In a beautifully animated RSA video on a TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson, he poses the concern, “We still educate children by batches, we put them through the system by age group. Why do we do that? Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are?” He discusses the differences between children and their learning styles. He clarifies that our education system is based on a production line system of conformity that is keeping our children from creativity and divergent thinking. Robinson claims that over time, due to education, students become less and less able to think divergently. Their ability to innovate and collaborate goes down because they are continuously competing against one another, being compared to one another, and being labeled as academically unintelligent or challenged. Our world has gone from one of communal support and shared societal gain to that of selfishness and dog eat dog competition. We’ve failed to create an educational system that truly educates our children for the future- a future in which we progress together and close the inequality gap such that suffering is minimized and our hierarchy of needs are met on the whole.

What I believe is the key to unlocking this ever-worrying Pandora’s box of societal decline is entrepreneurship. We were born learners, innovators, creators, and thinkers. We began with an innate interest in trying and doing and failing. We learned to walk by falling on our backsides multiple times, learning about gravity, stability and movement. Tom Wujec conducts an ongoing “Marshmallow Challenge” in which he asks various groups of people to construct a standing structure of spaghetti and tape with a marshmallow at the top. His findings show that kindergarten students consistently perform amongst the best of all groups due to their desire to try and fail and try again until they get it right. Over time we are taught that failure is not an option, and we make less and less space for it in our lives, making us less and less entrepreneurial and more and more robotic.

I met with Dennis Littky a while back in New York City. Dennis Littky runs a revolutionary program for high school students called Big Picture Learning. Dennis, when putting together his new schools, asked himself, “If we didn’t know there was such a thing as school, what would it be? Think about if you were teaching your own kid at home, you wouldn’t put them in the living room for 45 minutes then ring a bell then run them into the bathroom and say you’re going to do science now. You wouldn’t do it that way! It’s RIDICULOUS!” He asked thousands of kids what one word they think of when they think of high school and they said boring. So he decided to give students the screwdriver. He decided to ask THEM what they cared about, what they were passionate about, and then create the space for them to be the entrepreneurs of their own learning focused on their own interests. He winds education backwards hundreds of years to the wonderful apprenticeship based model in which a student gains her knowledge from a master of the art she cares about.

In Uganda, Eric Glustrom created a program called Educate! where high school students have the opportunity to take classes on entrepreneurship. His program, over the past 7 years, has been so successful in educare or “leading forth” students in creating their own enterprises that the Ugandan government has adopted his curriculum and implemented it at the country-wide level. What Eric’s program proves is that education can not only benefit society immediately, today, by creating local enterprises and jobs and opportunities, but it can bring forth the imperative skills of critical thinking, empathy, rapid prototyping, and making change in the world around us.

What if we began to innovate at earlier ages, allowing our students to be creative and think locally about making lemonade stands and clean water hubs and intelligent sewage processing? What if we allowed our children to become entrepreneurs and to fail in a safe space such that they would grow to learn how to embrace failure and find success by continuously trying?

Survival is predicated on the ability to adapt. If our education system cannot adapt to the growing needs of society, we will end up with “well-educated” mass of students lacking the skills required to truly progress. If we bring students’ innate desire to learn forth, making room for their creativity and uniqueness instead of shunning it, we will shine light on the beautiful solutions that could make a sustained impact on our world.

In Dan Pink’s Ted Talk on motivation, he tells us the “secret to high performance and satisfaction is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.” In other words, we require autonomy, mastery, and purpose to do what we do at our most optimal ability.

APS provide three major opportunities to their new hires that few other teachers enjoy, but how well does this translate into the necessary factors to develop motivated teachers?

Training (Mastery)

The training for teachers in APS is like that of Teach For America fellows: quick and as practical as possible.  There’s no time to waste. In the typical 2 year teacher attrition timeframe and low-income student demographic that APSs operate in, theory holds much less value than the low-cost, innovative energy that newbies bring to the table. Teachers are able to gain mastery in the field of education in a short and valuable time frame. The question remains, is the “thrown into the deep end” training sufficient enough to truly master teaching and positively impact students’ lives, or is it simply the “better than nothing” step up from a low income student’s alternative public schooling option?

