{"id":33,"date":"2022-04-01T02:20:06","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T02:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/chapter\/lynn-gattos-case-creating-unique-learning-opportunities-for-urban-elementary-students\/"},"modified":"2025-03-04T18:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T18:38:10","slug":"lynn-gattos-case-creating-unique-learning-opportunities-for-urban-elementary-students","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/chapter\/lynn-gattos-case-creating-unique-learning-opportunities-for-urban-elementary-students\/","title":{"raw":"10. Lynn Gatto's case: Creating unique learning opportunities for urban elementary students","rendered":"10. Lynn Gatto&#8217;s case: Creating unique learning opportunities for urban elementary students"},"content":{"raw":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong><font size=\"+2\">CHAPTER 10.<\/font><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong><font size=\"+2\">Lynn Gatto\u2019s case: Creating unique learning opportunities for urban elementary students<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><em>Raffaella Borasi, Shaza Khan, &amp; Ruthanne Vitagliano <\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>(with contributions from Linda Francis)<\/em><\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<div class=\"textbox textbox--learning-objectives\"><header class=\"textbox__header\">\r\n<p class=\"textbox__title\"><strong>Lynn\u2019s Profile<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/header>\r\n<div class=\"textbox__content\">\r\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><em>Throughout her 30-year teaching career\u00a0in the Rochester City School District, one of the poorest urban districts in New York State, Lynn Gatto showed remarkable resourcefulness in providing her elementary students with the learning experiences she felt they needed to \u201clevel the playing-field\u201d and be successful in both school and life.\u00a0 This translated into many innovative initiatives that spanned from creating and even publishing innovative curriculum, to organizing and funding field trips to other parts of the country to enable her students to broaden their experiences.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h1>10.1. Lynn\u2019s story<\/h1>\r\n<h1>\u00a0 10.1.1. Introduction to Lynn\u2019s case<\/h1>\r\nThis 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nLynn 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\u2014including 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).\r\n\r\nTeaching elementary students in a large urban school district can be rewarding and challenging at the same time.\u00a0 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI will be trying to make schools a better place for children until the day I die or get placed in a nursing home.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em>.<\/p>\r\nIt 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\u2019 practices, and it is what fueled her constant drive towards innovation. Her husband, also identified by Lynn as her \u201cnumber one collaborator\u201d, testified,\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe wants to provide for her students opportunities to experience the world just like all the other kids are experiencing the world.\u00a0 That\u2019s her underlying mission.\u201d \u00a0<em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><strong><em>\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\r\n<strong>Figure 10.1. <\/strong><em>Rochester City School District Profile<\/em> <em>(as of 2005, when Lynn retired)<\/em>\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n\r\n<strong><em>District characteristics: <\/em><\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Large urban district (69 schools; $582M budget \u2013 with $58M deficit)<\/li>\r\n \t<li><em>Percentage of free\/reduced lunches: <\/em>85%<\/li>\r\n \t<li><em>Students: <\/em>about 36,000<\/li>\r\n \t<li><em>Teachers:<\/em> about 2,900<\/li>\r\n \t<li><em>Graduation rate: <\/em>49%<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong><em>Student demographics:<\/em><\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>14% White; 64% African American; 20% Latino\/a; 2% other<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong><em>Organizational structure:<\/em><\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: left\"><em>Key reporting chain: <\/em>Teachers\/building staff \u2192 building principals \u2192 Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning \u2192 Superintendent \u2192 Board of Education<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong><em>Subject position: <\/em><\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li style=\"text-align: left\"><em>Classroom teacher:\u00a0 <\/em>Making ultimate decisions about what is taught in her class and how, but within constraints created by state tests, district curricula and additional mandates that may be specific to a school<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong><em>Subject\u2019s current school: <\/em><\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>632 students (with similar demographics as the district); 51 teachers<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.2. Highlights of Lynn\u2019s professional journey<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n<strong><em>A young entrepreneur AND teacher<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn 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.\u00a0 Lynn recalls being only nine years old when she started her own, albeit unofficial, business.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cAs a kid I was, I don\u2019t know, nine years old.\u00a0 I had business cards made up, little business cards, and went around the neighborhood and passed out my business cards\u2026 I took care of kids all the time.\u00a0 I had like this little nursery school, it was called the Lilliputian School, which I took from Gulliver\u2019s Travels.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nOther experiences helped her sharpen important skills.\u00a0 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\u2019s products.\u00a0 Lynn initially took this job because she wanted to have her own money to spend. She states,\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cMy parents lived on a budget, on this very strict budget.\u00a0 So when I went to high school \u2026 everybody had these really nice clothes, and I wanted nice clothes.\u00a0 But my mother was like \u2018No\u2019.\u00a0 I remember her saying to me, \u2018If you want those clothes \u2026 get yourself a job\u2019.\u00a0 So the day I was fifteen I was working.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nAlthough 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.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nSkills related to \u201cselling,\u201d 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 \u201cselling\u201d:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI think teaching is selling. You\u2019re selling a product: the knowledge ... or the reading or the science experiment.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cA big part of being a successful teacher is knowing every single one of your students\u2014who they are as people, who they are as learners.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nAlthough 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.\u00a0 In fact, school is one of the places where Lynn most vividly recalled being a \u201cfailure\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 This was because, given her outgoing personality, Lynn took advantage of any unstructured learning time to chat with her peers.\u00a0 Additionally, she found the teachers too boring, the subject matter too unapproachable, and the classroom rules too confining.