[I am teaching a Leadership for Deeper Learning elective for one of our doctoral cohorts this summer and thought that I would share what is happening each week.]
After weeks of discussing schools that focus on project-based learning, ‘no excuses’ learning, and the International Baccalaureate, in Class 05 we finally stepped into more-familiar territory: the hallways of the traditional, comprehensive high school. Chapter 5 of In Search of Deeper Learning featured Attainment High, which was instantly recognizable to everyone in the room. As you can imagine, my doctoral students had a lot to say because they had been saving up a bunch of questions about ‘that’s great, but what about OUR settings?‘
We were fortunate to start with Mike Riley as a guest speaker. Mike is the Executive Director of Secondary Instruction for the Roanoke County Public Schools in Virginia. I have worked on and off with schools and educators from Roanoke County for a few years now, including both instructional redesign work and leadership coaching. They have been extremely strategic about translating their Portrait of a Graduate into practice, including major efforts this past year to scale up student Portrait defenses across all five of their high schools. Roanoke County also has been working with the Carnegie Foundation and was featured in its recent publication, Reimagining Learning in the Classroom. Mike shared the school district’s historical journey, explained some things that worked (or didn’t) along the way, and answered a bevy of questions from my class. Thanks, Mike!
As we do for each of the schools that we discuss, we then talked about the learning theories that seem to drive Attainment High. We also put both Attainment High and Roanoke County on our Continuum Wall, complete with theories of action and some competing ones.
Our main act for the evening was talking about how to get beyond pockets of innovation. We had read some (hopefully) provocative pieces from both myself and Alfie Kohn to set the stage. Other main readings for the evening pertained to Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovation research, including the importance of educators’ perceived characteristics of the innovation, and Gaver’s research regarding a new innovation’s affordances. I also introduced them to Geoffrey Moore’s ideas around ‘crossing the chasm’ between the early adopters and the early majority.
The last third of our class was spent in small group conversations. In addition to the questions that they posted on our pre-class Padlet, this time was also when we resurfaced the pre-assignment that I had given them earlier in the spring to add five slides to a collective online slide deck. They shared examples of deeper learning in their own settings, and talked about how these pockets of innovation play out within the larger, more traditional school context.
We know from Kohn and McLeod that kids cram for tests and then instantly forget the material, meaning as educators we’re wasting huge amounts of time on empty compliance. Mehta and Fine discuss how difficult it is to break free of this performative cycle at the secondary level. So how can elementary leaders pivot away from “busywork” and test prep toward authentic learning projects kids will actually remember?
If students are achieving at high levels but are not consistently experiencing curiosity, intellectual risk-taking, or meaningful engagement with content, should educational leaders consider the school successful?
If the incoming Superintendent and School Board don’t actively protect this vision, how do they justify the massive investments of professional development hours, community resources, and tax dollars? Are they simply looking at another cycle where years of work and millions of dollars go down the gutter to satisfy a change in leadership?
Is there a way to transform AP courses into deeper learning, PBL-style formats? If so, what would the process look like? Would the “breadth over depth” concept be sacrificed with a total reconfiguration?
Kohn (2011) pointed out that a lot of bad practices in lower levels are justified by his notion of BGUTI (Better Get Used To It). That is, preparing students for future bad experiences by giving them the same ones in the present. While this is awful pedagogy, and definitely is holding schools back, the outside world and life after school are no more utopias than the schooling system. Might there be some value in teaching kids how to navigate the difficulties of life, such as going through bureaucratic processes and finding critical (sometimes life-altering) information from mind-numbingly boring texts? What are some ways schools might be able to prepare students for some of the bad experiences they will face in the outside world while still engaging them in deeper learning?
Mehta & Fine (2019) say that deeper learning develops students’ identities, creativity, and mastery. In Failing Our Students, McLeod (2019) argues that schools fail when students have good marks/grades/scores/etc. but leave school without curiosity or passions of the disciplines. If these outcomes for students matter (matter most?), how should we redefine what counts as evidence of success in our schools? What could we use as indicators beyond grades and scores?
Rogers’ framework reminds us that teachers won’t buy into a new initiative if it feels too complex or conflicts with their current teaching strategies. What practical things can elementary leaders do to create an environment in which teachers can take risks without the fear of failure, so that deeper learning doesn’t wind up feeling like just another stressful directive passed down from leadership?
How do we get competitive families who care only about the accolades of their individual child on board with systemic changes that would create greater learning for all students, including their’s, but would not “look” as fancy?
If schools claim to value curiosity, engagement, and lifelong learning, but continue to reward grades, test scores, and performance outcomes, how can leaders redesign structures, incentives, and accountability systems so that deep learning becomes an opportunity for all students rather than a privilege for a select few?
What have school districts learned since the pandemic about wasted time in the classroom? Nothing that mattered enough to change the teaching/learning models?
Our readings / viewings for Class 05 are listed below. The theme for the evening was Crossing the Chasm. End-of-class evaluations were once again very positive.
[I am teaching a Leadership for Deeper Learning elective for one of our doctoral cohorts this summer and thought that I would share what is happening each week.]
