Social Entrepreneurship attends a Lean Impact Summit

RealSchool has been busy with so many different projects that we haven't had time to update our blog recently, but we're catching up, and in chronological order, we want to share what we've been up to.

Our Social Entrepreneurship team at the Lean Impact summit!

First, on December 5, the Social Entrepreneurship team attended the Lean Impact summit in NYC. Frisch English teacher Rabbi Daniel Rosen chaperoned, and we enjoyed his droll observations about the day:

In summary, first we went to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Bleeker. That was nice. Then, the first part was about funding.

The Social Entrepreneurship team enjoyed meeting the conference organizer Leeanne Pittsford, who gave them some tips about how to refine a project we're working on and will be pitching soon ;). The first thing Ronit Langer ('15) texted us from the conference was that in order to do something, "you've got to get out of the building." We couldn't agree more. 

Ronit also shared the following ideas she learned at the conference about social entrepreneurship:

Know your audience: be specific

Know your product: a service or solution to a problem

Is there demand?

Get rid of assumptions about everyone

Get young people

Find the root of the problem

Experiment

Find stories and use data

Deal with poverty: half the world that's not poor should want to get other half not poor

Find new ways to solve old problems

Build-measure-learn cycle, proposal-grant-execute-follow-up: takes a long time

Program can be started in as little as 9 weeks

Entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to the judges
and participants at the summit.
Judges critiqued pitches and gave tips on refining
presentations and business ideas.

A lot of the ideas the conference espoused are ones we value in RealSchool: rough demo-ing; failing fast to fail forward; learning by doing; believing in youth.

The RealSchool members also discovered the power and fun of networking, enjoying meeting young entrepreneurs, including Megan O'Connor from Pencils of Promise, an organization that two juniors at Frisch have brought to the school.

The students also kept hearing about Eric Reis' book The Lean Startup, which we immediately ordered and are now passing around in RealSchool.

All in all, the Social Entrepreneurship team got out of the building and got a lot out of the day!

Blurring the Lines Between Work and Play

We've posted before about social scientist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi's thoughts on flow, a state of being where one is challenged and engaged because they're in the process of solving a tough problem, without being overwhelmed by the task of doing so. Czikszentmihalyi has said that most often people reach a state of flow at work, and Daniel Pink points out that in a study, those who were denied that feeling of flow in their work, after two days, began to show signs of generalized anxiety disorder. That's a pretty compelling finding.

Czikszentmihalyi goes further. Pink reveals that thirty years ago, the social scientist wrote, "There is no good reason to believe any longer that only irrelevant 'play' can be enjoyed, while the serious business of life must be borne as a burdensome cross. Once we realize that the boundaries between work and play are artificial, we can take matters in hand and begin the difficult task of making life more livable." (Qtd. in Drive, 128)

Pink also quotes Czikszentmihalyi on how children "work" and "play":

"A little kid's life bursts with autotelic experiences. Children careen from one flow moment to another, animated by a sense of joy, equipped with a mindset of possibility, and working with the dedication of a West Point cadet. They use their brains and their bodies to probe and draw feedback from the environment in an endless pursuit of mastery.

Then--at some point in their lives--they don't. What happens?

'You start to get ashamed that what you're doing is childish,' Csikszentmihalyi explained.

What a mistake. Perhaps you and I--and all other adults in charge of things--are the ones who are immature. . . . Left to their own devices . . . children seek out flow with the inevitability of a natural law. So should we all." (128)

We need to make school a place where students are in a state of flow and where they feel like the boundaries of work and play are blurred!

Superfoods on Thanksgiving: Pumpkin Muffins

Talia Schabes in the Health and Environment team is getting us ready to enjoy some superfoods this Thanksgiving. Here's her family's recipe for pumpkin muffins. Thanks, Talia!

Wholesome pumpkin muffins

1.5 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 raw sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cloves
1/2 cup oil
16 oz pumpkin purée

Topping mixture
1 tsp cinnamon
1tsp raw sugar
1 tsp chia seeds
1 tsp flax seeds
1 tsp hemp seeds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Fill muffin liners
Top muffins with mixture
Bake for 15-20 minutes

Click here for a link to pumpkin's nutritional facts!

More from "Drive": Performance Goals vs. Learning Goals

Look at what Daniel Pink has to say about mastery in Drive:

If you believe intelligence is a fixed quantity, then every educational and professional encounter becomes a measure of how much you have. If you believe intelligence is something you can increase, then the same encounters become opportunities for growth. In one view, intelligence is something you demonstrate; in the other, it's something you develop.

