Welcome to Hokkaido, Japan.  Enjoy your stay at the Sapporo Park Hotel.  Oh my.  There is a bidet in the bathroom.  My first bidet.  Heaven.  How long is too long on the stream?  Is there a such thing as too long?  Hello, room service?  I'll take my food on the toilet.  Can’t. Leave. The. Stream.  

I was worried about the language barrier. Many people spoke both Japanese and English. I'm embarrassed at my lack of dual language proficiency.

There seems to be free WiFi everywhere. That's a huge benefit for me since Sprint doesn't actually have service here.  Keep trying to remember what life was like before my hand-held computer… How did I get around in a new place? How did I find good food? Good drinks? Things to do?

Walking in Nakajima koen (park) was chillfully lovely. The large mountain looming in the background juxtaposed with the large apartment buildings at the fore took me mentally from city to serene and back again. 

Breakfast was delicious. I took a friend's advice. Eat less of something and more of everything. The red salad (red peppers and red cabbage with a dressing) was yummy. Fried egg was completely on point, but the bacon and sausage, dear God, they weren't fried, THEY WERE BOILED! Travesty to the poor oinker who have up his or her luscious bits for those sides. But it was all made better by a table seat at the window overlooking the deep-snowed park.

There are little cartoon characters everywhere. I'm loving the strange faces created for marketing seemingly every aspect of Japanese life. They make me giggle. 

Everywhere I walk, I find something new.  Even in the places I have already been. In Nakajima koen, I found a blue colonial house. At breakfast, I found the scent of freshly baked butter croissant.  The brilliant yellow orange yolks should be envied in eggs back home. The caws of crows and tiny anime voices serve as the white noise of my day.  The heaps of white snow and frigid cold help me feel the winter that's been missing from NYC. 

I spent much of the time walking, especially in parks which were beautifully abundant in Sapporo.  I like hiking, and what better way to embrace Japanese culture than to hike through the park at Mt. Maruyama and visit the Hokkaido Shrine.  I did my pre-reading and knew to approach the well of water (chozuya), even in the cold of winter, to purify (cleanse my hands) the body before entering the shrine.  Rinse left hand, then right hand, then mouth, return the ladle.  I entered the shrine, observed some tying their prayers to a rope for good fortune, marveled at the beautiful setting, and wandered back in to the park to find the Maruyama Zoo.  Absolutely beautiful way to spend the day.

I found an Australian bar in the Odori arcade.  The Japanese bartender is a nursing student, and looks all of 20.  She was making herself a drink right along with customers.  She also started a conversation with me to practice her English.  She told me about how she likes to sleep late.  She often oversleeps her alarm, and that happened in this day when earlier that morning she overslept for her test in Nursing School.  Luckily her professor was kind and gave her extra time.  

On top of the friendly bartender, I also met an English chap and an Irish lass.  Dan and Christine were fun to chat with, and Dan’s puppy, Mei Chan, was adorable.  They were also young and like to do shots.  I knew I was making a bad decision to start shooting Kahlua and Bailey's, followed by shots of Fireball.  Shots were great in my 20s, not so much in my 40s, but how do you say no to people so sweet?  Turns out Dan runs a ski school and has property in Hokkaido.  Makes it easy to plan my next visit.  Thanks for the drinks!  Made for a rough morning, though.  I am very thankful to have met cool people, regardless of the headache.

As I read the Introduction, I was already furiously annotating the book.  The calling for innovative educators in order to build innovative students really resonated with me.  That includes innovative education leaders, as well.  Without leaders taking part in the practice of innovation, teachers will not be likely to take on the innovation mantle.  Lead by modeling what you expect.  Liz made a really important point in our discussion that innovation can not be instructed as a task to staff.  That will breed both resentment and half-assed completion of something to comply with the newest item on the checklist.  

