CHAPTER 10.

Lynn Gatto’s case: Creating unique learning opportunities for urban elementary students

 Raffaella Borasi, Shaza Khan, & Ruthanne Vitagliano

(with contributions from Linda Francis)

10.1. Lynn’s story

  10.1.1. Introduction to Lynn’s case

This is the case-study of Lynn Gatto, an accomplished urban elementary teacher with over 30 years of teaching experience in one of the poorest school districts in the country.  Throughout her teaching career, Lynn engaged in many innovations that added value not only to the students in her class, but often also to their families as well as other students and teachers across the country. Her innovations not only involved the development of innovative instructional units and pedagogical practices, but also extended to extra-curricular activities, interventions with families and communities, and the dissemination of curricular and pedagogical innovations. Her outstanding pedagogy and passion for teaching did not go unnoticed.  Among other awards and recognitions, Lynn Gatto received the 1998 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching, the 2002 Toyota Tapestry Award, 2004 New York State Teacher of the Year Award, and the 2006 Disney Teacher Award.

Lynn spent all her teaching career in the Rochester City School District, teaching students at all elementary grade levels, in both mainstream and special education classes, and in several different schools. Her district is one of the five largest urban districts in New York State and one with amongst the highest poverty rate within the state. As such, it shares many of the challenges common to urban school districts across the country—including serving a largely underprivileged student population, experiencing low student achievement and graduation rates, facing frequent budget deficits, operating with old facilities and limited technology, and overall struggling with a large bureaucratic and rather dysfunctional system (see Figure 10.1 for some statistics documenting these challenges).

Teaching elementary students in a large urban school district can be rewarding and challenging at the same time.  It takes skills and dedication to deal with the many issues urban students face each day they are in school, as well as the pressures from the school district to have students performing at or above proficiency on high-stakes exams. Lynn chose to take this job on full force; in her own words:

“I will be trying to make schools a better place for children until the day I die or get placed in a nursing home.” (Lynn).

It is witnessing the many needs of her students, and how most schools fail to address them, that made Lynn recognize the need for radical change in schools and teachers’ practices, and it is what fueled her constant drive towards innovation. Her husband, also identified by Lynn as her “number one collaborator”, testified,

“She wants to provide for her students opportunities to experience the world just like all the other kids are experiencing the world.  That’s her underlying mission.”  (Lynn’s husband) 

Figure 10.1. Rochester City School District Profile (as of 2005, when Lynn retired)

  10.1.2. Highlights of Lynn’s professional journey

A young entrepreneur AND teacher

Lynn grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, as her father and mother started and operated their own business. However, she also knew from an early age that she wanted to be a teacher.  Lynn recalls being only nine years old when she started her own, albeit unofficial, business.

“As a kid I was, I don’t know, nine years old.  I had business cards made up, little business cards, and went around the neighborhood and passed out my business cards… I took care of kids all the time.  I had like this little nursery school, it was called the Lilliputian School, which I took from Gulliver’s Travels.” (Lynn)

Other experiences helped her sharpen important skills.  One of the most beneficial of these early experiences was a high school job as a shoe sales representative, which helped her become better at listening to her customers, identifying their needs, and marketing the company’s products.  Lynn initially took this job because she wanted to have her own money to spend. She states,

“My parents lived on a budget, on this very strict budget.  So when I went to high school … everybody had these really nice clothes, and I wanted nice clothes.  But my mother was like ‘No’.  I remember her saying to me, ‘If you want those clothes … get yourself a job’.  So the day I was fifteen I was working.” (Lynn)

Although her initial motivation was to make money, she found that she enjoyed her sales job, particularly because she was able to spend time just talking to her customers, and through this, build relationships with them.  The conversations with her customers helped her get inside their mind, giving her a better understanding of their needs and wants. That then enabled her to frame products in their terms, making her one of the most successful sales representatives in her company.

Skills related to “selling,” such as developing a relationship with customers and being able to show them how a product would meet their needs, turned out to be useful later on for Lynn, not only as she applied for awards or grants seeking funding for her initiatives, but also in her approach to students and their families. She herself draws an explicit parallel between teaching and “selling”:

“I think teaching is selling. You’re selling a product: the knowledge … or the reading or the science experiment.” (Lynn)

“A big part of being a successful teacher is knowing every single one of your students—who they are as people, who they are as learners.” (Lynn)

Although Lynn found success as a salesperson due in part to her ability to create relationships with others, one place this ability was not beneficial to her was as a student in primary and secondary school.  In fact, school is one of the places where Lynn most vividly recalled being a “failure”.   This was because, given her outgoing personality, Lynn took advantage of any unstructured learning time to chat with her peers.  Additionally, she found the teachers too boring, the subject matter too unapproachable, and the classroom rules too confining.  Instead of flipping through the pages of a textbook during class, Lynn read books of her own liking, which she tucked secretly under her desk.

“I think one of the greatest regrets in my life is that I didn’t know that what I was learning through school and college was actually going to be valuable to me as a teacher. No one ever made that clear, because I just thought being a teacher was being good with kids, having fun, you know, opening the book, whatever the book tells you to do, you do it, because that’s what I saw my teachers doing … I didn’t care about anything they were teaching me unless it was remotely interesting—then I would pay attention. But, otherwise, I sat with a notebook up in front of me and read. So I was not a good student, needless to say, and I did not go to a great undergraduate program.” (Lynn)

These negative experiences as a student were another critical factor feeding in her decision to become a teacher, and it subsequently shaped her educational philosophy of making school a place where kids have fun while working towards personal and academic successes.

Lynn recalled always wanting to be a teacher:

“I was born a teacher…I never played with my dolls as my babies, they were my students.” (Lynn)

“From the first day of kindergarten when I came home from school and school was so much fun, I just wanted to be there forever. I just—I’ve always known I’ve wanted to be a teacher, and I don’t think I’ve ever wavered from that.” (Lynn)

Early experiences as a teacher

Yet finding a full-time job as a teacher was not as easy as Lynn had expected.  After obtaining her bachelor’s degree, she worked as a substitute teacher for two years but was unable to find any permanent teaching positions. This is what led her to pursue an advanced degree in special education.

“I graduated from college … I was a hippie chick of the 60s and I was going to save the world and I could not get a job. … There were, however, special education jobs, so I went back to school full time and got a degree in special education – because I didn’t care what I taught, just as long as I could teach”.  (Lynn)

Lynn’s first teaching job was as a special education teacher in a self-contained class for students with severe emotional problems—a job nobody else had wanted to take!

