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January 1, 2017
Vol. 59
No. 1

Supporting Homegrown Teacher Innovation

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Instructional Strategies
An old, run-down portable trailer that once caught fire could have easily become the butt of a joke. Instead—despite being filled with discarded junk and old equipment—it became a sought-after space for teacher innovation in South Carolina's Richland School District Two, where teams of teachers clamored for a key to the "incubator."
For three years, the portable served as headquarters for R2 Innovates, a program where teachers and staff worked to identify and creatively solve district problems. This September, Richland Two opened a new central office building and student learning facility that houses a state-of-the-art teacher innovation room, rendering the crumbling portable obsolete.
Principals and district administrators are finding that driving innovation may be as simple as providing teachers with the time and space to develop their ideas. Whether through larger initiatives like R2 Innovates or smaller ones like teacher Genius Hour or "Try-It Tuesday," teachers are answering the call to improve programs and pedagogy by diving into their passions.

From the Classroom to the Incubator

After a small group of administrators from Richland Two visited Silicon Valley—taking cues from Google, Intel, Imagine K–12, and others—they launched a startup-style incubator to "foster and support teachers as they build out their ideas," says Donna Teuber, the district's innovation program designer.
Teacher teams (representing different schools and grade levels) apply during the summer, then move on to the district incubator where they participate in an intensive two-day training to take their ideas through the design thinking process. "We help them look at the information they've gathered, cluster it, come up with insights, develop 'how might we' statements, and [identify] their real problem," says Teuber.
In early December, the teams pitch their ideas to a panel. Unlike "the really hard shark tanks," R2 Innovates wants its participants to succeed, Teuber explains. If a group makes the cut, they gain access to significant support through substitute teachers (so teams can meet and collaborate), funding, project management assistance, mentors, and an advisory group of district leaders to "help with the red tape."
Bringing an idea to scale can take anywhere from one to three years, says Teuber (although some ideas bypass the process and head straight to the "accelerator program"). In the first year, teachers develop and refine their ideas; in year two, they can opt to stay in the incubator and work on sustainability; and by year three, they determine how to adopt the innovation across the 27,000-student school district.
The ideas that make their way through the incubator "can't be a lot of high effort from a lot of people," adds Teuber. They have to be affordable and scalable.
"It's not like a grant program where [teachers] want a cart of laptops," she notes. Instead, teams tackle "generative topics that open the door to a variety of solutions and ideas." Initiatives that have emerged from the incubator include microcredentialing for teacher professional development, blended learning for middle school math classes, and the conversion of media centers into makerspaces.
One of the earliest teams in R2 Innovates worked to reduce the dropout rate among the district's rising population of Latino students. A group of teachers, along with the district's Hispanic family liaison and ESOL lead, developed Sí Se Puede, a program to bridge the gap between Latino families and schools.
They piloted several initiatives in the 10 schools with the highest concentration of Latino students, including student-led conferences, school and district family engagement nights, home Internet access, a Spanish class for staff members, and a program to certify students as translators. To improve communication with parents, the team also provided front office staff with tablets and training on Google Translate.
Last year, the teachers continued to develop Sí Se Puede at the Teach to Lead® Summit in Baltimore, Maryland. Now, in their third year, they're engaging district stakeholders to spread the program to other schools.

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As teachers in Richland School District Two have proven, innovation can thrive anywhere—from a portable trailer that once caught fire to a state-of-the-art teacher innovation space.
Photos courtesy of Richland Two

Welcome to the Think Tank

Almost all of these ideas are organic to real classroom experiences, says David Holzendorf, principal of North Springs Elementary in Richland Two. Four teams from his school have used the district's incubator—and they've tackled challenges from solar learning (where teachers developed a curriculum around green building design) to student nutrition (an effort led by the cafeteria manager).
Hozendorf even gave up his office, converting it into an on-site "think tank" where teachers and administrators can meet to creatively solve problems. The room itself is unremarkable: it has a conference table, a whiteboard, and a SMART board. Posters (displaying student data, reminders of the SAMR model for tech integration, charts, and other information) cover every inch of the walls.
"It's not an attractive space as far as décor," Hozendorf admits, but it's an effective work space. "The biggest thing is having a central location [to meet] with resources, materials, anchor charts, and different things that we can refer to." Making everything visual really motivates and inspires the staff, he says. "In the think tank, we're much more focused."
Besides space, Hozendorf gives teachers the gift of time by providing subs or some other form of class coverage.
Of course, "you want teachers in the classrooms, not substitutes," says Teuber. But "it's very inexpensive to pull a teacher out for a day" or to offer planning time through flexible scheduling. "It's the best professional development you can invest in."

