- The Insightful Educator
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- Asking Better Questions
Sometime around 2012, I began to ask what has become the burning question of my professional life:
Why do schools have to do it this way?
Why do students have to sit in rows of desks looking at the back of each other’s heads?
→ What if they sat in a circle, looking each other in the eye?
Why is the teacher the one doing the majority of the talking (and learning)?
→ What if student questions, curiosity, passion, and wonder drove the discovery?
Why do we have to have multiple classes a day, with students running all over the building in five minute spurts frantically trying to keep six or seven subjects in their heads at a time (and trying to keep up with hours of homework in all these classes)?
→ What if students could take one class at a time and go deep, with plenty of time to explore, create, design, collaborate, innovate, and even lead out in the learning?
Why do we silo the subjects so that the disciplines of mathematics, history, literature, languages, art, music, and science never overlap (as they often do in the real world?)
→ What if we designed courses to intersect and overlap the subjects in ways that not only make more sense, but open the playbook for wonder, discovery, engagement, and enjoyment?
Why do we not allow students to build deep relationships with the caring adults in the building when the research is clear that what students need most of all is to hear from at least one caring person a day that they are seen, heard, known, and valued?
→ What if we reimagined the role of “teacher” as more than content deliverer? What if we created room and space for the educator to be the mentor, the guide, the one who calls out the best in students on a daily basis?
Why do we have to give A-F grades and do a numerical GPA? Especially when the research highlights how damaging that is to students and to learning?
→ What if we did a narrative transcript instead that told the rich story of a student’s intellectual, social, relational, and communal growth? A narrative that talks about a student’s areas of growth, discovery, courage, open mindedness, collaboration, and development?
Why do we separate students by age and grade?
→ What if we built our learning communities on the back of relationships and created overlaps of belonging between our older and younger students in ways that are healthy and provide opportunities for caring peer mentoring?
Why do we limit the learning to the classroom?
→ What if we opened up the world as our campus? What if we brought in experts in a wide variety of fields to facilitate real world learning and took students to experts to learn in real time? What if we saw our city as our campus and experts as educators?
The journey inspired by these questions led me to launch Odyssey Leadership Academy, an award winning school that is shaking the Etch a Sketch to tell a better story for schools, students, educators, and communities by actively pursuing a dynamic model of education that combines high scholarly inquiry and enriching pedagogy, backed up by design thinking within an ecosystem of care that helps students become architects of repair in the world.
Some key Odyssey distinctives that came out of those initial questions include:
No desks or rows
→ Instead, everyone, faculty included, sit around the circle eye to eye, face to face
No quizzes, worksheets, or tests
→ Instead, our students engage courses through deep conversation, pursue rich scholarly inquiry, create creative projects, and present their learning to each other
No grades / GPA
→ Instead, we use a narrative transcript that tells a more robust story of a student’s intellectual journey in each given class and throughout her academic career
Learner Led (rather than Subject Centered)
→ At OLA, our students teach courses in subject areas they are passionate about! These include: Entomology, Marine Biology, Creative Writing, Visual Storytelling, Architectural Engineering and Design, Cellphone Cinema…and more
Quarter Term System
→ Instead of six or seven courses a day, our academic classes meet from 9:30-noon every day for eight weeks, allowing students the opportunity to go deep in each and every class
No finals
→ Instead, we host a Celebrations of Learning student showcase at the end of each term to highlight the student learning. Students show off their research through original works of art, music, spoken word, fashion, culinary, museum sets, film…and more!
Daily Mentoring
→ Each and every student is in a Mentor group that provides care, engagement, check ins, accountability, and lots of coffee and donuts! These Mentor groups meet every day for 45 minutes to provide students a community of care and belonging
The series of questions I asked over a decade ago led to a school that is actively reimagining the very fabric of education itself!
My journey of questioning the traditional model of schooling and dreaming new What Ifs leads me to ask:
What questions are you asking?
What new dreams are you having?
What status quo are you questioning?
What questions keep you up at night?
What questions burn a hole in your brain?
What vision do you have to see things change?
**Please share your dreams and questions in the comments for everyone to see!
Keep asking, keep inquiring, keep pushing, keep dreaming, keep wondering, keep wrestling, keep pursuing
You never knew where a good question may lead you!
Dr Scott Martin drscottamartin.com
