Weekly Message from Head of School 2022/10/09-2022/10/15
Dear Members of our Keystone Community,
In a Harvard Business Review article [https://hbr.org/2021/11/make-learning-a-part-of-your-daily-routine] published in 2021, authors Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis make the case that “the ability to unlearn, learn and relearn is vital for long-term success”.
The fields of education and educational reform have also been also making this case for many years, with refrains from experts that learning how to learn will always be more important than what you learn. A great school is a learning organization, not only for the obvious business of educating our students, but to be an organization built for everyone to learn. In a learning organization, Tupper and Ellis affirm, “[i]nvesting in our ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn helps us increase our readiness for the opportunities that change presents and our resilience to the inevitable challenges we’ll experience along the way.”
One important organizational strategy is to see everyone as a teacher and everyone as a learner (see this post too). This week I experiences my first KAP (Keystone Activities Program) as a learner in the Chinese for Beginners student-run KAP. With Skylar as my very able personal teacher, other teachers and I practiced personal introductions, learned about the history of Chinese characters. It was a delightful learning journey as the “small teachers” encouraged, corrected and inspired their “big students”.
Tupper and Ellis also highlight that learning organizations must ask what they call “propelling questions”. The Stanford School of Design popularized this strategy as part of its design thinking framework; in the face of big challenges in opportunities, we can frame our learning by asking questions that begin with “how might we. . .?” This opens the door for brainstorming and out of the box thinking as opposed to task-oriented execution based on existing systems.
As Keystone moves its strategic plan forward, we have assembled our all-school committees for the year. As we shared with our faculty members earlier this week, we have six committees this year that all have big propelling questions to explore, questions about our school’s future and how we best serve our students and our important mission.
These questions range from understanding the relationship between Keystone’s signature Chinese Thread and the Chinese National Curriculum to what structures might best support our experienced, talented and diverse faculty in our current context?
Over the couple of months, I will make use of this space to introduce you to those committees and questions and invite your input. When we are dreaming big and learning together, all our voices matter and important insights and ideas can come from the most unexpected places. I look forward to learning with you.
Warmly,
Emily McCarren
