Scott McLeod:
I think it’s really hard to go and reverse on anything you do related to student agency. I think as soon as we start experimenting with ways to give kids more control and ownership of what they learn, and how, and how they show what they know and can do and whatever, it’s really hard to go back.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was the voice of Scott McLeod. I first discovered Scott’s work through his blog, Dangerously Irrelevant, when I was working at the Innovation Unit in London over a decade ago. He’s worked with a lot of school leaders on shifting their schools towards deeper learning, and he’s co-authored a book about that very subject. But Scott introduces himself much better than I could. So, let’s get right into it. Scott McLeod, co-author of Leadership for Deeper Learning: Facilitating School Innovation and Transformation. What should listeners know about you, Scott?

Scott McLeod:
And I am a professor of school leadership at the University of Colorado, Denver. So, if teachers want to be principals, for example, I run a couple principal licensure cohorts. I also have some doctoral students and teaching our doc program. I’m also the founding director of a university center called Castle, C-A-S-T-L-E. That’s different from the social emotional learning castle. And I think we’re the first maybe still only university center focused on leadership and innovation, and deeper learning, and technology, all the fun stuff, as I like to say. And in that work I get to be engaged with schools and educators all around the world on deeper learning stuff. It’s really great. And I’m also pretty active on social media. So, you can find me at my blog, Dangerously Relevant, various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera. So, that’s probably good to start.

Alec Patton:
When did you start using the term deeper learning?

Scott McLeod:
Alec, I started as a technology and leadership guy. That’s really why we founded Castle as a center. And I just got really, really tired of working with schools around using technology to analyze test score data. It just felt like very unfilling, dispiriting work, where we were taking the lowest level of learning and just elevating it to dominate both our instructional and leadership work, but also our technological work. And I knew as a technology user, and advocate, and nerd, that technology can be a really empowering force. So, I kind of said, I’m never doing that work again. And instead I really want to focus on how we can use technology and school structures to empower kids to do amazing things. And I didn’t really know what to call that at first, but as the world around us started coming to agreement around the term deeper learning, I just slid into that because it makes a lot of sense to me.

Alec Patton:
Where does the story of this book begin?

Scott McLeod:
Right. So, the story of the book actually starts with the last book, the one that I did previous. So, I was in Iowa at the time working for Iowa State University. And Castle and I had helped the State of Iowa move from six school districts that were doing one-to-one programs, where they’re giving kids computers, to over 220 districts in about half a decade. So, it was this massive grassroots movement sparked by each other, and Castle, and the university, and a yearly Iowa one-to-one institute that I hosted for free, where we just drove massive adoption of getting tech into the hands of kids all over the state. We went from nobody to two thirds of the student population, and again, in like five, six years.
And then, of course, what we found very quickly was that just because you gave kids a device didn’t mean that learning was any different. So, my colleague, Julie Grabber and I spent about four years trying to create a instructional design protocol that would help folks shift in some directions that we thought were helpful. And that protocol eventually was named the 4 Shifts Protocol. And so, I spent many, many years living on the instructional design side of deeper learning. How do we take existing lessons in units, possibly tech-infused, and start moving them into environments where there’s more student agency and ownership, there’s more critical thinking and problem solving. It’s more connected to real world authentic work. We’re using technology in authentic and powerful ways for communication and collaboration. And so, that was really great instructional redesign work.
And that the book that we wrote, Harnessing Technology for Deeper Learning introduces the protocol, which is free, by the way. And then I’ve been spending a lot of time working with teachers, and coaches, and principals on how to redesign instructional work. Because not everybody gets to start a model from scratch, like a high tech high and just say, “This is who we’re going to be,” and start from ground zero. Most folks are transitioning from more traditional spaces. So, that’s the idea behind the protocol. But ultimately, I’m a leadership and systems person. And so, the inspiration for the book we’re talking about today, Leadership for Deeper Learning was really about if this is the instructional experience that we’re trying to make happen, what are the leadership behaviors and key support structures that enable that kind of learning and teaching? And that’s really what drove the book.