“I was the fifth teacher in the room that year … that’s how I finally got a job, the fifth teacher, they couldn’t get anybody else to take this class, I said I’ll take it … the first day kids were picking up whole tables and throwing them, they were like little 5-year-olds … so I remember that night emptying the room out of everything … saying, okay, we got to start right from the basics.” (Lynn)

This extreme situation really challenged Lynn to question how she could reach difficult students and have them learn—as she knew that working from the textbook would not do it! This started a life-long journey to develop a child-centered and inquiry-based pedagogy.

“Over the years I’ve become a better teacher … I thought the textbook would tell me how to do everything, and it was boring and horrible. And I started with emotionally disturbed children, and they were not about to sit for anything.” (Lynn)

Even in this early stage of her career, Lynn was proactively looking for opportunities to meet her students’ needs, beyond what might be considered the traditional purview of a classroom teacher. For example, as she was assigned to a new position as a resource room teacher, “learning disability” was a new label that was just starting to be used.  Lynn perceived an urgent need as she realized that her students and their parents were just as confused about the label as she was. In order to successfully teach her students, she felt it was necessary for her students, their parents, and herself to build an understanding of what it meant to have a learning disability and its ramifications on the student’s educational and personal future.  To address this need she sought a district-funded grant to pay for the production and distribution costs of an educational video on learning disabilities, that she designed together with a videographer.

Challenges and opportunities of working in a large urban district

Lynn spent over thirty years as an elementary teacher in the Rochester City School District.  During this time, she witnessed the coming and going of several different superintendents, and she changed several schools and grade levels over the years.  Her ability to work and grow as an entrepreneurial educator fluctuated somewhat depending on these contextual factors.

At times, her district provided direct support for her creativity and passion for teaching, thereby helping her provide her students with rich learning experiences.  The district was also able to provide grant funding for initiatives from time to time, as well as professional development and connections with other innovative educators. For example, Lynn identified as one of the highlights from her career when she was mentored by a scientist from Brandeis University.  With enthusiasm exuding from her voice and body language, Lynn recounted the unique opportunities this gave her, which in time had a direct effect on her growth as a teacher:

“I had a mentor out of Brandeis University, a science mentor; he was a physicist. How many teachers who are becoming better science teachers have a scientist as their mentor?  Not many! I had the opportunity to… go to other urban sites…  We had little mini conferences [where] we really developed some close relationships with other teachers who were trying to do the same kinds of things that we were here in Rochester…  [T]hat’s why I say, personally and professionally this organization has been very good to me in many ways.” (Lynn)

Other times, though, she felt stifled by the environment, often facing resistance to her unique pedagogy and activities from district and building personnel.  Yet, Lynn did not let these negative conditions change her approach. The success experienced by her students in standardized tests caused many district administrators to remain quiet about her unconventional ways.  At the same time her innovative practices, national recognitions, and successful students at times caused some jealousy and animosity amongst her building colleagues.  Lynn responded to this hostility by finding alternative sources of support, often leading to professional partnerships that extended beyond her school walls, as well as searching for external validation for her success through national awards and presentations to conferences.

“That’s what winning awards has done for me, it has sustained me through all the naysayers … I feel so alienated so often that I think these awards have made me feel as though it’s not me, there is nothing wrong with me, it’s them, the people I work with.” (Lynn)

Her decision to pursue a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Rochester was also another way to receive professional development, find validation, and find a like-minded community where she could continue to grow professionally.

Relentlessly engaging in instructional innovations

Lynn was continuously on the look-out for ideas to make learning relevant and engaging for her students. First of all, she wanted to make sure that school would be fun and enjoyable for her students:

“I believe school should be fun for kids … the bottom line is that they are kids, and learning is fun, and I want school to be fun.  I want them to have a good time!” (Lynn)

But she was also clear, though, that having fun is not enough by itself—as she wanted her classes to prepare her students for life. Aware of the limited time students spent in her class, Lynn was always very careful about using that time most effectively, and this desire informed her design of specific instructional experiences.

This approach translated in many unusual yet extremely valuable experiences for her students—such as building a walk-in butterfly vivarium together with her students:

“We started with this idea of building a walk-in butterfly vivarium which is basically a habitat to raise butterflies … The science was all about the life cycles and habitats, and then there was an unbelievable amount of math in terms of measuring and geometric figures, and what’s the right shape and construction of it, how much netting … what kind of plants would fit in there. Just an unbelievable amount of everything went into that huge project and we’re still using the vivarium … the kids still use it, it sits in the front hall of the school.” (Lynn)

Over her years as an urban teacher, Lynn engaged in many of these curricular innovations. These included, among others, building a greenhouse for her school, making plant feeders for nursing home residents with her students, using video-conferencing technology to communicate with a “sister” class in rural Kentucky, and engaging in a long-term project involving visiting a local park in different seasons and preparing written materials for a “kiosk” that would enable other students to use the park more effectively to learn science.

These innovative learning experiences often called for creativity and ingenuity to come up with the needed resources, as well as to overcome unexpected obstacles in their implementation.  These points are well illustrated by this account of how she built a greenhouse for her school, as provided by her husband:

“We happen to be walking into Sam’s Club one day and she saw a portable greenhouse that you could build, so she ended up getting money in grants to go and buy this little greenhouse. Now it came all in parts, she found somebody that would deliver it, they donated their truck, she gave them a gift certificate to a restaurant out of her pocket. The greenhouse is now all stacked up, she got volunteers to come and assemble it in a rainstorm … she looked at the instructions and it said it must be on a stone base … she didn’t budget in for a stone base, so she said what can I do, so we called around. So and so could deliver the stone for $60 … but he can’t deliver it on this date. So, then we got an idea, I said you know what, why don’t we call this friend of ours who happens to be in charge of the City Environmental Services; we called him up, the next day the city crew is down there pouring stone and smoothing it flat so the greenhouse could be assembled, no charge, part of what they do.” (Lynn’s husband)

At the same time, Lynn was always very attentive to what was going on in the world around her, and ready to seize opportunities to create learning activities for her students. For example, when the disaster of the Columbia space shuttle occurred, her class stopped everything else to discuss this event; connections were made with science as they discussed information provided by the media about the cause of the accident, with history as they remembered other explorers, and most importantly they touched upon the importance of having individuals risk their lives for the good of humanity. In another occasion, when the school district announced they may cut the school librarians because of budget constraints, she coached her students as they decided to write a letter to the Board of Education explaining how important the librarian was for their learning.

Lynn’s pedagogy was based on constructivism and inquiry. She encouraged children to ask and pursue their own questions and interests, and to build knowledge from hands-on experiences. Much of her curriculum comprised of integrated units, where she wove in specific subject matters and skills around real-life situations and themes relevant to her students.