The two self-theories lead down two very different paths -- one that heads toward mastery and one that doesn't. For instance, consider goals. [Carol] Dweck [a psychology professor at Stanford University] says they come in two varieties -- performance goals and learning goals. Getting an A in French class is a performance goal. Being able to speak French is a learning goal. "Both goals are entirely normal and pretty much universal," Dweck says, "and both can fuel achievement." But only one leads to mastery. In several studies, Dweck found that giving children a performance goal (say, getting a high mark on a test) was effective for relatively straightforward problems but often inhibited children's ability to apply the concepts to new situations. For example, in one study, Dweck and a colleague asked junior high students to learn a new set of scientific principles, giving half of the students a performance goal and half a learning goal. After both groups demonstrated they had grasped the material, researchers asked the students to apply their knowledge to a new set of problems, related but not identical to what they'd just studied. Students with learning goals scored significantly higher than on these novel challenges. They also worked longer and tried more solutions. As Dweck writes, "With a learning goal, students don't have to feel that they're good at something in order to hang in and keep trying. After all, their goal is to learn, not to prove they're smart." (119-120)

Now consider this blog post on how project-based learning leads to mastery:

How Project-Based Learning Develops Drive and Mastery

Learning from _Drive_

Daniel Pink's book Drive has been recommended to us many times, but we've been so obsessed with Frank Moss' The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices that we hadn't had time to pick it up. That changed recently, and now we feel compelled to share some of the fascinating ideas in the book that directly mesh with our philosophies. For a test drive of Drive (don't worry, we won't bombard you with driving puns; we promise to use them sparingly.), check out the RSA Animate video narrated by Pink:

Chapter One of Drive

As you may know, RealSchool is all about student-driven, passion-based learning, and so we were immediately taken with Pink's notion that jobs in the 21st century have become and will continue to become "more complex, more interesting, and more self-directed."

Pink writes:

Behavioral scientists often divide what we do on the job or learn in school into two categories: "algorithmic" and "heuristic." An algorithmic task is one in which you follow a set of established instructions down a single pathway to one conclusion. That is, there's an algorithm for solving it. A heuristic task is the opposite. Precisely because no algorithm exists for it, you have to experiment with possibilities and devise a novel solution. Working as a grocery clerk is mostly algorithmic. You do pretty much the same thing over and over in a certain way. Creating an ad campaign is heuristic. You have to come up with something new. 

During the twentieth century, most work was algorithmic . . . . The consulting firm McKinsey and Co. estimates that in the United States, only 30 percent of job growth now comes from algorithmic work, while 70 percent comes from heuristic work. A key reason: Routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathic, nonroutine work generally cannot. . . .

Partly because work has become more creative and less routine, it has also become more enjoyable. (27-29)

And . . .

Routine, not-so-interesting jobs require direction; non-routine, more interesting work depends on self-direction [our italics] (30).

So! What are educators doing to make sure their classrooms are not places where algorithmic tasks take place, but rather where students participate in heuristic, creative, and self-directed work?

Additional Resources

We recommend reading Scott McLeod's blog Dangerously Irrelevant, for constant updates on what's good and what's still bad in the world of education today.

RealSchool Update: Food Day and our Consolidated Tech Team

Amitai created this awesome logo for Super Food Day!

Talia and Marni encouraged Frisch students to eat superfoods

Tsipora and Arianna got stickers saying "I Ate a Superfood" . . . 

. . . as did Solomon, shown here with his Superfood, oats!

Food Day is one of Health and Environment's favorite days. This year the H and E team focused on Superfoods, working with the Frisch cafeteria chef Kim Anderson to create a menu that included as many Superfoods as possible. Kim even made special blueberry smoothies for the day, since blueberries are a Superfood (did you know they help maintain good vision?). The H and E team, along with Mrs. Wiener's English class, prepared flyers with nutritional facts about the Superfoods, and we even translated the Superfoods into multiple languages, including Hebrew, Spanish, French, Russian, and Ukranian (thanks to Michelle G. for the last two and for Morah Dafna, an awesome Hebrew teacher at Frisch, for teaching the Superfoods in Hebrew!).

Morah Dafna (right) gets in the Food Day spirit
by teaching the Superfoods in Hebrew!

Rabbi Ciner loved the logo for Superfood Day so much -- thanks to Amitai for the amazing Super Cougar, who's based on the Green Lantern -- that he asked us to make a poster with it, so the Health and Environment team is now working on a permanent poster for the Frisch cafeteria, listing the nutritional benefits of Superfoods and including Amitai's Super Cougar.

OK, the froyo isn't soo healthy, but check out the salad: it's got spinach AND broccoli!

The Tech Team

This year, we merged all our tech teams -- App Making, Graphic Design, Video Production, and Web Design -- into one. Not everyone interested in the different technologies is working on everything, but streamlining has made these RS teams more efficient and productive. This past Monday, the Tech team met and accomplished the following:

1) The Graphic Design group is finishing up the logos so we can update our website with student-made logos. We're excited that Ari's brother Oren has now taken off where his brother left off with RealSchool's website design and maintenance!

Here's a sneak peek at one of our newly-designed logos, by Jamie Lebovics, who's been making logos for RS since it began:

A graphical representation of the Fibonacci sequence will be our Arts team logo.
The Arts team created an exhibit on the Fibonacci sequence
 for RealSchool's first Yom Iyun in March 2012.

2) An article about an app the App Making team created will be published this Friday in The Jewish Link. We'll be posting that as soon as it appears!

3) Simmy is spearheading the making of a music video for those interested in video production. The song the Tech team chose to work with is "Gold on the Ceiling" by The Black Keys.

4) Amitai is learning HTML, so stay tuned for our plans for Coding Hour this December!

Tips for Managing PBL and IBL

Thank you to Sarah Blattner of Tamritz Learning for sharing this informative and highly useful edutopia post about PBL:

Twenty Tips for Managing PBL

And thanks to Reuven Werber for posting these resources for inquiry-based learning:

Twenty Questions to Guide Inquiry-Based Learning

Finally, if you're looking for edtech tools for PBL and IBL, check this out: