Book Recommendation: The Future of Smart

Leave a Comment / Resources, Thoughts on Education / By Sheri Smith

We’re so excited! Long time friend of Indigo, Ulcca Hansen, just released her book, The Future of Smart. It’s a must read for anyone interested in education reform. See the review from our CEO below.

From Indigo CEO Sheri Smith:

“I work in schools across the US and can personally attest to the failures of the current education system. This book really delves into how education must be changed to better support students now. A great read to better understand the issue and become a part of the solution!”

For more information about Ulcca Hansen and The Future of Smart:

Facebook: The Future of Smart

Twitter: @ulcca @edfunders #FutureOfSmart

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ulcca

Colorado Impact Days

Indigo News, Indigo Stories, Speaking Engagements, Thoughts on Education / By user

Indigo Education Company is honored to be one of 60 organizations selected for the 2019 Colorado Impact Days, taking place next week from March 11th to March 14th. Colorado Impact Days was founded as a way to connect social enterprises and nonprofits with individuals and foundations looking to increase their impact on their communities. On Tuesday, March 12th, CEO and founder of Indigo, Sheri Smith, will present Indigo Education Company and its vision to change the education system starting with the individual.

This marks the fourth year of CO Impact Days, a venture that has helped invest over $201 million in social enterprises and nonprofits since 2016. The event will take place at the Curtis Hotel in Denver and includes the National Opportunity Zone Summit, the Social Venture Marketplace, and speaking engagements from foundation leaders and investors.

What is ‘Non-Academic Data’?

Indigo Data, Thoughts on Education / By user

A big part of the work Indigo does is providing schools ‘non-academic data’ that can be used to connect better with students and personalize education. But this begs an obvious question: what the heck is ‘non-academic data’?

It’s a question we get a lot at Indigo, and we understand. The phrase ‘non-academic data’ sounds like it should be in the small print of a nutrition facts next to words like ‘Dietary Fiber’ or ‘Vitamin B2’. It’s not the kind of term that gets thrown around in everyday life.

Here’s how we like to think about it at Indigo. Remember the buzzword ‘Big Data’ that took off a few years ago? What we do is human big data. We look at the behaviors, motivators, skills, and strengths of students, teachers, and administrators to identify trends that are going on in classrooms, schools, and districts.

So there’s academic data like grades, scholarship dollars, and ACT scores; and then there’s everything else. At Indigo, we focus on everything else.

But again, it begs yet another question: what can you do with non-academic data?

The short answer: *a lot*

The long answer: we’re still learning all the ways it intersects with education, and we’re looking to some of our most innovative schools to work with us in discovering them. Here’s just a few ways Indigo is leveraging non-academic data to make a big impact:

1. Classroom Analytics

If you’re a teacher, then you get it: some years, you get that fifth period class that seems to be full of troublemakers. What makes them different than your second period students who are always kind, polite, and write assignments in legible handwriting?

With Indigo data, teachers can see what makes each classroom unique and understand how the students in the room perceive their own behaviors and motivators. It gives teachers the ‘in’ to learn about their students faster and troubleshoot ways to make each class a success.

2. Mentor Pairing

We all love mentor-mentee programs. It’s just cool to see a senior pouring into a freshman’s life. Imagine if you could match students even more intelligently?

By looking at motivators, educators can find students who connect with each other. Instead of just pairing up a senior and a freshman because they are both in the yearbook club, what if you could pair them up because of a shared, mutual desire to find balance and harmony in the world?

3. Grade Correlations

We’ve been doing a lot of exciting work on the university level with this. We all want to know why certain students ace, and others drop out. Student success is an ever-evolving Rubik’s Cube, and there is no copy-and-paste answer that meets all schools and cultures. But what if you could diagnose the symptoms of success in your school?

By lining up Indigo data with grades, we can look for trends in academic success. For example, the students who are getting the most A’s may be the students who are high in Compliance (detail-oriented, logical, cautious), while students who are getting mostly C’s and D’s may be higher in Influencing (talkative, relationship-focused, easily distracted).

From there, helping the high Influencing students succeed is just a matter of reorienting the lesson plans to involve more group discussion and collaboration. Educators using Indigo can make smarter, faster bets on how to improve failing students.

4. Teacher Coaching

We’re always growing and learning as adults. We want to find new ways to succeed using our strengths. Some of our best schools are using Indigo to have positive, teacher-initiated conversations about how Indigo can be used to help teachers continue growing.

Here’s an easy example: one teacher we worked with was 98 out of 100 in Dominance (direct, competitive, blunt). This teacher realized they had a gift at teaching in front of large groups, and that they should seek out more opportunities to get in front of larger groups of students. Even a conversation as simple as that can help orient an educator toward their strengths.

It doesn’t matter how old you are – we all can benefit from honest conversations about ways to use our strengths!

5. College and Career Counseling

You want to push forward your college and career advising game into the next century? Use Indigo data. If you can help students identify what type of environments fit their communication styles (Dominance, Influencing, Steadiness, Compliance) and what gets them excited in life (Motivators), you can radically change the effectiveness of your advising center.

Not only can it help students find out faster what they want to do (shortening the amount of time it takes counselors to get students to that “aha!” moment), but it can help students get placed in future paths that they’ll stick with (increasing retention and success at the next step). Our Director of Training and Advising works with dozens of counselors across the United States to help them make the transition into using Indigo’s non-academic data as a cutting edge college and career tool.

So what really is ‘non-academic data’? It’s part of the solution to modernizing education. It’s the foundation of what the Whole Child Initiative will one day lead us into as country. Successful education will always be relationship based, and human big data will help educators reach more students better, faster, with a lasting impact.