I wasn’t happy with how Class 04 went. I didn’t think our flow was smooth. Our timing felt off. It just didn’t feel right afterward. And my students thought… it was great. Maybe I was just too hard on myself as an instructor (it’s been known to happen). Or maybe it was because in Class 04 we started to redesign!
Our chapter from In Search of Deeper Learning focused on IB High, which my students appreciated because they could empathize with the goal of increasing academic rigor without concurrently-heinous disciplinary practices (looking at you, No Excuses High and others…). As doctoral students, they could identify with the high-level, college-oriented, academic thinking that is intended to occur in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme. They also recognized that raising cognitive complexity alone is not the same as implementing a full suite of ‘deeper learning’ practices. We started class by identifying the learning theories that we thought were present in IB High (compared to Dewey High and No Excuses High), articulated both theories of action and some competing ones, and added IB High to our Continuum Wall in between No Excuses High and Laguna Beach Unified.
My students had familiarized themselves with the basics of the 4 Shifts Protocol before class, so after our instructional core conversations we were ready to move into a Redesign phase. We focused on Section C of the protocol and, as always occurs, they generated in a mere six minutes numerous great ideas for giving students in the observed math lesson some more agency and ownership. Throughout our redesign conversation with the 4 Shifts Protocol, I kept emphasizing that we can begin to do this work in smaller shifts rather than asking fairly-traditional educators to make the giant leap into full-blown, ‘gold standard’ project-based learning. As the Lego-style image in this post shows, a few teachers are somehow ready to bake the whole pie through a quarter- or semester-long project (green). Most need to start building their capacity by taking just one or two bites of the apple through a smaller redesign of that thing they are doing next Tuesday (red)…
We spent the rest of our evening in our student-led, small group discussions, and every group opted to sit or walk around outside for those conversations. Some of the questions that my students posted beforehand on the Class 04 Padlet included:
How can leaders redesign systems and learning environments so that student resistance is addressed as feedback rather than treated as a behavior problem?
We cannot keep kids trapped as compliant “achievers” or “producers.” As leaders, how do we help elementary teachers build true student agency when the system (and parents) are perfectly happy with kids who just follow instructions and get an A?
The Disengagement Gap describes Resister, Passenger, Achiever, and Explorer modes as student behaviors shaped by learning environments. But this raises a concern: if students shift between these modes based on context, then are we accurately diagnosing “student engagement,” or are we actually observing responses to instructional design conditions and system pressures?
Up to what point should students be allowed to choose what they learn?
How can structure be maintained while still granting students choice?
The more we try to measure student agency, the more we risk defining a “correct” version of it that reflects system values rather than student expression. Is it possible to design accountability systems that preserve flexibility and authenticity in agency, or does measurement inevitably narrow what agency looks like in practice?
I’m curious if others in our cohort have had success creating the common language needed to engage in [Elmore’s] seventh principle effectively, “Description before analysis, analysis before prediction, prediction before evaluation.” What are the best ways of establishing common language for teachers to describe what they see and do in classrooms?
To what extent can the IB framework, given “elite European origins,” be equitably adapted to meet the diverse needs of ‘IB for All’ initiatives in non-traditional school communities?
How do we balance the benefits and professional desire for teacher/classroom autonomy with the real fact that teaching in a certain way does result in better student outcomes? Is scripting really bad, or are we just giving teachers bad scripts?
We will continue our redesign discussions over the rest of the semester. We also will expand our frame from classroom- to building- to school district- to state-level, assisted by some upcoming guest speakers. My students submitted their audio/video Mid-Semester Reflections assignment over the weekend. So far, so good.
Our readings / viewings for Class 04 are listed below. The theme for the evening was Can We Build It? End-of-class evaluations were again very positive.
[I am teaching a Leadership for Deeper Learning elective for one of our doctoral cohorts this summer and thought that I would share what is happening each week.]
Class 03 was… interesting. We are following the flow of In Search of Deeper Learning, which sets up a staggering contrast between Dewey High in Chapter 2 and No Excuses High in Chapter 3. Dewey High is a mature project- and inquiry-based learning model. No Excuses High is exactly what you think it is… a school that focuses on tightly-scaffolded, heavily-chunked academic content in the name of college readiness; some occasional Socratic discussion (with SLANT!); and command-and-control classrooms with draconian discipline for even the most minor infraction.
Additionally, my students read several articles that extolled the virtues of direct and explicit instruction and articulated why inquiry-based learning is terrible. I also asked them to watch numerous short videos of educators training students how to track the speaker, students chanting academic answers in unison, and teachers making students line up over and over again while explaining that this “prepares them for college.” There may have been a video or two of uber-happy dancing students and teachers standing on desks at Ron Clark Academy. We also read a research brief on teaching differences in math between Japan, Germany, and the United States.
We started our class with two activities. I have been a participant in the nationwide EdPrepLab+XQ Faculty Working Group this year. We have been exploring the utility and integration of the XQ Power-Ups and The First Class film in our university educator preparation programs. EdPrepLab and XQ asked us to get some student feedback on the Power-Ups, so I asked my doctoral students to complete at least one module. For our first activity, we spent about 25 minutes unpacking the Power-Ups and my students’ comments were positive and insightful. For our second activity, we watched a classroom video of ‘classic education,’ read a short piece describing Lisa Delpit’s ideas about school culture and ‘codes of power,’ and engaged in a walk-and-talk conversation in pairs.
