"The Village Project"

My job is hard. But without some time for a passion project, my job would be even harder. There's no right time for it, but feeding your professional passion helps make the "everyday" work seem that much more exciting.

I have a passion for helping kids. 

In my current role, I am not afforded as much contact with kids as I was in the classroom- so I try to manufacture as much contact with our kids as I can. This year, we are dreaming big.

Just over two years ago, one of my goals for the school year was to have all of my AP students pass the AP exam with a 4 or 5. We did it. It was not easy, but we did it and we did it together.

In building on my passion for the AP exam, we are putting a team together and forming the "Village Project." The goal of the Village Project is to take 5-10 lower level Juniors enrolled in English classes and have them pass the AP test at the end of the year. They are not AP students and will not be taking the actual AP course. But, we are going to build in support along the way, help the students establish "AP habits of mind," and we are going to be relentless in our pursuit pushing these students beyond what they think they can do. Every kid can pass an AP exam, whether they believe it or not, and we are out to prove it.

Will we actually find students who want to do this? Can we give them four collective hours of extra support per week?  Aren't we just wasting our time when some of our regular AP students can't pass the exam? And what if they don't pass at the end of the year?

Yes. I hope. Absolutely not. And...so what?

My partner in crime is the students' English teacher who also happens to teach AP Literature. We are pulling in social studies teachers, a department chair, a writing coach an administrator, and hopefully others. It takes a village to raise an AP child, and I am confident that with the right supports, we can do it.

If we don't reach our goal, we are going to have a ton of fun along the way. Our students will hopefully gain an appreciation for a more rigorous and collective college-level effort, and with any luck, will be more inclined to try college when all is said and done.

We are going to film everything, blog about it, present it at the AP conference next year and learn from our mistakes. Hopefully this pilot can be taken to scale and affect even more students at our school and students at other schools too.

Living in beta. Playing with house money. Going where others' doubt. The Village Project.

We would love your support along the way and appreciate any advice you may have!

Service Learning

I did not want to go. Staring down the prospect of running my first summer school program eight hours after our flight landed seemed daunting. Leaving my wife and a 16 month-old to fend for themselves for eight days seemed unfair. We talk a lot about risk-taking in innovative leadership...well, supervising three dozen kids in a foreign country certainly included plenty of that. The layers of accountability for their safety and well-being seemed intimidating.

But in the spirit of "you learn something new everyday," this past week, I learned something new through an experience I've never had. For the past eight days, 35 of our high school students joined several administrators and teachers for a service trip in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This was the second annual trip that our service club organized to play with orphans and teach in Mexican schools with heavy orphaned populations.

While this story may be personal to our experience, I hope our experience can inspire others to give their time to service, and learn a whole lot more in the process.

I was not planning to go on the trip for many of these reasons but one day, a student of ours changed my mind. A veteran of last year's trip, I met her at the cashier's counter in the main office. She was peeling off singles from a wad of cash she held in her hand. She deposited her $100 downpayment to go back to Mexico on the trip. I asked her where she got all the money.

"Well Mr. Sharos, I wash cars all year and these are the tips I have been collecting for this trip. I went last year and I cannot wait to go again this year."

So here is one of our students, working all year, for the opportunity to do more service work.

Seriously? I needed to get over myself. That day I told our principal that I would love to join if he would have me.

For as many roadblocks as I created for myself, I was nervous and anxious to see how it went. As I reflect on the lessons I learned from our work, I think three things stood out more than anything:

1. Once you create a culture of service, it will spread.

Last year's trip was only the beginning of an identity that we hope to create in our school. Ownership of our collective space under shared themes, phrases, and commonalities helps create a school building that both the students and staff can be proud of. As more students join the service trip, and return in the following years, we are creating an identity and culture of service that is contagious. I am proud to be associated with kids who are selfless with their time, talents, and treasures. The best "high" in education comes from watching our students have fun. This trip provided that opportunity, but also left me in awe of their collective sacrifice to help others.






