am in the process of wrapping up composition of a YCISL white paper on adding Philanthropy to the YCISL program as a platform and cause.

The article reports on some gesticulation over a $25 million gift to a public school. This incident is interesting in that it highlights the distinctive features of conditional vs un-conditional philanthropic gifts of the monetary kind. For this conditional gift which involved naming and re-naming, a blanket of negative emotion was thrown on and it is certain that all named stakeholders (community members, the school board, the donor, and all other parties enabling the transaction) have had their positivity sucked out of them. Applying the lesson from Alison Ledgerwood’s TEDx Talk “Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck)”: there was a framing problem for this particular gift and getting into the negative will have a lasting impact outweighing a series of positives. That’s too bad.

Could the gift have been framed in an un-conditional manner and the re-naming of the school be floated as a possible sign of gratitude? Should the re-naming of the school have been just one of the options that came up as a result of brainstorming ways to show gratitude? Could that brainstorming have been done in a way that all stakeholders respect the ideas expressed? What kind of prototyping of the most promising ideas could have been done? Do people prototype philanthropic ideas (I don’t know) or is this usually set up with pre-set extrinsic motivators to draw in donors? How do you decide what the best “skin” is to wrap around the engineering/design/architecture so that the beneficiaries and overseers will focus on the positives? How (timing, content and attributes) was the donation articulated? Did all stakeholders understand the PROMISE and the ASK?

I am wondering whether the lessons we incorporate into and attempt to impart through the YCISL program can help our students navigate through philanthropy projects and build LI (Leadership Intelligence). Maybe. I can’t wait to try it this summer.

WSJ: The Gatekeeper Tests

The lead article in the Review section of the Wall Street Journal published Saturday/Sunday, March 10-11, 2018 is titled “The Gatekeeper Tests” and written by Nathan Kuncel and Paul Sackett. This article essentially supports the use of SAT and ACT in college admissions. Personally, I believe it is time for a ground-up replacement of these tests and find it no surprise that the credits/disclosure section of this article indicates “In the past they have received research funding from the College Board.” The article is adapted from a publication Kuncel and Sackett authored.

This article is sectioned into myths and research-based arguments why they are misconceived. My read of this article gave me a feeling that the arguments have good intentions (justifying current practice) but lack full perspective. From the use of the words “research” and “facts”, it is clear their perspective is defensive.

Many of us know that GRADES DON’T MATTER. I would add that SAT/ACT/AP scores mean even less. This ties in well with another WSJ article that I have just commented on titled ” More Companies Teach Workers What Colleges Don’t.” In that comment, I posted a simple graphic that shows the balance of college graduates vs pre-college graduates going into the workforce. The main effect of pushing more students to college creates the greatest economic benefit for test providers (I would have named College Board specifically if I were just focused on US college admissions). Viewed as an exercise in mass action, more college applicants (and more applications thanks to technology) means more test fees. A higher level of competitiveness also results in more repeated testing -> higher fee revenue from each test taker. Just like an argument I saw for supporting the income tax preparation industry, I would believe that the college admission testing industry is on a roll (let’s also include test prep as well as college application counseling services). I am look forward to more colleges making the SAT and ACT optional.

OK, now to my views of the myths.

Myth: Tests Only Predict First-Year Grades. Successful SAT/ACT test takers are largely likely to be successful GRE/GMAT/LSAT/MCAT etc test takers. Test taking is a skill and scales from low to high. Test taking skills can also influence college course grades which rely wholly or heavily on proctored tests (as opposed to take-home finals, papers and presentations). The authors point to evidence that high test scores are predictors of several forms of outstanding achievement; there is no mention of how many high test score students end up with lower college measures and outcomes (remember the effect of students finding themselves average in college because of the selectivity in the admission process). Consider too how students with low Math and Analytical test scores may avoid STEM majors. How too to rationalize foreign students who are able to game the tests by conditioning?; I have read elsewhere about how the college drop-out rate for foreign students is increasing.