We also articulated theories of action (and some competing ones) for No Excuses High, and posted them on our Continuum Wall. With Dewey High on the Deeper Learning end and No Excuses High on the Traditional Grammar of Schooling end, I believe that we now have established our end posts. We will place future schools that we discuss along the Continuum Wall as the class progresses this summer.
One of my design principles for this doctoral course is student co-ownership. I am trying to preserve half of every class for student-led, small group discussions. Accordingly, we spent the second half of the evening unpacking our readings and videos. Some of the questions that my students posted beforehand on the Class 03 Padlet included:
Why are visuals of order (straight line, no gaps, smile, hand raised correctly, stand when I count, clap when I clap, lid on the marker exactly when I say) so important in these schools? What purposes do these practices serve?
Does the use of explicit instruction require the use of heavy-handed, demeaning school and classroom management techniques? Would it be possible for schools to use explicit instruction methods while at the same time respecting students?
Is there a middle ground of an amount of structure and routine that is predictable and creates a “safe and inclusive learning environment” but that also allows for students to be valued and cherished children and individuals? What could the “Goldilocks” school look like?
The explicit instruction and cognitive load readings suggest that structure can be essential for learning, especially for students who are still developing foundational knowledge. However, I keep wondering whether these cultures of engagement can also unintentionally reflect and reproduce broader patterns of inequality, depending on which students are placed into which kinds of learning environments. If some schools are able to combine high structure with high expectations, while others are framed as needing strict control rather than rich learning, how do we know when “culture-building” supports learning versus reinforces systemic differences in opportunity?
The steps of explicit instruction are often included as accommodations in IEPs and 504 Plans. Mehta & Fine (2019) found that many of these steps “work against longer, more open-ended, and more uncertain explorations” and that students are not proud of their work. Are IEP and 504 accommodations getting in the way of achieving deeper learning in a school setting?
Ron Clark Academy seems to spend a lot of time and effort on appearances; it is almost the TikTok/Instagram-ified version of a school. Based on what you learned about the school, does it seem to truly serve kids or is it all appearances? Additionally, do you think the house system contributes a sense of healthy competition to schools or is it detrimental? Do you think a house system could help boys feel more connected to schooling in a time when they are struggling in academic settings?
If achievement differences across countries are influenced less by isolated teaching methods and more by the consistency of instructional design across an entire system, what does that suggest about the role of leadership in building shared instructional practices without oversimplifying cultural context or reinforcing unequal expectations across student groups?
Are we trying to build human encyclopedias, or are we cultivating critical thinkers who love learning once the basics are locked down?
How can education leaders pivot away from individual teacher evaluation and instead build cultural systems needed for continuous, shared lesson design?
Are there any schools/programs tracking their students’ “success” through alternative means, like eventual career placement and salary, happiness in their life, positive contributions to society? Should that data be more important than getting into (and graduating from) college, and how can we track that?
Most interesting for me this evening were my doctoral students’ attempts to try and bridge the two far ends of the Traditional Grammar of Schooling-Deeper Learning continuum (after all, we did discuss the Hegelian dialectic last week!). I heard many comments like “Well, our students need to learn content and to pay attention, and the school does well on the SAT” and “Are there ways to combine these two philosophies of schooling?” and “Ron Clark Academy looks fun. I love the idea of student houses!” and “Let’s be honest. We do a lot of these things ourselves.” I planted a few conversational seeds regarding behavior modification through conditioning techniques, including both swift punishment for small offenses and house-style point reward systems. I am eager to see how our discussions progress this summer about how we want to learn and teach, and how we want to treat the children who are in our care.
Our readings / viewings for Class 03 are listed below. The theme for the evening was Academic Rigor. End-of-class evaluations were again very positive.
[I am teaching a Leadership for Deeper Learning elective for one of our doctoral cohorts this summer and thought that I would share what is happening each week.]
We were missing a few members of the doctoral cohort in Class 01, so our second class was the first time this summer that we were all together. It was great to see everyone in the same room again!
We kicked off Class 02 by beaming in Chad Mabery as a guest speaker. Chad is the Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Services for the Laguna Beach (California) Unified School District. He shared with us LBUSD’s journey toward deeper learning, along with many of the strategies that the district is employing to change what learning and teaching looks like there. My students asked Chad some fantastic questions and we all wished that we had more time with him.
After a short discussion about my approach to this new class and our summer assignments, we engaged in a couple of quick activities. First, I described the Hegelian dialectic, just to emphasize that we should try to hold opposing thoughts in our heads and that reality is likely somewhere in the intersection of those. Second, I discussed the concept of a theory of action. Everything we do in schools is based on some theory of action: If we [do this], then [that thing will happen] because [reasons]. A theory of action is a belief statement about how things work, and often there are competing theories of action. For example, a theory of action in many schools is:
If we [create double math blocks each day], then [students’ math learning will increase] because [more math time equals more math learning].
