Resiliency?

The number one question, concern and source of skepticism I receive around Matchbook Learning’s vision have nothing to do with blended learning.  Most potential buyers of our blended school model can eventually see its potential for success.  Rather, I inevitably receive the following question somewhere during the course of presenting our vision for turning around a school:  what happens after the contract ends and you leave? 

If I drill down further with the question, at the root of this concern is doubt regarding the model’s resiliency.  Is the turnaround resilient?  Or is it dependent upon a constant and continual presence of Matchbook Learning.? After all, no charter school model would say that its success could endure beyond its direct management and control of the school in perpetuity.  Yet, our model is a turnaround model, not a charter school model, where we do intend to build and transfer capacity and the turnaround back to the district eventually.

I recently read the book “Resilience:  Why Things Bounce Back” by Andrew Zolli & Ann Marie Healy.  The book was phenomenal in looking at resilient systems across a range of industries from business to ecology to cloud computing to microbiology. 

Four themes emerged from this book about resilient systems:

1.  Resilient systems are simple at their core but diverse at their edges and are modular in design (i.e. DNA of a cell or language protocols for the Internet).  Resilience requires a strategic looseness, an intentional stance of both fluidity (strategies, structures and actions) and fixedness (values and purpose).

2.  Resilient strategies that embrace social innovation are usually found in the white spaces between bureaucracies, creating opportunity, connectivity, permission and encouragement for people to meet and data to be shared and collaborated on.  Resilient strategies require regular, modest failures that happen gracefully so the organization can reorganize its resources.

3.  Resilient leadership does not rely on command and control, but influence and coordination.  Resilient leaders are “middle-out” leaders that work both up, down and across hierarchies to broker relationships and transactions across groups that might otherwise be excluded.  These leaders create context and trust in participants and know when to let go, arming participants with the right incentives and information so as to embrace an ethic of decentralization, shared control and swarming for decision making. 

Resiliency!

We have designed Matchbook Learning’s turnaround to be resilient.  In other words, we fully expect our schools to be turned around (to go from bottom 5% to top 20% in 5 years) and stay turned around after we leave.  We work to fulfill that expectation by designing in our model and approach the 3 elements critical to resilient systems according to authors Andrew Zolli & Ann Marie Healy in “Resilience:  Why Things Bounce Back”:

1.  Resilient systems are simple at their core but complex at their edges.

Simple:  Students learn and teachers teach in a 1:1 computing environment inside bricks and mortar schools supported by two fulltime, onsite Matchbook Learning Program Managers/Blended Instruction Specialists.

Diverse: Content, learning pathways, teacher feedback and teacher-led and virtual instruction are each customizable to the unique needs of each student. 

2.  Resilient, innovative strategies can be found in the white spaces between bureaucracies where data sharing, collaboration and regular, graceful failures are common.

White Space:   Turnaround schools (aka bottom 5% schools) remain part of school districts (bureaucracy) and receive local, state and even additional Federal funding (bureaucracy) but are effectively carved out from bureaucratic governance, programming and constraints.  We track and measure our progress within these turnaround schools (white space) by reviewing, collaborating and reporting on our student progress results every two weeks, sharing our failures and emerging successes with teachers, Principal and District & State leadership.

3.  Resilient leaders do not rely on command and control, but influence and coordination.

Influence/Coordinate: Our turnaround schools remain part of the school district, local community and continue to educate the same children as previous to our turnaround.  We invest time coaching, supporting and scaffolding the ability of teachers daily to leverage technology to meet the needs of our students.  Our model is teacher-centric in that way.  If we win the hearts of teachers, they will be inspired to win the hearts of their students by realizing their potential as instructors so students can realize their potential as learners.