Myth: Tests Are Not Related to Success in the Real World. College admission tests measure convergent thinking. They are mostly made up of multiple choice questions – and even when there are other question formats, the key is simply to deduce the right answer (even in the essay). In YCISL, we emphasize the practice of preceding convergent thinking with divergent thinking, and repeating the cycle. Our program also positions real world success as being largely determined by fast thinking (improvisational) skills as well as emotional intelligence which are certainly not what these tests are testing.

Myth: Beyond A Certain Point, Higher Scores Don’t Matter. Higher scores really only matter to one group of people – college admissions staff. And the reason is to cut the workload down in the face of soaring numbers of applications due to the ease of applying thanks to technology and a larger proportion of many countries’ population aiming for college. When I interview students for on-campus jobs, I don’t ask for test scores (they don’t even put it on their resumes). Faculty seeking PhD students for their research groups couldn’t care less. An even when I worked in the tech industry, the interview never touched on test scores. You can’t even use GPAs any more either. So for all practical real world post-college purposes, test scores are buried history.

Myth: Common Alternatives to Tests Are More Useful. It is a pity that the authors discount letters of recommendations, personal statements and interviews in favor of test scores. They seem to miss the modern purpose of the college experience and the importance of self-fulfillment. They are stuck on older indicators of career success such as those mentioned in Ken Robinson’s TEDTalk about time of the Industrial Revolution. One is more likely to find a nugget among those with compelling personal stories (a topic in the YCISL program) than among test scores that measure a specific cohort on a specific date and less so between cohorts. Students would benefit more from self-presentation skills than test scores.

Myth: Tests Are Just Measures of Social Class. This is better phrased as a null hypothesis “Social Class has no influence on test scores” because if you look hard enough, you will likely see pockets of it. But the causation-correlation connection is weak because we also know that students from outside the US social structure have a propensity to ace the SAT tests. This could be due to grit (taken from the title of Angela Lee Duckworth’s TEDTalk) due to the higher barrier that foreign students perceive. Foreign applicants may also have an advantage due to the rigor of their education culture. Even within the US, I would hazard a guess that there are a measurable number of students who aced the SAT without any special prep.

Myth: Test Prep and Coaching Produce Large Score Gains. If we view tests like the SAT and ACT as IQ test derivatives then score gains are unlikely to come from test prep and coaching. But if you put all the factors discussed above together, they are not perfect IQ tests because there is an element of endurance and focus in taking these tests. And how do you build up endurance and help focus? You take practice tests and get someone to shift your viewpoint on test problems you can’t seem to get focus on. Again, these are test taking skills.

Myth: Tests Prevent Diversity in Admissions. Entering college cohorts are becoming diverse despite test scores and not because of them. There is a variety of options open to admissions staff to create the diversity. At my own college, we are quick to mention the presence of scholar athletes. And you may have heard about the legal actions being taken against Harvard. Test scores are a source of frustration.

I would disagree that such standardized test scores are “invaluable” and “effective” – we are just waiting for a revolution – one in which such tests are demoted to where they really belong. It is time to innovate and leverage intrinsic motivation in how we help willing students to pursue their passions for learning and self-development. Let’s get a system which helps you find the right college instead of keeping you in the dark.

WSJ: More Companies Teach Workers What Colleges Don’t

There was an online WSJ article today (March, 22, 2018) titled “More Companies Teach Workers What Colleges Don’t” by Douglas Belkin (https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-companies-teach-workers-what-colleges-dont-1521727200) which told about several companies which have training programs for new employees. These training programs don’t seem like anything new and the complaints by employers that colleges are not preparing graduates as perfect fits for their companies reflects usual me-me-me thinking.

What is different now though is how employers are having to take their pick from more college graduates (because government is pushing more students into college programs) who have gone through the 4-year memorization mill (that’s what undergraduate education is about). There are several problems with this development.