Some competing theories of action might be:
If we [create double math blocks each day], then [students’ math learning will NOT increase] because [we are not also changing how we teach math, we are only subjecting students to even more of what they already don’t like].
If we [create double math blocks each day], then [students’ math learning will NOT increase] because [by cutting a recess, students will have even more trouble self-regulating and staying focused].
I paired up my students and asked them to articulate at least one theory of action that they thought was occurring at Dewey High, which was profiled in the chapter of In Search of Deeper Learning that they had read for this evening. They also articulated a theory of action that they thought was occurring in LBUSD and at Crosstown High in Memphis, based on their conversation with Chad and the film that they watched last week. They then articulated at least two competing theories of action, and we shared those with each other.
The rest of our time was spent unpacking our readings and other pre-activities for the evening (see below). I ask each student to publicly post on a Padlet ‘2 or 3 fantastic leadership-focused discussion questions’ before each week’s class. We use that collection of questions to inform our small group discussions. For example, some of the questions that my students posted for this week included:
“Bringing symmetry to life means that leaders who seek collaborative, inquiry-rich learning environments for students must build collaborative, inquiry-rich environments for adults” (Fine & Fullan, 2026). To what extent was this provided for the staff at Crosstown High? At Dewey High? How did they benefit? What would your leadership moves be if you were leading those schools?
One thing that I noticed across Dewey High (using physics for the portable darkroom), Crosstown High (using geography for the Twister game re: the refugees’ journey) and Hook River Middle School (using algebraic formulas to determine acreage) was that allowing choice drove the desire to want to learn the skill. So the question I have is how can this be successful in every classroom? Once again, if teachers are not taught how to facilitate and foster this style of student-led instruction too many students slip through the cracks and will not achieve mastery of the skills.
Mehta & Fine (2019): There seems to be a large fear of failure holding back our schools. Deep learning requires experimentation and uncertainty and the risk of failure (as their many examples suggest). In a system whose purpose is to educate our children, how much risk is acceptable and who gets to decide when the potential benefits outweigh the potential costs? Also taking an equity lens, how can we ensure that the risks are not disproportionally beared by historically marginalized underrepresented students?
Structural incongruities are expected in public education because the “policies, schedules, or evaluation systems are out of step with a learning-centered culture” (Fine et al., 2026) When District and School Unified Improvement Plans (DUIP and SUIP) are rooted in state testing, how can school leaders cultivate symmetry? Is it realistic to create a deeper learning environment within the confines of our current reality of public education?
Why is math so hard? In thinking about integrating content and covering standards with deeper learning practices (and as highlighted by Dewey High’s separate math classes), why is mastering math standards seemingly the most difficult subject? It leads me to think about how we ‘organize’ and silo math currently, and I wonder what a completely different K12 scope and sequence for math might look like. Does every student need to get into ‘advanced’ math classes? Why is calculus more important or rigorous than statistics, when the latter is much more likely to show up in day to day life? Does geometry have to come after algebra 1? Why? Does math need to be subsectioned into these topics at all?
Across the readings on symmetry (Fine, Rincón-Gallardo, Fullan), there is a strong emphasis on aligning leadership behavior with the learning culture being promoted in schools. However, in many systems there appears to be a gap between “rigorous” or equity-centered practice models and what actually happens in day-to-day implementation. Could this gap suggest that even well-designed models are often reduced to symbolic or performative practices (tokenism) when they move into real organizational contexts? If so, is the issue the model itself, or the conditions under which it is implemented? What would it take for a model of practice to remain intact once it enters a complex school system?
What is a theory of action that you’re working with in your current setting? Discuss what competing priorities may be hidden in a “competing theory of action” that could limit the desired outcome.
As you can imagine, our conversations are quite robust!
Our readings / viewings for Class 02 are listed below. The theme for the evening was Theories of Action. End-of-class evaluations for the second week were very positive.
I am teaching a Leadership for Deeper Learning elective for one of our doctoral cohorts this summer and thought that I would share what is happening each week. It is my first time designing and teaching this course, and we only have eight weeks. I have had a blast pulling this course together!
Before the class started, I gave my students two pre-assignments. Last November, I encouraged them to purchase and start reading In Search of Deeper Learning by Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine. We are working through all 400-ish pages this summer, and I hoped that they might try and get ahead of that heavy reading load, particularly since we have such a compressed semester in June and July. Some students have, others haven’t. Including other readings, we will be averaging about 75-80 pages each week.
The second pre-assignment was to add five slides to a collective online slide deck. This spring, before the school year ended, I asked each student in the cohort to take five photos of P-12 students engaged in deeper learning, describe what is happening in the photograph, and include the grade level and subject area. PhotoVoice is a participatory photography strategy that allows community members to observe their inhabited spaces, document lived experiences, analyze issues of interest, and raise critical consciousness. We used my list of nine key elements for definitional purposes, and the student who works for an airline, not a school organization, included some fascinating photos of adult learning. We will be using these photos for a class session later in the summer.
