3 Steps to Cloning Bright Spots to Transform Your School Culture | E188

What if you could transform your school's culture by amplifying its brightest moments? This week on the PBL Simplified Podcast, we unlock the secret to asset-based school development that goes beyond traditional methods. We'll start with an inspiring story from a teacher in Malaysia who engaged 11-year-olds with community partners to create meaningful, hands-on learning experiences. You'll also hear about exciting opportunities to join the PBL Movement, offering workshops and in-person events in Missouri designed to help educators develop effective PBL Movements.

We then shift gears to focus on identifying and amplifying the bright spots within your school. Learn how tools like Google Forms from pblculture.com can help you poll stakeholders and gather invaluable feedback. Discover the power of forming voice teams composed of students and teachers for ongoing, authentic communication. These strategies allow you to consolidate and clone successful practices, fostering a positive ripple effect that squeezes out less effective methods.

Finally, we emphasize the crucial importance of measuring the impact of these bright spots. Through concrete examples like advocacy classes and student-led conferences, we'll show you how to codify and share effective processes with other educators. By focusing on replicable, data-driven methods, schools can shift their culture towards continuous learning and improvement. This approach not only energizes school staff but also creates a sustainable and inspiring journey for the entire school community. Listen in and get ready to transform your school by cloning your classroom bright spots!

AFFINITY MAP
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_9puU3SctCCS1xHrjvj1djbsSOBjbQ

SIGN UP FOR THE MAGNIFY LEARNING NEWSLETTER

https://www.magnifylearningin.org/newsletter-sign-up

SHARE A PBL WIN!

www.pblshare.com 

ORDER THE BOOK PBL SIMPLIFIED (affiliate link)

https://amzn.to/3VLsBtG

SCHEDULE A PBL TRAINING WITH MAGNIFY LEARNING

https://resources.magnifylearningin.org/onsite-workshops

CHECK OUT RESOURCES MENTIONED ON THE PODCAST

PBL Simplified Podcast Links

ASK RYAN A QUESTION FOR THE PODCAST

https://www.pblshare.com

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Ryan’s Twitter (X)

Ryan’s LinkedIn

Ryan’s Instagram

Magnify Learning Twitter (X)

Magnify Learning Facebook

Magnify Learning LinkedIn

Magnify Learning Instagram

BOOK A MAGNIFY LEARNING DESIGN DAYS WORKSHOP

https://www.magnifylearningin.org/design-days-sign-up

Some of the links above are affiliate links which means we get a small commission on anything you purchase using that link (at no more cost to you). As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Transcript

Ryan Steuer: 0:00

What if you could clone those bright spots that happen in your classrooms, those wins? What if you could clone the bright spots that happen in any classroom and bring them to other classrooms? Today we're continuing a series on how to co-create your dream school or classroom with asset-based school development. If you're with me with asset-based school development, that means you're ready to build on the assets and not continually harp on the deficits. That's the big difference. And if you're with me, then I'm with you, movement Maker. So let's go lead inspired. Welcome to the PBL Simplified Podcast, where we add value to PBL Movement Makers like you so that they can lead inspired, because everyone wins when leaders are inspired. So, whether you're leading a classroom, a school or a district, your leadership matters. I'm your host, ryan Stoyer, the Chief Inspiration Officer at Magnify Learning. Welcome to the podcast. Today we're talking about asset-based school development. Before we jump in, I've got a couple of announcements. I want to share a win. You can go to pblsharecom to share your PBL win. Let me know and I'd love to have you on the podcast. You can ask a question or you can share a win at pblsharecom and even if I don't share it on the podcast, I'm going to reply directly to you. So if you have a question, you're going to get an answer either way, even if it doesn't quite make the podcast.