1. ISSUE OF MASS BALANCE. More college graduates means fewer pre-college candidates. There just are fewer prospective employees that have not been conditioned by colleges to memorize (of course, high schools seem to be picking up that slack). The pool of pre-college candidates that do not go to college contains many who struggled with the “memorization” challenges of secondary education and possess the critical “out-of-box” thinking that employers today desire.
2. ISSUE OF GROWING NUMBER OF COLLEGE GRADUATES WHO ARE AVERAGE OR BELOW AVERAGE AMONG PEERS. More students in college inflates the quality bell curve of college graduates. The main benefit of putting more students into tertiary education is increasing the number seeking advanced studies and doctoral research. Competitive employers are usually interested in the top decile of graduates from the top few percentile of colleges, so there is a slight benefit there. However, there will be a more noticeable increase in the lower quartiles of the distribution; that is, more average and below average students for whom further higher education is not an option. This is the candidate pool that has grown for most employers to select from, and where we find a magnified mis-match.
3. ISSUE OF NEED FOR REMEDIAL COURSEWORK IN EARLY COLLEGE. Pushing more students into college prep and extending education for many to an additional 4 years has lowered the quality of students entering college. This is because secondary education can now rely more on colleges providing remedial courses, especially in writing, as part of an undergraduate degree program. Further, college prep has led to high schools struggling to cope with being a high school (reality) yet simulating a college education (virtuality). So the quality shift is across the whole applicant pool and not just the tail end.

It is therefore not a surprise that employers will place less weight on a college degree (hopefully, where the college degree is from also does not matter as much) and focus on skills uncovered in interviews, initial hiring periods and other opportunities to observe performance. Employers could probably use a new kind of assessment: one which evaluates problem-solving and collaboration aptitude before college. This could be used to identify and select candidates for in-house training programs (as an alternative to college) as well as a progress measure of whether workplace aptitude grew stronger in college (you really can’t tell from a college transcript). There are some employers who apply such a tool during their hiring process and I’ve seen effective results. But the idea is to make such an assessment as universal as existing college entrance exams.

In the YCISL program, we emphasize skills as tools to leverage knowledge. Our task is to bring awareness and attention to these skills so that students can educate themselves in this framework. We also believe that problem-solving and collaboration aptitude should be assessed at the beginning and end of each year in secondary education. This is to give the teacher a clearer view of individual skill levels as well as progress patterns. Without such information, we have the one-size-fits-all that ails our systems of education today.

Reflection: The Recommendation Letter

This is just a short reflection on the thoughts that jump up whenever someone asks me for a recommendation letter.

I usually have a limit of writing one recommendation letter per year. It’s hard to be original and genuine in composing the letter.

There is an exception to this rule, and that’s if a requestor has a long and memorable history of interaction (for example, my TA from 2010 who became a regular participant in my YCISL program). But most requestors have interacted with me on the order of days to weeks. It is from among these requestors that I am very selective in agreeing to a recommendation letter and my purpose needs to be strong and clear.

I am quite particular about the traits I need to have observed (and remembered). The three traits that I typically recall and draw upon are project accomplishment, personal and effectual energy, and sense of purpose. These contribute to the story that I would tell with the requestor and I as main characters.

If I feel an imbalance between these two characters of the story, I would be uneasy about being a recommender.

Thinking in terms of a bell curve (as I oft do), if the requestor is not at the very top end, then there is probably something negative on my mind. I would not want to be a recommender in this case either. There is a chance to turn this around though – by informing me of a plan to get to the top end.

I believe in the 3-parts of the Your Personal Story that we craft in our YCISL workshops. The Past element is what I am usually provided (resume, for example). The Who am I? Present element is typically the main driver in getting me motivated (this comes from our recent interactions). And the Future Self is where I take a guess at fit and determine how excited I get about the potential outcome.

So what does a prospective requestor need to do to get me to agree? The first is being confident that I would present only strengths and not in any significance about weaknesses. The second is to approach me with the request in a timely and informative manner – last minute or vague requests are a big turn-off. Third is to meet with me, and make sure I like Your Personal Story.

