Schoolhouse Scrum

[John Miller - Agile Schools]

Dear Members,
I am preparing (last minute, it is due tomorrow) a proposal to talk
and discuss how Scrum and transform student learning and school
operations. I have been doing a lot of work in this area (I work in a
school district and am a SCM and SCPO). I have 3 elementary teachers
using Scrum (one 4th grade teacher just got ScrumMaster cert) with
their students with amazing results. It is starting to spread to
teachers working together using Scrum to develop lesson plans and
more. One principal wants me to help his whole school use Scrum! This
has been so much fun and the students really, really love it.

My question, would any of you be interested in:
1) Helping to adapt/modify Scrum for Schools?
2) Help to build awareness of Scrum/Agile in schools and even teach/
coach them?
3) Be interested in a talk about Scrum in Schools and how we as
practitioners can help prepare our students and schools for the 21st
Century using Scrum? Thus, making better schools, communities, and a
better future for our country. I would present this at the Scrum
Alliance Conference in Atlanta, hopefully.

I am editing some videos now on students using Scrum, that I will post
on my blog. I hope by this week.
You can see some of this on my blog:
Scrum in the Classroom http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/2012/01/scrum-in-classroom.html
Extreme 21st Century Learning (serves as the basis and reasoning why
schools need Scrum): http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/2012/02/over-rainbow-to-extreme-21st-century.html

Thanks for listening and I am really excited about your responses.
John Miller
agiles...@gmail.com

[John Miller - Agile Schools]

Hi All,

I have had many responses to this post, which I am very excited
about! So many of you, like me, want to and see how Scrum can not
only help our students but bring renewed passion and meaning to our
Agile/Scrum practice.

Can you please reply to the group topic if you feel like sharing
instead of emailing me directly so others can hear your passions and
thoughts?

By the way, I am not the first to propose Scrum in the classroom.
Scrum in schools is one blog, and Stephen Peha posted an InfoQ article
on it. I think, I could be wrong, I am one of the first to make it
work in the classroom and see it start to grow rapidly where teachers
are asking for it. They do not always know it is called, or inspired
by, Scrum. I am calling the for ABLE (Agile Based Learning
Environment), but, that could change as we get smarter and more
creative people than me on board to help with this.
I have lots of insight on how to make this useful and a right fit to
schools. One of the biggest "smells" of this cross-pollination to the
classroom to go awry is for us to to preach to educators that
education is broke and teachers need us to fix it. Teachers are an
amazing and passionate group, but they have to work within such a
tight box of compliance to standards and other District requirements,
most can't do many of the ideas from outside of education that don't
understand it. Teachers want to engage students passions, do project
based learning, and everything else. It is kind of like SOX
compliance for teachers, they have such things thrust upon them, they
feel they have no room or time for anything else. They will reject it
like an antibody by stating "We know better" or "We can fix your
mess". Also, even the terms in Scrum must be translated and changed to
fit their vocabulary and goals. We need to meet them where they are,
see their "stories". I have done a lot of this already, and have been
able to meet their needs using Scrum, but having to modify it, for the
classroom. Just like they are a client, we need to speak their
language and solve their problems and show how Scrum can not only make
their life better, meet their compliance needs, and also allowing them
have passion based, participative learning, and more.

Another reason is there has not been a passionate enough "call to
arms" and a unifying source to organize and make progress on this. It
has been individuals with a really cool idea. That flattens out
quickly as people's real jobs suck them back in from this hobby and
lack of progress in real schools.
It can not be a process by us, for them. It must be "participatory" or
"joint-development" with teachers, students, and us. I have already
sent one teacher to Certified ScrumMaster training and have 2 more who
I am trying to get budget for to go. So, we will have at least 3
teachers who have a deep level of knowledge of teaching and knowledge
of Scrum to start things off and co-develop this with. I have lots of
ideas to share on this and some basic processes mapped out, but, I am
sure it will change and emerge if we can get a great group together.
I suggest an open source/creative commons framework that brings
together passionate people like you in a crowdsourced site. I see
this, at least right now, as a "fork" out of Scrum to education.