To learn more about how Indigo can work with your school to bring human big data to your school, contact us at info@indigoproject.org!

Indigo’s Theory of Change Explained

Indigo News, Thoughts on Education / By user

Indigo’s Theory of Change Explained

May 5th, 2016, written by Nathan Robertson

How do you change schools when educators are at their breaking points, students feel disconnected with the school, and administrators feel like their Masters in Education Leadership did nothing to prepare them for operating a school well?

Some schools seem to change with ease. They bob and weave with the trends and are always launching new programs with forward-looking agendas. The parent community always rallies behind them with support. Students are writing their own publications, starting businesses, and spend off periods pursuing passion projects.

Some schools are like that. Some.

Some schools are struggling to make it through each day. They can’t bob and weave – they get hit hard by each changing trend and policy. New ideas and initiatives get lost in subcommittees and inner-school politics. Parents are sullen, unhelpful, and often are only a source of complaints. It’s a struggle to get students in desks, yet alone see them learn anything they will apply to their lives.

Many schools, I fear, are more like that.

There is a bevy of big ideas in education – and a countless number of school models – trying to make schools nimble, quick, and agile when it comes to change. But which ones do you pick? How do you prioritize what resources to use when changing a school? How do you make teaching kids social emotional learning or training teachers in lean launch techniques relevant? How do you deal with financial limitations?

Where do you begin?

Often times, it is unclear. Schools don’t know where to begin, and the resources do nothing but overwhelm them even more.

At Indigo, we have developed a working hypothesis based on our work with dozens of schools. We are getting a clearer sense of what is needed to equip a school to change its culture and self-sustain transformation towards a safe, positive environment focused on personalized learning.

How do you change a school? First, you change the people in your school.

The Three Pillars in a School

Change begins with aligning the three main constituents of education: students, leadership and teachers. Successful change only happens when these three groups are aligned. If students aren’t onboard, no new ideas stick. If leadership isn’t onboard, the best ideas are stifled. If teachers aren’t onboard, then the classroom experience won’t change – no matter what ideas students and leadership push forward.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “A house divided against itself will not stand.” If a house divided against itself cannot stand, what makes anyone think schools will fare any better when divided?

That’s why it is so important to engage these three pillars. It’s the key to successful change.

Students – Bottom-up, “The Groundswell”

Students are the reason why the education industry exists. If society ever reverted back to parents teaching their children, then teachers, principals, policy makers, and think tank education researchers are all out of jobs. We are employed out of an obligation to develop this nation’s youth.

However, it is not uncommon for students’ voices to go unheard. This does not just happen at struggling, financially strapped schools. I have been at successful college-prep academies where students feel they have no choice in their education path.

Students need to be met not only “where they are”, but also as “who they are.” By meeting students where they are and as who they are, schools pave the way for student-centered and personalized learning.

It’s easy to write off the ideas of a 15-year-old high school student. But the best innovations come from people on the ground level. Factory workers can identify better improvements than an engineer who has never stepped in the plant. Servers see better ways to please customers than a manager who sits in the back office.

Just think about what sort of insights educators could get if they really took time to understand who students are, what they are passionate about, and then change the way they teach.

Leadership – Top-down, “The Gatekeepers”

Principals, headmasters, and CMO directors are shaping the landscape of education. They choose school models, handle hiring, start initiatives, and control the direction of schools. Sometimes it is a leadership team – sometimes it is an individual who rules carte blanche through force of personality. Regardless of structure, leadership choices cascade down to affect our teachers and students.

Some leaders struggle with the idea that their school needs to change – to admit the need is to admit failure. They close off to new ideas from their faculty and students. Other leaders are under pressure from their board or community and feel they can’t change – even if they want to change.

Principals and high-level administrators must understand what needs to be done and “buy in” to innovation.

Different leaders have different motivations. Some will be convinced through data. Some will be convinced by arguing with them that change will do good for the students. Strategies vary. Once leadership is onboard, however, resources can begin to move to gain momentum for change.

Teachers – Pivot Point, “The Go-Getters”

Teachers are the true change makers in schools. They run the classrooms. They have meaningful relationships with students. They are training, coaching, and evaluating every young person that comes into their rooms. The modern teacher is part content master, part assessment expert, and part personal Sherpa.

Teachers stand as the intermediary between students and leadership. Without them, neither side would be heard by the other. If a school’s teachers simply stayed in the classroom and didn’t mind the rest of the school environment, then schools would fall apart into pieces. Culture cannot be built without the support of teachers.

Teachers must be the pivot point in bridging communication, idea generation, and implementation for students and leadership.

Many administrators I speak with groan about “the one time the school tried to do such-and-such professional development program, but the teachers didn’t respond well to it.” Imagine if you could get teachers excited for a shift that is part of the long-term vision. What would your school look like?

It’s Not Easy, but Easy Work is Boring

All of Indigo’s work centers around bringing these three pillars together. We are the catalyst that aligns these key stakeholders and drives them towards culture change and personalized learning. We have seen that when schools begin to get all three groups on the same page, change occurs organically and is sustained from within the school without support from Indigo.

Schools thrive when students are engaged, leadership is motivated, and educators construct the bridges for change. Our vision is to create a world where those schools exist in every county, city, and state in the country. At Indigo, we work everyday to make that a reality.

4 Easy Ways To Help Students Believe in Themselves

Thoughts on Education / By user

4 Easy Ways To Help Students Believe in Themselves

April 19th 2016, Written by Nathan Robertson

Why Do We Focus on the Negatives?