Lynn did not conceive of her role as teacher as being limited to helping her students learn the curriculum specified for their grade level, or even just gaining academic-related skills. She genuinely cared for each of her students as an individual, and she was willing to “do what it takes” to enable them to learn. This led her to engage in several acts of advocacy on behalf of her students, as illustrated by the following quotes:

“That … family now has a brand new … front step because when I made [a house visit] I almost broke my neck, the bricks were falling all over the place … I knocked at the front door, I said, oh my God, these front steps are horrible…[the mother] says, well, that’s why we don’t use the front door … I said the landlord needs to fix these steps…. I said you call that landlord and you tell him the teacher was here and you tell him the teacher is coming back in 2 weeks and if she breaks her neck on these steps, she’s got a really good lawyer—and don’t think that those steps weren’t fixed!” (Lynn)

“If the student needs reading services, she’ll advocate for reading services. If the parent has to sign paperwork, she goes to the parent’s house and makes sure the parent signs the paperwork. If a kid needs glasses, she’ll even go and take the kid to get glasses…she goes above and beyond what normally people would think of as a teacher.” (Lynn’s husband)

Lynn’s desire to “change schools” led her also to take on active roles in teacher preparation and professional development, especially towards the end of her career. This took on a few different and complementary forms.

First of all, she made her classroom very open for visitors—whether they were student teachers, other teachers, or educational researchers from all over the world. Almost every year she had one or more student teachers interning in her class, and for several years she taught as an adjunct professor some of the elementary methods courses offered at the University of Rochester as part of its elementary teacher preparation program. She partnered with Dr. Joanne Larson, an education professor at the University of Rochester, in research taking place in her classroom, and reported on the results at professional conferences. She also offered several professional development workshops for teachers both within and outside of her district.  Her drive to provide more students with learning opportunities similar to those experienced by the students in her classroom also led her to look at publications as a way to empower other teachers to do what she did and thus significantly expand her sphere of influence.

The following stories are good illustrations of the creativity and skills required to carry out these instructional experiences successfully as a teacher.

  10.1.3. Lynn’s innovation #1: The Cookie-Cutter instructional unit

Sometime in the middle of her teaching career, Lynn secured a $1000 School to Work grant that allowed her 4th grade class to create and sell a teacher’s guide for a geography lesson requiring the use of cookies cut in the shape of New York State, while also manufacturing the large cookie cutters needed for that instructional activity.  The students were involved in all parts of the enterprise, including making the cookie cutters, writing the teacher’s guide, and learning about how to create a company that would allow them to sell these instructional materials to other teachers.

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

Lynn recalled that she read about a geography lesson involving a cookie cut in the shape of New York State, but she could not find a cookie cutter big enough to do what she wanted with it. So, she decided to create the large cookie cutters with her class!

“There was this great activity I read about, where you could cut out a cookie [in the shape] of the state and use little chocolate chips to show where the mountains were and little colored candy beads to show where the major cities were, and a star candy to put where the capital [was]. But the state cookie cutters that I could find were only this big, so how could they really work? … I’m like: ‘I need a big cookie.’  So I went on the search for a large cookie cutter and couldn’t find one, so I said ah hah … we’ll make them.”  (Lynn)

She realized that this initiative would require some resources for buying the materials needed to produce the cookie-cutter, so she began to look for some possible funding sources through grants.  Sometime later, as she received a flier in her teacher’s mailbox advertising a $1,000 grant for teachers, she began to think that this could be a good match.  Based on the grant guidelines, Lynn began to reevaluate her initial idea and decided to develop a larger interdisciplinary unit in which the students themselves would produce and sell the cookie cutters, and by doing so they would also learn what it would take to start and run a business.

Lynn thought that such a unit would be very rich of learning opportunities both in terms of traditional content and in terms of life skills for her students.  As such, it was going to move forward her vision of providing urban students with learning experiences that were “fun,” while at the same time preparing them for life and providing them with experiences available to their more privileged peers.

She knew that to do this unit she would only need the materials to produce the cookie cutters, as well as access to the equipment needed to make the cookie cutters.  She was confident she could find a technology teacher who could give her free access to the equipment, and she also concluded that the other costs associated to the experience were within the scope of the $1,000 grant.

Based on these considerations, she decided it would be worthwhile to go ahead and write a proposal for this grant.  She was clear, though, that she would be able to go ahead with implementing the unit only if she got the grant – and, thus, the resources needed to purchase the materials to produce the cookie cutters.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

Lynn wrote the grant proposal.  As it was her practice, she tried to provide a clear image to the funders of what the outcome of the project would be and what her students would gain from it.  The grant proposal also included a plan of how she would develop an interdisciplinary unit with her students around producing the cookie cutters.

Lynn was thrilled when she learned she was awarded the grant!  However, at this point she also discovered that, because of restrictions on the use of government funds, she could not use any of those funds to purchase metal and then resell it. So, she had to either give up the grant or re-conceptualize the project.  After talking with the grant program officer, she came up with a creative solution that allowed her to keep the grant:

“So, I get the grant and … it turns out there’s this little fine print thing that you cannot buy raw materials with federal funds and then resell it. … Oh my God, what am I going to do? … I started thinking and I went, wait a minute, … if the kids create a teacher’s guide and talk about how to do the lesson and all the other things that we did around that and learning about New York State, we could sell the teacher’s guide and a free cookie cutter could come with it.  [The program officer] goes: ‘Oh, that will be great,’ and so I went okay, we’re in business.” (Lynn)

As her elementary school did not have the equipment to produce the cookie cutters, Lynn reached out to the metal shop teacher in one of the high schools in her district. She explained the project, and her idea that the high school students could serve as mentors to her elementary-aged students, giving both groups an opportunity to learn from each other in a hands-on learning experience. The metal shop teacher agreed to participate in the project, realizing its value for his own students.

“I called over to Edison Tech because I knew they had a metal shop there and spoke to the metal shop teacher. … I didn’t know the guy, I sought him out … and talked to him about the project … he said, oh yeah, no problem, we can do that … he said you know the kids could do this, his kids could do a piece of it … he was all excited because it would be something interesting for his kids to do …” (Lynn)

Lynn carefully planned the experience as a multidisciplinary unit where her students would create a company that would produce, market, and sell the activity guides (along with the free large NYS cookie cutter) for interested teachers. To help her students understand all of the processes involved in such a task, she persuaded local businessmen, lawyers, and other community professionals to invest their time and share their expertise with her students in how to create and maintain a company.

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

Implementing the unit required a lot of attention to details – as for example arrangements had to be made with the technology teacher as well as all the other volunteers who had agreed to participate in the project, and important decisions had to be made as unexpected elements came up.