Ryan Steuer: 1:16

But listen to this one. We've got a teacher over in Malaysia and it's his third time having community partner in from the environmental department and they came in and answered learner need to knows. He's got 11-year-old learners and they're interacting with government officials and this is awesome. So they're taking notes as the speaker's talking. The speaker has a PowerPoint up on the screen, so they're taking these notes and as they're taking these notes, they know that they're going to use them to write an essay, an individual product. So one of the end products is an essay in a project-based learning unit. Did you hear that you can have essays? You should have essays, individual products, along with some group work. That's happening right. So there's going to be a decision matrix, there's going to be group contracts those things are going to happen. There's going to be this digital proposal that comes so they can present it back to the environmental department. What I want you to hear some of the secret sauce is one this is community partner number three what a win. And figuring out how to get these individual grades while doing group proposals and group projects is a huge win because it takes this burden off of you of how do I get my learners to do amazing, authentic work and still get grades in the grade book. How do I make sure that I'm not just covering standards with worksheets, but I'm engaging standards so that my learners are learning deeply. That's what we're talking about in this PBL year. What a great win.

Ryan Steuer: 2:41

And this win was actually shared in the PBL Movement online community, which you can join come August. Registration is currently closed. We are bringing people in from workshops, so if you've done a workshop this summer with Magnify Learning, then you are automatically going to be put into the PBL Movement online community. So great way to get in. In fact, you have an opportunity come July. You could jump into the virtual that's happening. We'll put a link in the show notes, but you could think about it as you jump into that. Say, it's a PBL jumpstart the virtual, or you could do an advanced. You also get a full year subscription to the online community. What a great bonus. Like, you can be in there, sharing your wins, seeing other people's wins, being a part of Facebook lives, getting all the different resources that are in there. We're having an awesome time in there. If you're not going to make it to a workshop this summer, that's fine. We'll open up registration in August, so make sure that you are on the lookout for that. We'll certainly announce it on the podcast and if you're on the email list, you'll get that as as well, so you can jump into the virtual.

Ryan Steuer: 3:45

In july. We've got an in-person happening in july too. That would be in missouri. So if you're looking to start your pbl movement at your school, you want to get your leadership involved probably a leadership team to missouri with us. It's such an awesome experience. We've taken the individual design days that we do at schools and we brought it to a conference setting. So for two days, you're planning out what your PBL movement is going to look like. It's a phenomenal event.

Ryan Steuer: 4:10

We've had great success in launching PBL movements this way. So if you're ready to launch it, this is time. Again, we'll have a link in the show notes. Come to the in-person in Missouri and click on Emerging Schools, get that ticket for Emerging Schools and bring your leadership team and watch the magic happen. You're going to have a three-year plan of how to implement PBL and we're going to help you create a grassroots movement to do that. So it's not a top-down mandate, right? You're going to start this groundswell and you're going to support it with your administration, but really going to have teachers that are super fired up by the time you get this plan implemented. So we're having a ton of fun this summer working with schools across the country, and obviously we've got some international folks involved as well, so I'm really having a great time this year.

Ryan Steuer: 4:53

So today we're going to talk some more about asset-based school development, and the big thesis here is that it's really difficult to build off of deficits. So, hey, we've got this tardy issue or we've got this state score. That's an issue. How do you build off of that? You don't build a foundation with a hole. You might strengthen it, you might put some concrete down, but what we want you to do and it's not just us this is research that came out of the Heath Brothers work, in that if you have a complicated change process and that's what it is if you're moving from a traditional school setting to something that's student-centered, that has project-based learning in it, this is complex work. So this is not just a checklist of things to do. You're in change process. You have people involved, you have emotions, you've got an innovation curve to consider, you've got a century of traditional teaching that you're pushing up against. There's so many different obstacles that it can get overwhelming. So you need a place to start and you want to start where the bright spots are.

Ryan Steuer: 6:00

So what we've talked about in these past leadership episodes around asset-based community development is the idea of how do you get your bright spots together and why is that important? So we're going to continue to build off of that, and today, our main topic is the idea that every educator should clone their bright spots by following these three steps that we're going to talk about today. We're going to ask you to clone your bright spots by following these three steps that we're going to talk about today. I'm going to ask you to clone your bright spots. So we've created a few systems for you to collect them, to look for them and hopefully by now, with the asset-based school development idea, you understand the importance of bright spots, because you're going to take that bright spot. Now we're going to clone it, so there's more of those bright spots and essentially, we want those bright spots to squeeze out everything else, so that we're really just doing all the things that are working.