Alec Patton:
And tell me a little bit about your co-authors.

Scott McLeod:
Justin Bathon is a associate professor of school leadership, University of Kentucky. He and I worked together for a long time. Justin actually took a break from higher ed to help start a brand new STEAM high school in the Lexington, Kentucky area, and then came back to higher ed. So, he has a lot of experience working with the what school could be folks, then the STEAM high school. And he runs the University of Kentucky Next Generation Leadership Academy, where they work with districts to start moving in some new directions. So, that’s Justin. Jason is my primary writing partner. He and I have been writing together for 15 years plus, around all things technology and leadership in deeper learning. Jason is currently the program chair and professor of school leadership at the University of Denver, right down the road from me. Jason and Justin just got back from the 21C conference in Bangkok, Thailand, working with international schools in Asia around deeper learning.

Alec Patton:
You traveled a bunch putting this book together. Is that fair to say?

Scott McLeod:
Yes. So, what we did was we put our heads together and word of mouth schools that we knew about, places we found online, recommendations from others. We tried to identify about 30 schools that were doing some really interesting stuff, maybe hadn’t gotten quite the level of attention that say a high tech high gets or the MET gets, but it’s still doing some interesting things. And then what we wanted to do is we interviewed every principal. We did site visits for 28 of the 30 before the pandemic hit. And really, the driving question was, what do the leaders do in innovative deeper learning schools that’s different from their counterpart at the traditional school down the road?
So, the principals told us, they showed us. We have lots of student artifacts, and photos, and interview transcripts, and conversations with teachers and students when we visited. And that’s what the Leadership for Deeper Learning book is all about. Now, you probably also know that I’ve been on sabbatical this spring, unpacking deeper learning in grades K through eight. That’s going to be the next book, Deeper Learning in Elementary Middle Schools. And we have two high-tech middle schools that I visited for that book. And it was very fun to be out there in San Diego. So, thank you.

Alec Patton:
All right. So, on page five, you have a line that really jumped out at me. I’ll just read the sentence, “Francis Parker Charter Essential School is a quintessential deeper learning school.” Talk me through how you identify this. When you walk into a school building, what are you looking for?

Scott McLeod:
Yeah, great question. It’s interesting when you walk into a lot of deeper learning schools, and I’m sure people tell you this when they visit there, there’s a vibe. There’s a vibe and an energy that’s often different. And you can tell almost immediately when you walk in, because you see it on the walls in terms of the kind of student work that’s being displayed. You see the kind of energy that kids have around the learning work, the kind of dialogues that students and teachers are having in the classrooms or in the hallways. Leaders are talking about different things. And that actually becomes pretty tangible once you visit a few of these schools, because you can see, well, when I walk into the traditional high school down the street, it feels like this. And when I walk into a deeper learning school like Francis Parker or High Tech Middle Chula Vista, it just has a different vibe.

Alec Patton:
There’s a weird thing here, which is that everybody under 18 in this country spends six hours a day, five days a week in a building whose sole purpose is to help them learn. And you’ve written a book that’s basically, hey, there’s a few of these spaces where kids are actually learning deeply, we should check them out. Which makes you go, well, what on earth is happening at all the other schools if these kids are coming in spending six hours a day not learning deeply? So, I guess my question is, based on what you’ve learned, why isn’t this the norm?

Scott McLeod:
Oh, yeah, okay. So, I got a couple thoughts on that. So, the first one is that we have somewhere between 115, 130,000 schools in America alone, not counting schools worldwide. We probably have 1,000 to 2,000 deeper learning schools. It’s not that these schools are so rare now that there’s only 30.

Alec Patton:
Sure.

Scott McLeod:
I mean, you have 15, 16 in your network alone, right?

Alec Patton:
Yeah.

