One of the common tools used in Agile Learning Centers is the kanban board. Kanban is a Japanese word that can mean “card you can see.” It is used in agile learning to help communities create rhythms around learning goals, collaborate on projects, and teach young students the executive functioning skills that take an idea from concept to reality. While the system has been trending recently due to its use in agile software development, its origins actually date back to the 1940s when it was first introduced by a Toyota industrial engineer named Taiichi Ohno. Its initial purpose was to reduce waste in a production method sometimes referred to as “just in time manufacturing.”
This concept of doing things “just in time” is a bit counter-cultural in education, but aligns well with the principles of unschooling applied to agile learning. The mainstream education system is primarily based on an educational philosophy called essentialism. This implies that there is a set of knowledge and skills deemed essential for all 18-year-olds to be prepared for adulthood (assuming that means either the workforce or college), and that list has been broken up into 12 years of school. Some compare it to the conveyor belt of the factories that would have been so common during the Industrial Revolution, when compulsory schooling became the norm. I can see where this would feel so appealing, so efficient, in a time when centralizing, systematizing, and automating seemed to be making every part of life easier.
But we now live in a very different time. I would argue that we are now bombarded with so much ease, so much automation, that we aren’t even sure anymore what to focus on. Mail comes to me so easily; I am inundated with messages, advertisements, and invitations. I can scroll through entertainment so quickly that I am flooded with good ideas, “pinspirations,” and quite honestly, pure distractions. Technology is changing our lives so quickly that we have to ask what skills and knowledge are truly going to be essential by 2037, the year that this year’s kindergarteners will be graduating high school.
A different take on the idea of essentialism is offered in the book by the same name, Essentialism by Greg McKeown. I read this book as a homeschooling mom after I had my fourth baby and was wondering whether I could continue homeschooling my kids. McKeown calls “essentialism” the “disciplined pursuit of less,” and invites his readers to consider that an essentialist sees nearly everything as non-essential. This mindset shift really got me re-evaluating the to-do lists I was working from in our homeschool. And now, as a microschool founder, I find it helpful to revisit this editing process in my business.
One of the mantras of the Toyota kanban system is “build what is needed when it is needed, and only what is needed.” As a visionary with a passion for education, I can get a long task list pretty quickly and start to feel overwhelmed. On our community kanban board for The Treehouse ALC, we have a large section called the “parking lot.” This area can be filled with as many ideas as we want. The kids can fill it with ideas and dreams and plans, and then the sections get smaller as we move ideas from the parking lot one at a time through the phases of planning and execution.
My own “parking lot” of ideas for my microschool is very full. There are an endless number of online learning platforms that I want to explore, an ever-growing number of new school models that inspire me, and probably countless ways I could improve my bookkeeping, parent communication system, or student documenting. I am still trying to build a leadership team and find it challenging to delegate. My systems don’t feel organized enough to hand off, and I am still learning to trust people with “my baby,” as this small business feels. When I get overwhelmed with good ideas, I remind myself that I need to build what is needed, when it is needed, and only what is needed. This mantra is helping me edit the task list while I work to build my team and learn to delegate. Two questions help me stay true to this principle: What next? And, why now?
So in the spirit of essentialism, I will end this soliloquizing and get back to work. In the words of Greg McKeown, “Only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”
