PILOTed

Uh oh, I think we have a problem

People ask me, “What is the benefit of learning how the mind makes decisions?” 

Persistence, self-initiative, critical thinking, creative thinking and innovation, collaboration, communication, and their opposites all begin in the mind. When you learn to recognize how the mind operates in each of these spheres, and learn how to move minds into resourceful mindframes, you will accomplish more and you will recover faster from conflicts, unanticipated obstacles, and detrimental emotional responses.

Here is an education example from real life.

A district was evaluating digital textbooks for science, and they asked for teacher volunteers to review a few offerings from respected publishers and make a recommendation. Each textbook was already in use at hundreds, or even thousands, of districts.

The teachers pull together and after a few weeks of reviewing the materials and sharing insights, they are close to selecting textbook A.

Just at that time, the district’s curriculum director realized that the district had received a grant for teaching science, and that the grant included purchasing textbook B. He cannot in good conscience pay for a different textbook when the district would be receiving copies for all students, support materials, and even PD for this one at no charge.

He informs the teachers, takes responsibility for the mistake, and says he is sorry.

The teachers are angry. They aren’t buying the apology.

Here is how a mindshifting practitioner would look at the situation.

At this moment the teachers are angry. Anger emanates from the more primitive areas of the brain, the limbic system. When the limbic system activates anger, it also secretes the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisone which focus the brain on reactions to the threat that is causing the anger, shuts off the innovative and critical thinking parts of the brain (which tend to exist in some of the more recent areas to develop, the prefrontal cortex) and direct those areas to generate reasons or stories the justify the anger.

These stories are phrases like:

• The district doesn’t respect teachers
• The district took advantage of me
• I’m going to show them that this textbook isn’t going to work
• They never listen to us
• That’s the last time I put in extra time or effort for them
• It’s always just about the money, they don’t really care about the children at all, only we teachers care about the kids and look where that gets us

While the teachers are angry, and while their critical thinking, creative, and resourceful parts of their brains are shut down, the teachers will not be receptive to anything that administration says or does to justify the decision or to move on; in fact those efforts are likely just to reinforce the negative stories that their brains are feeding them.

What can’t people just move on?

Before the teachers can move on, their limbic anger has to dissipate, and their limbic brain must reset.

There are three ways to reset the limbic brain and give access to calmness, resourcefulnes, or playfulness.

1. A person can be aware of when their limbic brain is controlling their reaction. Sometimes just realizing that you are angry (or afraid, or anxious, etc.) is enough to reset.
2. Mindfulness, or focusing on sensations such as breathing, sounds, the environment, meditation, trees, or the bodily sensations of the emotion may open up enough space to reset,
3. Positive internal chatter, talking to yourself in positive terms such as, “maybe this is really for the best,” “what does this now open up for me to best live my life,” “of course I am disappointed but I wonder how I can make the best of this now.” Note that this is internal chatter, no one wants to hear this from someone else, it has to be internally generated.

Along with the three ways of resetting the limbic brain, there are only two ways of getting over a past disappointment or negative outcome.

1. You can decide that this outcome was not really that important, choose to dismiss any slights or anger, and move on. In fact, over time, this often happens. In ten years (probably less), virtually all of the teachers will likely have moved on from this event; we all do.
2. You can find a gift or opportunity in this outcome. For example, the district will now have hundreds of thousands of dollars that they can spend on other things, can those actually be more beneficial than using textbook A? Or, in the process of reviewing the textbooks, the teachers were exposed to many different tools and teaching techniques, can any of them be incorporated into teaching along with textbook B?

When teachers are trained in mindshifting

they learn the skills to reset their own limbic systems and to move past disappointments. This significantly reduces the chances situations like this turn into crises. Imagine listening in to the internal thoughts of a mindshifting teacher:

• What? All that work for nothing?
• Wait, that’s my lizard brain working up to anger.
• Let me take a few minutes to calm myself.
• Okay, in the grand scheme of things, this really isn’t so terrible, what can we salvage from this?

These teachers were not.

If the administration had been schooled in MIndfulness

They would have recognized that the teachers would regard this as an empty apology; all form but no substance, or what behavioral psychologists might call a “denial” apology: “I’m sorry but it wasn’t my fault.” They would have either formulated their initial communications to the teachers in a form that would connect better with how the teachers would likely feel and react, or, if they overlooked that step, they would have quickly realized the situation and reacted in a way to restore the teachers’ sense of connection and value.

These administrators were not.