“I worked it out with the metal shop teacher first and figured out how to make this big New York State cookie cutter. And [then] we went over there and we made the cookie cutters.” (Lynn)

“[My students] did a field trip over to Edison Tech and they did the rivets … they learned how to work in the metal shop and the high school kids worked with the kids and this is really cool … then we wrote up this little teachers’ guide, and it was really cute … like I did a little cover … but I made the kids do all the printing on the inside and it was when we had just gotten computers … so they wrote everything up on computers with their own little mistakes, and I left everything the way the kids had done it … they talked about the activities they had done in the classroom about New York State and the things that they [the teachers] could do with their class.  It was really cute, and it was sort of like the kids writing to other teachers all over New York State.” (Lynn)

 Since Lynn was directly in charge of this initiative, she was able to attend to all of the details, doing what necessary to make everything work well.  Being so directly involved with the implementation also gave her the opportunity to monitor closely how the unit unfolded and make changes in her plan as seemed appropriate to her.

Implementing the unit included not only producing the cookie cutters and writing the teacher guide for the geography unit using the NYS-shaped cookies, but also marketing efforts to sell the guide to local teachers.  A real break-through occurred when a newspaper reporter learned about the activity and published an article on this experience in a statewide magazine for teachers, as this generated a lot of requests for their product:

“I was just going to have the kids write letters to the teachers in the Rochester City School District and we’d sell them ….  Well, the New York State Teacher Magazine ran this big article … and I don’t even know how they got the story … they called me and said ‘we heard you have this cookie cutter’ … well so they came …and they took pictures of like the kids with like these piles of New York State cookie … We sold out in 2 weeks.” (Lynn)

Overall, the Cookie Cutter unit’s implementation was a big success!

  10.1.4. Lynn’s innovation #2: Organizing a field trip to Kentucky for urban 4th students

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

One of the forces driving Lynn’s practice as a teacher was her belief that, in order to level the playing field, her urban students needed to gain “life experiences” important for their success in life that were often denied to them. For example, after years of working in her urban school district, Lynn realized that several of her students never traveled or even left their urban neighborhoods.  So, she felt they would need at least some understanding of their broader surroundings in order to fairly compete with students from wealthy backgrounds for jobs and other future opportunities.  She stated,

“If there’s going to be any sense of equality, you have to give them some of what is out there, so that they are aware of what’s going on outside of their neighborhood and what are the possibilities.” (Lynn)

Thus, she instituted a culminating field trip at the end of every school year that took her students outside of their city neighborhoods to suburban and rural places both within and outside of the state.  Since she recognized that neither the district nor her students’ parents would be able to finance these trips, she and her students fundraised each year to pay for the expenses and obtained donated frequent flyer miles to pay for any associated flight expenses.

One special field trip provides insight into the entrepreneurial nature of these initiatives.  This field trip was scheduled to occur during the 2001-2002 school year and was to take Lynn’s students on a field trip across the country, from New York to Kentucky, to visit the class of another teacher Lynn was collaborating with.  The two teachers had met at a science conference ten years back, where they found that they had very similar personal and professional backgrounds.   Additionally, and most importantly, they found that they had a similar educational philosophy.

Building on the friendship and collaboration cultivated by the two teachers, their students also became familiar with one another through numerous shared activities which occurred over email and using teleconferencing technology.  This caused Lynn to begin thinking about Kentucky as an ideal end-of-the-year field trip.

The two teachers decided to pursue this idea, even as they realized the many challenges it would present to fly an entire class of 4th graders across the country.  They felt that this field trip would provide the students the experience of a lifetime, especially since the demographics of their classes were so different – Lynn’s being predominantly urban African American, and her colleague’s being predominately rural Caucasian.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

The planning of this trip developed over several months, as there were a lot of details to attend to.  The two teachers made detailed plans for their students, mapping out how to get the most “academic mileage” out of every minute of their stay and working out how to obtain the necessary financial resources.  They organized for the students to get hands-on learning opportunities at a local university, exposing them not only to interesting science projects, but also to a university environment that many of them had not experienced before.  In addition to this, they also discussed how they would help the kids from the two classes get to know one another in an easy, comfortable manner.  Lynn’s colleague provided insights into the level of detail that the two teachers had to go into to plan this trip, and some of the rich experiences this trip provided to the participating students.

“From my end, I had to start with the orientation for parents, and make sure that they were on board with what we were going to do before we started all the little details of everything.  Then, it was a matter of deciding what we were going to do with them [Lynn’s students] when they arrived.  We knew we wanted to put our students on a school bus, take them over to the airport, meet Lynn’s kids coming off the plane, and all of us ride back to school on the bus; that was a given.  So that meant I was going to have to have all of her ticket times, everything had to get to me so I knew when they were coming and all that stuff.  Then I had to get in touch with the bus garage and make sure that the bus could be at the school at the right time to get over there, make sure that the bus could wait and not have to go back to pick a load of kids up, [and] it had to be a free bus…  And the students were going to spend the rest of the day at school with my kids and we were going to leave school, and we were going to go to a local environmental center where … we could bring the kids in and have both groups go through these classes at the extension service to get to know each other.  So we did all these outdoor education classes … then went inside to see some astronomers give a little presentation because it was getting close to evening, and astronomers took them outside and showed them the night sky, and they talked about all the things in the night sky, and then we all, [Kentucky] kids and Rochester kids, stayed all night in that center.” (Lynn’s Kentucky colleague)

A few parents and grandparents volunteered as chaperones for the trip (and some of them were as excited as the children, as they had never been on a plane before!).  Lynn’s husband also came along to support her, and the Kentucky teacher capitalized on many of her connections to organize free lectures and activities for the students.

The plan the two teachers put together already included very creative ways to minimize costs while in Kentucky, yet plane tickets would have to be purchased.  So Lynn engaged her students in several fund-raising activities. She also obtained donated frequent flyer miles from friends to pay for most of the flight expenses.  And in the end, she also put in some of her own funds to cover the difference.

Yet after all this planning, when the 2001-2002 school year began, an unexpected event rattled not only their professional plans, but the entire nation.  On September 11, 2001, the U.S. was faced with a terrorist attack, which eventually caused Lynn’s district to make strict changes to its field trip policy.  They sent a directive to all the teachers stating that any field trip to take place would have to meet the superintendent’s approval, wherein this approval would be given only twenty-four hours in advance.  A cross-country field trip could obviously not take place with such little notice.  Airline tickets needed to be purchased, and all the collaborators—the university professors, astronomers, etc.—would have to know beforehand whether or not the fieldtrip was taking place.

