How much time and treasure does your school spend on creating master plans for campus facilities, capital campaigns, marketing and communications, strategic plans, and accreditation reviews? Go ahead, count it all up. I know; I have done them all. Over a 5-10 year period it is a TON of money and focus. For most larger independent schools or public districts, it is EASILY seven figures.
Now, how much do you spend on planning what and how you are going to teach, the learning experience that defines the value of your organization? If you just took a deep breath and saw the dissonance here, you need to immediately link to the roll out by Bo Adams and Unboundary of their Pedagogical Master Plan concept. I am not going to try to summarize it; go to Bo’s blog and get the links to the summary article done by SAIS.
I won’t say their approach is the Holy Grail, but it is, in my humble opinion, a complete game changer if we are serious about what we are calling educational innovation, by my definition, “teaching students for their future, not for our past”. This is a holistic approach that can and should drive us to create school-based master plans for the learning of the future.
Thanks for the support and encouragement, Grant. We certainly want to help schools realize greater possibilities by approaching transformation in ways that engage the entire learning community and focus efforts on the whole ecosystem. As a secondary benefit, we do believe that this approach will help schools be much more strategic in their spending and resource allocation.
How might we make it more Holy Grail-ish? We’re very open to those insights and suggestions, too. We want what’s best to schools and education. Truly.