So either the teachers remain in anger mode until their anger dissipates over time, or the administration needs to use some mindshifting techniques to coach the teachers.

Here are two mindshifting techniques that could be used in coaching

Someone can coach the teachers. A good coach could connect with the teachers and help them move forward, perhaps with mindshifting techniques such as motivational interviewing.For example, one possible coaching technique would be starting a discussion of other times each of us has been angry, and times when when we were able to move out of anger and into calm and action. The process of recalling and recounting those instances would be a way to trigger a form mindfulness, and provide space, and then recalling instances when they diminished the anger on their own might give them access to their own resourcefulness.

The administration could provide a “gift or opportunity” to the teachers. For example, they could talk about their error, and that since the district has this extra money and since the teachers have been so helpful, they would like to give the teachers the opportunity to determine how some of that money would be spent for the students.

It’s not that these different possible solutions couldn’t be arrived without Mindshifting, but

1. With Mindshifting, if one understands the dynamics of how the brain is operating and the mechanisms for controlling the mind’s operation, the problem is framed in a way that naturally leads to possible interventions such as these.
2. If the teachers and administration were already skilled in Mindshifting, the recovery from issues such as this would be much quicker and likely autonomous.

Want to learn these techniques for yourself or your students?

The next class, Mindshifting 1: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Educators will start on October 18 and run for 8 sessions. More info and register here.

I screwed up

Yesterday (Thursday, July 7, 2022) I had scheduled a FB live conversation with Angela Maiers on Mattering, Mindshifting, and the power within every person to positively affect our own lives and the lives of others.

There are certain people we all look up to. For me, Angela is one of those people, and I was eagerly anticipating the opportunity to discuss how MIndshifting and Mattering blend into each other to transform anxiety and fear into joyful energy. We can all use a little more joyful energy in our lives. Right?

Preparing for success

I’d set up the FB Live event with Angela as the Cohost. I’d posted in social media. I’d sent out an email and a reminder mailing.

I started the event on time, and then …

I couldn’t get Angela on stage.

There were about 25 people watching, many more who were interested and would want to watch the archives. And nothing was working.

Yes, I look confused, dazzled, and anxious, right?

What are the normal human reactions? How would you react if you’d set this up and it was completely bombing?

• Self Blame? I should have tested everything out, we should have had a test run during the week. I’m such an idiot.
• Anger? What was Angela doing wrong? What was I doing wrong? Why didn’t FB make their instructions clearer? What was wrong with me that I couldn’t see how to bring her on stage?
• Panic? Fear? What would people think? Didn’t this confirm my incompetence? Wouldn’t everyone see what a sham I am? No one would ever want to listen to me again.

We all have had these reactions, right? This is the default mode for our limbic minds. I felt all of these, and more.

Mindshifting: Switching Mindset,

And that’s also the beauty of Mindshifting and Mattering.

If you are aware of how your mind works, you can modify your first emotional reactions, and the more you practice, the better at this you can become.

I calmed myself with the following, taken directly from Angela’s Mattering framework:

We are all perfectly imperfect beings. We are all deserving of love, peace, and joy. We all make a difference in others’ lives. Whatever we are going through, we can turn into gifts, lessons, and opportunities.

Shifting the mind to these frames calms our survival brains and activates our resourceful sage powers.

Not every obstacle can be avoided. Not every eventuality can be prepared for. This was one 15-minute interval with a different result than anticipated, but we can, and somehow always do, come back; and when we do we feel triumphantly exultant.

Which mindset is more enjoyable and helpful?

How helpful would it be if we, or our students, could learn to exit from a fear and blame mindset into one of possibilities, exploration, and innovation?

The goal of the Mindshifting Course is for all of us to learn to switch into resourceful collaborative playful mode. You can get an overview in this 15 minute interview. You can dive deep, and also learn how to teach these techniques to others, in the full course starting July 12.

What was the gift?

We learned that what FB calls a “cohost” is merely someone who can invite others, not someone who will also appear on stage. To do a FB Live event with multiple speakers, you need a web-platform such as Zoom or Streamyard.

And we both had the additional opportunity to exercise our abilities to Mindshift, draw on the calming effects of Mattering, and strengthen our love and respect for each other. Those were the gifts.

Angela and I both have punishing schedules over the next few weeks. We will have to postpone our FB live conversation to the end of July or possibly August. But when we do host it, we won't be making the same mistakes. We'll have to invent new ones.

Making Sense of Dreams, and Using Them for Good

I teach sensemaking and mindshifting. I know that dreams are one way that our minds help us interpret and make sense of the world.