​"If students leave school less curious than when they started, we have failed them."
#InnovatorsMindset

​As I read through chapters defining innovation, I began thinking about my own Instructional Vision which is framed around my core value of Curiosity and Seymour Papert's Constructionism to create a learning space that really embraces the idea of learning being student-driven in a space that resembles a studio - full of tools and supplies to create varied ways to present what was learned.  But, in the behemoth that is the New York City public school system, I felt the only way to bring this vision to life was through a complete revolution of schools and classrooms, redesigned from the ground up.  As I read about innovation being anything really that is newer and better to help my students learn, and that it can be done inside the box, I began to realize that change can (and maybe even should) start small and within the system that I currently exist.  Liz and I talked about the existence of teachers, and leaders, already that have their own pockets of innovation within our school systems.  This can be built upon, it can spread.  Small steps can lead to big changes, and often small steps, done well, are longer lasting so the message can catch on.

"Having the freedom to fail is important to innovation.  But even more important to the process are the traits of resiliency and grit."

We talked about the agents of resistance.  How do we prevent resistance from starting in the first place?  What might hold teachers back from accepting an Innovator's Mindset?  Turning a critical eye to your practice can be enlightening, when it is done from a place of constructive coaching, collaboration, and as co-learners.  So many teachers are stressed and tortured by the looming prospect of test scores.  How can we shift that mindset?  How do we protect educators from potential consequences of low test scores if they are willing to take a chance on trying something different?  Liz and I have both read multiple articles that share research about test scores improving when you drop the wide berth content coverage and focus on deeper learning with more creative thinking and problem solving integrated into the course.  Yet, it still is a fear in taking that risk, making the move to try a different way of teaching.

"Learners are the driver, and technology is the accelerator."
#InnovatorsMindset

Liz and I discussed ideas around digital portfolios.  She had created, when still a teacher, a blog of her teaching that she posted weekly that served multiple purposes.  The blog gave parents a window into her classroom and the topics they studied so parents could really engage with their children.  No more, "What did you learn today?"  She shifted the conversation to be, "Tell me more about _______ that you learned in math/reading/history this week?"  The blog also served her as a reflection tool.  Each year, Liz was able to see what she did the year before, and adjust and improve upon what she had accomplished with her students.  Her school also uses Google Drive as a way of creating a digital portfolio of work for all of their students.  I use website design as a means of tracking the work and research I do in education.  I have this site and old Google Site from when I was teaching that serve to capture my larger goals in Studio-Style learning and using tech to try and make teaching life a little easier.  We wondered about the logistics of getting students started in creating their own digital portfolios.  Do you front load the skill set and tech training?  What does this look like in elementary grades?

"When we think differently about the things that we are used to seeing daily, we can create innovative learning opportunities."

Liz shared some great ideas happening at her school and in her practice.  One thing she immediately took from the book was the idea of getting out from behind her desk into the classrooms more often, even if it is to do email catch-up or scheduling.  This has given her a window into classroom culture she didn't have before.  She is having more conversations with teachers about learning that reminded me of Kim Marshall's Mini-Observations.  Liz also shared that her school is trying to do something new where, rather than have another period of the school day to be an enrichment hour, they are discussing the idea of stopping courses for a week at a time to really have unique experiences outside normal curricula.  This seems to be a great success at schools like High Tech High where I see the posts of @kalebrashad on Twitter with the creations of students during their "Intersession" activities.  I offered to be a week-long course for kids, too.  What a great way to teach a subject you are passionate about.  And even if you feel like you have no unique skill or area of interest to share with students, you can always spend a week sharing the importance of learning by being a learner of something new with the students.  This also builds in the need of the school to learn about the strengths of people in the school community - students, staff, parents, business owners, etc.  School begins to be less about content coverage and more about learning with and from each other.  

"Great educators can work within the constraints of the system and still create innovative learning opportunities for their students."

I am walking away from this with ideas, and a need to frequently refer back to the book for inspiration and reminders.  I also enjoyed the Book Club aspect of this experience.  Sharing ideas and questions with a thought partner made this book read uniquely different than others.  I hope the Book Club continues.  ​

It's been a while since I have taken note of a Discrepant Event in my own learning.  Again, I find myself reading a book in the midst of my morning commute to work.  This particular morning, I was reading Seymour Papert's The Children's Machine.  I had been struck, time and again, by Papert's words, written in 1993, and their still-relevant nature today.  My purple gel pen furiously adds highlights, underlines, annotations, and questions to fill the margins of the book's pages while I balance myself carefully between subway stops.  