Something like Ideo's work on :
-Human Centered Design Toolkit http://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit/
-Design Thinking for Educators http://www.ideo.com/work/toolkit-for-educators
-K12 Lab (Stanford's Dschool) http://dschool.stanford.edu/k12/

and, Openagile's work to have an opensource agile framework.
http://www.openagile.org/wiki/Main_Page

It also can not set out to reinvent the entire American education
system from the get go. I think it should be much like Agile started,
as a grassroots efforts from bottom up. I think the big vision could
to be down the line or to work at a bigger level to do this. But, we
need iterative, early, and frequent success stories to share and to
"inspect and adapt". The best way to do this is at the local classroom
or school level. This is how disruptive innovations happen, they
trickle in, they have safe havens where it can fail and grow safely,
until it is big and strong enough to change the whole system

I would love for you to join and comment on my blog, I think my posts
on Extreme 21st Century Learning will give us all a foundation of why
Agile is needed in schools. I am not trying to "recruit" blog readers
(OK, just a little), but, start of with a pool of meaning to grow
from.
http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/2012/02/over-rainbow-to-extreme-21st-century.html

First, get the right people on the bus, then, figure out exactly where
we are going. I think many of you are the right people with passion
and the skills to make it happen.
Please share more ideas, disagree with me, or just hop on the bus : )

Thanks, John Miller
agiles...@gmail.com
theagileschool.blogspot.com/


On Feb 19, 3:37 pm, John Miller - Agile Schools

<agilescho...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Members,
> I am preparing (last minute, it is due tomorrow) a proposal to talk

> and discuss howScrumand transform student learning and school

> operations. I have been doing a lot of work in this area (I work in a
> school district and am a SCM and SCPO).  I have 3 elementary teachers

> usingScrum(one 4th grade teacher just got ScrumMaster cert) with

> their students with amazing results. It is starting to spread to

> teachers working together usingScrumto develop lesson plans and
> more. One principal wants me to help his whole school useScrum!  This

> has been so much fun and the students really, really love it.
>
> My question, would any of you be interested in:

> 1) Helping to adapt/modifyScrumfor Schools?
> 2) Help to build awareness ofScrum/Agile in schools and even teach/
> coach them?
> 3) Be interested in a talk aboutScrumin Schools and how we as

> practitioners can help prepare our students and schools for the 21st

> Century usingScrum? Thus, making better schools, communities, and a

> better future for our country. I would present this at theScrum
> Alliance Conference in Atlanta, hopefully.
>

> I am editing some videos now on students usingScrum, that I will post

> on my blog. I hope by this week.

> You can see some of this on my blog:Scrumin the Classroom  http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/2012/01/scrum-in-classroom.html

> Extreme 21st Century Learning (serves as the basis and reasoning why

> schools needScrum):http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/2012/02/over-rainbow-to-extreme-21...

>
> Thanks for listening and I am really excited about your responses.
> John Miller

> agilescho...@gmail.com

[John Miller]

Typo, my 4 year old was tugging on me to play :  ) Correction below which is not as confusing....

I think it should be much like Agile started,

as a grassroots efforts from bottom up. There can exist a BIG underpinning vision to change education as a whole, but that is down the line, and it will fail due to the size of changing such a large and entrenched system. We need iterative, early, and frequent success stories to share and to"inspect and adapt".

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[Bachan Anand]

Hi John,
I am very passionate about taking Scrum's values and principles to school . We had some wonderful discussions at Agile India Conference in Bangalore yesterday on the same topic.

Me and others here would like to participate , contribute and implement some of the ideas that we come up in Indian schools.

I believe Michael de la Maza has done some work in this area.

So I am hoping on the bus !

-Bachan

[Sita Pun]

Hello John,

Your idea is interesting and your effort is really appreciative!!!

It would be great to be a part of it.

Regards,

Sita

[Helen]

Please count me on the bus!

A couple years ago my brother, Michael de la Maza, approached me about working on a curriculum development project to create "Scrum in Schools."

We initiated the project but were not able to obtain funding, so it was put on hold.  However, I did go through the CSM training and currently apply concepts to my work life, and a fellow educator also attended the workshop and she implements it in her high school teaching.