I am including cinematic lenses in this course, and the main event for our first class was an in-class screening of The First Class, the documentary from XQ of the first group of students to attend and graduate from Crosstown High in Memphis, Tennessee. I have included the movie trailer below, and I believe that you can see the entire film online by signing up on the documentary website. I created a film screening poster, printed movie tickets, and brought popcorn, movie popcorn buckets, and theater candy to class. We had some time to debrief the documentary afterward, even though the movie took up two-thirds of our class time. My students loved the film, and it was a great springboard into our summer class discussions!
One of our course assignments is our Deeper Learning Film Fest. In addition to The First Class, each student will watch Most Likely to Succeed and at least one of the following: Race to Nowhere, Beyond Measure, and/or All Who Dare. Students then will submit an audio or video response in July, reflecting on what they saw in the films and responding to some prompts that I gave them. Additionally, I am including one or more shorter videos each week that show deeper learning (or the opposite) in action in schools across the country.
End-of-class evaluations for the first week were overwhelmingly positive. I feel like we are off to a good start and am looking forward to a fun summer talking about deeper learning!
Our readings / viewings for Class 01 are listed below. The theme for the evening was Cracks in the Foundation.
As the day continued, they started matches. If you were watching on the live stream, you would have seen us in action! If not: You will see photos at the bottom and I will start to explain. The pit area is set up and ready to go! We will take some video tomorrow of what will be happening and why. It will you guys a more “behinds the scene” look of how much work it actually takes!(in the photo to the left, we are talking to Dark Matter…one the three teams from our Iowa Trio at the North Super Regionals. The three teams together were Finalist Alliance Award)
Our Qualification Matches are: 9, 25, 47, 57, 78, 91, 101, 122, and 132. Tune in tomorrow to the live stream. #Support Lets do this!
We only got to play the first two with the time allotted and we are currently in 8th place! We are 2-0 and extremely excited for tomorrow. Tomorrow will consist of many more matches, scouting, and going to the big dome (we are currently at Union Station)! At the Edwards Jones Dome we will have opening ceremonies, a college/scholarship row, and we will be able to see the FRC (First Robotics Competition) and the FLL (First Lego League)… We will also be able to see the companies who helped sponsor this event and get a lot of one on one information from them.
I don’t really have a lot of information except for good news. The robot is still working great as well as the team members. Just remember: Gracious Professionalism and Continuous Improvement!
Thank you so much to the community/business’s who helped get us here! You guys mean SO much to us! #MonkeySwag #WorldChampionship #International #SUPERCOOL
Over a 3-day span in late January I worked diligently to whittle the 1,014 emails in my Gmail inbox down to zero. I also cleaned out another 2,300+ listserv emails that were in a second folder. Whew! Since then I have managed to stay on top of my email and the reduction in psychic weight from feeling behind has been glorious. I’m now whittling down my 121 to-do items that still linger from all of those messages. Luckily not too many of them are huge items and I should halve that number in the next week or so. Sorry if you’re still waiting to hear from me!
Sanebox has been a lifesaver for me and well worth every penny. I forward emails to addresses like or or feb.9+4pm@sanebox.com and they disappear, reappearing later in my inbox only when I need them. In addition to using these addresses to schedule work tasks, I also use them in the BCC field of email messages to remind me to follow up with someone.
I also have Sanebox folders set up for each day of the week. I can just drag emails into them and they will reappear at 7am on the morning of that day. My SaneLater folder contains all of my listserv emails and messages from folks who are new contacts. I try to check this folder only once per day.
I am starting to use Trello again for my to-do items, keeping in mind that my emails should be separate from my to-do lists. I’m not there yet but I’m working on it. I also am putting to-do items directly onto Google Calendar and then doing my best to actually work on those things during the reserved times. And, finally, I’m trying to use Google Chat, Twitter, text messaging, and online communities to reduce the number of emails that I’m sending.
Wishing you productivity and serenity with your own email…
The Online Model United Nations (O-MUN) program is not only a powerful model of global conflict resolution and community building for students. The fact that the traditional Model United Nations (MUN) academic simulation can now take place online makes O-MUN a powerful example of the evolution of Connected Learning principles (see Scott’s post on Connected Learning). And if O-MUN exemplifies the Connected Learning principles of interest-powered, academically-oriented, peer-supported learning, then Junior Online MUN is a powerful extension of this third principle, in particular. It has transformed peer-supported learning into a global mentoring network.
Junior O-MUN epitomizes apprenticeship in the 21st century. Technology tools such as Edmodo and Mightybell provide the means for middle school delegates and their upper school mentors to come together online where the teaching and learning can occur as part of the fabric of their social lives; where the lines between the academic, the personal, and the social are blurred; where the formal and informal co-exist.
Junior Online MUN (jrO-MUN) is the middle school branch of the O-MUN program. It is specifically designed for students in the middle grades to collaborate and debate with a global network of middle school students and upper school mentors using online community platforms (e.g., Edmodo, and Mightybell) and educational software (i.e., Blackboard Collaborate).