I’m probably too close to these dreams to really evaluate them. I’m hoping that perhaps some of you can comment with your impressions.

Dream one

The first dream involved remembering some past events, and they really did take place. When I was about 7, one of my friends was Doug Pirrie (I have no idea if the spelling is correct). I vividly remember two of the times we were playing together, and they came back in the dream.

There was always a nice wind blowing along the side of his house. We would go there to blow bubbles and make what we called “bubble history”. We would blow bubbles and then measure how far the bubbles travelled before popping. We took his dad’s tape measure from the garage, and would try creating multiple bubbles, single bubbles, small bubbles, large bubbles, blowing bubbles pointing straight up, blowing them pointing to the side, blowing them pointed forwards. As 7-8 year olds, we were sure that one of us was making the longest distance ever traveled by a soap bubble, either in the world, or in Connecticut, or at least on Archer Avenue. I remember how excited we were when we talked to our parents about how we were going to be famous as bubble blowers.

Another memory that flashed back in the dream was us building marbles “golf courses” in his back yard. The back yard was sloped. A “hole” consisted of a starting place and below that a barrier to stop the marble. You would aim the marble at the barrier, and if you got the barrier to stop the marble, you could move to the next hole. If not, you had to try again until you succeeded. The lowest score for 9 holes won. We would build and play for hours.

These were such happy memories of kids being kids, and they were framed by the final memory. I remembered 25 years later seeing the headline and article that Doug Pirrie had been shot and killed as he was attempting an armed robbery of a convenient store. This is also unfortunately true.

I was seven. He was eight. We were just two kids being kids. How did our lives go in such different directions, why did those memories come back so vividly last night, and what can we all take out of this?

Dream two

In this dream, somehow my wife and I had a second grader living with us. She was not our child, our children were already grown, but she was ours for at least the school year.

In her class, the teacher assigned the students to put together a “book” on what they did during the summer. Our child created 40 or 50 drawings of her summer. Some of them she labeled with words. Sometimes she would put 2, 3, or 4 drawings on a page. On some pages, there were drawings on both sides of the page. Some of the drawings were made in pencil. Some were in crayon. Sometimes she would draw and then fill in the colors with crayons or colored pencils. She spent the entire weekend happily drawing, painting, telling us the stories of what she did or what she made up that she did, and showing us her work.

When I went to class and met her teacher, the teacher told me that she’d given our child a zero on the project. Here was the explanation:

The children were supposed to draw five pictures. Each picture had to be on a separate page. Below each picture they had to write a three word sentence about the picture: a subject, a verb, and an object.  They were to use one side of the paper, not two sides.

In the dream, I thanked the teacher, with our daughter there:

Thank you. Our daughter is going to learn very good structure from you. She has an incredible talent for storytelling, there are so many stories and pictures bursting inside her that they can’t wait to get out. One day she is going to be a famous storyteller, people from all around the world are going to be waiting anxiously for her stories, and you will have been an important molder of her talent, helping her learn the skills to bring these stories to life, and when people ask her what influenced her, she is going to be able to tell everyone that you helped her with the structures and craft of writing.

The teacher’s answer was

In this class we do things a certain way. Your child got a zero because she did not follow our way. If she does what I say in the future maybe she can start getting passing grades. If you can’t discipline her to follow my instructions, then she going to continue to fail this year. I don’t see any evidence of any talent, she just needs to learn to follow my directions. She will have many chances, the children are going to be making these 5 page books all year long and the instructions are always the same.

This seemed so real as I was dreaming, and while horrifying in one sense, the fact that as a parent I could still help my child blossom seems a large mitigator. But again, why now and what's the message for all of us?

Please let me know about your interpretations of these messages, and you can learn more about Mindshifting here.

Brain Hacking Strategies: A technique five times more effective at changing others’ behavior

Imagine. As a teacher you assign a paper. It’s not an onerous assignment, and the topic is actually a fun one for the students to explore.

Despite your clear instructions and explanations about how to plan for assignments, and your efforts to make the work meaningful, the pattern is very frustrating. On the due date, the same 10 students have put the work in, perhaps another 10 made a perfunctory effort, and maybe another 10 didn’t submit anything, for a variety of reasons.

We all experience that or situations very similar right? Not just with students, but with family members, peers, colleagues, acquaintances, pretty much anyone. When we encounter people who are taking actions or holding opinions that are unhelpful or even damaging, it seems no amount of persuasion, cajoling, coaching, instruction, or whatever we try seems to work.

Or as my nephew Ben says, “you can’t fix stupid.”

Except you can, you just can’t do it using the methods we tend to use.

How to Reach Those Who Resist Efforts to Help

A technique called Motivational Interviewing works 74% of the time, 5 times as often as other techniques investigated.

Motivational Interviewing involves

1. Asking open questions
2. Using reflective listening
3. Affirming the person’s desire and ability to change

Why do people resist our efforts to help them?

Cognitive and neuro- scientists have mapped out what happens in the brain, and why our normal methods of influencing others’ behavior are often ineffective.

While our offer of criticism or coaching is generally from a genuine desire to help, what happens in the other person’s brain is that the survival instincts take it as a threat. Threats trigger stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, which focus our resources on combatting the threat, shut down our ability to be resourceful or thoughtful, and trigger a flight or fight response.

This happens subconsciously, before their consciousness is even aware of what is happening.

With their ability to think through the issue essentially cut off, they are mentally and emotionally incapable of incorporating our efforts at their changing behavior.

How does motivational interviewing help?

Motivational Interviewing resets the brain from survival mode, establishes connection and trust, and then gives agency to the individual affected. All three components are necessary to enable a person to entre a resourceful state of mind, and be capable of reconsidering decisions or actions.

When a person is in a resourceful rather than anxious frame of mind, they become conscious of their own ambiguities toward their stance and actions, and able to consider alternatives and eventually choose a different path.

A deeper dive into Motivational interviewing and how to implement it in practice and in classrooms, along with 60 other brain hacking techniques that can accelerate your ability to motivate students, is part of the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators.

How to Make Better Decisions with Role Playing

The Decision Making Game

At the Serious Play Conference, I ran a role playing game that pulled 9 of the concepts taught in the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators Course in order to teach group-based decision making and problem solving strategies.

These were 9 of the 70 different strategies that are covered in the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators Course, which provides educators with the foundations for building the following in students:

• social emotional intelligence
• diversity and inclusion
• the growth mindset
• critical thinking
• perseverance
• innovation
• problem solving
• communications skills

Here is a link in case you want download the game to use it for your group or students. 

How the Game Worked

In the game, participants played one of 7 different roles, all serfs, in a village in the year 1023. During the game, the village faces problems. Players are part of teams that have to come up with a solution to the problem. For each problem, each team receives instructions on how to conduct their meeting, then, after each team presents their solution and what happened in their discussion, the entire group discusses the different strategies how they impacted the flow of ideas, and how they might use those techniques. When we ran the game, the discussions led to deep reflection on effective ways to communicate, persuade, and influence others. Thus, all participants are exposed to the 9 different strategies for brainstorming ideas or coming to decisions as a group.

Feedback from Participants

The feedback from participants was excellent. I asked them what they learned, and how implementing the concepts changed how the group handled challenges. 

Here’s what they said: 

Question: What do you think people learned through this game:

Feedback:

• Think outside the box. Listen to others. Compromise. 
• I think it would make the discussion process more equitable and positive.
• This reasoning ends with a solution that everyone can get behind.
• Compromise and flexibility 

Question: What were your thoughts on the game?

Feedback:

• Great idea and fun. 
• This is an inspired game. So fun and would help students understand discourse. 
• It was very well designed. I like that we discuss the various strategies afterwards. It gives a great understanding of worst case/best case strategies.
• It’s so much fun and forming relationships immediately. Great ice breaker 

Ready to try it in your classroom or organization? 

You can register for the course here: link

And, as an incentive, if you register before June 20, you can use this code for a $15 discount: Mindshift15.

The Path to Resilience Leads Through OODA Loops

Imagine students who can handle failure and persist until they are successful. If you’re interested in learning how, click here to sign up for my online course: Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators.

What are OODA Loops?

John Boyd’s OODA Loops is probably the most effective way to learn resourcefulness, perseverance, and flexibility. Tens of thousands of individuals use OODA Loops, especially when faced with unexpected events or competition. But if you are not in the military or law enforcement, you probably have not heard of it.

That’s a shame, because we can all benefit from being able to adapt to almost any situation faster and more effectively - especially if you’re a teacher who wants to better equip your students.

How OODA Loops Work

In its simplest terms, the OODA Loop is common sense. When you go into a situation, you Observe, then you use all the information at your disposal to Orient or come up with alternatives, you Decide, and then you Act. As you act, you observe and start the process all over again. Which is why they are called loops, OODA Loops are an iterative process of experimentation until the objective is achieved.