Accountability (Purpose)

APS teachers are often the primary bread winners for their whole family. They are not guaranteed a job for life like their counterparts in the public system, so showing up and working hard is imperative. They know they are replaceable however they know they are valued for the time that was invested in their training. They are lastly, and most imperatively, accountable to their students and students’ parents. Studies show that people who pay for products & services inherently have more skin in the game and demand higher quality services than those who receive the same services for free. The question here is whether or not uneducated parents are demanding the appropriate outcomes from the teachers they are paying to educate their children. And furthermore, do these various players create a sense of purpose or a sense of fear and frustration in a teacher’s life?

Outside legal structures (Autonomy)

Till date, APSs have generally operated outside of legal structures. Although the government is now working on changing this fact, school owners have had the freedom to conduct curriculum, classrooms, tuition, hiring and education as they see fit. Has this autonomy trickled down to the teachers or have the minute-by-minute lesson planscrippled autonomy and creativity in the classrooms?

I truly believe an open debate around these critical motivating factors is necessary as we have been ringing the Affordable Private School bell claiming perfection for long enough. Perhaps a magnifying glass is needed to determine what should stay and what could go in order for us to get the equation right in bringing education to billions of poor children worldwide. And once we can master the ingredients, perhaps the developed world will look to the developing world for appropriate solutions to serve their neediest children.

The major question that resides in my mind is this: Why do we value doctors above all else in society for saving lives, for curing illnesses, and for generally giving us answers to queries we cannot fathom but somehow assume teaching is the simplest, most commonplace, easy-to-pick-up profession in the book?

For those of you thinking, “Well, I was once taught, so being on the opposite side of the classroom cant be that tough,” I balk at this statement. You were also once given a treatment by a doctor- does that certify you to treat others’ illnesses? I hope not. Please, take half a day off, go to your child’s/niece’s/neighbor’s preschool, and ask if you can teach a 30 minute lesson in English. Come back and tell me how it went.

For those of you thinking, “Well, teaching is important, but not as important as saving lives,” I again balk at this. In fact, I argue that teaching, especially the early, formative years of childhood, is the most vital profession to halting our avalanching society today.

From the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, a recent report states, “Because teaching is a profession of practice, teacher education must focus on preparing expert practitioners who know their students, their subject-area content, and pedagogy in much the way that a family doctor must master the knowledge base of medicine as well as be able to understand patients and their symptoms to deliver a course of treatment that can achieve the best possible outcome.” There are two facets to this statement likening Teachers to Doctors, though. The physical training aspect, of course, but also the emotional and social aspect which affects the behavioral outcome.

If you look at the inner workings of the social strata wherever you reside, think about vital people such as the garbage wo/man, the taxi driver, and the banker. It’s possible these individuals move with a sense of pride and self-worth through the community based on two major reasons: 1. They are compensated well for the imperative work they do. 2. They are treated with respect because others could not/would not be able to do the work they do. If these factors are lacking, it is likely that these people who keep your city moving and ticking at a steady, clean, livable pace, are under valued and under incentivized. What this results in is poor motivation and hence, poor output. One might argue a chicken and egg situation here; that if the proper training had been done, higher quality output would be guaranteed and higher compensation and respect would ensue.

This is quite simply the infinite loop of the solution-less blame and finger pointing public school teachers are stuck in the middle of today, without much say or agency to make any changes to the status quo. Neither are they respected and well paid, nor are they offered quality training to bring quality education to our students. So both morale and knowledge are at an all time low in the sector of society who will determine the success of the future. Does this make sense?