The thing that frustrates me the most in life is negative self-image. In our culture, people often struggle to acknowledge their strengths and passions. They focus on weaknesses. It’s so bad that people often warp their strengths into sounding like weaknesses! Being “outspoken” turns into “I talk too much”. Being a “planner” turns into “I’m not spontaneous”.

I see this throughout our society. Where I see it the strongest is within schools.

Students are disengaged, disconnected, and struggle to find their value. It can show up as behavior problems or academic failure. Rarely is it a problem with the student’s ability to learn or interact with others. They act out and struggle because they don’t see value in themselves.

Maslow’s Hierarchy and How it Affects Students

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a popular tool used in sociology research, psychology training, and even management coaching. The insight is simple and profound – to reach our highest potential, we need to first have esteem for ourselves. To gain esteem, we must feel we our accepted by our peers. But we can’t process acceptance if we don’t feel safe, and we can’t even meet that need if food and shelter needs are not met. Without a base, students can’t aspire for higher levels.

Put simply, students can’t self-actualize and reach their full potential overnight. It takes work getting there.

Here is my question: do you think students are self-actualizing and reaching their full potential? Do you think they have esteem for themselves? Are they even socially accepted by a group of friends in school or their community? The more students I meet across the nation, the more I begin to doubt it. I think many students feel uncomfortable in their schools because they don’t feel like they belong. They don’t feel like they have value.

So how can we turn around students? What is the point of trying to get students to self-actualize if they haven’t even felt accepted yet? What is the point of launching a new STEM lab if students feel like they are outsiders? What is the point of bringing community-based companies to talk about careers if students think they won’t amount to anything in life? What is the point of encouraging students to “be the best they can be” when they think their best will never be good enough?

What is the point?

There is nothing wrong with STEM labs and career days and pushing students. Before we can do that, however, first we must convince students that they have value.

Change the Conversation: A Focus on Positives

“Jack, you seem like someone who gets the details right and are passionate about learning everything there is to know about how to play soccer better – and I think that is fantastic.”

Students need to hear affirmation. Not only do they need to hear that they are valuable, but they need to hear why they specifically have and bring value to others.

It’s a simple thing – and it takes time. But it pays dividends. I have watched students transform over the course of months when educators, leaders, and mentors speak life into them. I have seen them start to see themselves as people with something to give the world. They come alive. They transform.

So how do we do it? Here are just four ideas:

Here are 4 easy ways to help students feel their value:

1. Turn a Weakness into a Strength:

I once met a student who loved anime – but he felt awkward talking about it. It felt uncool. So I flipped the script on him. I talked about how watching anime was exposing him to Japanese culture and helping form an international perspective. I turned what he thought was a weakness into a strength no one else in the room possessed.

2. Push an Opportunity:

One of the students I knew well was complaining that he had to find a summer job. He goes to camps frequently, and didn’t know how he could find a job that would fit his schedule. So I pushed an opportunity on him and led with a strength. “Blake, have you thought about teaching English online? It’s really flexible hours, you can do it from home, and I feel like you would be great working with kids who are trying to learn English. You are a naturally patient guy.” It doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t do it. He heard affirmation.

3. Challenge Them:

Sometimes I run into students who seem defeated. They have thrown in the towel, and given up on being a leader, or an engineer, or friendly – fill in the blank. They are stuck in an unhealthy self-pity cycle. Push back against these students. “I’m going to challenge you on that. You think you’re not an influence, but I see students every day follow you around and model your behavior. What do you call that?”

This only works with some students – but when it works, it is an effective wake up call.

4. Put Up Circles:

I saw this for the first time at a school recently, and I love the concept. It’s the reverse of a “put down”. You circle up the classroom, the group, or even the whole school. Students and teachers give call outs to each other for specific things they did that week that were great and helped the community.

Not every school will have the time to fit this into their schedule. But even if you do this as just an individual teacher, it can set a cultural tone of, “You have worth. You have value.”

This is why my favorite part of my job is when I am in front of students, especially ones I get to see consistently. I get to play a small role in seeing this transformation happen. It’s powerful.

Indigo transforms schools and districts. That’s part of the vision. We work at the administrator, faculty and student levels. On the ground with students, however, we are helping fight a much grittier battle. We are fighting to get students to acknowledge their own worth. We are fighting to get students to love themselves.

It’s hard work. But it’s the basis of any meaningful change we can make happen in a school.

Personalizing School Culture Causes Radical Transformation

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Personalizing School Culture Causes Radical Transformation

March 14th 2016, Written by Nathan Robertson

Your School is Struggling? Tacking on a New Computer Lab is not the Answer

I remember when my district began introducing smart boards into my high school. Teachers fought for a classroom outfitted with the new technology. Educators began to build lesson plans around the boards, excited as they imagined how students would gape in awe at the digital equivalent of a whiteboard.

However, as a current high school student at the time, I remember how my friends and I actually responded. A lackluster comment here, a raised eyebrow there, and any interest the smart board may have initially garnered dissipated within a matter of weeks. Math was still math, whether you wrote it with a dry-erase marker or a digital marker (we frequently mixed up the two types of markers, much to my teachers’ chagrin).

In college, the same trend continued. I remember how bullishly the journalism school fought for students to get iPads. The professors felt like rock stars handing out 100 iPads in a lecture hall – their class had now been validated as a “cool” place to learn because of 1:1 hand-held technology in the classroom. I am remember looking quizzically at the fresh iPad with a university branded cover, tossing it in my bag, and then opening up my computer where all of my files were stored. The majority of students followed the same behavior.

Technology in schools is a boon for innovation – new tech brings new applications and options for educators. However, smart boards and iPads are not the solutions – they are not the independent variables that drive educational outcomes. You need to go deeper than surface-level tech plugins to impact schools in meaningful ways.