\u00a0 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.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI think one of the greatest regrets in my life is that I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s what I saw my teachers doing ... I didn\u2019t care about anything they were teaching me unless it was remotely interesting\u2014then 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nThese 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.\r\n\r\nLynn recalled always wanting to be a teacher:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI was born a teacher...I never played with my dolls as my babies, they were my students.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cFrom 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\u2014I\u2019ve always known I\u2019ve wanted to be a teacher, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever wavered from that.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<strong><em>Early experiences as a teacher<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nYet finding a full-time job as a teacher was not as easy as Lynn had expected.\u00a0 After obtaining her bachelor\u2019s 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.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI 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\u2019t care what I taught, just as long as I could teach\u201d.\u00a0 <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nLynn\u2019s first teaching job was as a special education teacher in a self-contained class for students with severe emotional problems\u2014a job nobody else had wanted to take!\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI was the fifth teacher in the room that year ... that\u2019s how I finally got a job, the fifth teacher, they couldn\u2019t get anybody else to take this class, I said I\u2019ll 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nThis extreme situation really challenged Lynn to question how she could reach difficult students and have them learn\u2014as 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.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cOver the years I\u2019ve 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nEven in this early stage of her career, Lynn was proactively looking for opportunities to meet her students\u2019 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, \u201clearning disability\u201d was a new label that was just starting to be used.\u00a0 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\u2019s educational and personal future.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Challenges and opportunities of working in a large urban district<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn spent over thirty years as an elementary teacher in the Rochester City School District.\u00a0 During this time, she witnessed the coming and going of several different superintendents, and she changed several schools and grade levels over the years.\u00a0 Her ability to work and grow as an entrepreneurial educator fluctuated somewhat depending on these contextual factors.\r\n\r\nAt times, her district provided direct support for her creativity and passion for teaching, thereby helping her provide her students with rich learning experiences.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI 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?\u00a0 Not many! I had the opportunity to\u2026 go to other urban sites\u2026\u00a0 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\u2026 \u00a0[T]hat\u2019s why I say, personally and professionally this organization has been very good to me in many ways.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nOther times, though, she felt stifled by the environment, often facing resistance to her unique pedagogy and activities from district and building personnel.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 At the same time her innovative practices, national recognitions, and successful students at times caused some jealousy and animosity amongst her building colleagues.\u00a0 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.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThat\u2019s 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\u2019s not me, there is nothing wrong with me, it\u2019s them, the people I work with.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nHer 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.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Relentlessly engaging in instructional innovations<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI believe school should be fun for kids \u2026 the bottom line is that they are kids, and learning is fun, and I want school to be fun.\u00a0 I want them to have a good time!\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nBut she was also clear, though, that having fun is not enough by itself\u2014as 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.\r\n\r\nThis approach translated in many unusual yet extremely valuable experiences for her students\u2014such as building a walk-in butterfly vivarium together with her students:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWe 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\u2019s 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\u2019re still using the vivarium ... the kids still use it, it sits in the front hall of the school.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nOver 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 \u201csister\u201d 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 \u201ckiosk\u201d that would enable other students to use the park more effectively to learn science.\r\n\r\nThese 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.\u00a0 These points are well illustrated by this account of how she built a greenhouse for her school, as provided by her husband:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWe happen to be walking into Sam\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019t deliver it on this date. So, then we got an idea, I said you know what, why don\u2019t 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\r\nAt 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.\r\n\r\nLynn\u2019s 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.\r\n\r\nLynn 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 \u201cdo what it takes\u201d 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThat ... 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\u2019s why we don\u2019t use the front door ... I said the landlord needs to fix these steps\u2026. 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\u2019s got a really good lawyer\u2014and don\u2019t think that those steps weren\u2019t fixed!\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cIf the student needs reading services, she\u2019ll advocate for reading services. If the parent has to sign paperwork, she goes to the parent\u2019s house and makes sure the parent signs the paperwork. If a kid needs glasses, she\u2019ll even go and take the kid to get glasses...she goes above and beyond what normally people would think of as a teacher.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\r\nLynn\u2019s desire to \u201cchange schools\u201d 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.\r\n\r\nFirst of all, she made her classroom very open for visitors\u2014whether 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. \u00a0Her 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.\r\n\r\nThe following stories are good illustrations of the creativity and skills required to carry out these instructional experiences successfully as a teacher.\r\n<a id=\"10.1.3.