Boyd reasoned that there were two key factors that led to success: speed and proficiency. The faster you could cycle through the steps, the more likely you are to prevail. The more areas of proficiency you have mastered, the more likely you are to prevail. When you combine speed of reaction with proficiency, you could outmaneuver any opponent and overcome practically any obstacle. If you can build up your unconscious skills, the actions you could make without having to stop and consciously think, you will overwhelm anyone or anything that gets in your way.

Boyd proved this in his career as an Air Force Colonel training fighter pilots. Fighter pilots taking his course felt OODA loops was too academic and not particularly practical. To overcome their reservations, Boyd offered a wager. He would engage in a dogfight, and the other pilot would have the initial advantage. But within 2 minutes he would use his OODA training to shoot down the other pilot. Then the two would trade places and he would prevail again.

In all the years he taught, he never once lost that bet.

Learning OODA Loops sounds simple, but there are dozens of problem solving and information gathering skills and common mistakes to avoid, and so it takes hours to fully understand how to implement or teach OODA Loops. Why is it worth it?

Why expend the effort to learn OODA Loops

OODA Loop techniques prepare you to

• Overcome obstacles
• Handle complex situations
• Overwhelm opposition and competition
• Effortlessly persevere
• Know how and where to put preparatory time and effort before important challenges
• Create and lead highly effective teams

Why teach OODA Loops to students?

If you teach OODA loops to students, they become prepared to 

• Overcome adversity
• Persist
• Practice until they are fluent
• Use failure or success primarily as feedback
• Work well in small groups

Isn’t this what you want for your students? Do you think that will reduce your load of classroom management and free up time for more important learning?

How can you become proficient in OODA Loops?

While John Boyd left no materials other than Foil slides, I’ve studied OODA Loops for over four years, read books, watched hours and hours of recordings, and organized all this information specifically for educators. OODA Loops are extensively covered in the Mindshifting: Growth Mindset and Critical Thinking for Impactful Educators online course that starts July 12.

Take a look and register.

We can’t continue to educate the same way and expect better results

What is Mindshifting or Sensemaking

We can radically improve the way we solve society’s problems, and it starts with empowering our students to think. Anyone can learn the skills to shift their mind to resourceful states, and educators are in the unique position to provide those skills to students.

Have you noticed that we don’t seem to be looking at problems in ways that lead to positive actions, and we are talking at each other not with each other. Some tragedy happens, and there is talk and blame, but nothing gets done. And then there is another disaster, another tragedy, and the cycle repeats, with angrier talk and still no action.

We see this play out in issue after issue: climate, guns, abortion, healthcare, education, taxes, school shootings, natural disasters, immigration, livable wages, voting, government programs, transportation, disease mitigation and prevention, social media, right to privacy, gender, pollution… and countless others.

Five years ago, I started on a journey. What did experts know about the way we make sense of situations, prepare to take action, interact, learn, and make decisions? Were there insights from different fields that could guide us?

Why aren’t we more effective?

The source of the problems is that we humans have evolved, and our societies have evolved, in ways that that worked most of the time, but are now driving us apart.

1. We naturally think that once we come up with a way to do something, that we need to convince others that they are wrong and should follow the same path.
2. We quickly react to situations, and then come up with rationalizations of why; and then cognitive biases don’t allow us to react to information that should be informing us to modify our actions.
3. Our most common problem solving mechanisms do not cope with ambiguity, unexpected events, complexity, or hidden assumptions and biases, and so we gravitate to actions and solutions that seem to avoid risk, appear easy, copy what others are doing, and/or follow old habits.

When the situation is novel and complex, these strategies don’t work well at all. Human beings, by nature, often don’t know that we don’t know, or worse, think we know when, if we were able to deeply question ourselves, would find out that we are just acting from fear or habit.

Can we and our students learn to be more effective?

I found that scientists and practitioners from a wide variety of fields had defined both the factors that were holding us back, and ways over, through, and around those obstacles.

1. We can learn to use our prefrontal cortex to recognize when our minds are in default mode.
2. There are ways to reset and control our own minds when they react in suboptimal ways.
3. There are ways to be resourceful and flexible in complex and rapidly changing situations.
4. There are ways to prepare for unexpected events and iteration so that each trial brings us closer to success.
5. There are ways to become more effective and efficient than anyone who opposes us.
6. There are ways to communicate and collaborate with people who oppose or disagree with us so that they are more likely to be allies than adversaries.
7. And there are ways that pull together groups of people to form a team or community in highly effective and flexible organizations.