Through pre-debate collaboration and during the online debate itself, jrO-MUN student leaders provide mentorship and support as young delegates navigate the language and procedures of MUN diplomacy. The chat feature of the Blackboard Collaborate debate room is one example of how O-MUN leverages tech tools to facilitate this kind of interaction.
These technology tools provide the means for young people to come together online where the teaching and learning can occur as a natural extension of their social lives. This is apprenticeship in the 21st century. Technology has freed O-MUN to operate outside of the traditional barriers of geographical location and financial burden, as well as the limitations of school-based learning, which requires everyone to sit down together in the same room at the same time within the constraints of the same school schedule and calendar of activities and often subject to teacher availability. Now, in the jrO-MUN program, student masters and apprentices can interact online to prep for and debate global issues – anywhere, anytime.
When middle school delegates sign up for monthly global debates, they are supported by a team of upper school MUN mentors from the global O-MUN community who serve as jrO-MUN Assistants under the supervision of the jrO-MUN Secretary General and Deputy Secretary Generals, as well as O-MUN Founder & Director, Lisa Martin.
Debate prep follows a monthly cycle of collaboration. Middle school delegates are introduced to the global issue debate topic by the jrO-MUN student leaders, who curate a Mightybell collection of resources. Via Edmodo, the younger delegates introduce themselves and the country they will represent, while continuing to suggest research links for Mightybell. As the debate cycle moves ahead, the delegates post country policy statements and eventually propose resolution clauses for the debate, connecting with each other to build alliances and develop arguments. Meanwhile, MUN directors have the luxury of simply observing the Edmodo collaboration, as the team of jrO-MUN Assistants pick up where the lone teacher would traditionally have operated. The Assistants post and reply alongside their young apprentices in the jrO-MUN Edmodo Group, providing individual feedback and group-wide updates, all the while modeling the language and practice of diplomacy.
Edmodo and Mightybell support the jrO-MUN Groups/Communities where the collaborative MUN debate preparation takes place.
The social context of apprenticeship in this model is essential and the online platforms make this possible. Young delegates have access to a variety of veterans, helping them to understand that there are multiple ways of thinking about international diplomacy and helping them to appreciate a diversity of perspectives to global issue problem-solving. Young delegates have the opportunity to observe others grappling with the issues and completing various tasks in the debate prep cycle. They also see the mentor feedback provided for others so they can self-correct. In this way, the middle school students come to understand that learning is a process but also that there are benchmarks indicating success. Compare this to the limited impact of a single MUN teacher-coach (sometimes managing 30, 50, or even 80 delegates) and the exponential nature of the advantages becomes even more apparent. In fact, even if a student moves to a new school, they can enjoy the continuity of the O-MUN program and the O-MUN community. The jrO-MUN mentoring model derives many important characteristics from the fact that all participants are embedded in a community of practitioners, all practicing and discussing the target skills.
“When I first started MUN many years ago, I learnt primarily from my senior delegates, since there is only so much time a MUN coach can offer. Looking back, I now realize the importance of guidance from strong MUN role models in becoming a strong delegate. Now, as a senior delegate myself, jrO-MUN allows me and other experienced high school delegates to engage in this “pay it forward” system on a far larger scale. Through the jrO-MUN program, experienced MUN student leaders give tutorials on essential MUN skills such as composing and delivering opening speeches. Furthermore, via the social learning platform Edmodo, jrO-MUN Assistants help delegates through the process of researching, writing country position statements, collaboratively composing resolutions, preparing arguments and anticipating counter-arguments, and finally through lobbying and the culminating debate. The jrO-MUN program enjoys all the advantages of Online MUN, but it is perhaps even more relevant to these younger delegates because they get strong guidance from experienced mentors, without needing to worry about monetary or logistical burdens.” – jrO-MUN Secretary General Rohan Sinha (Taipei American School, Taiwan)
The jrO-MUN program pushes past traditional boundaries of time and space to bring together masters and apprentices to solve global issues. In the example below, Edmodo allows Jasper, who will represent India from his home in Taiwan, to be mentored by Omar, a jrO-MUN Assistant and the Deputy Secretary General of Africa regional debates, who lives in Egypt.
“There’s something very motivating about being part of the online MUN community – perhaps it’s just the kind of dedication that O-MUN attracts – but among our delegates, there seems to be a constant drive to participate, and more importantly to improve. It’s been humbling to watch the zeal with which even our middle school participants approach MUN preparation and debate. I’ve seen complete novices transform into confident delegates in the space of a year. The passion and leadership that O-MUN fosters is truly inspirational to me … as I’m sure it is to our many delegates, too.” – jrO-MUN Deputy Secretary General Sheyna Cruz (Singapore American School, Singapore)
“Mentorship is one of the most crucial and integral parts of the jrO-MUN program because it ensures the quality of our debates and allows delegates of all levels to further their knowledge. The quality of mentorship is one of the key factors explaining the quality of jrO-MUN debates and the success of this program in general. Increasingly, jrO-MUN mentors are graduating from the pool of previous jrO-MUN participants. At this point, it’s just an amazing cycle: experienced MUN delegates continue to raise the standards and expectations of jrO-MUN debates while the younger generation of delegates strives to attain and exceed the standards set by the previous generation.” – jrO-MUN Deputy Secretary General Jessica Chen (Taipei American School, Taiwan)
Through this junior online program, MUN delegates are gaining extra MUN debate preparation, practice, and performance as well as the opportunity to network and collaborate with middle school and upper school students with whom they may well debate face-to-face at future MUN conferences around the world. For example, around 40 students who participated in the November jrO-MUN Global Debate from as far afield as Jordan, India, and Taiwan are looking forward to continuing their collaboration in person at a February MUN conference to be held in Singapore!