In Finland, Singapore, and South Korea, only the top 1/3^rd of any graduating college class are allowed to become teachers, and their students and knowledge economies are kicking ass. In America, under 23% come from the top 1/3^rd and in India my guess is 95% of government school teachers come from the bottom 1/3^rd. Low cost private school teachers typically have not finished 12^th grade. And our steady decline in education is extremely evident. Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education in the US says, “We have to reward excellence. We’ve been scared in education to talk about excellence. We treated everyone like interchangeable widgets. Just throw a kid in a class and throw a teacher in a class. This ignored the variation between teachers who were changing students’ lives, and those who were not. If you’re doing a great job with students, we can’t pay you enough.” What is keeping other nations from recognizing this same epiphany? What, once recognized, can be done to realize this dream?

Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap, claims, “We need a new National Education Academy, modeled after our military academies, to raise the status of the profession and to support the R & D that is essential for reinventing teaching, learning and assessment in the 21st century.” Whether or not this is the answer is to be determined, as teaching is also not as simple as shooting a rifle, but perhaps it’s the training, commitment, and respect we need for a profession that’s been highly misguided.

I was immediately enamored with the setting of the school. Rural, earthy, sustainable, open, relaxed. I was then entirely floored by the teachers themselves. They exhibited confidence and exuded ownership of the state of the school that I had never seen before. This was their school. Their students. Their children to mold into worldly human beings. Not only that, but this was their personal lives to worry about, their desire for balance and peace within which they would exude into their students’ hopeful, peaceful minds. This was a school of empowered people, just what I thought I might never find.

There were of course pros and cons. Yes, the school offers scholarships to children whom they pluck from the slums nearby. Yes, this allows children from various classes and incomes to come to the same playground, learn from the same teachers, participate in the same activities, and grow up as humble, caring, understanding individuals of our racist, segregated society. A rarity, to say the least. But no, this is not a different model from charity. No, this does not solve the problem at it’s root. No, this is not scalable without outside funding. No, it’s impact has not be tested over an extended period of time. Although, to be honest, I don’t really see the charity model as the most compelling part of this social experiment at all.

In the last school I visited, the young budding teacher carried a stick in her hand as she paced the aisle to instill fear in her student’s hearts. The children sat silently, in organized, gender segregated lines on the floor, smiling but nervous to speak out as they wished. Only the students who had memorized the answers word for word were given any sort of positive reinforcement, which to be clear was a mere, “Good. Sit down.” All the rest got a harsh “No! Sit down!” and silently took their place, embarrassed and confused. A previous school’s children knew songs in Japanese but could hardly tell you what they were saying or why it made any difference to know such a verse; as they came from the nearby slums and rarely got a full meal for dinner let alone had a substantial use for Japanese.

But this school. This school was filled with light, laughter, and play. It was beating with questions, thoughts, ideas, and solutions. It embraced a child’s innate desire to be active, to question everything, and to learn by doing.

Aman Setu is rooted in extensive research around holistic education; the theory that a student should be educated not just in book knowledge, but emotionally, socially, personally, behaviorally, physically, artistically and well…holistically.

Here they also work hard to remold our natural assumptions around teaching. As teachers today, as adults today, the majority of us were educated in a very un-holistic manner. We were taught to be good students by sitting quietly, adhering to what the lesson plan of the day is, and getting high marks on standardized exams. Often our teachers were graded and gauged according to these same metrics. When I inquired into the effort it takes to get a budding teacher to become effective in the classroom, the answer was “years.” This was visible immediately.

The conflicting theory that young adults can pick up a profession as difficult and complex as teaching within months now sounds absolutely absurd to me. And I had a slew of questions to this regard which were clearly not going to be answered within a 1 hour visit. So I decided to stick around. I stayed for another 5 hours that day, and decided to stay even longer. For 9 more weeks.

I decided if I wanted to delve into the world of teachers, uncover how and why we’ve failed to educated children worldwide by understanding the biggest challenges teachers today face, I must understand what it means, at the core, to be a teacher. I must strive to empathize with teachers and must understand not only the failing attempts at education but the potentially revolutionary ones as well.

So here I am. Come back soon for more thoughts on becoming a teacher.

This is where conversation mapping comes in. Below is a conversation map around teacher training from the ES symposium last week.