As human beings we should be shifting our minds into these sensemaking frameworks.

How will this help our students?

As a society, we should be preparing students with these frameworks, primarily because these will make them much happier and effective adults, but also because they will make our teachers’ lives so much more productive.

Imagine if students knew how to control their minds to avoid disruptive or risky behaviors? Imagine if students had a helpful effective framework for evaluating news, articles, information, and communications, and could communicate more effectively as well. Imagine if students knew how to collaborate even when they disagreed. Imagine if students knew how to adapt to unexpected events so that they could persist and accomplish academic and personal goals.

Then imagine these students as adults. What couldn’t their generation accomplish?

The problem is that all that information is dispersed. There is no one place to find a unified prescription of how to shift our minds to match our current frenetic pace of change. So I decided to pull together all of these different aspects of decision-making, sense-making, perseverance, overcoming cognitive biases and communication and collaboration into a course.

For the last five years, I’ve curated, summarized, and operationalized research and insights from cognitive scientists, psychologists, neuro scientists, behavior economists, futurists, and educators. I’ve compiled this material into about 16 hours of course materials.

I’ve taught, rewritten, and retaught this course about 8 times. The feedback I’ve received is that this material presents a blueprint for how we all should be thinking, taking control of our minds, looking at problems and opportunities, preparing solutions, and eventually solving the issues we face.

How to teach students to be more effective thinkers and doers

You can take the Mindshifting Course this summer, one especially designed for educators with comprehensive course materials starting July 12. The cost of the course is $125. Each session will be recorded, so if you register but miss a session, or want to revisit any content, you can view the archive. Register and see the description here.

If you are curious, I have been invited by the RSA to conduct a 1-hour free Salon called Brainhacking which will introduce the topic, and cohosting with me will be Tammie Schrader who has attended the course and will be offering it again to Washington teachers in the Fall.

And on June 14 I will be conducting a role playing game that uses some of the decision making strategies of the course. You can register for Serious Play Conference here.

Insanity is doing the same think over and over again and expecting different results.

If we are to rise above strife and anxiety, we need a new paradigm for making sense of the world, and we and the next generation need to learn how to shift our minds to helpful frames. Please join me in the 11 sessions beginning on July 12.

Postscript: the quote about insanity is generally attributed to Albert Einstein, but with some sense making and research, you would find out that it was first used in Rita Mae Brown’s 1983 novel “Sudden Death.”

Some Thoughts on the Pandemic

Every day, I check the data for Covid New Cases and Covid Deaths comparing New York and Texas.

Why these two states? I live in New York, and, since March of 2021, Texas governor Greg Abbott has taken a diametrically opposed approach to New York's. New York has taken a very health conscious approach, with closings, required or encouragement of mask wearing and social distancing, and highly encouraging vaccines, Abbott and Texas have consciously tried to minimize any inconvenience encouraging business as usual, with no requirements for social distancing, no closures, prohibitions against mask requirements, and no strong incentives or encouragement for vaccinations.

Did it make a difference?

New Cases

Deaths

Understand that Texas has about 30% more people than New York does, and also that the scales for the graphs that I’ve been able to obtain are different, so while the graphs show total cases, in this discussion, we will compare cases based on comparable populations.

Interestingly, in March and April, Texas actually showed about 20-30% fewer new cases and deaths than New York did. You can see in the New cases charts below that New York had a third peak in April.

In May and June, New York and Texas were comparable.

In July and August, Texas has been 2 to 5 times higher than New York. July and August are when the new Delta variant became dominant in the US. Currently the 7-day average for deaths in Texas is 108, which would be the equivalent of about 75 deaths in New York; but New York's average is 19. While 108 deaths may not seem much for a state with 29 million people, that’s over 39,000 deaths a year, while heart disease kills 45,000 people a year, cancer 41,000, and strokes are third with 11,000. On average, 168,000 Texans die a year, so 39,000 is a pretty significant number.

If Texas adopted NY-style policies, then, instead of 39,000 deaths due to Covid, there would be about 10,000.

So, it looks like Texas’s policies should result in roughly 29,000 preventable Covid deaths. If I were Governor Abbott, I’d switch to requiring masks indoors in public places (like schools), encouraging vaccinations and frequent testing, and maintaining social distancing.

Good job New York.

We Need More F-words in Education

A fellow traveler, Dave Eng, posted a link in Facebook to his Video Fired Up Fiero, 9 minutes and worth watching.