To provide a bit of history, here is a link to one of my brother's original posts on the topic:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/scrumalliance/1GLbsgDt4-E

And pasted below is some of the foundational work we, along w/ other Scrum folks, completed:

******
Statement of Problem / Opportunity

Many students at the high school level do not possess the necessary skills to:

    organize longer term projects - "timeboxing"
    monitor progress and complete work on time
    think iteratively to improve the final output
    break work down into small, manageable pieces
    organize thoughts into paragraphs
    collaborate effectively
    be creative, explore solutions
    get into a rhythm of work i.e. multi-tasking vs. establishing a heart beat

We suspect that learning Scrum would provide many benefits for high school students. There is significant evidence that good time management habits are positively correlated with increases in scholastic performance.  Imagine teaching children to work through homework assignments by creating task boards, prioritizing work, and frequently examining their results.  The Scrum practices related to self-appraisal, timeboxing, and prioritization are, from the student's perspective, metacognitive strategies.  Directly teaching metacognitive strategies to students, and not just teaching the subject matter, has been found to be a powerful way to increase learning.  The group skills, communication skills, and emotional skills that are regularly taught in Scrum training courses would seem to be particularly valuable in the highly charged and sometimes toxic environments that high school children find themselves in.

Along many dimensions the way of being of a child is naturally consistent with Scrum principles and values.  For example, very young children do not feel much shame in the face of failure so they are willing to conduct radical explorations of the world they live in, trying a wide variety of behaviors without fear of making mistakes. Children have beginner's minds and do not have to sweat to achieve this mental state.  Learning Scrum would probably be naturally easy for many high school students as it would help them recapture what they once knew and did.

Introducing Scrum to kids who will find it useful both immediately and over the long term supports the Scrum Alliance's goal of changing the world of work.

Outline of Proposed Solution
We propose to create a 10-15 hour Scrum curriculum which would be taught as a semester class.  This curriculum will explore Scrum values and principles and teach common Scrum practices through a series of lectures and activities. Each one hour lesson will include Scrum content and implementation practice, and will be accompanied by material for the teacher and material for the student.  The teacher's guide will provide guidance on the material itself and how to teach it.  The student guide will be similar to a textbook.

The team will spend a period of 3-6 months developing the curriculum.  The curriculum will be piloted by selected educators, and we will make revisions based on their feedback.

This curriculum will be distributed via a web site which will contain all of the content, for both students and teachers, as well as videos which show the content being delivered.  This content will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution license which lets others "copy, distribute, display" our work provided that they give us credit.

Solution Backlog
A list of stories that describe what we are proposing to do:

    As a teacher, I want to be able to download lesson plans and materials for the sessions.
    As a teacher, I want support in learning how to use the curriculum.
    As a teacher, I want to learn how I can use Scrum to teach more effectively.
    As a student, I want material that supports my learning needs.
    As a student, I want to learn more effectively.
    As a student, I want to organize my work more effectively.
    As a student, I want to be taught in a wonderful way.
    As a student, I want to learn how to communicate through conflict.
    As a student, I want to learn how to manage my time.
    As a student, I want to learn how to be open about my feelings and needs.
    As a student, I want to learn how to ask for help and not be afraid of doing so.
    As a student, I want to use my creativity to explore possible solutions to problems I encounter.
    As a student, I want to learn how to reflect effectively on decisions I have made.

Teachers will receive three types of training under this program.  First, they will attend the two day CSM course.  Second, the teachers will have a Teacher Guide for each lesson.  Third, online material, including videos and games, will be created to support the teacher as they learn Scrum.
***
 
Helen de la Maza, M.S., M.A.
dela...@earthlink.net

[AgileSchools]

Hi All,

Sending this from my iPhone, pardon any typos. 

This has, happily, generated some interest and rekindled some past efforts.  I spent time this week, motivated by the responses emailed to me, to get some students involved. 

I am working on creating an open collaboration space at a middle school. Similar to a Makerspace/Hackerspace, but, we with more of a a Creative, combing arts, musics, tech, science, and engineering (STEAM). Truly passion based/strengths based and student-directed.   The students are very excited, especially since we are not designing the space for them, but, are codeveloping the space with them and are listening to what they want. 