As Papert makes the case for thinking about the art of learning, mathetics, and its importance, he takes us through a learning journey of his own - learning about flowers.  This topic was a huge stuck point for Papert.  It was as if his brain blocked the material from being learned.  Over time, he began to make connections between flowers and his interest in etymology.  And as his knowledge base grew, he uncovered interesting facts about some flowering plants.  "One night... I ran headlong into the fact that for a botanist a daisy is not a flower."

"WHAT?  No way," my only slightly caffeinated brain screamed inside.  I began reading each page intently, wanting to know more.  I learned that daisies and related plants, like sunflowers, are not considered flowers.  They are called "false flowers" or "inflorescence".  The structure we see, that we call a flower, is actually a grouping of many individual flowers of varied type and structure.  

Staring oddly across the car of the train, focused only on distant memories and mental images of sunflowers, I began thinking about how this explains why there are so many seeds from the flower-like disc of the sunflower.  There is not one ovary involved here, but many.  I think about my friend Christi's love of Black-eyed Susans and Sunflowers.  Did she know about false flowers all this time and never tell me?  I wonder what other flowers are part of this botanical family.  I wonder about how easily I can find one around New York City so I can bring it home and study it under a microscope to really see the structures.  I realize, suddenly, that my stares into space may look a bit creepy, and I bring myself quickly back to the page.

And then thoughts pour in about how this connects to classrooms.  Discrepant events and statements like the title of this post can drive learning.  ​Connections to learning can drive learning for students, the same way it was driving me as a learner on the train.  I was a middle school science teacher for a decade, and I never knew about false flowers.  I taught the reproductive structures of flowers, and I never knew this.  I was excited to learn something new that changed my view and connected past learning to new information.  My brain went into overdrive.  

Papert really summed this experience for me.  "The more complex moral is that some domains of knowledge, such as plants, are especially rich in connections and particularly prone to give rise to explosions of learning."  Narrowing curricula will create disconnections.  Students need time to think and explore topics, to make connections, and talk about those connections so they become real moments of learning, not memorized factoids that will be forgotten shortly following a test.

I have been wrestling with an issue for some time lately.  I never was open about being gay when I was a teacher.

I visited a school today that was celebrating their work for creating school-wide structures that affirm student identities.  Today's lens was focused on LGBTQ students.  A staff member at the school shared his story about being openly gay in his school community and how much that helped students feel comfortable coming to him to talk and for guidance.  

I was particularly struck listening to young people have a student-led, student-created discussion around Hot Topics on their mind.  They were well-spoken:

• Topic of Girls-only Softball Team:  "Sports are not about gender, it's about who can make the shot."
• Topic of Mental Health for Students:  "It's not that I'm trying to get out of [class]work; I'm trying to survive."

A young male student shared a story about breaking down during a test because he didn't know the answers to many of the questions.  He said he broke down thinking about how he was letting down his family and ruining his chances for college.  Another young male begged for more mental health support from the Dept of Ed central office personnel that were there visiting saying, "This year, more than ever, I'm losing it.  I'm in a downward spiral.  I need help." 

Luckily, the help they needed was right in that room, in that safe space, where he had school-based counselors and teachers, GSA allies, along with many others of us from around the city ready to help them all make sense of the stresses of high school.

But I have been reflecting on my own practice, as well.  My years as a teacher.  I was always connected to GLSEN and used their Safe Space Kit in my classroom to create a space where LGBTQ students could learn without derogatory comments or harassment of any kind.  While I was an ally, I was never an Out Ally.  I was of the mindset that they didn't need to worry about my personal life -- the school, the learning, and the space was about them.  

Now I have to ask myself:  How many students needed a deeper connection to one adult like them?  How many needed to know that they weren't alone?  How many passed through my classroom doors without ever really knowing me?  How many more could I have helped?

I will have to live with my past silence, but my present and my future will be open and honest so this never happens again.  Tough lesson to learn.