Ryan Steuer: 6:54

So in the last leadership episode we talked about three ways to collect the bright spots that are happening in your school. There are three ways to do that. I mentioned pblculturecom. You can still go there. You can go to pblculturecom to get a whole slew of Google Forms to poll your stakeholders to find the bright spots. You're also going to ask for areas of growth. But you really want to find the bright spots. Where are the things working in your school? Because you have great things happening, but sometimes they're scattered about and sometimes they're not totally known. So we want to bring those bright spots out into the light and magnify those.

Ryan Steuer: 7:29

You would also going to develop some voice teams, both with students and with teachers, so that you have a regular way to communicate and hear what's happening in your school. And the third one that we talked about was just informal means. You need to start collecting testimonials from parents, from community partners, from teachers, from students. As soon as anybody says anything, you pull out your phone and you make a note and then you get it into some kind of a system so that you have all these bright spots collected. So once you've mastered this process of collecting bright spots. You're going to have a plethora of bright spots. You're going to have way more than you would have thought, because every time you say that you're going to remember it, you probably don't, but you're going to start writing them down and you start collecting them.

Ryan Steuer: 8:10

But collecting bright spots is one part of the process. Now you need to step up and pick a bright spot to clone. So you're going to find one to clone, because we want more of that happening in your school. So if you found a practice in your school that's successful, don't you think you'd want to do more of that practice? Of course you do, right, so that's an easy one.

Ryan Steuer: 8:32

We want more of what works, and it sounds easy when you say it like that, but so many times we get overwhelmed by all the things that need to be done that we forget about the things that are working. We say, oh, that's working, just let it keep going. The seventh grade team's working great, I don't even have to work with them. Well, what if we found some other things and we cloned them? So we got more of those. So what we're going to do is we're going to continue to inject more of what works and it squeezes out the things that aren't.

Ryan Steuer: 8:59

So the way I like to look at it is if you have a bucket of dirty water, you get some river water and you put it in a bucket. You can grab a hose and you just start spraying clean water into that bucket. As you add more clean water, you see the bucket start to overflow and then, as you continue to do this, you see it start to become clear. As you put in more and more of that clean water, you see the bucket of water getting clearer and clearer. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to just add more and more bright spots. We're going to clone them. We're going to magnify those things that are working, and it's going to squeeze out a lot of those things that are not working. And it's that asset-based school development idea. We're going to build off the things that are working. So we're going to do a similar process in your school. We're just going to keep putting in clean water, right?

Ryan Steuer: 9:41

So let's take a look at these three steps that every educator should take to clone bright spots. The first step is to gather your bright spots into one place. Gather your bright spots into one place. So in the last PBL podcast episode, the last leadership episode we talked about how to gather them. But now we need them all in one place because they're probably scattered all over the place and maybe you're going to do this formally. So you're going to look at your PLCs, you're going to look at the data, you're going to go get Chad Dumas' book, who's been on the podcast PLC Expert, and you're going to ask the four questions and you're going to find a new way to teach fractions.

Ryan Steuer: 10:22

Let's just say you've got a teacher who's crushing the fractions. You get all the teams together in PLC and they're crushing it. What would you do? Do you just say, oh great job, mrs Thomas, we love the work you're doing, keep it up. Maybe, like I suppose that's a good idea, but wouldn't also be like hey, mr Smith and Mrs Story, like do you guys think you want to try this idea with fractions Because it seems to be working over Mrs Thomas's room? Of course you would do that right. As soon as you found it. You'd be like, yes, we should all be doing this right and that's one way that you can collect some.

Ryan Steuer: 10:59

You can start to bring the formal bright spots into one spot. You could pull them out of PLCs and some of those might be very content-specific, but some of them might be process-specific. If it's a process of workshops and formal assessments, then maybe that can actually transfer to other grade levels and not just fractions in our example. So you're going to look for these different formal places where you might find some, and then, if you remember, there's also this idea of informal collection of bright spots. So maybe you've got some reflection from community partners, right? Because you're going to start collecting reflections from everybody.