Dave called for Fiero and Flow to drive learning; with them we engage learners and motivate them to put in the hard work of learning. Fiero is the feeling when you have accomplished something momentous. You ever watch a soccer player after scoring a goal, jumping in the air, raising her arms, and yelling because she cannot contain her joy? That’s Fiero.

Flow is that feeling of timelessness when you are doing something and lose track of everything but what you are trying to accomplish. It’s when I tell my wife, “I’ll just be five more minutes” and when the five minutes have passed I’m amazed she’s angry because it hasn’t, in fact, been five minutes, it’s been two hours.

Dave was wrong.

We don’t need just two more F-words in education, we need four F-words.

We also need Failure, and we need Fun. Without the chance of failing, especially relatively risk-free failing, there is no Flow, and there is no great satisfaction of achievement. And without Fun, why bother? Fun and enjoyment are foundational to flow.

I’m thinking we need to find ways to add Fun, Failure, Flow, and Fiero to education. Or the kids are just going to continue giving school the one F-word we really don’t want.

An Opportunity to Reimagine Learning

We have a onetime opportunity to remake education; not just to modify aspects of what we already do, but to start at zero and imagine a system that supports humankind – from the report

Last June, the Augmented Society Network started examining the long term effects of the Pandemic. The Augmented Society Network is a Fellow Network of the RSA, and international organization focused on social impact with 260 years of history and over 30,000 problem-solvers.

Education is faced with a huge opportunity wrapped up as a monumental problem.

Together, 30 collaborators from 15 different countries representing five continents created a 100-page document to address both the problem and the opportunity. This report has eight themes. Here is a summary and intro for each theme. The report is free and can be downloaded here.

Theme 1: Basics for Fourth Industrial Age Human Success

We are entering into the fourth industrial revolution, where machines augment human mental and social activities. There is one lesson we can learn from the previous three industrial revolutions:

In the long run, each revolution has advantaged more people than it has disadvantaged, but there were severe disruptions that disproportionately negatively impacted the underprivileged. Many of them could have been avoided.

In the information economy, there is now an opportunity to give every human being access to high quality learning content, in any topic and field, and at any time they need it. However, the vast majority of individuals, schools, communities, and educators are not prepared for distance learning.

Theme 2: Foundational or Transversal Skills

Advancements in our knowledge of foundational skills, or skills that transverse all aspects of life, have exploded, and yet we are not scaling those skills.

Traditional methods such as planning, data analysis, goal setting, and expertise also lock us into ways of perceiving the world that end up limiting our ability to adapt to change or thrive during chaos. We cannot rely on the way we frame the past to prepare us for the future.

We need to develop the skill of creating alternative frames to make productive sense of threats and opportunities. This is the skill of unknowing, and it means embracing the unknown.

Let's embark on keeping the joy of learning, the excitement of trying something new, ignited in all people.

Theme 3: Solving Complex Problems and Design Thinking

The pandemic illuminated deficiencies that were always there if we had been looking for them.

Rigid educational systems are ill-suited to unleash creative thinking and problem solving.

The wicked problems we face tend to lend themselves to iterative design thinking, and the paper explores a five-step process of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

Design thinking can both be used as a tool to rethink education (and an array of societal issues) and as a skill to be learned in educational settings.

Theme 4: Access, Diversity, and Inclusion

Today’s societies, and the paths toward success, have been structured  as much through exclusion as for advancement; we have been striving for the advancement of the included. But when progress is framed as progress for all, all progress. The pandemic has again illuminated the inequalities, but they were always there for people who experienced them or looked for them.

Diversity builds stronger futures for all: gender diversity, biodiversity, ethnic diversity, financial diversity, all diversity. Learning is the best way to advance, both for individuals and for society.

Through education, we can change our language to promote inclusion and progress for all. To do this, we have to learn about the ways we have structured inequality, and one place this learning can take place is in schools. The language we use, and often the language we use without even thinking about it, often reinforces inequality.

Too often schools today assume and reinforce the dominant culture, gender, and skin color. We have to change schools to value and explore differences, using that diversity to build a stronger future.

Theme 5: Purpose and Context of Education

Education is the main driver for human talents and societal skills. Access to high quality education, whenever it is needed, needs to be regarded as a universal human right.

Many areas of the world have already seen improvements in academic knowledge because of the educational systems they have implemented, but in this Fourth Industrial Age, we need to think of learning beyond the education of the population under the age of 18, and beyond the transmission of academic knowledge and skills.