Scott McLeod:
So, in every state there are some schools that you could go see, you could go visit. They’re trying to do this work at various stages along their journey. So, we have enough proof cases, proof points now, that it feels like this is no longer a rarity. If you have 1,000 to 2,000 schools you could go visit in the US alone, that’s a good sign. Now, there’s still a minority compared to the vast total. And I think one of the things we say in the book is that the standardized model of education is deeply, deeply embedded in people’s brains, and it has deep roots and sharp claws which help fend off challenges. And so, I think the main reason that we don’t see the kind of work that’s done in these schools in more places more often, is just because it just doesn’t feel like “school” to most people. And so, it’s mostly mindset.
So, if you walk down the street in any community and you just say the word school to people, like a whole host of images come to mind. Kids in rows, they’re sitting at desks, there’s a teacher up front, there’s probably a board. Something’s being pushed out to kids, they’re regurgitating it back. The schedule’s broken up in time blocks and bells, just all the things. And getting people to buy into something different or understand that something different is not only happening, but also could be really desirable, is just hard.

Alec Patton:
That segues beautifully into my next question. What conditions need to be in place for a school to be able to pivot to deeper learning?

Scott McLeod:
It always starts with vision. You have to have a powerful vision of what you want student learning to look like instead and why. But I think one of the fatal flaws that happens is that we have this idea that some charismatic leader is going to come in and wave the flag with the new vision, and everybody’s going to go woo-hoo and follow and so on. And a couple things happen. One is that never works, at least not for very long because it’s not a shared vision. So, the question is, how do we create a shared vision where people not only understand the direction that we’re trying to go, but also commit to it? And so, what happens in a lot of these systems is that a principal or a superintendent is itching to do something different and tries to drag everybody else behind, rather than building the collective capacity and will of people to travel together.
And so, you can impose a vision or a profile of a graduate or a learner on a community, but what’s going to happen is that it never really takes deep root. And as soon as you leave as the leader, it just fizzles out. There’s no sustainability or succession planning or any of that. It’s very person-dependent. So, if the vision is not shared, if the commitment is not shared, if there’s not collective capacity building and the collective will to do the work, then at best it’s going to be temporary and it’s going to be imposed.

Alec Patton:
All right. So, you got a school leader with a vision. They have a sense of what they want things to look like that would be different. They recognize that they want to bring people along with them, that they don’t want to just impose it. How should they begin?

Scott McLeod:
I think it starts with dialogue. It helps with lots of rich, robust discussion with the community, both internal, other educators and also parents, families, business leaders, community members, whatever, about what does the world look like today. What skill sets and competencies do we think children need to have? What kind of experience create those and lead to those competencies and so on? And then I think you also need to put examples in front of people of what it can look like instead. And I think that’s often hard for leaders, because they just haven’t had the luxury of visiting places like I have, or they don’t have the luxury of being immersed in a system that’s already doing it, like you. So, I think I find that a lot of my work, for instance, is just helping people see it.
So, for example, I’ve been leaning heavily into the Changing the Subject book that you all published recently. It’s an absolutely phenomenal resource. And the examples you all provide there of the two decades of projects from High Tech High have been valuable for me in terms of my discussions with school leaders and educators about what could it look like instead. So, to put some of those project examples in front of them and be like, so what do you notice? What do you wonder? What do you think about this? Is this something you want to make happen? As we put those models and exemplars in front of people, it starts opening up possibilities for them, that they otherwise is just a vague term. Student agency is this amorphous concept. Real world work is an amorphous concept. But now we can see it playing out and we can say, yeah, we want that for our kids here.

Alec Patton:
Can you think of a school where you’ve seen that done really well, that sharing of examples?

Scott McLeod:
Yes, absolutely. Just thinking about some of the school districts that I’ve been working with myself. I got a school district in Illinois, the Mattoon Community schools, that is one of these regional hubs. They’re in rural Illinois. They’re the town that has the movie theater and the Walmart. And they’ve created this regional CTE hub in this whole tech building for 15, 20 school districts that surround it. And then they not only have used some examples that I provided them to get themselves fired up internally, but also to help their CTE folks working at the hub, which is called LIFT, to think about how to design their own work, and then how to get other communities around them to also be excited enough to send kids to them and do the transportation.
I think about a local district here where I got a middle school that is hot to trot. And they have this amazing leadership team. And as I put examples from the book and other schools in front of them, they’re just like, “Yes, yes, yes, we need that. We so desperately want that for our kids who have been underserved.” And they are just all cylinders go in terms of school transformation right now.