After some months went by, and once Lynn was convinced that the personal safety of her students would not be jeopardized by this trip, she contacted district administrators asking for permission to go on this field trip.  She received no response.  After several attempts and no response from her district, she called a meeting to discuss the issue with her students’ parents.  Almost every one of her students had a parent present at the meeting, and most felt this field trip was too important not to happen.  This was, after all, one of the only times many of their children would have the opportunity to fly to another state.  They decided that they would all write letters to the superintendent, requesting permission to let their children go on this fieldtrip.  As the date for their scheduled field trip got closer and Lynn received no response from the superintendent, she decided she could wait no longer for the district’s approval.  She went to her school principal, received his support, and was on her way to making this field trip happen.

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

In the end, the fundraising done by her class, the detailed planning that she and her colleague engaged in, the efforts put forth by herself and her students’ parents to curb district resistance, and Lynn’s desire to provide her students with an unforgettable learning experience won out.

Things mostly went as planned – although a few decisions still had to be made on the spot to make everything go smoothly.  The two teachers were there all the time, ready and able to respond to any surprise and make the necessary adjustments.

This experience was an unqualified success for everyone involved – as documented as part of A Life Outside, a video documentary of a year of Lynn’s teaching (included among the Other resources section of the companion website).

  10.1.5. Lynn’s innovation #3: Publishing an elementary science curriculum

Lynn’s desire to provide more students with learning opportunities similar to those experienced by her students led her to create and publish an entire innovative science curriculum for elementary school.

How the idea came about and was evaluated/refined

This project came about through a happenchance meeting at a national science teachers’ conference. She was walking around the vendor’s stalls when she ran into someone she knew, who was working at a stall that had science curriculum kits.  As they caught up on life, Lynn looked through the products he was selling and saw the innovative science curriculum they were marketing for secondary schools.  She felt it was an interesting and valuable curriculum and wanted to purchase a similar one for elementary school teachers, but she was told that they had no such product available.  It was at that point that the owner of the publishing company walked over.  Lynn was introduced to him, and he caught a glance of a ribbon on her nametag, which indicated that she was a recipient of the Toyota Tapestry Award, a national award given to innovative teachers. He then asked whether she might be interested in publishing an elementary science curriculum herself.

After returning to Rochester from the conference, Lynn received a phone call from the owner.  He and his partner were interested in seeing Lynn in action, to determine whether having her write elementary science materials was truly an opportunity worth pursuing.  Once they saw her teach, they were convinced that she was a perfect candidate for writing an elementary school science curriculum that was both hands-on and innovative.  Thus, the owner of the company pursued her to work on this publication.

Lynn was originally uncertain of whether this undertaking was worth her time and energy, but she also felt it was a unique opportunity to put something new and teacher-friendly on the market. Publishing this kind of curriculum and having it used in elementary classrooms across the nation would also indirectly realize her vision of empowering more urban students to learn and succeed.  She also thought it could be of value to her personally, both financially and as something to have on her resume as she looked for different job opportunities after retirements.  After being convinced of the educational as well as personal value of this opportunity, Lynn signed a contract with the company to develop nine science kits aligned to the national science education standards.

Planning and gathering the needed resources

Throughout the development of the elementary science curriculum, Lynn had substantial input in how the final product would eventually turn out.  Most importantly, she did not want it to be “teacher proof”. She wanted it to push not only the students, but also the teachers to new levels of understanding science.

“I wanted to provide something for teachers that was not saying to them ‘Here is what you do’.  I wanted them still to make decisions on their own. It [was] about them being motivated and them being part of the process of their own growth or their own change in practice.” (Lynn)

To fulfill this goal, Lynn felt there was a need for an introduction to the guide that included a theoretical framework, informing teachers of the approach and method that she used in creating the curriculum guides.

Gathering resources was not an issue in this case, as the contract covered for expenses – although Lynn still had to find the time to devote to this demanding initiative!

Implementing and monitoring the initiative

As she wrote these curriculum materials, Lynn used her knowledge of education in the structure and content of the book.

“I know teachers, I know … what are road blockers.  So I try to anticipate that in my notes.” (Lynn)

She included sections that had suggestions to teachers on how to modify the lessons for grade level instruction.   She also aligned the goals of the modules with the national science standards.  In all, her published curriculum guide turned out to be a comprehensive, easy-to-read book providing engaging ways to learn more about scientific concepts.  It also included science kits providing teachers with all the materials required to teach the curriculum.

In the published version, Lynn wrote,

“The focus of It’s Alive! is to provide an environment that encourages children to be scientists…The goal of It’s Alive! is to educate children to think like scientists through the study of the characteristics of organisms; therefore, teachers must think like scientists.  The teacher promotes inquiry by being an inquirer her/himself.” (Gatto, 2005, preface)

When she initially agreed to complete the project in six months, she had not fully realized how big an undertaking this was.  Although she based the materials on her own practice, writing the text and creating the kits took her a lot longer than she expected – especially because she wanted to make sure that the materials would remain true to her goals of engaging students in inquiry:

“I really worked hard at trying to develop activities … that would actually invite kids to question things.  Materials was a problem because they wanted it cheap … and that’s something that I never really gave much thought to.” (Lynn)

Furthermore, her responsibility did not end with the production of the curriculum material, as the contract also included her helping with selling it by giving workshops across the country and being at available at conferences.

Having a published product ensured that Lynn’s creativity in designing experiences for elementary children would live on.

  10.1.6. Updates on Lynn’s story

While Lynn retired from the Rochester City School District soon after the end of our research study, her mission as an education change agent did not stop by any means!  She was immediately hired, first as a Visiting Professor, and then as a Clinical Faculty, to direct the Elementary Teacher Preparation program at the University of Rochester Warner School of Education.  In this role, she initiated many innovations that transformed that program and greatly increased its effectiveness in preparing high-quality elementary teachers.

Before even starting in her faculty position, Lynn was instrumental in establishing the first university-based Horizons Summer program – a 6-week full-time summer camp for urban K-8 students, following basic principles established by the national Horizons organization, but with significant leeway in terms of the curriculum to be offered.  Lynn was the director of this program for its first eight years, growing the program from 30 to almost 150 students over this period of time – and doing most of the curriculum development, fund-raising, staff hiring and training, required to run the program.

After her (second) retirement from the Warner School in 2019, Lynn still continued her mission through publishing.