WSJ: Work Before Fun? That Might Not Always Be Best

In the Wealth Management section of the Monday October 23, 2017 issue of the WSJ, Demetria Gallegos wrote the article “Work Before Fun? That Might Not Always Be Best” which cites a research article in Psychological Science by O’Brien & Roney (2017) titled “Worth the Wait? Leisure Can Be Just as Enjoyable With Work Left Undone.” My commentary and analysis is based on the WSJ article by Gallegos and the research article’s abstract.

This topic reminds me of Shawn Achor’s question about the order of success and happiness, and the overall subject of positivity as related to productivity. The difference may be that Achor focuses on the pursuit of success and happiness, whereas O’Brien and Roney are looking at the pursuit of fun and work. Both are looking to produce productivity gain.

But what if we took a fuzzy view of work/fun? That is, what if work and fun were not neat packages that could only be sequentially ordered? For example, what if work and fun could be in parallel? Yes, have fun doing your work. This is an idea I remember from Richard St. John’s “8 Secrets of Success” and I think is closely linked to the motivational feeling of purpose. In YCISL, most of our activities are framed as games – to promote the “fun factor” which I have learned from coaching youth.

We could also extend this thought to having work paired with fun. Not all work has to be paired (there are some things we have to do that we might not feel that it is fun) but we can influence productivity by selectively choosing specific tasks to have a fun component. In the chemistry analogies I like to use, work could be bonded to fun and it doesn’t have to be just a 1:1 combination. If I could bring in Daniel Pink’s ideas on intrinsic motivation, we could try to bond mastery, autonomy and purpose to work in order to gain that significant and sustainable productivity gain.

While these latter views of the work-fun system are more complex, I feel that a sequential order for work and fun (as designed in the published study) is not a sustainable solution. The actual problem may be bureaucratic policies that only measure work (at work) and try to stifle fun (at work) – to borrow from our basic program premise that schools stifle creativity.

Paul Tasner: How I became an entrepreneur at 66 (TEDTalk)

What does age have to do with being an entrepreneur? The story in this TED Talk by Paul Tasner suggests that entrepreneurship is not reserved for the young, but can be a pursuit in late-career as well. The introductory paragraph for this talk on the TED.com web site reads “It’s never too late to reinvent yourself” and when I think about it (pause…), reinvention is one of those situations that provides an opportunity to gain life lessons in being a creative and persistent entrepreneur. The detail in the talk that I found the most interesting is “40 plus years of continuous employment for a variety of companies large and small…” which means Tasner had to reinvent himself several times over. This means he had past experience in changing/rebounding and even if he had or did not have confidence through each transition, he apparently made it – which shows resilience. Every change, even the latest one into entrepreneurship, is a testament to his mindset.

Youth is often seen as an advantage for entrepreneurs because they can afford to dedicate many hours to getting started, but there is a degree of sacrifice in this. Tasner actually has an advantage over young entrepreneurs in that there is little life sacrifice (it was working on this new endeavor or retirement) and he was driven by tremendous motivation (“most rewarding and meaningful work of my life right now”).

The YCISL program delves into one of the biggest transitions in our lives…from high school to college (which for many is about leaving the nest). If we can get through this particular transition well and learn some life lessons along the way, we can perhaps develop the resilience and mindset, like Tasner’s, to sustain ourselves through each future leap.

Activity: YCISL Photo Essays – Focus on Gratitude

One of the YCISL agenda topics that has evolved over the past 6 years is emotional intelligence. Early on in this program, my colleague Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu shared with me and my students the idea of four emotional intelligence (EI or EQ) domains. Soon after, he chose to focus on Mindfulness as a practical discipline in exploring EI and I formulated the expression

KI + EI = LeaderI

to position how our workshop activity in EI helps achieve our sustainable leadership objective.

In one of the Mindfulness-focused workshops, Stephen played the video “A Good Day” With Brother David Steindl-Rast which called my attention to the topic of gratefulness. Steindl-Rast also has a great TED Talk titled “Want to be happy? Be grateful” that provides an actionable promise-ask. This resoundingly connected with the Happiness and Positive Mindset topics I had brought into the YCISL program via the ideas of Shawn Achor (see his 2011 TEDx Talk “The happy secret to better work”).