I first learnt of conversation mapping from Avary Kent at Hip Investor. She had learnt about it from a man named Bruce McKenzie from the Systemic Development Institute in Australia. She explained the methods behind it- how it looked similar to a mind map, but had specific rules that allowed users to freely, anonymously, time-boundlessly, tangentially comment and converse and contribute to important systemic issues that are not easily solved. She also explained the exciting part about the physical nature of the maps- on big pieces of paper one could take them from place to place and get conversations going between various geographies, sectors, people, and organizations. It sounded perfect for The Teach Tour and the systemic problems that exist in Education today.

Here are Bruce McKenzie’s rules for the divergence part conversation mapping, summarized by me: (Bruce’s version is physical, on paper, whereas ours will be online, so slightly altered.)

1. Begin with a trigger word in the middle.

2. A participant then begins the conversation with thoughts/feelings around that trigger word.

3. Each participant should be given their own colored pen. (Colored text, for us)

4. As others respond to this and other comments around the trigger word, each comment branches with a single line to the issue being addressed. This creates a tree of sorts.

5. All contributions are valid, whether they agree, disagree, begin new conversations (around the trigger) or continue to tangentially branch out with more twigs.

6. Attempts to deliberately shape the conversation should be avoided. Just let it happen. If the edge of the paper is reached, more can be added. (Internet blank space is unlimited…I promise)

7. When one theme is exhausted, new themes/issues should be discussed and exhausted, around the same trigger.

8. Try not to connect ideas between themes yet. Simply stick to the conversation you are having.

9. Allow for the conversation to continue as long as possible, the map gets messier and messier and richer and richer.

Then, we move into assimilation. This part will be done on the back end by our team unless we set up an online web-conference of sorts with all participants, but nonetheless, here is how it works:

1. Try to avoid making the obvious connections between ideas and observations across themes; we want to get an overall impression of the picture and extract unusual, unexpected trends.

2. Think, “What does this messy shape say about my perceptions of the issue or about the people who spawned it?”

3. Think, “What would represent an improvement to the complex message that is being conveyed to me as (a) I stare at it in its entirety, and (b) I try to get into more detail?

4. Transformational details will be found in the detail.

5. Select the emergent issues from the list, which the group believes may have significant leverage to improve the problematic situation. These issues can be used to: (a) Probe to the complex issue to gain greater understanding of its behavior when emergent issues are manipulated, or (b) Design activities that will leverage improvement in the problematic situation.

Bruce’s final words:

The Conversation Map is neither time nor geographically bound in its generation. The map can be moved from location to location (or online where all locations are accessible) to ensure many separated perspectives are captured. New participants can quickly engage with the conversation that has gone before adding their contributions be they new themes or additions to themes already presented. Similarly many successful mapping activities have been conducted by displaying the map in a public place (the Internet, perhaps?) for two to three weeks so that potential participants can contribute and re-contribute as they are able.

Conversations maps can make the follow contirbution to work on an intractable problem:

1. Articulate different perspectives of a situation and the interaction (relationships) between several perspectives that are captured

2. Generate an opportunity for all stakeholders to understand the different perspectives of a situation and to modify their personal understanding in the light of others perspectives

3. Provide an opportunity for all stakeholders to mutually identify emergent properties of the problematic situation that were not previously available and which may be the basis for new probes to explore and improve the situation.

Imagine how incredible & rich this could be if each of you 50 people per day who read this site contributed one thought to the map! When you click on the pencil to edit the map, you can sign in using your gmail account, no need to create a new account! Simple.

For those of us attempting to change the status quo, there are two clear options to decide between; make change from within the system, or make change without the system. Granted, there are of course crossovers, straddlers, and those who start on one side, get frustrated, tired, and fed up, and move to the other. But for the most part, there are two distinct options on the table for which most grab one and run with it in hopes of infinite impact and immeasurable scale.