Alec Patton:
And then with that school, what happens next?

Scott McLeod:
I think it then becomes down to design and logistics. And I think it’s so contextual, you have to figure out what are those key early levers that will move you forward quickly, and have some quick wins, and some early successes that can help you build momentum towards some of the more complex stuff. I was talking with Justin the other day, my co-author, and one of the things that he said, which I thought was pretty smart, is that he is recommending to people over and over again, that as soon as you decide to do the work, you commit publicly, both internally and externally to a community exhibition. And you put it on the calendar, here’s the date, time, and location. We are going to have some kind of exhibition of work that looks different.
And what that does is it provides a very visible deadline for people. And good or bad, we’re going to show up, and we’re going to show out. And we’re going to try to invest in this idea of work that looks different. And that puts some internal pressure on us, because now we know we have something that’s going to be community facing and that we have to stand behind it as kids, as teachers, as a system. And that can be a really powerful driver.

Alec Patton:
Saying that I’ve seen a couple times recently as a precursor to that is actually doing a teacher exhibition first.

Scott McLeod:
Yes. Right, absolutely.

Alec Patton:
Especially if the kids can see that.

Scott McLeod:
Yeah, I love that idea.

Alec Patton:
To be like, yeah, look, we take this seriously, and so we’re doing it. And then when you go, oh, I don’t want to do that, that sounds terrifying, it’s like, but you’re cool making your kids do it.

Scott McLeod:
Right. And I think Justin was also leaning into this idea that inevitably when you do your very first exhibition, you’ll have a spectrum of quality. But it allows the teachers and the students who aren’t quite there yet to see what we’re striving for. So, if your fall exhibition is a variable quality, guess what? The deviation is less in the spring exhibition, because the floor gets raised pretty quickly. But without that public accountability to ourselves and to the people that we serve, it’s easy to hide behind a bunch of excuses.

Alec Patton:
There’s a term from theater, get it up on its feet. In theater, you can argue about how to play a scene literally for days. Or you can stand up, you can read the scene doing the thing, and you can either say, that worked or it didn’t.

Scott McLeod:
Yep, that makes sense.

Alec Patton:
I mean, the other thing that I always said in teaching was it’s never too early for a first draft. Make the first draft on day one. Do the thing so that you can look at it and see how to make it better. And people put that off, because it’s scary. But actually doing it in a low stakes way makes it all less scary. The longer you wait, the scarier it gets. All right, and exhibition’s a great example. Because one thing I wanted to ask you about was what are the Trojan horse changes that seem relatively minor, but actually lead to radical shifts? I think that’s a great example of one. And so, I’m wondering if there’s other ones of those that you’ve identified.

Scott McLeod:
I think it’s really hard to go in reverse on anything you do related to student agency. I think as soon as we start experimenting with ways to give kids more control and ownership of what they learn, and how, and how they show what they know one can do and whatever, it’s really hard to go back. It’s really hard to say, “Well, we used to have kids have some choice pathways through this unit, or we used to have kids drive the talk time,” and now for some reason we think that’s not a good idea anymore. Because inevitably, what happens over and over again is the kids just blow our minds about what they can do. And so, I think any step that moves us towards agency and ownership by young people is, I don’t know if it’s a stealth move, but I think people drastically underestimate how quickly that can move the needle.

Alec Patton:
Yeah, I think that’s a great point. And we touched on this a little bit, but you’ve seen enough people do this that you can say, “Hey, I’ve seen a lot of people make this mistake and you don’t have to.”