10.2. Analysis of Lynn’s entrepreneurial activity

  10.2.1. Lynn’s practices about vision

As mentioned in the introduction, Lynn’s vision was centered on the well-being and future success of her urban students and her understanding of what it would take to provide them with a “level playing field” and the experiences they needed to be successful in life.  Her commitment to this vision was also quite strong, as testified by two of her closest collaborators.  Her colleague in Kentucky stated,

“She doesn’t just have a passion for the teaching; she has a passion for the students…She knows who she has to attend to… it’s not administrators, it’s not other teachers in the building.  She knows that her vision [is] for teaching these students” (Lynn’s Kentucky colleague).

“She gives 100% all the time, get the job done. To her, teaching is her profession. It doesn’t end at 4:00 when the kids walk out the door, she’s committed even at home.” (Lynn’s Kentucky colleague)

Lynn’s passion for this mission was demonstrated in her multi-pronged efforts to provide underprivileged students with social and cultural capital, regardless of the challenges and the cost to her.

Lynn also recognized the importance of sharing and spreading this vision, as she wanted to promote change in education that went beyond her classroom. This prompted her involvement in professional conferences and publishing. An important part of her message, in these cases, was dispelling myths about urban students. She stated:

“As [New York State] Teacher of the Year, I’ve been able to go around and say to people, you know, what you hear and what you see in the paper or in the news are not true.  City kids are smart and they’re great people, and the parents are great people.  And no matter what, city parents love their kids, no matter what.” (Lynn)

Lynn recognized that these issues were important to address if city school students were truly going to compete with their suburban counterparts once entering the workforce.

Lynn also recognized that empowering the parents to advocate for their children’s rights was a critical element in this cause.  Lynn helped parents understand the language and approach they must use in fighting for their rights.  For example, when the parents decided they wanted their children to go to Kentucky, one parent suggested that they call the superintendent with their concern over the field trip restrictions.  Knowing that their calls would not get through, Lynn suggested that they write letters to the superintendent instead, pointing out that this was a more effective way of getting his attention.  To help them compose their letters, they wrote one sample letter together on the board, giving parents with limited English proficiency the opportunity to make themselves heard as well.

Lynn showed a great ability to share her vision with others and get their buy in as needed to gain participation in her various projects—as illustrated throughout her story. Her passion, determination, and the personal rapport she established with people all contributed to her success:

“She just is a very determined person, and people who see her passion for this are willing to buy into her mission. … She breaks it down in such a way that people cannot refuse … they want to participate.” (Lynn’s husband)

Providing a clear and concrete image of what she was trying to achieve also served her well, especially when writing grants.

“I want people to see what I’m seeing and picture the outcome, the same outcome that I’m picturing, or the product.” (Lynn)

  10.2.2. Lynn’s practices about opportunities

Lynn was always full of ideas for new initiatives, and treated each of those ideas as an opportunity to put her overarching vision into practice:

“I guess that’s how I view myself, I view myself as an educational inventor…I invent a lot of this stuff and… invent lessons. … I’ve got an idea a minute” (Lynn)

“She is always seeking innovations, ways to improve things.” (Lynn’s husband)

Her ideas traditionally stemmed from recognizing an unmet need of her students or in her practice, and then trying to find ways to address that need – as typical of many business and social entrepreneurs.  Since she taught in a high-needs district, identifying such needs was never difficult!

“They’ve all come from a need, either my own personal needs, or to take kids out of their present environment to move them to another, to show them another place.”  (Lynn)

 Sometimes it was a specific problem that provided the impetus for an innovation—as illustrated with the case of the Cookie Cutter Unit. As such, we can say that Lynn approached needs and problems as opportunities and catalysts for innovation.

Ideas and opportunities for innovation also often arose from the desire to improve her own practice. Lynn adjusted to changes in her professional environment by continually reflecting on lesson and unit plans she conducted in previous years.  Her husband explained,

“She keeps everything in big Rubbermaid tubs in the basement and periodically… when she’s going to do that unit she sits down and says okay, ‘This is how I did it last time, how can I improve on this?  How can I make my work less, yet the kids get the same experience out of it?’ … she’ll come in and say, you know, ‘Remember five years ago I did this?  How can we make this look better now?  Is there better technology out there now that we can use?’” (Lynn’s husband)

Lynn was also an early adopter of technology and she often looked at new technologies as opportunities to enhance her students’ learning, and she worked proactively at developing new ways to capitalize on them. She was also always on the look-out for new ideas through reading, participating in professional conference, and talking with other teachers. In fact, many of her curricular innovations originated from ideas she gathered from one of these sources—although almost always she ended up significantly enhancing and transforming the original idea, as illustrated in the case of the Cookie Cutter Unit.

Lynn saw so many opportunities for innovation that she recognized she would never be able to implement them all. In fact, she developed the practice of writing down some of her ideas and putting them in a “grant folder” for future reference, ready to be implemented if the right circumstances came along – whether it was a new grant opportunity that would allow her to fund the materials or other expenses involved in a specific initiative, or a new curriculum mandate that could be addressed through one of the learning experiences she has thought about:

“I used to have a big folder of ideas and so when a grant comes out I flip through it and if there’s something that matches then I write it up.” (Lynn)

So, how did she choose among the many ideas and opportunities she generated? First of all, she relied on her vision to decide if the opportunity or idea is truly worthwhile. In the case of curricular initiatives in particular, this meant first of all evaluating the learning opportunities the experience could offer to her students. Lynn purposefully pursued opportunities that would produce the most “academic mileage” for her students.  In the case of curricular initiatives, she looked for activities that could cover the most substantial amount of academic ground for her students, while attempting to give them learning opportunities that also built their social and cultural capital.  Further, she chose to pursue opportunities related to her own personal and professional growth.

If an initiative was deemed worthwhile and she had a sense that she could pull it off, Lynn often did not stop to evaluate its specific costs and would move mountains to make it happen—as illustrated throughout her story and captured in the following quote:

“Sometimes you have to jump feet first into a project and later figure out where you are heading and how.” (Lynn)

Yet funding and capacity considerations were not ignored, as suggested by her very practice of setting aside some ideas in her “grant folder,” to be revisited if and when the appropriate funding opportunity came along.

Lynn admitted, however, that sometimes she had been uncertain about whether a specific initiative would be worth the effort, as it was the case for example when she was offered the opportunity to publish an elementary science curriculum. In some of these cases, it took others to convince her to make the investments required—be it time, emotions, or her own money—to pursue it. With the science curriculum, for example, she was not sure if the project would be successful, and the company had to reassure her that they would not be undertaking it if they thought it would fail.

  10.2.3. Lynn’s practices about risk

While Lynn’s initiatives rarely involved any financial risk, many of them involved breaking or bending the rules—a family trait!