Education is shaped by society, but society is also shaped by education, and we need education to lead society to success, resilience, and adaptability. For example: globally, people need to learn the modes and means of sustainable development.

Rather than any one solution, local trust between the broad community and the learning institutions create dynamic effective systems. There is no one right way, there will and should always be a diversity in curricula, technology, and structure.

There are many new technologies that are having a huge impact when deployed in support of societal learning goals and to overcome gaps in equity, access, knowledge, and skills.

The article looks at cases where education has and has not prompted beneficial change for a society, and what we can learn from each one.

Theme 6: Success, Failure, and Evaluation

We need a radical reappraisal of what we understand as success in education.

Measurement of academic proficiency based on narrow learning goals, tying rewards and punishments to results of measurement, and accreditation of competence often distort education away from society’s needs for learning. They can move the focus from competence and mastery to one concentrated on achieving positive results on the assessments themselves.

This calls for a shift of emphasis from attainment to inclusion. Instead of rewarding those who have attained, the practice of education can address the needs of those who have not yet secured success.

Assessment would move from a screening mechanism, on which redirects human beings out of the paths of success, to a way of furthering learning. There would be no failure, just measurement for the aim of determining the next best possible steps to increase knowledge, skills, and capabilities.

It’s easy to test the things we don’t particularly care about. Technology can be part of the answer to assess the things that are actually important. Technologies such as AI, voice recognition, and Augmented and Virtual Reality can be, and are being, deployed to assess learning, to address learning gaps, and to certify competence.

We can hope that we make progress humanely by being inclusive in our implementation, evaluation, and iteration.

Theme 7: Empowering the Educators

We need to recognize that we all educate. And as people who educate, we all need to improve in our ability to coach, train, and inspire.

There are those who educate as a profession. We need to provide those people with the knowledge, resources, tools, and support to be effective.

Areas for support and training include

1. knowledge and skills about teaching in an educational setting,
2. technical knowledge (which includes knowledge about a subject or domain as well as technology), and
3. critical reflection (models of reflections, ethics, and culture).

Educators tend to be most effective when they have access to high quality, differentiated educational materials and work collaboratively and supportively with diverse stakeholders toward common goals. Professional educators need the power, knowledge, and skills to make autonomous decisions about what happens with their students and within their classes. The report goes into some details as to what these are.

Theme 8: Lifelong Learning and the Social Fabric

We propose that a purpose of learning is enabling individuals and society to flourish multidimensionally, but that our current systems seem designed to produce “normal” people primed to follow social norms.

Education can address issues of equality, inclusiveness, and diversity, and it can be a factor in creating more equitable distribution of wealth, developing humans to their potential, and promoting multiculturalism.

A good start is to develop listening skills, to be able to listen and understand what we initially disagree with or dismiss.

Education should explore the differences between a society whose focus is financial to one where members define and develop their driving essence, purpose, and meaning in life. Learning should enable people to have work that matters, to embrace love unconditionally, and to be courageous and authentically vulnerable even in the face of difficulty.

Let’s start thinking of learning as unleashing each person to be successfully different in their own way.

How Does Technology Fit In?

Use of technology to further learning is a dominant theme of the report, and has the potential to

• Facilitate exploration of concepts, problems, and alternatives
• Augment the way people experience the world
• Provide for what-if scenarios
• Promote collaboration
• Be a communication media
• Improve technology skills, as 3D thinking and manipulation will be increasingly important
• Be a critical component in the design process, leading to design thinking and computational thinking
• Overcome obstacle of time, distance, and cost
• Expand practice opportunities
• Diagnose knowledge and skill gaps

During the pandemic, we have seen instances where technology has accelerated learning and development, and we have also seen how underprepared we all were to deploy technology at scale. If we are to level up, we are all going to have to become vigilant forces for progress.

What’s next?

The Augmented Society Network and the RSA are going to be planning a series of events for us to resolve how we are going to move forward. Contact [email protected] to stay informed.

Thank you Samaya Borom, Dr Tony Breslin, Zoe Camper, Nishan Chelvachandran, Jenna Fuentes, Gary Handforth, Nitzan Herman, Carlos Largacha-Martinez, Dr Lynda Leavitt, Rachida Merbough, Anna Morrison, Amy Moser, Julie Samuels, Jessica Slayback, Jenny Seelman Stiven, Tim Stiven, Benjamin Strawbridge, Ruth Travers, Jonathan Tavssberger, and Cyrill Wiget.

What a great beginning.