Ryan Steuer: 11:32

So, before the community partner leaves, it might just be a conversation that you have with them. It doesn't have to be on an exit ticket for them, right? So you're just going to ask them, like, what went really well this time? What'd you guys appreciate? Because we want to do more of those things that you really like and, by the way, people love to have their opinion asked of them, right? They don't have to come to you and tell you. But what if you ask them? It's honoring to them to say you know, I'd like to know what worked for you because I want to do more of that for other people. And what if they say because this is a real answer that I heard, that you know when I just have to fill out likes and wonders when I'm watching presentations. That's so much easier than when you had me trying to grade content standards and if you listen to that and went, well, yeah, duh, thank you, that's correct. But I can tell you that in the early days we just didn't know like, hey, we've got experts in here, let's get them addressing the content standards. But it kind of makes them a little uncomfortable instead of doing likes and wonders. Well, we would never found that out, that bright spot, if we hadn't asked. So that could be really informal.

Ryan Steuer: 12:38

So now you're going to gather all these things into one place. And that might be going to gather all these things into one place, and that might be Evernote, it might be a Google Drive folder system, it might be a bunch of Post-it notes for now, right, you're just going to get everything down somewhere, and maybe you've got a faculty room or a meeting room that everybody uses. Just start getting them up on a wall somewhere. But you need to collect them all into one place because you're going to gather your leadership team to look at the massive amounts of bright spots that are at your school and once you get them together, it is a massive amount, by the way and you're going to have them, start to put them in categories of likeness and we call this process an affinity map and we can link that in the show notes as well. But essentially you're going to start taking all the bright spots that you have and you're going to start to create major categories.

Ryan Steuer: 13:22

So you might have some categories by the end of, say, classroom management, like these ideas really worked for classroom management and here's some content practices that worked really well for me. Or maybe you've got some leadership moves, like you're talking with your APs and your coaches that are going into classrooms. These were some leadership moves that really worked for me. I went to the back of the classroom. I just left a like in the back. That felt really great because it just felt great for my walkthrough. Or maybe it's formative assessment. Whatever it is, you're going to start to create some different categories and this is step one. So step one, you're going to gather them all in one spot and you start to affinity map and see what kind of categories start to jump out at you, because then you're going to move into step two.

Ryan Steuer: 14:04

Step two for cloning your bright spots is to pick a bright spot. You're going to pick a bright spot and you might say, well, that's easy, ryan, we'll just put them all in order and then we'll just pick one. You can just pick one, but before you do, let's consider a few questions around the bright spot that you're going to pick. Because when you pick one bright spot like let's just understand that there's going to be some down river effects to this when you pick one, right, so you want it to go well, as you're picking this first bright spot that you're going to work with. So the first question I would ask I've got three questions for you You're picking a bright spot which bright spot has the potential for the biggest impact? So you've got your leadership team in this room, you've got all the bright spots gathered and now you're going to ask this question which bright spot has the potential for the biggest impact? You've got them affinity mapped. You can see them in there. This is going to be a really great discussion. You can let it happen informally, in pairs to start with, and in small groups, and then bring everybody together. But what bright spot has the potential for the biggest impact? And start to hear what people believe about the impact in your school, from your leadership team, you see how it's going to be such a great discussion.

Ryan Steuer: 15:19

Because if a bright spot is a process for engaging your learners, let's just let me give you an example. Let's say it's an advocacy class, right? So that kind of homeroom, this bumped up homeroom time, where you're really trying to get into some learners, you're going to connect with them and build relationships, but every learner has an advocacy class. So if you could have a bright spot that positively affects all of your classrooms, because every teacher has an advocacy class, so if this bright spot turns out to be scalable, with a positive effect for every classroom, every teacher, every student, well, I mean, that seems like a winner, doesn't it Right? To me it does. And maybe your leadership team's a little bit different. What if it was student-led conferences? If you're doing student-led conferences and somebody is just crushing it, right, that could be a bright spot that again could affect all the classrooms in the school.