“My father was a rule breaker. My mother always says, you are just like your father, you think the rules are made for you to break them.” (Lynn)

“When I break the rules, it’s only for their kids and they know that… and [parents] know I am their biggest ally.” (Lynn)

While Lynn did this purposefully and with considerable ease, she realized that the rule-breaking presented a personal and professional risk for her.

Some of the initiatives Lynn was involved in presented a risk to her reputation.  Lynn felt that publishing the science curriculum, for example, was a great personal risk, not so much in terms of the product’s “success” or “failure”, but rather how it would be received by her own teacher colleagues.

“What if people read this and say …‘This woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about’.  ‘This is terrible’.  There was tremendous personal risk.” (Lynn)

One of Lynn’s collaborators describes her as a calculated risk-taker:

“She does do a lot of risk taking. A lot of it is calculated, a lot of it isn’t. She’ll take the risk to the point where she knows she can do certain things. If she ends up coming up against an obstacle, there’s ways around it, then the calculating starts, but most of the time she’s a very good risk taker.” (Lynn’s husband)

Indeed, as we saw in the previous section, most often Lynn would not embark in a new “costly” initiative until she had a grant or some other means to secure critical resources. Ultimately, taking those risks was always worthwhile for Lynn if she saw a significant benefit involved for the students and the parents.

Lynn was also not afraid of failure and mistakes, as she stated,

“I see failure as the opportunity to improve or to do [something] again and succeed.” (Lynn)

  10.2.4. Lynn’s practices about resources

As a teacher in a public school, Lynn had essentially no control on her organization’s resources and no discretionary budget. Furthermore, her urban district was often under-resourced in terms of equipment, technology, buses to do field trips, etc. As some of Lynn’s initiatives required funding—especially her field trips—she had to find creative ways to secure the needed resources. This usually involved a combination of grants, fund-raising, in-kind donations and even her own funds – as well illustrated for example by the account of her construction of a greenhouse for her school, as reported earlier in her story. Lynn also used her award money to bring in more resources and opportunities for their classrooms, students, and schools; for example, she had a Smart Board installed in her classroom which she purchased with funds provided when she won a national award.

Her approach to grant-writing was quite purposeful and successful. Lynn was always on the look-out for grant opportunities specifically for teachers that could match some of the ideas she had placed in her grant folder. When an opportunity came about, she was quick at seizing it. She understood the basic principle that in order to get funded it is not enough to have a good idea – you also need to understand what the funders want and “sell your idea” to them. Lynn made an explicit connection between seeking funding and “selling”:

“…that was why I sold shoes so well … a lot of times women would come in wearing a dress, and I would bring out [some shoes] and I’d say, ‘well you know, this looks good but they’re not as comfortable, so you could try these’ … so I’m just seeing what the other person, how they think or how they perceive what you’re trying to tell them or sell them.” (Lynn)

Lynn also learned overtime the importance of identifying concrete products or outcomes in her grant proposal:

“I try and give people a vision … I want people to see what I am seeing and picture the outcome, the same outcome that I’m picturing or the product.  … I always am very explicit in terms of giving examples.” (Lynn)

She was also very creative in how she presented herself and her ideas, as illustrated by the following quote about how she differentiated herself in the interview leading to one of the major awards she won:

“When I went to New York State Teacher of the Year we had an interview at a table with 15 people; they interviewed the 5 finalists … I walked in with a bag because I knew generally what they were going to ask me …   I brought artifacts [from my teaching] so when they asked me about something … that would help to jog my memory … so they were floored … they said you are the only person who has ever brought anything in all these years …  How can you walk in with nothing, you’re selling yourself.” (Lynn)

Lynn (as many teachers!) was also very good at bootstrapping. As illustrated throughout her story, she significantly reduced the need for start-up costs by figuring out what she, her husband, and her kids could build rather than purchase; she asked for donated equipment and services; she found ways to secure free access to equipment her school did not own; and she asked for volunteers among her students’ parents as well as her friends.

Since as a teacher Lynn did not have any control on other staff’s time, by necessity all her initiatives were such that she could carry them out on her own, at best with the help of volunteers. However, overtime she was able to gather a group of friends, colleagues, students’ parents, and community members that she could call on to help her develop, launch, improve, or sustain a specific initiative. At times, she sought out people with technical expertise that she did not have, such as the metal shop teacher who helped her class create New York State cookie cutters. Other times, she sought to work with individuals who shared a philosophy similar to hers, such as her colleague in Kentucky.  At times, Lynn also reached out to some teachers within her building for some collaborative activities. In addition to this, her relationships with the school librarian, custodians, and other school employees were critical to some of her projects.

The most important team members in all her initiatives, however, were her students and their parents.  These were the individuals who worked with her on a daily basis to inspire, create, develop, and sustain various initiatives.  The parents, for example, helped her fight for their right to go on the field trip to Kentucky and served as chaperones during the trip.  The students worked tirelessly to create a successful company that produced cookie cutters and lesson plan booklets for other teachers to use.  Furthermore, the students were the source of most of her ideas and the inspiration for all she did.  Without their enthusiasm, support, and desire to learn, Lynn would neither have launch nor sustained her entrepreneurial initiatives.

Lynn was never shy about asking people to volunteer for her class. The following account from her husband sheds light on how Lynn went about securing volunteers:

“She just is a very determined person … she’ll say to somebody, the parents for example, I need five parents to be on an overnight … we’re going to an overnight at a girl scout camp in the middle of Fairport and I need people to come and spend the night … ‘well, I can’t spend the night’ … ‘well, can you come for a couple hours and help with the meal?’ … ‘yes, I can do that’ … so, she breaks it down in such a way that the people cannot refuse. So, they actually buy into the whole project but not necessarily are doing the whole project.  So you got a parent, for example, who brings in some wood for the kids to work with in class … and maybe sticks around and helps them out, but that’s not important, they did their share of the mission, of the total picture.” (Lynn’s husband)

  10.2.5. Lynn’s practices about growth

While as a teacher Lynn was not in any position to “grow” her organization, or even add to the services it could offer to her students and community, she shared the same drive to impact as many urban students (her “clients”) as possible as the other entrepreneurial educators featured in this book. Interestingly, though, she did not choose to achieve this goal by moving to administrative positions within her school system (as Mary and Ralph did, in the previous two case-studies). Rather, she reached students outside of her class by working with their teachers through providing workshops, presenting at conferences, publishing innovative curricula, and participating in teacher preparation programs – as described in details in the last section of her story.

  10.2.6. Other interesting elements about Lynn’s case

Willingness to break rules

Lynn’s innovations rarely were smooth and her story is full of examples that show her persistency, determination and creativity in the face of obstacles. She never let a problem stop her projects, but rather would search for alternative approaches till she could reach her objective – as illustrated for example in the building of the greenhouse.  In this process, she was always willing to bend or even break some rules!