Put simply, technology needs to be married with personalized learning. Schools need to be using more applications that facilitate tailoring pedagogy, curriculum, school culture, and even the school environment to students. Any technology that doesn’t contribute to personalizing learning holds little to no value in improving the quality of education.

Personalized Learning – Why it’s Important, Why it’s Hard, and What We’re Doing About It

Personalized learning means diversifying academic instruction, strategies, and experiences to meet the unique strengths and needs of individual students. In short, it’s the transition from a one-size-fits-all teaching approach to inviting students to help co-create their own education. It’s the power of listening for how students actually want to learn, and building a path that makes sense for each individual.

Although the modern wave of personalized learning is still nascent, schools that take on personalizing learning are seeing tangible impacts in their classrooms. Schools that are taking personalized learning are seeing major shifts such as 20% more students pursuing college and 14% more satisfactory grades across the board. Personalized learning isn’t just an interesting trend, it’s something that is unlocking student potential across schools.

In reality, however, personalized learning is difficult to implement because educators cannot copy and paste successful initiatives from one school to another. Since successful personalized learning is tailored toward an individual school’s culture and students, there’s no guarantee of repeated outcomes from any schools attempting to mimic them. While there are models that exist to help guide schools through the conceptual path, there is no easy solution. Because of this, 78% of teachers say meeting the personalized learning needs of students is too difficult.

So how does technology come into play with personalized learning? Schools are in need of technology that gives them more avenues to reach students. Cloud technologies and products that track meaningful student data provide new, innovative, low-cost avenues to make personalized learning possible in all types of school – from upper-end private schools in California to inner-city public schools in Detroit.

Technology that helps schools personalize education is what we need– but what does that technology look like? How do schools avoid throwing EdTech products at their teachers until something works? How do education leaders cobble together a series of ideas and philosophies that actually fit their students without getting frustrated by trial and error?

At Indigo Project, we believe that the most crucial piece of any personalized learning initiative is knowing the answer to the following three things:

Who are the administrators? How do they like to work?
Who are the teachers? How do they like to teach?
Who are the students? How do they like to learn?

We help schools find the answers to all three with the Indigo Assessment, a corporate-level assessment that measures the Behaviors, Motivations, Skills & Strengths, and Social Emotional Health of each individual. We test everyone – from the youngest freshmen to the most tenured administrator – and use the data to paint a picture of the school body. Once you understand who the administrators, teachers, and students are, how they operate, and what they want, you can start effectively personalizing the school to fit its people.

We’ve worked with more than 30 high schools and universities – more than 8,000 students and teachers. Below are three stories from schools that began to personalize their schools based on Indigo’s data and saw their schools begin radical, positive transformation.

Pinnacle High School – Identifying Leaders

In Pinnacle High School in northern Denver, Principal Todd Bittner and his teachers are using Indigo to identify potential leaders who may otherwise go unnoticed. Teachers are pulling in “problem students” into their office hours to talk about their strengths, skills and passions, and connecting them to clubs and opportunities where they can put those strengths to use in a positive way. For example, one teacher looked up the Indigo Report of a student causing issues in his class and discovered one of his top skills was leadership. Instead of shutting him down, he decided to give him a leadership position in the classroom and it transformed the entire dynamic of the class. The student went from being a “problem” to being an engaged, positive example of a leader.

“It’s giving students confidence,” Principal Todd Bittner said. “They start thinking ‘maybe I can go to college’ – Indigo is giving us hope.”

The Academy – Change School Culture

Indigo has the potential to change the whole culture in a school. At The Academy, Principal Cody Clark is giving students control of clubs and activities and watching the community thrive. The Indigo test identified that his students want to give back and make a positive impact in the community – and so he started providing opportunities to do just that. As a result, coat drive donations went up, food drive donations went up, the student council doubled the attendance at the homecoming dance, and classroom behavior referrals went down 50%.

“This has been transformational for the school,” Clark said. “It breaks down barriers.”

Peak to Peak – Building Strengths Improve Grades

Helping students understand their strengths improves academic performance. At Peak to Peak High School, Counselor Kimberly Gannett ran a 10-week group with failing sophomores. They all took the Indigo Assessment before beginning the group. Each week, they focused on the different strengths in their Indigo Reports and how they could use them in their school and in their futures. As a result, at the end of ten weeks the number of failing grades in the group went from 30 grades to only 3 grades.

“I really do feel it was the first time for those kids in their entire lives where we focused on what they were good at instead of what they were failing,” Gannett said. “I’ve never seen a change like that in my 20 years of education.”

The common denominator of change wasn’t new technology; it was creating opportunities for students that let them take charge of their education. If you give students the opportunity to connect their strengths to your curriculum, leaders emerge, referrals go down, and failing grades disappear. It’s all about leveraging your resources to create learning opportunities that make sense for students.

Indigo does use technology in our process – our assessment and online cloud-based platform are key parts of how we execute. Although they are key parts of what we do and help catalyze change, educators don’t walk away praising the tech. They walk away in awe that they found answers to the three questions Indigo solves when we begin working with any school – they discover who are their students, who are their teachers, and who are their administrators.

Conclusions

Indigo is pushing our schools into new territory. We’ll be launching a long-term personalized learning plan that will use our data as a base to guide schools to the next level of personalized learning; students and teachers will be working together to set school culture, seniors will be teaching social emotional resiliency to freshmen, and all students will be advocating with their community and school to find opportunities that enhance and push forward their studies in impactful ways.

