Let’s ignite a conversation.

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The 3 R’s so many of us are familiar with can be traced back to a speech made in 1795 by Sir William Curtis. The problem is we are not preparing students to enter an 18th, 19th or even 20th century world. But reading, ‘riting and ‘rithematic still seem to dominate the discussion and decisions about how we define educational outcomes for student success.

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I propose we need to add a new set of R’s to our conversation and those new 3R’s are redefine, redesign and re-envision.

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Conversations on redefining how we measure readiness have begun. An Example, on the national level, is the AASA initiative Redefining Ready.“Learning should be more personalized and assessments should inform instruction to help students deepen their learning. Students are often being prepared for an industrialized world that no longer exists.” David Schuler

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In the Dysart Unified School District, that work on redefining ready began many years ago as a group of community stakeholders came together to create a Profile of a Dysart Graduate. We recognized ensuring students had a strong foundation in core academics was important, but not enough for our students to be college and career ready. We redefined ready.

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We asked ourselves, “Which of these students will be ready for the challenges and opportunities in a global economy?” We knew if we redefined ready, we would need to redesign our system.

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Redesigning our system to support our new definition of ready lead us to our work to personalize learning.

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This graphic is what the Dysart District is utilizing to represent the Dysart Innovation Academy we are opening in 2016. The academy will provide middle level students with a personalized learning environment. We are redesigning teaching and learning.

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To redesign our learning environment we had to re-imagine that place we call school. The classrooms that served students in the 18th, 19th and 20th century will not serve our 21st century learners.

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Once we worked to redefine and redesign learning, we had to begin re-imaging school. Learning is no longer defined by or designed around the 4 walls of a classroom, or an 8 to 4 clock, or the resources that are only available inside the school building.

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As we re-imagine teaching and learning in Dysart, we realize technology is important-but it alone cannot transform our schools.

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To re-imagine education we must ignite a culture of imagination, exploration, and innovation. Technology is a critical tool in that transformation, but our human resources are the key.

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So in Dysart we re-imagined how we as adults learn and lead . This graphic is an example of the 21st century collaborative network we created to provide adults with that same supportive and transformed teaching and learning environment we want for our students.

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We are building a culture for our adults and students where collaboration, creativity, communication and critical thinking are nurtured. This is an example of a maker space where our future future ready graduates are learning.

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In Dysart we started with the end in mind-our graduates. We have a strategic plan that guides us, but we plan to be strategically flexible.

We operate with a living plan that provides direction and helps prioritize the use of resources, but doesn’t restrict opportunities.

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Another lesson we learned in our transformation is the importance of building networks-internal and external. Internal connections include the 21st Century NetworkI shared. External networks include the AASA Digital Consortium, Ed Leader21 and the AASA Personalized Learning Cohort.

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These networks provide the opportunity to explore the new 3R’s of education-redefine, redesign and re-imagine.

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John Maynard Keynes said:“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”We need to be collaborators as we apply the 3 R’s of redefining, redesigning and re-imaging to revolutionize education and prepare students for the innovation age they will live in.

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So I ask you to ignite a conversation using the new 3R’s and let’s re-imagine school to revolutionize education-not for all children, but for each child.

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