In the education space we see the same phenomenon occur. The secret about the term “NGO” or Non-Governmental Organization is that they are most often exactly that, minus the “Non.” Perhaps they do not take money from the government, but their main focus, if they are involved in education, is working within the government system to make systemic change in the way things work. In India, we have Pratham, Naandi, Byrraju and people like Professor Paul Gunashekar of EFL University teaching government teachers to become better teachers of English to children.

On the other side of the coin, we have For-Profits, Trusts, and sustainable Non-Profits, all encompassing the “screw the system, we can do this better” perspective. These organizations often struggle to bring their service or product to a viable affordable price point while creating something that provides high enough quality to their end customers. If we were talking middle-to-high income, the discussion is generally moot. In the low income, however, this is a serious issue upon which many intelligent minds debate, including those at the symposium we attended last week. On this side, we have companies like Hippocampus, Rumi Education, Christel House, iDiscoveri, and The Teacher Foundation.

The most common argument made from the latter group to the former is, “You might have the best model, product, service in the world, but without a sustainable model, you might go under one day and end up hurting mass numbers of families more than helping. Then what?!” (See: Byrraju Foundation Failure) “Furthermore, the governmental system is seriously flawed, what with bribery, low wages, ulterior motives, and undereducated folk all around. How do you plan to get around that?”

This is valid. For a long time I agreed with these statements in fact. But let’s hear from the other side. What they might say in rebuttal is, “Your model might be sustainable, you may have even scaled in the middle income sector, but do you really believe you will ever reach the scale that the government has reached in the low income sector? Soon?” Yes, quality must meet affordability in order to run a sustainable company, but what about scale, fast, and immediate, for all the children who need education today? What about the fact that the government will always exist, and for the foreseeable future, has the widest reach, so why not work on systemic change from within?

We have yet to see a product developed for the low income sector working outside of the governmental systems reach any sort of scale. Why is that? What we have seen is the Affordable Private School sector grow over the past 10-15 years to a large number of schools and children today. But the quality and affordability varies heavily, and we have yet to see a solid randomized controlled trial displaying the true impact on a child of an APS over a regular government school. On the other hand, the government at the moment is injecting thousands of benched teachers into the system to bring pupil:teacher ratios down to 35:1. Apparently it’s as easy as that, but can these teachers teach well?

Lastly, among many others, what about value? The most common argument made all over this sector we call “development” is that of value. Do people place value on that which they receive at no cost? As a society, today, do we place so much value on money that all else is worthless to us unless we must give up some of our hard earned wages in order to gain access to it? When we speak of low income families, must we assume parents are so ill-informed in the value of education that they must put money down to see the value and become involved?

Let’s be honest, public schooling has worked in some places. Why not others?

Either we’re all fighting against each other while the solution lies far off in left field or we are fighting different battles at the same point in time and getting no where fast, sustainably, feasibly, meaningfully.

In meeting with patient, strong willed, articulate Leticia Isaacs of Make a Difference, I learnt about a methodology that I have come to notice as a common thread amongst the youth of our generation.

Gap: All children need an education.

Surplus: Young professionals are educated.

Plug: If we combine the two, in all likelihood, the problem will become alleviated.

The differentiating factors between organizations such as MAD, Dream a Dream, Aashayein Foundation, and MentorTogether, to name the ones I had the pleasure of meeting with, is the method with which they choose to train, incentivize, and deliver their free services to the children. Along with these formalized organizations come the vast number of us who land up in a new place, notice the tools we have in our belt far outweigh the entire toolbox of offerings to many children, and decide to grab our chisel and start chipping away in hopes of creating something like a masterpiece. What is fascinating to see is the impact that is made on the children in the moment, and eventually for their hopeful, bright, beautiful, shining futures.

To be sure, the impact made in this moment is incredible. Visions of smiling, laughing, jumping, and rowdy children, children who daily sit quietly and utter a mere rote retort when spoken to, children who cram the answers to tests and children who often miss school because they once again have the flu, come to mind. Children who learn English from a teacher who speaks only a few words herself get the chance to hear it thrown around at reckless abandon, read it along in a story they embrace, sing it in songs they repeat over and over.

