This Simple Yet Wonderful Metaphor Will Steer You Towards Action

You will see over the next few months a range of posts about Legacy. The impact that children can have on the world around them is a topic that intrigues me. I will be sharing my emerging understanding of what Legacy means to me and the relevance to education and society more widely. I suppose this is the first of those posts.

Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American author and designer, architect and systems theorist. As an inventor and visionary he dedicated his life to making the world work for all of humanity. Something that is remarkable about his life was his staunch belief in the generalist approach. “Fuller did not limit himself to one field but worked as a ‘comprehensive anticipatory design scientist’ to solve global problems surrounding housing, shelter, transportation, education, energy, ecological destruction, and poverty.”

Creating silos in schools, through subjects or career pathways, is not likely to foster the thinkers we need. Fuller grappled with complex problems in a holistic manner. He chose to be interested in many areas of study encircling the problem. I always find stories of multidisciplinary teams or mindsets hugely encouraging. These are stories we need to pay more attention to in education.

Trimtab

During an interview for Playboy back in the early 1970s Fuller outlined a simple metaphor for the impact we can all have on the world.

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trim Tab.”

There is great ambition in these words, a message of hope that the individual within a system can make change. Fuller believed we can start with the self, to make changes and build momentum there. The ripples of our impact will soon happen.

I’m positive that what you do with yourself, just the little things you do yourself, these are the things that count. To be a real trim tab, you’ve got to start with yourself, and soon you’ll feel that low pressure, and suddenly things begin to work in a beautiful way.

Learning Legacy

This will form the basis of a longer post in the future, but it is worth mentioning here in the context of Fuller’s challenge for us all. I believe we need to spend more time considering the design of ambitious learning. To help the youngsters we work with develop the capacities aligned with Fuller’s metaphor. To design the opportunities in school for learners to push out against the world and maybe make it a little better.

In many ways this ambition is subdued by the knowledge that through learning we are developing the individual child. But it is the more outward looking, more ambitious holistic design of learning that maybe needs more attention.

What do you mean? I hear you ask. I suppose I think of the examples of school based work that I have been lucky enough to take a small part in over the last few years. Instead of just pretending to do a TEDx event, a primary school we worked with ran the first official event of its kind run by 7, 8 and 9 years olds. Instead of just creating new ideas for the Space Gallery at the British Science Museum one school invited the Education Officers to visit and pitched them.

The list goes on of little Trim Tabs in our schools.

Start Small

Where do you go from here? Learning projects or units of work do not always have the opportunity to have a vast, far reaching impact, so just remember it all begins with yourself.

  • As educators we can make small changes in how we think about learning.
  • We can consider how ambitious we have been in our design of learning.
  • We can foster a creative mindset that starts to believe in the impact we all can have – especially our students.
  • Whilst we might not be able to change the system, we can help our students see that little changes count.

How Worthwhile Is The Learning You Are Designing?

We have all seen the likes of these documents before, a system-level framework for effective teaching, a document that states the fundamental principles of what is expected of teachers in a particular region. The Canadian Teacher Association paper titled “What did you do in school today? Teaching Effectiveness: A Framework and Rubric” is no different in that regard. It is a multi-year research piece about the effectiveness of teaching.

However, what is particularly arresting about this piece is the plain-speaking language used. Often the weight of unhelpful language and Edu-jargon causes us the poor reader to get lost in sometimes and the true meaning is lost most of the time. So it was refreshing to read such simply stated principles in the document about teacher effectiveness:

  1. Effective teaching practice begins with the thoughtful and intentional design of learning that engages students intellectually and academically.
  2. The work that students are asked to undertake is worthy of their time and attention, is personally relevant, and deeply connected to the world in which they live.
  3. Assessment practices are clearly focused on improving student learning and guiding teaching decisions and actions.
  4. Teachers foster a variety of interdependent relationships in classrooms that promote learning and create a strong culture around learning.
  5. Teachers improve their practice in the company of peers.

For each element they expand on the principle with some clear justification for example in the first principle – Teachers As Designers, the authors refer to crafting opportunities for learning that:

…awakens the human spirit’s desire to know. The result is a deep, personal commitment on the part of learners to explore and investigate ideas, issues, problems or questions for a sustained period of time.

This speaks to my passion for the craft of what we do and emphasises the design skills and dispositions needed to do our work so creatively.

The other principles are just straight forward and make great sense to me – however, there is one stand out phrase for me. Principle number two:

The work that students are asked to undertake is worthy of their time and attention, is personally relevant, and deeply connected to the world in which they live.

That one sentence delivers such a challenge and provocation to what we do that it almost leapt off of the page at me when I read it. If you read further into the rationale for this principle you will quickly find a reference to the design of learning that is authentic to those individuals we are with, even providing a useful rubric as a guide, reference and starting point.

TEACHING_EFFECTIVENESS_A_FRAMEWORK_AND_RUBRIC_—_Evernote_Premium

How is the learning we are designing worthy of the time we all put into it? How might we ensure we make every learning moment count with our students and still leave room to take opportunities when they arise?

The worthiness of learning is a measure that may reveal real challenges for some and most certainly will lead to rich conversations for those that care.