Ryan Steuer: 16:09

So again, maybe Mrs Thompson has this process that she specifically uses. It's natural for her, it's not a big, it's how she always does it, right. Why wouldn't everybody do it this way? But it's natural for her, it's not natural for everybody. So you've got one or two teachers that are crushing student-led conferences. So now you're going to go to them and say hey, mrs Thompson, mrs Seaver, you guys are crushing student-led conferences. We get great feedback from parents. What do you do? And again, first they're going to say, well, I just do what I always do, but let's codify that, let's bring it into steps Like what's their process? Then you're going to see if you can share that at a faculty meeting. If you can get it to a process piece, you may be able to level up all of your student-led conferences with this one bright spot. That that, again, to me seems like a winner. That's a bright spot that has potential for the biggest impact. And you're going to let your leadership team discover this. Because even if you know the right answer which I don't think as leaders we just say, hey, I know the right answer. We want to teach our people to be looking for these types of answers. We want to teach the process as well. So the first question is to ask which bright spot has the potential for the biggest impact? The second question will help you figure out where to go next, but first, hey, we'll get back to the episode in just a second, but I wanted you to know, just in case you haven't checked it out.

Ryan Steuer: 17:30

My book, pbl Simplified, gives you the structure that you need the six steps to move project-based learning from idea to reality. You've been thinking about PBL but haven't been able to implement it. If you're a principal who wants to bring PBL, this is a great way to start and if you use the link down in the show notes, we're gonna give you a free book study. Do not PBL alone. Invite the teacher next to you. If you're a principal, take that small group of innovators and get them started in the book study so you start to have your own PBL success stories before you start your full movement. Go out and grab a copy today.

Ryan Steuer: 18:04

Let's head back to the episode. All right, question two when did this bright spot come from and where would it most naturally go next? All right, so it's a combo question. I put two of them together for question two. But let's say the third grade teacher has a breakthrough workshop on teaching fractions. The most logical next place to test out this bright spot alluded to this earlier would be other third grade teachers, right? So let's just see if the content works for in another classroom so you can again find the original teacher to get the process recorded, codify that, communicate the process to the other grade level teachers and let's see if it works. So we're looking at this bright spot and we're going to test it out to see if it works in other places. There may be some through lines for other grade levels, again if it's a workshop process. But the most immediate place for this to go would be the other grade level teachers that share the same standards, because it might not be a bright spot for the whole school, and that's okay. But what if you cloned a bright spot for an entire grade level? Wouldn't that be a win? Absolutely. And now your leadership team is starting to look for bright spots that are clonable. Right, we're learning that process. So where did the bright spot come from? Where would it most naturally go next?

Ryan Steuer: 19:21

The third question you're going to ask when picking a bright spot is how can we measure the progress of this bright spot? How can we measure the progress of this bright spot? If one of your bright spots is dependent on the personality of a specific teacher? It's not likely going to scale. So if it truly is, mrs Thompson just has some secret sauce in her personality, and that's what makes student-led conferences so great. That's probably not scalable. You can't go to another teacher and say, hey, could you be more like Mrs Thompson, right? So we have to be able to measure it. We have to be able to codify it or add a process to it in order to be able to scale it. So make sure it's not personality driven.

Ryan Steuer: 19:59

So, as you work through the change process to bring people to your school, you're taking a data-driven approach, and here's why, yes, we want to measure the progress. Yes, I mean, just because we pick a bright spot, we don't know that that is the best bright spot, right? There's a little bit of trial and error, there's a little bit of art to this, right, to get this figured out. So, number one, we're going to bring it to in the case of the fractions, to other third grade teachers and we're going to say, hey, this worked with Mrs Thompson, it might work with you, let's go find out. And it's actually a really great way to get buy-in Instead of just saying, hey, mrs Thompson did this. You should, too, add a data-driven point to it to say let's track the data and see if it works with your learners as well to see if this is a bright spot that's scalable, and when we take that to staff, when you bring PBL in and you don't mandate it from the top down and say this is going to fix our school because we're broken right, that's what people hear. If it's going to fix our school, then we must be broken Versus. This is something that might magnify the great work that we're already doing, magnify the passion that's already happening in our school. Let's try this. We're going to track the data and see if it works and we're going to mold it to fit our school culture, to fit our learners and our community. The buy-in is so much easier it's not that major step that you need from your teachers much easier for them to buy in. So then at that point, you can allow the data to speak for itself. Right, if you're looking at assessments and it shows that this mastery of fractions in third grade right has gone up in all the third grade classrooms because of this new bright spot, you've got a winner and it makes sense for everyone to adopt this practice. Right, like we're going to lock that one in and we're going to go look for the next bright spot.