But what will this mean for their future? Will the fly by weekend mentors, teachers, and new-found friends make a lasting impact on their potential?

As I walked away from the 15 courageous young girls rescued from the horrific brothels of Cambodia, the girls I had spent 6 months teaching English and Computer skills to, I questioned why it cut so deeply in me to leave while they seemed at ease with my departure. I realized I had convinced myself that I was going to make as big of an impact on their lives as they had had on mine. That not only was I attempting to “give back”, but that my ad-hoc teachings would outlive my physical presence in their lives.

What was unsettling me was the recognition that I had simply and truthfully just lived in their lives, and they had lived in mine, and that was enough to make us happy, there and then, but that may not have been what it would take to change their lives forever.

Perhaps a deep dive into the experiences of a deer-in-headlights Teach for India‘s full-time 2 year committed teacher is the imperative next step to understand the complexities of the battle we are fighting. Up next…

-Shabnam

Here’s an example:

Conversation Maps are neither time or geographically bound. They can be moved from location to location to ensure many separated perspectives are captured. The Teach Tour will be publicly displaying a number of similar conversation maps with varying trigger words such as “Teachers are not appropriately trained in child-centric learning” or “Impact Measurement tools are lacking” or “Teachers are not motivated.” Participants will be able to walk up to the physical version of this map and add their comments to any portion of the conversation, creating new themes, or adding their perspectives to existing themes.

Conversation Maps can make the following contribution to work on an intractable problem:

1. articulate different perspectives of a situation and the interaction (relationships) between the several perspectives that are captured.

2. generate an opportunity for all stakeholders to understand the different perspectives of a situation and to modify their personal understanding in the light of others perspective

3. provide and opportunity for all stakeholders to mutually identify emergent properties of the problematic situation that were not previously available and which may be the basis for new probes to explore and improve the situation.

EXCITED TO GET SOME CONVERSATIONS GOING!!

Arriving in the shrunken school exploding with bright minds and beautiful smiles, I slowly allowed my eyes to adjust to the sight before me on the sunlit rooftop. 5 students stood in front of the milieu of boys and girls classes of 4^th and 5^th grades at Grace Model School, a leading Affordable Private School in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. The candidates held up home made signs displaying “Vote for Me” along with an icon they had designed and the sturdy confidence of a politician. A teacher sat at the front calling each student’s name out. The students jumped up proudly, strolled to the front of the class, and cast their votes for who should become their  first student body president.

In speaking with Deepti Doshi after observing the elections with many hiccups along the way (as is standard operating protocol in most elections), she revealed some challenges she faces in attempting to take a successful product in the Colombian market to fruition in the Indian market. Her product, Escuela Nueva, attempts to empower teachers with materials, resources, and opportunities for school capacity building. The end goal is to create a sense of teacher ownership and desire for reforming the status quo.

The overriding question to be answered here is: Can a proven, successful service or product in one geography, one market, one sector be boxed, replicated  and franchised into various other places?

A similar conversation ensued in the offices of Butterfly Fields with founder Sharat Chandra and Mr. Anantharajan along with the Gray Matters Capital team’s Sarayu Natarajan and Aditya Kumar. In a similar manner, Butterfly Fields has found success in marketing their product to the middle income schools in Hyderabad, but struggles to penetrate the lower income market. Butterfly Fields delivers products to students that allow them and force them to “learn by doing.” Their office is littered with basic everyday items; plastic cups, straws, balloons, & legos that come together to create incredible unique & educational crafts.

The conclusion and solution that both Escuela Nueva & Butterfly Fields came to at the end of the day was that of a trickle down effect: get the middle income reputable schools to adopt the product and in turn the lower income schools’ parents & teachers will take notice and demand the same offerings. This solution does two things: 1. Allows the company to bring in profits earlier on, thus bringing the price point down for lower income schools, 2. Capitalize upon the human desire to want what richer people have.

Is there an insight we as a sector can build upon here? Or are we simply sacrificing our mission of educating the neediest children for the time being so we can stay afloat and find success sooner than later?