As we continue to grow and add tools to our arsenal, however, we fight to make sure we don’t lose sight of why our work is important. It’s not because of the tools, the gadgets, and the plans. It’s important because of what that helps schools accomplish. We don’t celebrate Indigo’s accomplishes – we celebrate the accomplishments of schools like Pinnacle, The Academy, and Peak to Peak.

Indigo isn’t another EdTech thing to slap on the wall next to the smart board. It’s a process that engages with the one thing in school that’s not going out of style anytime soon – people.

Highlighting Excellence: New Vista’s Success in Personalized Education

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Highlighting Excellence: New Vista’s Success in Personalized Education

March 9th 2016, Written by Nathan Robertson

It’s not everyday you hear about high school students restoring a 1969 Pontiac Firebird.

This past fall Indigo Project, an education technology company headquartered in Niwot, Colorado, peered behind the curtain of New Vista High School to see what makes the school tick. Through this work, Indigo discovered a school that is excelling at personalized education. Based on the data insights, New Vista has cracked the code on how to connect with students. It’s leading to the development of skills such as empathy and creativity, an open and collaborative environment, and helping students nail down who they are and what they are passionate about in life.

Indigo’s data proves this. New Vista’s faculty have the highest Steadiness Behavior (calm, loyal, patient) of any high school Indigo has worked with in Colorado. Additionally their Empathy Skill is far above the average corporate adult, and they are also highly motivated by giving back and making an impact in their students’ lives (Social Motivator). These characteristics, identified by the Indigo Assessment, indicate New Vista’s environment is a nurturing and stable place for a school that is “designed to cultivate the unique talents, gifts, and interests” of students.

To understand what New Vista is doing right, a deep dive is necessary to see who are the students, who are the staff, and what things are administrators doing to help align students, staff and themselves together. Understanding how Indigo shed light on what New Vista’s process is and why that process works can launch larger conversations about what is the current state of other schools who are trying – and maybe struggling – to figure out who their students are and what the school culture is.

What if Test Scores Aren’t the Most Important Thing?

Many schools today are focused on driving students toward the types of success that are easiest to measure. They would rather emphasize school-wide SAT scores and percentage of students going to a four-year university than evaluate how many students feel good about themselves and also feel prepared to pursue the future they want for themselves. It leaves out a lot of narratives about how schools are actually developing children as people.

Enter New Vista High School: a school of about 300 students in the heart of Boulder, Colorado. New Vista is one of the schools that champions the idea of creating a safe, supportive and trusting environment for students. It’s not about cutthroat competition. It’s about an open, collaborative place where individual differences are respected and students are held to high standards for the betterment of the community. It’s a nurturing environment that is designed to develop students in all aspects of their life.

However, this leads to a dilemma. How does a school like New Vista display these qualities to potential students and their families? How do they advocate for the model in a concrete way? What if test scores aren’t the most important thing to measure?

New Vista, an Overview

New Vista opened its doors in 1993. For more than 20 years, they have been providing an alternative education experience to students who do not thrive under traditional models.

“One of the things we do really well here at New Vista is focus on the whole student through individualized instruction,” Principal Kirk Quitter said. “ Ultimately, our aim is to meet students where they are and give them what they need to be more successful.”

As soon as you walk into New Vista, you can feel that the school is personalized for its students. The New Vista community is creative, and student artwork is all over the walls. The students are also environmentally conscious, with posters on the wall announcing meetings for groups like Earth Task Force and classes such as Community Adventure Program, a quarter-long outdoor course that focuses on survival skills and how to reduce your eco-footprint. This is not a one-size-fits-all model, but a school that is clearly honing in on how to best fit the students that are coming through their doors.

In the spirit of a collaborative culture, classes are not separated by age. Instead, all classes have a variety of students from freshmen to seniors. It breaks down walls that sometimes occur when grades are isolated in their own cohorts. The result is a strong community where 14-year-olds and 18-year-olds are interacting in the same room and learning together.

This community is not just internally focused however. Once a week students can go out and engage with their city in Community Experiences. CEs can take many forms, ranging from professional experiences like working in a local architecture firm to partnering with nonprofits in the community. Regardless of form, students are going outside of their schools and advocating for themselves in roles and responsibilities with real organizations. This builds a sense of autonomy, independence and confidence that is critical for the development of our youth.

New Vista brings all these unique experiences to head with their Culminating Projects. The projects are senior capstones a la personalized learning – students complete an original, rigorous piece of work that is relevant or of great interest to them based on who they are. It dovetails the intensity of a traditional capstone with the individualized streak of the student. With a community like New Vista, projects stay wide, varied and original; some past examples include ecological studies in Tasmania, interning at a school for autistic children, and restoring a 1969 Pontiac Firebird.

New Vista is a community based on the individual. It stresses individual discovery and provides opportunities to explore passions through a variety of projects and experiences. It also provides a collaborative space where all these individuals can engage in respectful dialogue with each other regardless of age. In terms of a school-student fit, New Vista fits its students like a glove fits a hand.

New Vista through the Lens of Indigo

This fall, the Indigo team worked with all the students and faculty at New Vista. Here’s some of the key insights on how the school is shaping students that the Indigo Assessment revealed.

A Steady Staff

One of the areas the Indigo Assessment measures is Behaviors – how people communicate or “show up” in a room. One of the Behaviors measured is Steadiness: it embodies consistency, patience, loyalty, and how nurturing an individual is capable of being. When looking at the staff at New Vista, teachers showed up nearly two standard deviations higher than the average adult in Steadiness. This is the highest Indigo has seen in any school.