Ryan Steuer: 21:43

So step two for cloning bright spots is to pick a bright spot, but let's also remember that that's not a super easy process. So we've got those three questions in there for you to bring to your leadership team, to bring to your teachers, because we really want to build a process of everyone looking for bright spots. So what's step three? Great question. Step three of cloning bright spots to complete your school vision is to measure the bright spots. And in step two, one of the questions is can we measure it? Step three is to actually measure the bright spots. So in step two, we're figuring out can we measure this bright spot? In step three three is to actually measure the bright spots. So in step two, we're figuring out can we measure this bright spot? And step three, we need to actually measure it. So, depending on your leadership style, this may be a super easy step for you or it might be a pretty hard step for you.

Ryan Steuer: 22:33

Some leaders are very data-driven and others are not, and I think that's okay. But I would also say that if you're not data-driven by nature, you'll need to at least lean in this direction or find a data person you can lean on. If you've got someone that's super geeky in data and, by the way, geeky is a very positive adjective for me, right, like we need these data people to measure and show success. We cannot just go fully with our gut, right? If you say, hey, I've got this gut feeling that this is the best bright spot that's really going to move the needle, I'm going to say that's awesome. How can we measure it? How can we know for sure? Because I believe in a gut feeling. That makes sense. I think that's part of leadership and we should be able to measure it and have steps to know that it's actually working. So part of that reason is that change process is difficult, right, but doable, because there's often emotional processes to change work. We're pushing against the way things have always been done. So to take some of the emotion out of it, we need to bring in more data. So let me give you an example.

Ryan Steuer: 23:46

I was talking with an educational leader who had polled teachers to see if they were in favor of technology A or if they were gonna go with technology B. What did we wanna use? Great idea, right, we're gonna bring in teacher voice. So after the session, one teacher came up and just asked him like Now, what's interesting is that this is a data-driven leader. But the leader was nearly swayed by this statement. When I was talking to him he said well, you know. And he at first to the teacher. He said well, since we've already taken the data, we'll go through it and see what comes out of the data. But he thought to himself if it's overwhelming that everybody likes you know technology B, maybe we should just save the time and go with it. I don't want to take the two hours it's going to take to go through this data and figure it out. So even a data-driven leader can be potentially swayed by this idea of yeah, everybody wants to do it, let's just do it.

Ryan Steuer: 24:46

And here's the really interesting fact. You may know how this turns out already, but he went back and he did go through the polling data and, yes, it may take an hour or two. There are some chat, gpt, google form hacks for this, by the way, that you might want to Google. But when he did this, it showed the exact opposite conclusion. It turned out the majority of teachers wanted to go with technology A. So there were a few loud voices in the room that wanted technology B, and they weren't trying to bully anyone. They were just outspoken a little more extroverted, right, but the majority of teachers were already using technology A and in favor of continuing to use technology A. If he had not pulled the data from the teachers, he could have made the absolute opposite decision of what teachers wanted to use technology A. If he had not pulled the data from the teachers, he could have made the absolute opposite decision of what teachers wanted to use and were actually currently using. It turned out, most people were actually using technology A. Isn't that wild?

Ryan Steuer: 25:41

So you've got to find a place for data, you've got to find a place to measure this. And if measuring doesn't get you excited and I'll be honest, measuring doesn't get me excited Like, that's not really my leadership style. I really like a lot of autonomy, I like vision, I like inspiration, but I'm also pretty competitive. So what has worked for me is, instead of saying, hey, let's measure this, it's hey, let's create a scoreboard for this, right, let's score this and see who's winning. Is it technology A or is it technology B? Right, and let's create a competition, not between teachers, but between ideas, right, like which one of these is gonna work. So for me it's like hey, is this new process working? Is it winning or is it losing? And for me that gets a little more exciting. So maybe that works for you, maybe it doesn't, but you've got to find a way to measure it. You want to make it transparent. You want to make it obvious, right? Because if you're not making it transparent, then it's quiet.