In 2016, I found the 2013 TEDx Talk “Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck)” by Alison Ledgerwood in which she discusses the benefits of practicing gratefulness. This reminded me that Shawn Achor (in his TEDx Talk mentioned above) had also suggested a gratefulness training routine to increase optimism and focus on positives among the thatch of negatives. These ideas – and more – had led me to start an iOS app project called the GratitudeApp (that’s another story) in late 2016.

The final piece that has converged on this YCISL activity is the 2014 opening of the Windhover Contemplation Center at Stanford which demonstrated that the university considered mindful behavior of having merit and value in its academic setting. This has become the place we bring our YCISL workshop students so that they can focus on the Your Personal Story mid-series question of “Who am I?” and appreciate the present.

All this has led to the refinement of our Visit-Experience Photo Essay into a Visit-Experience-Gratitude Photo Essay where the emotional component is focused on the daily training of grateful reflection. Students in our most recent workshop were first introduced to the practice of being grateful in the present, then tasked with building a gratitude photo essay through daily reflection on that day’s events and experiences. We set up our Photo Essay Gallery on the last workshop day as usual. This was a great example of simple, but not easy. The idea of building this photo essay is a simple idea, but the emotionally positive portraits were powerful and lent great insight into the leadership confidence that gratitude enables.

We have a keeper.

Salman Khan: Let’s teach for mastery — not test scores (TEDTalk)

Back in 2011 at an Education Roundtable at Stanford, Salman Khan (as a roundtable participant) left me with one enlightening understanding and it was about the pursuit of a “productive and happy life” in order to feel a satisfying sense of fulfillment. Education in the US (generalized), demonstrating low EQ, apparently does not understand this and continues to structure itself based on imminent failure and impossible fulfillment. This is what I found to be the premise of Salman Khan’s latest TEDTalk “Let’s Teach for Mastery – Not Test Scores” from November 2015.

Let’s also connect the mastery mentioned here with the mastery mentioned by Daniel Pink in his 2009 Ted Talk “The Puzzle of Motivation” and his book “Drive.” Mastery is one of the keys to intrinsic motivation which in turn is an essential element to building a love of lifelong learning – this ultimately is the purposeful beauty (albeit forgotten) of education.

“…then I start to disengage.” Under the lecture-homework-lecture-homework-quiz-test model (traditional US secondary education model), there is no opportunity to engage. So the problem is that there probably wasn’t any engagement to begin with (student-subject and student-teacher both) and that this lack of engagement is only apparent after an assessment. Even more pitiful is that the knowledge of a lack of engagement does not create any action item. There is ample opportunity to have a more professional approach to engagement, but it’s not done. For example, teachers should allocate time to checking engagement levels of individual students (akin to checking your blood pressure periodically to track health) so that action items can be prescribed and followed. Should we treat teachers as “educational physicians” – the ones on whom we rely on for our educational health?

“…it would reinforce the right mindset muscles.” Yes, ideally positive and growth mindsets along with creative and critical thinking would be nurtured, but the Target (tar-jay) model of US secondary education provides no aisle space to it (the IB model on the other hand does the mindset training well). One usually only starts to see this in graduate school where professors are somewhat focused on their research teams and identifying future prospects from their crop of lecture students. Below graduate school, the existing opportunities are in sports and other extracurricular activities. This is why the YCISL program treats leadership development as a self-driven choice.

“If you were allowed to be operating in a mastery framework…” I would have liked to have seen more visualization about the “mastery framework” being proposed. What is the “process” in mind and what are the specific changes (action item deltas) from the current process? Is the mastery for students as well as educators? What is the “ask” and what is the “promise”? I believe the greater ideal is to build intrinsic motivation, not only mastery, through education.

Following the YCISL leadership model, the mastery objective in high school (“Proof”) is different than in undergraduate college (“Integration”) which is different as you move higher. If you think of a Gamestorming framework, we need rules for “mastery” in education then be allowed to play and ultimately have a conclusion. What’s most absent now is the “play” sector where students can explore, experiment and change. But just as critical is to re-write the opening rules and re-define how the game ends. And we certainly should not be expected to close all the gaps.