What does this say about the school? It says they are doing a good job at hiring. If the school is truly focused on individualized education and growing students in a holistic way, that requires a lot of additional time from teachers to form one-to-one relationships with students and invest additional time in each person. It requires patience, understanding, and a non-aggressive demeanor. With a staff this high in Steadiness, this team of teachers will constantly be thinking about how they can help provide the right environment for their students – and it shows. Teachers want outside guests and speakers to understand who their students are and what the culture is before they come because they want to make sure anyone working with their students provides a personalized experience fit to them.

They don’t do it because of rules or compliance. They do it because they care that much about the students.

A Creative and Empathetic Student Population

Another area the assessment measures is Motivators – what drives a person, how they prioritize things in life. It measures between six different motivators. One of the motivators is Aesthetic: it embodies a desire for balance and harmony, and typically underscores a desire for some sort of creative or artistic outlet. Looking at the seniors, 50 percent of students indicated that Aesthetic was their number one Motivator.

Remember when I said there was artwork all over the school walls? That wasn’t some school program that forced students to paint – students there are looking for an artistic outlet. The fact that the school is hanging up their artwork everywhere just means that the school is listening.

As a result, when looking at students’ top 21st Century Skills on the test both Creativity and Empathy show up as top skills. Confidence in these skills are a direct result of being in an aesthetic, steady school built around student preferences.

A School that is Addressing Social Emotional Issues

The fourth and final section measured on the test is Social Emotional Health – measuring how people view both internal and external elements of who they are and the world around them. At Indigo, we typically see most schools have about 30 percent of their population showing up on the “Blue List” of students that may need additional social emotional support.

At New Vista, however, we see an interesting trend. While the school is known for attracting students that need social emotional help, the school is showing that the percentage of students in each grade that needs additional support is dropping marginally each passing year as they get older. The school is aware that its students need the additional support, and the test shows that they are doing things to help students that are working.

Conclusion

New Vista’s model is different than the other schools in its district. It has an environmental emphasis and cares deeply about the state of its student community. It gives students a lot of flexibility to pursue their own path and passions. The assessment puts concrete numbers behind their culture. They are a school with an incredibly steady staff. Their students are developing skills they wouldn’t be developing at any traditional school in the district. On top of all that, students are finding closure in their emotional struggles as they begin to feel more and more confident and empowered to go into the future.

In other words, New Vista is a model that excels at their mission, and they now have scores to show that.

So what’s next? New Vista will begin integrating curriculum around Indigo into their advisories. Additionally, counselors are beginning to use Indigo in one-on-one advising with students. More than anything, Quitter says it brings a lingua franca into the school to talk about the different attributes that make people who they are.

“The results mean a greater opportunity to serve the needs of our kids, and bringing that common language into our community is huge,” Quitter said. “This process has had some big ripple effects from the classroom, into the advisory level and out into the community amongst parents.”

It is our hope those ripples will continue to grow in starting conversations between students, parents and teachers about how to connect with students and help them find a college and career future that fits who they are.

Homeboy Industries – A Story of Redemption

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Homeboy Industries – A Story of Redemption

February 28th 2016, Written by Nathan Robertson

I’ve heard it said before that one of the most humbling human experiences is to meet someone who may have less than you materially, but who possesses joy and hope beyond your personal understanding.

This past week, I spent some time in Southern California doing workshops and meeting with a few clients. Friday morning was free, so I decided to head north up the 405 into Los Angeles to visit Homeboy Industries. For me, it was a humbling human experience.

HBI provides help, support and training to gang-involved or previously incarcerated men and women. Services range from college and technical courses, counseling, case management, and a tattoo removal center that has removed more tattoos than any other institution in the world. They put people on an 18-month program to prepare for integrating back into the community. That’s all I really knew going into it. I wanted to avoid scraping Google beforehand so that I could experience HBI with as little bias as possible.

When I walk in, it’s unclear to me if I am in an office space or a pep rally. The staff has gathered 75 or more of their walk-ins for morning announcements. Every single staff member that will be working with the walk-ins is introduced to sound of applause. An Irish-American Catholic gives a quick anecdote on the health benefits of laughing often. Where I am at is standing room only, and more people are coming in the doors throughout the announcement.

What was interesting to see was the diversity in the staff. Some of them were Caucasian, corporate, with buttoned up shirts tucked into slacks. Others looked like they came from the community – not just because of their skin color, but also because of how they dressed and looked. It’s not just a multiracial team, but also a team that clearly comes from a range of backgrounds.

The morning meeting breaks, and then the place turns into organized chaos as everyone moves to a class, meeting, or to take care of the community garden outside. I’m quickly passed on to my tour guide, Jimmy.

Here’s where the humility begins to kick in. I spent an hour with Jimmy touring the building and walking through the gardens outside, listening to his story. If you ever meet Jimmy, he will tell his story to you as freely as he did to me: he was incarcerated at 16 for killing a man in an act of gang violence. Despite the fact he began to reform and change during his sentence, it would not be until 30 years later that he was released. The woman he married during his sentence, who was waiting for him to be released, died less than a week before he was free. He came back into the world in June 2015 with his wife gone and her son in need of a guardian.

Now, this level of trauma is enough to shut most people down. Some may be able to power through, but they would do so with gritted teeth and a jaded outlook on the world. They would numb themselves to the pain in order that they may cope.

But not Jimmy. Jimmy is a man of hope. Even if his wife’s 14-year-old son is not his biological son, he said he must be an example for him to follow. Even if two-thirds of his life has been spent behind bars, he said he must be an example for his community. That’s why he came to Homeboy to start his 18 months, and that’s why he volunteers to lead tours. That he may share not only his story, but his excitement and vision for the future.

During this conversation my mind is reeling. As Indigo continues to grow into more inner-city schools, we are beginning to run into this undercurrent of gang culture. I was all questions with him, but the biggest question I had was, “Jimmy, how do you connect with someone if that person feels like they have no value, if that person thinks they can’t succeed?”