I spoke with the students about process to create their projects. They totally understood it can not be anarchy, and they do not want that. I presented the Scrum process to them and they loved it. I have a great group of students who want to help design a process that is for the students. I believe in student-centered design. I want it to be in language that excites them and they do not reject because the terms are foreign. 

Here was our initial discussions. 

1. Students get that teachers need to teach the standards within certain timeframes. 

2. Students overwhelmingly  felt that their passions, interests, and strengths were rarely brought into learning. 

3. Students loved the idea of creating and applying what they learned.

4. At least at the Middle School level, they feel they could be trusted, with some facilitation, to have more control over how they learn. 

So, about a group of 8 middle schoolers said they would join us in developing an agile based learning system.  We have a great base with Scrum, but, it needs to be modified for the unique needs, perspectives, and contexts of students, teachers, and schools. 

Helen, a long round about way to your email. First, you and your brother are visionaries. Sometimes the first movers in this is so tough. I commend your efforts and vision. I do think the approach either was not correct (that is good, we need to fail fast forward, best way to get to a good solution) or, perhaps there you had a different intent in mind than what my intent is in schools. 

The intent, off the top of my head in no particular order or regard for redundancy, is to use Agile/Scrum in schools to:

1. Develop 21st Century Skills (Agile does all of this out of the box)

2. Engage Student Passions and Strengths

3. Participatory learning ( even "flipping the classroom")

4. Improve the teaching and learning experience

5. A framework for self-direction that provides accountability, results , and achievement of mastery of standards 

6. It must convince teachers and administration that this is not another thing to do, but, makes teaching easier, more effective, and gives them a way to integrate the reasons they got into teaching (love, passion, fun, etc). It must embed better and more effective ways for students to learn the standards. 

7. A general framework that can be used in every class, student projects, teacher teams, & school improvement at all grade levels. 

8. Recently, I realized how it could possibly help with bullying at schools. Not as an explicit and overt anti bullying program, but in it's natural course of elevating individual student's strengths and developing empathy/respect if differences through collaboration. 

I do not see it being very effective to teach Scrum as a class for these objectives. The intent here is not to get students good at Scrum. 

I do see that being a useful class, just like I have seen, Project Management being a class in HS. 

So, we have some students ready to go (I do need to get permission from parents). I have some teachers ready to go who are already using Scrum. And it sounds like many of you are interested. 

If anyone has had any experience in leading crowdsourced projects, any ideas on incorporating diverse volunteers around the world, to get this moving in a sustainable way? 

Or, should I just develop a draft with the group I have here in Arizona?

Other?

I wish I could do this full time, but, like you, full time job + family makes it tough to move as fast as I would like. I am open to any and all ideas and feedback, positive or negative. 

Thanks!

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[John Miller - Agile Schools]

Hi,

Please check out this cool video of 4th graders using Scrum for their
Market Day project.
http://theagileschool.blogspot.com/2012/02/what-if-google-taught-4th-grade.html

This as recored before the teacher got the full Scrum training, just
after a one day crash course with me.
The class has evolved way beyond this already and has been modified to
fit a classroom.

Also, did I scare some off from the last post to the group? It was
not my intention and I hope I did not cause some to lose interest in
this project.

John Miller
http://theagileschool.blogspot.com

[Justin Urbanski]

John,

This is cool. What were some of the challenges you encountered to get the students to be open and collaborative?

Justin

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[AgileSchools]

Really none. Very natural once you give them clear goals and a framework. The Task Boards really help give them something to collaborate around and bring focus.
The teacher is great and dipped in to help bring some back to focus at times.
Much better than us adults : )

[Bob Schatz]

Hi John,

Thanks for all of this info. My daughter is a 2nd grade Special Ed.
Teacher in the Philadelphia School District. I have taught her some
techniques for the classroom and I've passed along the pix and video
you've been posting. She's having great results as I expected. Keep up
the great work, it makes it all worth it to see kids learning like
this. I can only hope it continues as they go through the rest of
their education process!

Bob Schatz
Agile Infusion LLC