jrO-MUN Tutorial: Pre-conference practice session prior to a traditional f2f MUN conference
Online MUN was not developed simply to increase MUN student numbers and events. It was developed to take advantage of new educational technologies in order to build a global community that more closely models the true purpose of the United Nations. To paraphrase the United Nation Charter Preamble, the role of the UN is to provide us with the ability to build community, unite our strength, and work together for a better future and the advancement of all.
The most critical aspect of O-MUN program growth thus is this very deliberate and explicit cultivation of a culture of mentorship. Connecting masters and apprentices has been every bit as important as simply starting students earlier with MUN. By creating a cross-divisional mentoring network and building bridges between middle school and upper school MUN participants with open source technology tools, O-MUN is able to unite their strengths and work for the advancement of all.
Kristin Rowe is the jrO-MUN Assistant Director and Middle School MUN Coordinator at Taipei American School, a THIMUN O-MUN Partner School. O-MUN Taiwan operates under the directorship of Darby Sinclair, the Upper School MUN Coordinator. Together, they coordinate Taipei American School’s annual junior MUN Conference (TASMUN).
My first contact with Online Model United Nations (O-MUN) was in my sophomore year of high school. At the time, I approached the program with some degree of caution; after all, although I had done a substantial amount of Model United Nations (MUN), I had never heard of its existence online. MUN was supposed to be in real time, face-to-face, wasn’t it? How was an online MUN program even possible, let alone practical?
The extensive MUN program at my school had already served me well. By the end of my sophomore year, I had done MUN in three continents and I wanted more. However, clear barriers existed which prevented me from acquiring more experience. After all, traveling expenses, geographical distance, restrictions on face-to-face meetings, and time off school ultimately set a conference limit and a school only has so many human resources.
The Online MUN debate platform is a Blackboard Collaborate room, where traditional elements of a f2f conference are replicated online – for example, delegates raising their placards to indicate they are ready to take the floor. O-MUN student leaders run monthly Tech Check sessions for new delegates and students quickly adjust to the debate room environment.
My first online conference, however, was the game-changer. With the friendly accents of delegates from over four continents, with the sheer intensity of debate over the South China Sea archipelagos, with the voices of students my age hungry to make a positive difference, a feeling of belonging stirred within me. I felt connected to a group of people who, like me, were filled with raw idealism in hoping to help others. I was empowered – I could now influence and be influenced by change-makers from over fifty countries.
With Online MUN I can debate multiple times every month, and with far greater authenticity due to the international nature of the program. It is not uncommon to be in a committee with delegates from three continents, some of whom are directly tied to the conflict in question. In my opinion, it is this democratization of a more authentic MUN experience that separates the MUN of today from the MUN of tomorrow.
The middle school delegates of jrO-MUN (Junior Online MUN), many of them new to MUN, are particularly appreciative of the way this online simulation is democratizing the MUN experience. They recognize that jrO-MUN brings an authentic experience of international diplomacy to their fingertips. They see that jrO-MUN is giving them a voice. Middle School delegates who are fully capable and passionate about debating are often denied early MUN access due to resources. They may have to wait their turn while older students take up travel team positions and have their overseas adventures, but junior delegates no longer have to wait for a genuinely globe-spanning MUN debate.
Secretary General, Rohan Sinha, sets up the interface for a Security Council simulation. Junior O-MUN is also integrating crisis scenarios into traditional face-to-face debates using the O-MUN platform, an exciting addition to middle school MUN programs.
Over the past year, as jrO-MUN Secretary General, I have had the opportunity to lead and learn from students all around the world; from my laptop at home in Taiwan to the lecture halls of Georgetown University in Qatar and the assembly halls of The Hague in the Netherlands. More than ever before, I realize the power of exposure – early exposure – to different voices with shared passions. O-MUN sets the stage for this chorus.
Rohan Sinha serves as the Global Secretary General of Junior Online MUN (jrO-MUN), the middle school partner program to O-MUN. Currently a high school junior at Taipei American School, Rohan started MUN in seventh grade and since then has debated in conferences in Taipei, Berlin, New York, and Qatar. He also founded and leads his school’s International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) team, after having won the Gold Medal at the college iGEM competition at MIT with the NYMU Taipei team.
THIMUN Online Model United Nations evolved around (mostly) free and open source technology tools and today revolves around three, interrelated parts: our website, our Blackboard Collaborate suite of conference rooms, and our social media network. Each of these pieces plays a part in creating an online community that is both student-centered and capable of delivering information in a timely fashion. Much of O-MUN’s development has been experimenting with this combination of pieces, finding ways to make them work seamlessly with each other, and searching for other options when they have not.