Scott McLeod:
Yes. And that’s why in the book we tried at the end of every chapter to outline what some key leadership behaviors and support structures were, is to help people recognize what some of those things are that need to be in place. I think where schools fall apart is that one is the lack of a shared vision and commitment toward the vision. That can be huge, because then it’s just person dependent. But I think one of the concepts that I keep coming back to over and over again is the concept from Richard Elmore at Harvard, around this idea of internal accountability. And internal accountability is really an alignment question. It’s the question of, do we have the capacity to enact and pull off what we say we want to, or are we just blowing smoke? Is it just empty rhetoric?
And schools, unfortunately, have typically had really low internal accountability. And what Elmore says is that it actually doesn’t matter what the external accountability is. If you don’t have the ability to actually pull off internally, whatever you say you’re trying to achieve, because you’re misaligned, because you don’t have adequate resource allocation, because you didn’t get stakeholder buy-in, because whatever, you allow people to opt out. And actually doesn’t matter what’s happening outside the system, your system is a dysfunctional system.
So, this idea of internal commitment, and monitoring, and accountability, and alignment is huge. Because whatever your own internal logistics are, it’s going to fall apart if you don’t follow those with fidelity, and constantly monitor, and adapt those to actually accomplish the thing you say you want. And I think the way this plays out over and over again is that I will walk into a school that has a very visionary, forward-looking learner of a profile or graduate profile. We want kids to be blah, blah, blah, thinkers, problem solvers, collaborators. But then you walk down the halls and most learning and teaching looks exactly the same as it did 20, 30, 40 years ago. And what that tells us immediately is that they have poor internal accountability between what they say they want, profile of a graduate, and what’s actually happening in the classrooms on a day-to-day basis.

Alec Patton:
The thing that I see a lot also is that when you try something new and it doesn’t go great, you penalize it so much more than when the traditional thing doesn’t go great.

Scott McLeod:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We never hold existing practice up to the same standard as things we’re trying that are new.

Alec Patton:
Which is like, I don’t know, it’s like getting annoyed about plate tectonics. Clearly, that’s baked into how the world works.

Scott McLeod:
But it’s also maddening, because critics of this kind of work will say, “Well, that didn’t work.” And you’re like, “Where’s your evidence of what we’re doing now works?”

Alec Patton:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, final question. Obviously, leadership for deeper learning is a given here. Other than that, what are your go-to resources for school leaders who are trying to do this work? What books should they be buying? What videos should they be watching? You mentioned changing the subject as well.

Scott McLeod:
Yes, absolutely. I’ll return to changing the subject again. I think it’s been a real gift to the community. I have found a lot of value in some stuff that’s really old, some of their really progressive writers from the ’60s. I’ve been rereading some work by John Holt from mid-1960s, about how children learn and why do they fail. That’s been very resonant. I think some of Tom Vander Ark’s work around place-based learning and difference making is a nice lens for us to think about what do we want kids to be doing instead and how. And Tom, of course, is great at getting people up and running. I’m a senior fellow for Getting Smart. I’ll also give them a shout-out, because I don’t know very many entities that profile innovative schools the way that Getting Smart does. And so, it’s nice to hear about new schools and hear what other innovative schools are doing through the work that Getting Smart does on its website and podcast. So, those are a few that jump out to me quickly.

Alec Patton:
That’s great. That’s super helpful.

Scott McLeod:
And I think we have to be careful, because we have a lot of people who are doing this work in the light version, not a deep rich version. And it’s hard when you see the book title to know is this going to be really substantive or is this somebody who’s just skimming across the service and trying to make a quick buck.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. How do you tell?

Scott McLeod:
I usually don’t until I buy it.

Alec Patton:
So, send Scott an email and be like, have you read this one, is it legit?

Scott McLeod:
Yeah, yeah. I pull up things from my shelf.

Alec Patton:
Awesome. Cool, man. Thank you so much.

Scott McLeod:
Thank you for the opportunity, Alec. I appreciate being a guest.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. We have links to Leadership for Deeper Learning and all the resources Scott recommends in the show notes. Thanks for listening.