Pure Genius

Rachel Porter, digital curriculum integration specialist at Southwest Parke Community Schools in Montezuma, Indiana, agrees that above all, teachers need the time to innovate. At least once a month on staff development days, teachers in her district participate in Genius Hour. The concept is based on Google's 20 percent initiative, where developers can spend up to one-fifth of their time pursuing a self-directed project that benefits the company.
Teachers can use the hour to choose from a series of self-paced minicourses (on tech tools like Google Docs and Smore) or to pursue their own interests. "The only stipulation is that there has to be a driving purpose or question behind it and it has to benefit their classroom, themselves professionally, or the school in some way," says Porter. "They can't go home and organize their closet." They also can't use the hour to catch up on tasks like grading papers or making copies.
But accountability hasn't been an issue. "Teachers rise up to the fact that they're being treated like professionals," observes Porter. One 2nd grade teacher used Genius Hour to plan weekly STEM projects for an entire year, while a high school math teacher prepared a summer workbook for incoming precalculus students.
At first, teachers scrambled to come up with projects. But now, "when teachers attend a conference or pick up an education magazine and see something they're interested in, they know that there's an opportunity to pursue it deeper."
John Spencer, assistant professor at George Fox University in Oregon and a former middle school teacher, understands the need for unstructured creative time. One evening a week, he goes to a coffee shop or restaurant for his own version of Genius Hour (with the help of a supportive family). He uses the time to explore a topic that he's passionate about—writing, coding, the macrohistory of humankind. "It alternates between geeking out on a singular idea or a big question and working on a project."
As a middle school teacher, Spencer tested Genius Hour's potential by piloting a redesign of his school's professional development program. He followed two groups of 10 teachers to compare their approaches to integrating technology into the curriculum. The first group practiced tools, then collaboratively planned lessons around their implementation. Teachers in the second group played around with tools independently as they tackled Genius Hour projects on "something they find fascinating." One math teacher, a Seattle Seahawks fan, started a sports blog with videos, text, and research.
What Spencer found over the semester was that the group who learned the tools while working on Genius Hour "had the best results in terms of integrating technology into the pedagogy." The focus wasn't on "how will you use this in your classroom?" but on "getting them excited and passionate about their own personal inquiry-based learning." The rich integration of technology was the byproduct of that passion.

Worth the Try

Sometimes, teachers just need a safety net to try new approaches. In her first year as principal of Marie Reed Elementary School in Washington, D.C., Katie Lundgren noticed that teachers were reluctant to experiment because "they had a lot of anxiety about someone walking into their room for an observation." The school district's IMPACT evaluation system involves multiple classroom observations that are unannounced and high stakes, she notes.
So her administrative team launched Try-It Tuesday—one day a week free of formal observations where teachers could be more creative with their instruction. The staff jumped at the chance to use more project-based learning "as opposed to something that was within the lines and 'safe' for observation and evaluation purposes," says Lundgren. For instance, one teacher led a demonstration on how to make modeling clay that was tied to expository writing.
Try-It Tuesday helped reinforce the sense that "it's OK to try things and fail," Lundgren says. Plus, "the gesture made teachers feel like I was on their side, which probably helped build trust."
When it comes to practices like Try-It Tuesday or Genius Hour, "principals just need to give it a try," says Porter. This approach is "out of the box and different than what has always been done, but it's worth taking that risk to see what amazing things teachers are able to accomplish."
Ultimately, explains Teuber, "what we're doing is developing teachers to be experts and leaders in the district." 

Sarah McKibben is the editor in chief of Educational Leadership magazine.

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