Website: Our current website feels a little bit like a driving a Ferrari – way too powerful a machine for someone who just got a driver’s license. Our website is run off a Drupal platform: not exactly user-friendly, but full of possibility. We burned through our wiki and our WordPress site in a matter of months. As we grew and attempted to add more functionality to our website (something we felt was important because we didn’t want the program driven entirely off Facebook), these two options filled a need but quickly became too limiting. Currently we run our blogs and debate registrations off our new home, and we hope to include messaging, forums, and additional program websites in the future. Students and MUN Directors are encouraged to register on the site and, once approved, may then sign in, click on a debate event, and register to debate. Goodbye Google Surveys, a system we outgrew and that was becoming far too cumbersome for our needs.
Blackboard (Bb) Collaborate Conference Rooms: O-MUN’s first conference room was a 50-seat room that we won in a Learn Central competition. The following year we were generously provided a room by The Hague International Model United Nation’s office in Qatar (THIMUN Q). When we needed more than one room, they updgraded our license. O-MUN now has 18 rooms, with various parts of the program each having their own specialized room (jrO-MUN, ICJ, Security Council, Asia, France, etc.) This is the only significant piece of kit that we pay for. We have not found suitable alternatives but Blackboard’s pricing structure is madly frustrating and does not adequately address the needs of small, non-profit with inconsistent first-time user numbers. Customer support also can be a bit dicey, particularly if you are not a large institutional customer. Having said that, it offers everything we need and the students find it easy to use!
Symbaloo is the only way I can keep our multiple room links straight
Students log into the Bb conference room as their country using the following protocol +China (name). This allows participants to be placed in alphabetical order. Guests log in as ‘guest’ and sink to the bottom. Moderators/Chairs log in with their name (position), with the exception of Amendments. An amendment student logs in as “amendments.’ When a delegate wants to submit a proposed change to the resolution being debated, she sends it via private message to this moderator. We only use the audio feature in Bb since 30-60 students with multiple bandwidth issues would make video streaming too difficult. You can hear an example of a debate and what it sounds like.
Behind the scenes a WHOLE LOT OF ACTION is happening. Students, upon initiation into this moderating world, describe it as a ‘rush,’ ‘wild,’ ‘hairy,’ a ‘multi-tasker’s nirvana.’ All moderators (and it takes a minimum of five to run a debate) are logged into a Skype group for backchannel communication. The tally moderator and the chair are logged into a shared Google doc to track every speech and question and update that in real time. The amendment’s moderator (the most challenging moderating position) is fielding private chats (amendments), copying those into a separate Skype group so that these can be reviewed with the chair, and operating a TitanPad (similar to Google docs) that is pulled into the Bb room via a web tour. The Chair and Co-Chair calmly officiate over the debate but behind the scenes the tally mod is tracking participation, the chat mods are reviewing ALL private communications to check for suitability and appropriateness, and the amendments moderator is working the Titan Pad. ALL of them are on Skype, messaging hints, calling for assistance, offering encouragement. One or two university students – and usually myself – are present to oversee all of this but it is, for the most part, a student-run show.
And the best part? These students are usually on separate continents. It is very common to have a chair and co-chair from the USA and United Arab Emirates, chat mods from Taiwan and Jordan, an Amendments mod from Nigeria, and a tally mod from Lebanon or Tanzania. Throw in an Assistant Director from Somalia or Hong Kong and you’ll see just how crazily amazing this gets. In a recent debate, we had participants from over 30 countries log in synchronously for a 90-minute debate on reaching the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal on universal primary education.
Social Media: It all started with Facebook but we do engage with some of our delegates via Twitter, using #omun and @onlinemun to communicate. Students recently set up a Tumblr account to engage in some of the sillier outreach we like to do: photo competitions, videos, and the like. Online Model United Nations has a LinkedIn Business page as well. But it really has been about Facebook. We have regional groups, moderating groups, leadership groups, working groups, and travel team groups. It’s a lot of Facebook but it is where students are. I now use social media like many of my students – friending and unfriending students to form alliances, to get information, and to network. Since email has become oh-so-20th-century to many of these millennials, I am more apt to communicate with them via private messaging than any other form of communication. In the evening here in the Middle East, my computer and iPad ping and squawk for hours as the messaging occurs in a steady stream.
So that’s our world, developed fully-online by students from around the globe. But technology is just part of the equation here and, in my opinion, the smallest part of a larger story. The next several blog posts will give you a glimpse into the transformative nature of this program. I hope you’ll enjoy hearing from the students who have worked so hard to build THIMUN Online Model United Nations.
Lisa Martin is a 20+ year educator who has worked in places as far flung as the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, San Diego, and, now, Amman, Jordan. She is the Co-Founder and Director of Online Model United Nations and would love to connect with like-minded educators. You can find her just about everyplace online, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
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![Online Model United Nations: Raising our voices [guest post]](http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/OMUN2-293x300.png)
![The nuts and bolts of online debating [guest post]](http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Symbaloo_Mod_Links-300x138.png)