Turn that Frown Upside-Down: Think of Sustainability in a Positive Frame

In the YCISL program, we focus on three mindset areas: positive, growth and youth (the latter as a competitive advantage). In a recent workshop memo I drafted with regards to our sustainability platform (that is, a topic that everything we do sits on), I also touched on a sustainability mindset and how that connects to several of our workshops topics – such as emotional intelligence, intrinsic motivation and fast thinking (especially waggle-dance reasoning). We also recently added “positive framing” to our workshop topics. Altogether, a sustainability solution should consider all these factors in order to have a good chance at influencing human behavior. Ultimately, sustainability is about connecting knowledge with behavior – and making that an intrinsically repeatable condition.

In the workshops this summer, I talked about the idea of “Simple, but not easy” and used a personal example from sustainable health related to weight loss = eat less + exercise more. We then approach environmental sustainability with our session on “Sustainable by Design” which has been a great way to introduce emotional intelligence, intrinsic motivation and fast thinking. We also try to show that positive and growth mindsets are essential. In reality though, sustainability is largely associated with pain or suffering or sacrifice – not too surprising as we know that adults tend to take the easy approach and use fear – the fear of judgement, the fear of disaster, etc.

But when did it get that way? I think it could have something to do with shortened attention spans and shorter-term outlooks (think Cultural Dimensions though to understand that there are differing levels globally). Countries embracing short-term outlooks probably tend to want to use fear for deep and lasting impression – so that they can go on to think up the next bad thing. But we know that using intrinsic positive emotion is harder than using negative framing, but is actually the more sustainably successful way to change human behavior.

Working with youth on sustainability is a wonderful challenge because there still is (Adora Svitak’s brand of) optimism that we can leverage to support sustainability in a positive frame and ultimately create solutions of tremendous impact for the benefit of sustainability. It’s time to reframe the sustainability message.

Let’s consider a few environmental sustainability situations.

1. The Y2E2 building (that’s the building where my office is located). A few years ago, this building earned a LEED Platinum Certification for operations and maintenance (Stanford News article). Evaluation for this certification is based on performance (longitudinal measured data-based) and a couple of surveys. But if you’ve seen my earlier reports of how “empty” this building is, this certification is rooted in discouraging use of this building. As an example, this building is often cold until the critical number of occupants is reached (we rely on body heat and thermal air flow from computers) – usually 10 am.  In general, people come to this building because they have to, not because they want to. Does that make sustainability a worthwhile or even credible achievement? Is this the kind of human behavior we want?
2. One of the frustratingly disconnected efforts to build sustainability is with cars. Car sustainability can be viewed in a few ways: (a) fuel consumption, (b) air pollution and (c) cradle-to-grave vehicle lifespan. Today’s solutions for more sustainable fuel consumption are more creative than innovative. Hybrid cars like the Prius are technological genius (electric cars less so, in my opinion; think Scalextric). Clean diesel automotive engines have seen some negative developments recently. And there are quite a few new gasoline cars that can achieve 30+ mpg on the freeway (but wait, I remember the Honda CRX getting rated at 50 mpg over 20 years ago). But all these gains are predicated on sensible driving and optimum driving conditions. Where and for how long can you sustain 55 mph in order to get the maximum mpg? Has human behavior changed so that fuel consumption has broadly risen? Not really. The argument for more sustainable automotive use just hasn’t become persuasive. [Similar thoughts can be applied to air pollution and cradle-to-grave but I don’t want to go on too long].
3. Do you notice your own behavior when it comes to being more environmentally sustainable? Can you use less water? Can you use less electricity? Do you reduce, recycle and reuse more than before? What about those around you? So we have plastic bag bans and small fees for grocery bags now. How is that as a leadership strategy? Think of all the devices around us that are supposed to help us be more sustainable. Why not leverage intrinsic motivation rather than instill fear of penalty?