Jimmy looked at me levelly and just smiled. “It’s about compassion, brother. It goes beyond just understanding where they are at, it’s connecting them to people that have been where they are at, and can show them the way.”

I sat with my notebook afterward at Homegirl Bakery (a spinoff company next door that employs incarcerated women and helps fund the services provided at Homeboy Industries) trying to process everything. What does this mean for how Indigo approaches education, I wondered? How can I translate this back to what we do for students?

I suddenly recalled the words of an Assistant Principal at a Denver inner-city school with which we work. “Education is important. Sometimes, however, we as educators need to step back and realize that life is more important than education.”

Indigo as a company stands for expanding how schools and educators can interact with students, but this takes things to another level. How can Indigo support boots-on-the-ground staff in servicing not only students’ educational needs, but also life needs through Indigo? If life is more important than education, how can we help students conquer the problems in their lives so that they can move forward to excel in their future education and career?

A day at Homeboy Industries answered questions, but also created many more that need to be explored. However, it is the pursuit of answers to these types of questions that will make Indigo more and more relevant in schools.

If we are designed to be partnering with the schools to help them push students forward, then we have to meet them on all fronts. But when I meet guys like Jimmy, I know that any student, regardless of their background, beliefs or situation, can unlock their strengths and find an outlet that allows them to become fully realized in the person they are uniquely designed to be.

In short, it reminded me why I do the work that I do.

National Education Week: 7 Lessons from America’s EdTech Community

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National Education Week: 7 Lessons from America’s EdTech Community

January 14th 2016, Written by Nathan Robertson

Right before the Christmas season, I went to the National Education Week conference hosted by the EDGE EdTech Accelerator in New York City. As one of the directors at Indigo, I spend the majority of my time serving as the boots on the ground in schools throughout Colorado, Arizona and Nebraska. This was a rare opportunity for me to take a break after the 50 workshop I did last fall and see what else was going on in the EdTech world.

The conference exposed me to the heart of action in NYC’s education-entrepreneurism space, and here are the 7 insights with which I walked away.

1. The Education World of Today is Not the Education World of Tomorrow

Chancellor Carmen Farina pointed out that in her 20 years of working in education people spent too little time innovating and too much time reacting. There are great EdTech companies out there, but are they providing services that equip students for the world they live in today or the world they will graduate into tomorrow?

Farina challenged us to think more critically about the schools we serve. Based on your students, and their interests, and technology’s advances, and where the economy is predicted to be in five years, what are the best things you can pass on to your students that will prepare them for the future?

2. Students are “Digital Ready”—Use Those Skills

88 percent of teens have access to a cell phone, and 58 percent of them to a tablet (Growing Wireless, 2016). Some children carry in their pockets more computing power than my entire 5th grade computer lab possessed—and they know how to wield it. We need to see curriculum that leverages that skillset.

Last week I was in a school where the teacher commanded students to put up their phones before the class could move forward. Instead of suppressing the desire to use technology, imagine if we could find ways to redirect it through coding classes, research projects, or even incorporating apps in a blended model.

3. Teachers are – Surprise – Still Important

One of the startups I saw at the conference was an early-stage company that is building an artificial intelligence math tutor. That’s right, despite all the movies about AI taking over the planet, in the real world they are teaching Algebra I. Many companies are looking for ways to remove human interaction from education (Coursera, Khan Academy) by teaching online or removing teachers from the equation.

But General Assembly CEO Jake Schwartz brought up an interesting point. “We’ve have had the technology to spread knowledge for 500 years since the Gutenberg Press—and it still has not replaced our teachers.”

EdTech startups should spend less time thinking about how to work around teachers, and more time thinking about how to work with them. They are the true difference makers in students’ lives, and the ones with power to innovate in the classroom. We need them for successful, long-term change.

At Indigo, we see teachers as the pivot point that bridges administrators and students to communicate, generate ideas and implement new initiatives in schools. Teachers are not just important– they are absolutely critical.

4. We’re Forgetting about Community College Students

Imagine the stereotypical college student. Who do you see? 19-year-old frat star? 17-year-old coding genius? 22-year-old student council president?

How about 28-year-old mother who is working two jobs and taking night classes?

According to Dr. Gail Mellow, President of LaGuardia Community College, 50 percent of all undergraduate students are in community college, and most of them don’t look like they stereotype we imagine. Most of the time EdTech companies want to partner with Ivy League universities or similar to boost their prestige—as result 12 million students in community colleges are not getting solutions build for their problems.

For me, this was one of the biggest questions in my mind. How do you create a product that works for community college? How do you create a personalized education that can meet people who, while they may go to the same community college, are in all different phases of life?

This is one area that I think could be incredibly exciting for Indigo in the future. Since we are a strengths-based organization that focuses on the individual strengths of each student, we have the potential to help these non-traditional students find their voice. There will definitely be things to learn from them about the best way to deliver, but being able to impact students that other EdTech companies may be ignoring gives me a thrill.

5. Many Programs Give Only the Illusion of Learning

I have an app on my phone for language learning. I’ll spend 15 minutes jabbing buttons and repeating back words into my iPhone’s speaker, and just like that I’ve got 30 points and have passed the animals and pets lessons. Congratulations, you’ve just pass your fourth German course!

Many education programs take pains to make students’ progression very visible. Tracking points, multiple levels, badges and stars. How many of these types of programs are actually facilitating the learning they claim to provide?

Companies working with schools possess an ethical responsibility to test their products and really understand the impact it has on students. Did students really become better leaders? Are their writing skills truly better than they were last year because of what EdTech companies sold the school?