“To be successful, you have to learn how to get around something, under it, or over it. … There’s always a way to get around the rules.” (Lynn)

A notable example of her “rule breaking” was going on the Kentucky field trip even if the district had put additional restrictions on such trips that year (although she sought her principal support to do that when the district did not respond to her request).  More frequently, she simply did not ask for permission for things beyond the norm and tried to do them “quietly” to avoid being noticed.

She jokingly recognized this as being a family trait, as she reported her mother saying to her at a young age: “You are rule-breaker just like your father.”

Capitalizing on networking

Networking was a critical component of Lynn’s entrepreneurial practice.  For example, her work on the science curriculum arose out of a happenchance meeting with an old colleague at a national science teachers’ conference. The Cookie Cutter Unit was made possible by the collaboration with a high school technology teacher. Her friends and acquaintances helped the Kentucky trip by donating miles.

Mostly, Lynn built this social capital by talking to people. These conversations often helped her build relationships with people she could later invite into her classroom to visit or volunteer, or as experts in a certain field, as illustrated by the following examples:

“I was at the jewelry store, talking to my jeweler.  And his wife was there and … she said she wasn’t working; her children were all gone off to college.  And I said ‘Well, then, what are you doing all day?’  She says ‘Well, I’m working here.’   And… she’s a certified teacher! I said ‘Well, then, I’ve got a job for you!’  So now she comes … every Wednesday morning and actually it has been great because I walk my kids to the nursing home once a month and we do this connection with community service with the nursing home, and so now I make her come every Wednesday morning so she comes with me to the nursing home, and she loves it!” (Lynn)

“I was in the liquor store the other day and the lady who has the liquor store was talking about how she was a teacher, and I said ‘Now you own a liquor store?  How did that happen?’  And I get the story and I said ‘Well, gosh, you know, I could use some help in my classroom.’  That’s just how I do it.  I just pick people up.”  (Lynn)

Through these casual conversations, Lynn built relationships with other individuals who served as important assets to her classroom activities.

Choosing not to engage in organizational change

Lynn did not have the power nor the desire to change the culture of her school or district into one that was more entrepreneurial. This was not just because classroom teachers are often not given the authority to make such structural changes, but also by personal choice, as Lynn explained:

“I just stay out of school leadership.  I have been burned so often.  I was on the school base [planning team] and all of those kinds of leadership positions, and it has really only made me enemies, mostly because I don’t think the way most people do.” (Lynn)

“Someone said to me recently, ‘you cannot be a prophet in your own land.’  And you know what?  They’re so right!” (Lynn)

Creating entrepreneurial spaces within her own classroom

Lynn proactively sought to create an entrepreneurial culture in the one place where she had control: her classroom.  That is, within each of her classes, with the students she taught, she tried to create an entrepreneurial culture by involving students in the planning of some units and having them make decisions about their own learning, as well as by being very transparent about her own decisions and their rationale.

Lynn felt that all of her students took a piece of her entrepreneurial spirit with them as they went through life.  For example, one of Lynn’s previous students called her up a year later wanting to know if there were any grants available that he could apply for; when asked why he wanted the money, he explained that they were receiving horrible food at his summer camp and he hoped to get better food by writing a grant to fund this.  Because Lynn was so open with her students about her own methods of obtaining resources for her classroom activities, her students became aware of avenues they too could pursue when in need of such support.

Capitalizing on dysfunction in the organization 

Lynn pointed out that being in an urban district in a constant state of crisis, where the students were failing and the system was dysfunctional, did provide her with more freedom than she might have enjoyed in other more typical districts, as her superiors were more willing to overlook her most unorthodox methods if they yielded good results — or even simply because they did not realize what was going on until it was too late to stop it!  Even in describing the dysfunctionality of her urban district, Lynn recognized that this enabled her to be the kind of innovative teacher she was:

“One of the great joys of teaching in the Rochester City School District is that… the fingers on the right hand don’t even know what one another are doing, so I can get away with a lot.  Also…I don’t teach to the test, and I don’t use any of the text books that they hand me… But the kids are successful, or I am deemed successful, because my students test well.”  (Lynn)

  10.2.7. Concluding thoughts about Lynn’s case

This chapter has shown how one elementary school teacher was able to employ many entrepreneurial practices and processes in a manner that took advantage of the strengths associated with her students, school, district, and community in order to meet the unique needs of her students primarily, but also their parents and communities.  Her innovations as a teacher involved not only continuously designing innovative learning experiences for her students, but also providing her students with unique extra-curricular opportunities (such as her end-of-the-year field trips), constantly improving her teaching practices (for example, by learning and integrating new instructional technologies), developing initiatives for parents (such as her early video on learning disabilities), and also disseminating her innovative ideas and practices to other teachers through presentations, publications and professional development workshops.

It is important to note that Lynn was able to find innovative ways to help her students reach their individual best despite being in a non-leadership position and working in an institution that, in many ways, did not encourage entrepreneurialism.  To do so, though, she needed to find or create spaces that would allow her to be entrepreneurial.  Eventually, this opposition worn her down and she decided for early retirement – although she continued to be involved with teacher preparation and began a new entrepreneurial activity (developing a new summer school program).

Perhaps even more than Ralph Spezio, the case reported in the previous chapter, we see Lynn as a prototypical example of “education James Dean” as described by Williams (2006).  This is especially true, unfortunately, when it comes to Lynn’s difficult relationship with her colleagues and superiors:

“[T]hese James Deans tend to become folk heroes of sort and often have complicated relationships with administrators and union leaders.  They tend to have a healthy chip on their shoulder and some degree of confidence in their ability to make things happen.  Often times, the only thing that keeps them employed is the fact that they can point to measurable results and have used their entrepreneurial skills to forge political support among key stakeholders, like politicians, business leaders and parents. (Williams, 2006, p.132)

A key point drawn from this case study, however, is that the behaviors, practices, and processes of entrepreneurship require reinterpretation within the context of teaching in an elementary school.  As exemplified by Lynn’s key innovations, it is clear that she held neither the same control nor power of a CEO or even a school leader. Therefore, she had to find alternative ways to conceive of, carry out and spread innovations.  Nonetheless, this case study still points out many similarities between the actual behaviors, practices, and processes she used and those of other entrepreneurial educators.

10.3. Commentaries on Lynn’s case

We are collecting readers’ insights and lessons learned from reading Lynn’s case on the companion website, and we invite you to add yours by following the specific guidelines provided in the “Guidelines for Contributions” document.

Posted commentaries about Lynn’s case – None available yet