Leading for Deeper Learning, A Series in Four Parts, Part 2: The Beauty of Naïvete and the Development of the Backpack

Carmen Coleman, as the newly appointed Chief Academic Officer of a large district on the verge of being taken over by the state, considers reimagining a system that, itself, is the problem.

Some Context

There is real beauty in being a little bit naïve. I had just accepted a position as the Chief Academic Officer for the 100,000-student Jefferson County Public Schools, and the newly appointed interim superintendent had no district-level administrative experience despite working and teaching in the district for more than 20 years. He had been principal of two different high schools–arguably one of the most difficult jobs in existence–but he had no experience leading an entire district, not to mention one of the largest districts in the country, complete with a powerful teacher’s union and a 7-member board.

I had been a superintendent in a district of 1,800, and had worked at the district level in another district of about 35,000 students. I would later realize that the differences–and challenges–went far beyond size. Being at risk for state takeover was just one of the obstacles looming in the weeks to come.

Students were coming back to school, and though our vision was big, the day-to-day was all-consuming. The culture in the district had turned toxic; poor leadership and district-wide challenges had engendered mistrust, frustration, and anger among the assistant superintendents and other staff. The central office building was a maze of cubicles, creating small, isolated work spaces which reflected the district culture; individuals were working hard but were siloed, and no one could see past their own workspace. 

Thankfully, we truly didn’t know what we didn’t know, and so we plowed ahead. 

The Birth of the Backpack

We knew we had to paint a much bigger picture of student success, and to get everyone focused on making it happen. Having convened groups of students, teachers, parents, and other community members to talk about the meaning of a JCPS diploma, we had lists of “Success Skills,” those academic and life skills that were deemed essential to future success. Now we needed a way for students to continually add evidence of their learning and growth to some kind of digital portfolio. Some districts have the luxury of time. We did not. And if we were serious that this was about equity and creating a completely different kind of student learning experience, all students needed the same access. Thus, the Backpack of Success Skills was born.

Our theory of action was simple: if students were required to show tangible evidence of mastering those Success Skills each year, then they must have learning experiences that would lead to those artifacts. And as one of our third-graders said early on when he was learning about the Backpack, “Worksheets won’t make good artifacts.” Exactly.

The Backpack of Success Skills was scheduled to launch at the start of the 2018-19 school year. We’d made our plans and vision very public. We promised that every student would have a digital backpack into which they would upload artifacts each year, beginning in kindergarten, and that they would be ready on the very first day of school. 

Not only that, we decided that at key transition points–elementary to middle, middle to high school, and high school to post-secondary–students would be required to do a defense before a panel to publicly show they were ready for a successful transition. This new approach, ensuring a much more engaging student experience, was captured in a book we called The New Normal. We made copies and distributed them. Inside the book was the purpose of implementing the Backpack, examples of learning experiences that would lead to great artifacts, and the “tight and loose” expectations for both what would go inside the Backpack and what would be shared during defenses. We didn’t ask for lots of input. We just charged ahead.

While the superintendent and I were doing everything we could to promote the vision during the summer of 2018, our district team was searching for the right vehicle to serve as the digital portfolio. I will never forget the day they proposed that we create our own. The first day of school was literally weeks away. The district already had a reputation for continually trying to do things their way, creating their own internal systems that resulted in being isolated on many levels from other districts in the state. This approach was a factor that led to the state audit, and we were not looking to continue the pattern.

After some serious discussion and persuasion, we were convinced. Still, every one of the 100,000+ students in the district had to have a digital backpack on the first day of school. In this district where trust had been eroded by a long-standing, tumultuous relationship between the district and the community, coming through on the first thing we promised simply had to happen.

Next in Leading for Deeper Learning: Part 3, Backpacks, Defenses, and Surprises

Previously in Leading for Deeper Learning: Part 1, Setting the Scene