Agile Principal Interview

Introducing Principal  3.0

Christopher R. Barnes, award winning principal of Cortes Sierra Elementary School in Arizona, is a different kind of  principal. He has lead his school to two A+ awards, is currently a finalist for the National Distinguished Principal Award, and has established an amazing shared culture with staff, students, and the community.  His greatest legacy may be leading a new way of thinking about how learning and school operations should be conducted in the 21st Century for a vibrant learning experience and a vibrant future. He is Principal 3.0, an Agile Principal, one that harness the power of Agile thinking to innovate education.

Scrum as Game Changer in Education

Chris was so inspired by the success of Scrum in one of his 4th grade classrooms, he invited me to help him transition his entire school to Agile thinking, from leadership council, staff professional learning communities, Principal leadership, and classrooms.  He has always believed in a culture where students and staff are empowered, passionate, and innovate to reach their unique destiny. This Principal 3.0 has witnessed firsthand how Scrum is the ultimate framework to bring these values to maximum fruition. 
Chris exclaims, "Scrum is a game-changer in education!". Spearheading through the 21st Century" is his powerful vision for the school, and Scrum is what powers that spear. He sees that Agile is making a great school into the innovative leader in education, developing real life skills for students to thrive and lead in the world, a true love of learning, mastery of standards, and character development for the 21st Century (Character 3.0).

Flip the Economy

Agile is the business framework of the future. For the first time, schools have the opportunity to be in the lead with the world's most innovative businesses. Rather than business telling schools how to run, schools that adopt an Agile transformation will flip this equation on its head, being the model for business to emulate. Cortes Sierra Elementary, with Agile, will not be benchmarked against other schools, but, will benchmark themselves with the most innovative organizations in the world, such as Google, Yahoo, GE, and Ericsson. The students and staff from Cortes Sierra Elementary can walk into Agile team at one of these businesses and feel right at home. Better yet, these students could be unleashed into the business world and teach and transform businesses stuck in old management paradigms. Imagine, a concept I call the "reverse internship", where Agile students are placed in business to transform the business.  Perhaps businesses will start placing their leaders into internship programs at Cortes Sierra Elementary to learn from students and teachers the power of Agile cultural transformation.

Principal 3.0 Interview

Here is the interview I did with Mr. Barnes, perhaps the first Agile Principal, recently after his Common Core workshop. Pardon the bad production quality, I am not a skilled videographer or interviewer. You will witness how he is spearheading through the 21st Century as a pioneer in Agile Based Learning Environments (ABLE). l.  Note: You will mention he references his "interview" in the video. Mr. Barnes is referring to his interview as a finalist as a National Distinguished Principal he had recently.

Can Scrum Change The World?

A great article, "Can Scrum change the world?" , by Melanie Webb from TechTarget.com on my Scrum in Schools presentation at the Atlanta Scrum Gathering this week. She makes me sound so much better than I actually was : )  And yes, Scrum can and will change the world for a vibrant future.

The Scrum Alliance Gathering was amazing! The best part was meeting the amazing folks that work behind the scenes at the Scrum Alliance. They are the most friendly, warm, and passionate people you could meet. I know they are taking the organization to amazing places.

Trailer for presentation:

Prezi for Presentation: Just pics. I was requested to accompany this with a speaking video or voiceover.  Coming soon!

Thanks,

John Miller

Vibrant Lives, Work, Communities, and Schools

http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/

Agile Learning Communities

 Schools have a great concept called Professional Learning Communities (PLC).
PLC's are "An ongoing process through which teachers and administrators work collaboratively to seek and share learning and to act on their learning, their goal being to enhance their effectiveness as professionals for students’ benefit" (Hord, 1997)

Often than not, many PLC's are ineffective. A lot of talk and no action is the complain I hear from many teachers. I am sure there are some action packed, results oriented ones out there, but, I fear that may be the exception.

Kim Mills, our famous 4th Grade Certified ScrumMastering, thought of this concept while attending Certified Scrum Master class to use Scrum as an inspiration to make quick collaborative progress in their Professional Learning Communities at her school. Let's call the idea, Agile Learning Communities.  It takes a PLC and focuses on rapid feedback, fast results, and iterative improvements.

The ALC Sprint

Each grade level forms an ALC team.  The team works in a one week Sprint, in which planning, doing the work, and reviewing the results occur for quick feedback and iterative results.

The ALC Sprint Board

The Agile Learning Community Board is divided into these columns: Goals, Task, Intensive, Strategic, Benchmark/Done.  Intensive, Strategic, and Benchmark are the level categories based off of Dibels scores. Each student is on  on their own sticky color coded and placed in the column of their level.  

The ALC Sprint Planning

Each grade level teams has their own product backlog.  This Sprint has 3 stories developed in this ALC Sprint Planning:

1. "As a second grade team, we want to move our strategic student to make benchmark". Moving survey students up a grade level. These students are reading at another grade level below the grade that they are in, 2nd story moving intensive students to strategic, and 3rd story moving strategic students to benchmark(on grade level).
2. "As a second  grade team, we want our intensive students to gain 10 words"
3. "As a second  grade team, we want our survey students to move up a grade level"

The tasks are the interventions to be undertaken with the students for that Sprint.  Tasks are developed by autonomous teams of teachers.

The ALC Sprint Review

At the end of the Sprint, there is a ALC Sprint Review, where the team revisit the students results by using our data from progress monitoring based on the stories or goals for that Sprint.  If the students have scored out of their area three times, the student sticky is moved to another level.

During the Sprint Review, the team updates the ALC Burndown chart - Each team has their own chart with the total number of students needed to move to bench.  Every week we discuss the data collected and move the students if they made their goal 3 times in a row.  We then burn them down for the week that we are on and talk about our goal until we meet the following week. This helps the teacher team gauge progress and detect trends early. There is something very powerful about having a visual graph posted on the wall for the team to review.

The ALC Sprint Retrospective

Teachers then preform a Retrospective, collaborating on  "What Went Well, What Did Not Go Well, and What One Thing Should We Commit to Changing Next Sprint". With Agile, teachers get faster and more open feedback from their results and their team members. It provides a rhythm for rapid feedback which is the fasted road to mastery

The teachers have gained excitement and celebrate their success with other teachers.  They also made time in their day to progress monitor to make their goals.  Teachers feel their time in ALC's are highly valuable since they quickly move to action and use Agile to empower themselves to help students grow. Through Agile, teachers are more autonomous, collaborative, creative and see obtain results faster.

Kim Mills has done an amazing job on this and continues to iterate and improve the ALC concept.