Ryan Steuer: 26:40

People tend to think that you're just making things up, you're not using data, right. The rumor mill starts turning and gossip starts to move. And well, he just picked that one because so-and-so liked it. But if you've got the data brewing to say, hey, we did some formative assessments throughout third grade and here's what worked for fractions, so I don't know why you would do anything different, right? Or if you can explain to me why you would do something different, that would be great. But this process moves the needle better than anything we've ever tried. Here's the data. And if you've got the data, it's really hard to argue that. It takes a lot of the emotion out of the change process and in the end, even the people that are emotional, that are holding on to that old, traditional system, they're relieved with the data. They want data that shows this is working. This is why they're holding out at the old, because they're not sure if the new is going to work. So when we can show them data, they're more likely to take a couple steps forward.

Ryan Steuer: 27:35

You're going to pick a bright spot, knowing that it's not as simple as throwing darts, and then you're going to figure out how to measure the progress of this bright spot to see if it really is something you want to scale. So what's your call to action today, after this episode? Your call to action this week is to gather all of your bright spots into one place. And you might say well, ryan, that's only step one and it seems pretty simple as far as call to action. But you also might be surprised by the logistical issues that pop up.

Ryan Steuer: 28:13

And getting all these bright spots collected into one spot Set aside some time to think, plan and do, and then, as you do it, set aside some more time to realize. It might take longer than you think, because you're going to start collecting bright spots from teachers, from students, from parents, from community partners, and each of those might be turning those in separately to you. Some of them might be informal, you might have napkins in your pocket and things on your phone and some on your computer. So you need a system and, again, if you're not the systems person, the data person, find someone that is and bring them into the conversation. And sometimes, if you really have the right person, you can just put it on the table and say, hey, here's what I need. Can you help me create a system for this? And some people just see the world that way, right? So one, buy that person lunch and make sure that you keep them, but open it up so that you can gather up all of those bright spots, because once you take the time to set up step one, then you can move on to step two and three.

Ryan Steuer: 29:10

You can pick a bright spot and you can start small here. You can start with a small bright spot to get the process going, measure it, and then you've got this example that works in your local school, right, you're not telling a Heath Brothers story. You're not telling one of Ryan's stories from PBL Simplified, or one of Andrew's from Life's a Project. You're telling a story from your local school Like this is what worked for Mrs Thompson and then it worked for all the other third grade teachers. Where are the bright spots in your grade level?

Ryan Steuer: 29:36

Right, and start teaching people this process and eventually what happens is is. You have a culture of continuous learning. You have a culture of people continuously looking for bright spots so that you can clone them, measure them and clone them again, and that's when things start to get really, really exciting. So once you jump into this process, you will love, love, the encouragement and the energy of having a process of bringing bright spots together. It's just going to give you a ton of energy to see them all, because most of your day is likely filled with solving problems and putting out fires, like I get that there's still this whirlwind of what makes a school work. So bringing these bright spots together, it's energy for you, right, as well as the way to start to change culture in your school. So get your leadership team involved too. Don't do this on your own. So once you get step one done, jump into steps two and three so you can clone your bright spots intentionally and there's actually a lot of content in this episode, as I'm starting to wrap up here, right, so you might need to listen to this again to get all the steps again. Have your leadership team listen to it so they can get the steps down and they can really be on board with, also this process of collecting and cloning your bright spots. Once you get this process moving, you will lead inspired.

Ryan Steuer: 30:54

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the PBL Simplified Podcast. I appreciate you and honor that you tune in each week. Would you please take two minutes to leave a rating and a review? When you leave a review, it lets the next person know that this is a podcast worth listening to when they go into their player and search project-based learning and PBL Simplified popped up. Thank you so much for leaving a review. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you.