6. Students > Your Newest EdTech Idea

In an earlier point I mentioned the need for teachers to be involved in education innovation. Another fact that must be emphasized is that students need to be involved in change as well. Too often I wonder if companies are building products that meet the needs of the gatekeeper—an administrator, a district official—and miss the needs of students.

The reality is that students possess the power to drive demand in schools. Not only are there tax dollars associated with each student that chooses your school, but they deserve the highest standard of holistic education that an institution can provide.

If we want to look toward the future of schools, it’s not just in listening to the big picture from administrators. It’s listening to the every day problems of students who are living and learning in the system we have built for them today.

At Indigo, it’s not about the technology. We have technology, and building out our Indigo.Fathym platform will be one of the major developments for the company this spring, but that is not the focus. The focus at Indigo has always been, and always will be, the students. If we aren’t reaching and changing them, then we aren’t doing our job. It’s that simple.

7. Implementation is Everything

I heard a lot of great ideas while I was at this conference. Seriously, the best and brightest of EdTech entrepreneurs and education leaders were present. However, I think the most poignant quote came from Wendy Kopp, Teach for America Founder:

“Technology is not the answer. Implementation is everything.” –Wendy Kopp

It doesn’t matter how great our solutions are, how innovative our models, how competitive our teams, if we are not going into schools and doing something. Without action, all of our efforts just amount to more tools on shelves that do nothing for education.

The more time I spend in schools working with administrators, teachers and students, the more this truth resonates with me. Schools don’t just want another platform. They want a partner who works with them to help begin the kinds of changes they want to see in their school. It’s one of my favorite parts about the job. When I can look at a school and know that Indigo played a roll in impacting their culture and how they treat their students, it reminds me how much I love my job.

For me, this conference taught me a lot. It gave me a better sense of where Indigo fits in the world of education, and why what we are doing in schools is important. Indigo is not an EdTech product—we’re an EdTech process that can transform schools and spark changes that schools can sustain.

It’s been so encouraging for me to see the impact and hear the stories of changes that are happening in schools. I will go back to that conference one day—and when I do, I want it to be because my CEO is talking about how we’ve changed the way one million students receive education in this country by shifting school culture away from test focus and toward a holistic, student-centered education.

Catch you next time, New York.

Sources:

http://www.growingwireless.com/get-the-facts/quick-facts

Indigo’s Alternative Education April Winner: The DO School

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Indigo’s Alternative Education April Winner: The DO School

April 24th 2015, Written by Jahla Seppanen

Indigo chose The DO School as its Alternative Education April Winner because we believe dreaming and doing is the future of education. The DO School has successfully allowed young people to make a difference, turning school into a space for real change and impact.

The DO School offers excellent educational programs that empower individuals and teams to turn ideas into action. Participants learn how to create social innovation hands-on, learn from passionate peers, engage with current experts and create impact for leading organizations.

Do you learn better when someone explains how to do something or allows you to try for yourself? Would you rather think about the next great idea that will change the world or go out and create it?

If you chose action, it could be the traditional college model of education will not fulfill your intrinsic goals and motivators. You might find yourself sitting in class wondering, ‘why can’t we put these ideas to use!?” Let’s call you, the Do-ers. You garner knowledge through application, dream big, and enjoy seeing the fruits of your labor come to life. For all you Do-ers, The DO School might be your perfect post-secondary path.

Students at The DO School are empowered to turn their great ideas into solid actions. Real action means real impact, and for all you Do-ers this sounds too good to be true. It can be difficult for young people to understand that post-secondary education is not reserved to the pre-req, sit-in-a-desk, take-notes, write-papers format. Shield your ears college professors but as they say at The DO School, “it’s not what you know, but what you do with it.” The DO School method enables students, or “Fellows,” to become innovators and have real positive social impact.

That’s why, during time on campus, the Fellows solve a real-life Challenge – a hands-on group task given by a company, governmental agency or NGO, next to preparing their own start ups. Recent Challenges have been the Green Store Challenge for H&M Germany or the Sustainable Cup Challenge given in collaboration with New York City’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability.

Florian Hoffman, Founder and President at The DO School says,

“In today’s quickly changing world, innovation and social progress will come from individuals that reflect on their values and talents and learn the skills that are needed to seek opportunities and turn ideas into action. The DO School’s hands-on programs empower these leaders to create impact in the world.”

It doesn’t take long to realize The DO School might be on to something. Ask yourself why you go to college? To get a job. To survive in the “real world.” Students at DO have already created their “real world” job before their traditional counterparts start applying for post-grad positions. The DO School method, used in their One-Year Program, teaches Fellows how to focus their passions and talents to create positive and sustainable change in their communities. Past Fellows have created amazing projects including: a social enterprise called OneLamp, providing safe and affordable solar light bulbs to rural Ugandan families, a mobile ride-sharing app called Raye7, connecting friends and co-workers for easy and safe ride-sharing in Egypt, and an eco-brick manufacturing business “My Dream Home” to address the housing shortage for low income families in Cambodia. Take that college essay!

Read about other DO innovations here.

The DO School’s One-Year Program is open for enrollment to passionate social entrepreneurs between the ages of 21-31. Their admissions process is selective, only because applicants must be highly determined and willing to use DO to start or grow existing ventures. For more application information read on here. Other programs offered at The DO School include Leading for Impact with the Scoll Centre of Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford, and the Intrapreneurship Program.

The DO School is supported by global organizations such as H&M, Newman’s Own Foundation, PlaNYC, EY, and more, and partners with other alternative education programs across the world including H&M Germany and EY.