2. Service learning breaks down walls for our students.

Our kids do not get to experience things like this all the time. Many of our families are first generation, blue-collar immigrants who came from Mexico seeking opportunity. In that struggle to adapt to this country, our kids are often subjected to "survival mode" at home and do not necessarily have access to the experience of traveling. In that vain, our kids found excitement in experiencing an airplane ride, a boat trip, and the simplicity of "Panchos Takos" for dinner. At the same time, they did so in the comfort of their home language and the familiarity of their own culture. As I struggled to adapt to the language and culture during the week, I often thought about how our kids must feel living in America-without these comforts. Every one of our faculty members should go on this trip just once to experience this phenomenon alone. The two-sided empathy I've gained has enriched my perspective of the students and the population we serve.

3. The suspension of reality is something we all need sometimes. 

The world we lived in for the past eight days was nothing like our world here- and that is ok. For the adults, it gave us the opportunity to unplug and enjoy the company of each other and our kids. Some of our students made friends with kids they normally would never talk to. The stories, laughs, and smiles we shared will travel back with us.

On the last night, we all took a dinner/dance cruise on the ocean. The adults looked on as our kids staged their own dance party on the deck of the boat. Our students were having so much fun after an exhausting week of 100 degree heat and a jam-packed schedule. They also managed to physically pull many of our adult chaperones to join them in the dance circle.

The symbolism of that goes much deeper than dancing a few steps to Marc Anthony's, "Vivir mi Vida."

Like the student who pulled me in with her downpayment of singles, the lessons learned
from this trip will last a lifetime.

Design Thinking: "Yes, and..." vs. "Yes, but..."

Having worked in just one school district for my entire career, I credit Leyden for all of my professional development. From in-house PD to conferences all over the country, I've benefited from some amazing experiences with some truly inspirational educators. Sure, I have learned from friends and colleagues on Twitter, but even my PLN and Twitter networks were inspired by people like Jason Markey, who had used Twitter as a learning tool for  years. 

Today, I had an opportunity to work with Eric Burmeister and our Professional Learning Planning Team at Leyden. One of our goals for next school year is to create an "Innovation Incubator" team of teachers that will be given the curricular freedom and lesson design autonomy to create amazing classrooms for our kids.  These teachers will form a PLC that focuses on piloting anything imaginable, from changes to physical learning spaces, to innovative web 2.0 software to things our field has never seen before. Their task is simple: innovate (with a "semi-blank" checkbook and as much freedom as we can provide). 

In following a generally accepted educational philosophy of practicing what we hope to preach, we explored the design thinking model engineered by some of the Silicon Valley's best and brightest innovators. We created a test case that centered around improving the quality and comfort of our students' most coveted space- the cafeteria. Starting from a base of empathy, we asked four of our students open ended questions about their "turf." Our questions aimed to solicit feelings and emotions about our cafeteria in order to guide the design of a cafeteria of their dreams.

By starting with empathy, we were empowered to make changes using the students' guidance, not our own beliefs. We dreamed, and we dreamed big. We followed just one rule during our brainstorming session: whenever someone proposed an idea for the cafeteria, the group's response had to be, "Yes, and..." 

So often in education, we hear "Yes, but..." when we propose new ideas. 

We are all really good at asking questions, and many times, reminding others why new ideas won't work. But even basic changes in education probably started out as a dream much bigger, a change more sweeping, or a cheese moved even farther from its original spot. By dreaming big and thinking wild, we can create a prototype that incites positive energy and pioneering ideas into our design. 

Following the mantra of "Yes, and," we created a cafeteria prototype with food options that were both creative and healthy. We designed a student-centered space with outdoor seating, televisions, and space to relax. There may have even been food trucks, retractable roofs, and organic vegetables growing from our school's roof in some of our prototypes. Dreaming big. Check. Thinking wild. Certainly. But most important-responding to our user's expressed emotions. 

So how do we know that it worked? We invited the students back in the room to judge our ideas. The students were instructed to ask us tough questions and make sure that our design addressed all of their concerns. We wanted their feedback, but moreover, we wanted to know if our design was reflective of their dreams too.

You should have seen the looks on their faces! (because who can resist lunch from a food truck, really?)

We can't protect the status quo because its "the way we have always done things." In looking at the design of anything- be it PLC, a new grading practice, innovative lesson design, or a groundbreaking curricular change- we can start from a mindset of "Yes, and..." 

In doing so, we can find a finished product that empathizes with our audience and maybe even stretches what we originally thought was possible.