\"><\/a>\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.3. Lynn\u2019s innovation #1: The Cookie-Cutter instructional unit<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nSometime 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0 The students were involved in all parts of the enterprise, including making the cookie cutters, writing the teacher\u2019s guide, and learning about how to create a company that would allow them to sell these instructional materials to other teachers.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>How the idea came about and was evaluated\/refined<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn 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!\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThere 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? \u2026 I\u2019m like: \u2018I need a big cookie.\u2019\u00a0 So I went on the search for a large cookie cutter and couldn\u2019t find one, so I said ah hah \u2026 we\u2019ll make them.\u201d\u00a0 <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nShe 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. \u00a0Sometime later, as she received a flier in her teacher\u2019s mailbox advertising a $1,000 grant for teachers, she began to think that this could be a good match.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nLynn 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.\u00a0 As such, it was going to move forward her vision of providing urban students with learning experiences that were \u201cfun,\u201d while at the same time preparing them for life and providing them with experiences available to their more privileged peers.\r\n\r\nShe 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.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nBased on these considerations, she decided it would be worthwhile to go ahead and write a proposal for this grant.\u00a0 She was clear, though, that she would be able to go ahead with implementing the unit only if she got the grant \u2013 and, thus, the resources needed to purchase the materials to produce the cookie cutters.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Planning and gathering the needed resources<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn wrote the grant proposal.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The grant proposal also included a plan of how she would develop an interdisciplinary unit with her students around producing the cookie cutters.\r\n\r\nLynn was thrilled when she learned she was awarded the grant!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After talking with the grant program officer, she came up with a creative solution that allowed her to keep the grant:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cSo, I get the grant and \u2026 it turns out there\u2019s this little fine print thing that you cannot buy raw materials with federal funds and then resell it. \u2026 Oh my God, what am I going to do? \u2026 I started thinking and I went, wait a minute, \u2026 if the kids create a teacher\u2019s 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\u2019s guide and a free cookie cutter could come with it.\u00a0 [The program officer] goes: \u2018Oh, that will be great,\u2019 and so I went okay, we\u2019re in business.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nAs 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.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI called over to Edison Tech because I knew they had a metal shop there and spoke to the metal shop teacher. \u2026 I didn\u2019t know the guy, I sought him out \u2026 and talked to him about the project \u2026 he said, oh yeah, no problem, we can do that \u2026 he said you know the kids could do this, his kids could do a piece of it \u2026 he was all excited because it would be something interesting for his kids to do \u2026\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nLynn 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.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Implementing and monitoring the initiative<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nImplementing the unit required a lot of attention to details \u2013 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.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201c[My students] did a field trip over to Edison Tech and they did the rivets \u2026 they learned how to work in the metal shop and the high school kids worked with the kids and this is really cool \u2026 then we wrote up this little teachers\u2019 guide, and it was really cute \u2026 like I did a little cover \u2026 but I made the kids do all the printing on the inside and it was when we had just gotten computers \u2026 so they wrote everything up on computers with their own little mistakes, and I left everything the way the kids had done it \u2026 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.\u00a0 It was really cute, and it was sort of like the kids writing to other teachers all over New York State.\u201d <em>(Lynn) <\/em><\/p>\r\n<em>\u00a0<\/em>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.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nImplementing 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.\u00a0 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI was just going to have the kids write letters to the teachers in the Rochester City School District and we\u2019d sell them \u2026.\u00a0 Well, the New York State Teacher Magazine ran this big article \u2026 and I don\u2019t even know how they got the story \u2026 they called me and said \u2018we heard you have this cookie cutter\u2019 \u2026 well so they came \u2026and they took pictures of like the kids with like these piles of New York State cookie \u2026 We sold out in 2 weeks.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nOverall, the Cookie Cutter unit\u2019s implementation was a big success!\r\n<a id=\"10.1.4.\"><\/a>\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.4. Lynn\u2019s innovation #2: Organizing a field trip to Kentucky for urban 4th students<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n<strong><em>How the idea came about and was evaluated\/refined<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nOne of the forces driving Lynn\u2019s practice as a teacher was her belief that, in order to level the playing field, her urban students needed to gain \u201clife experiences\u201d 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. \u00a0So, 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.\u00a0 She stated,\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cIf there\u2019s 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\u2019s going on outside of their neighborhood and what are the possibilities.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nThus, 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.\u00a0 Since she recognized that neither the district nor her students\u2019 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.\r\n\r\nOne special field trip provides insight into the entrepreneurial nature of these initiatives.\u00a0 This field trip was scheduled to occur during the 2001-2002 school year and was to take Lynn\u2019s students on a field trip across the country, from New York to Kentucky, to visit the class of another teacher Lynn was collaborating with.\u00a0 The two teachers had met at a science conference ten years back, where they found that they had very similar personal and professional backgrounds.\u00a0 \u00a0Additionally, and most importantly, they found that they had a similar educational philosophy.\r\n\r\nBuilding 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.\u00a0 This caused Lynn to begin thinking about Kentucky as an ideal end-of-the-year field trip.\r\n\r\nThe 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.\u00a0 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 \u2013 Lynn\u2019s being predominantly urban African American, and her colleague\u2019s being predominately rural Caucasian.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Planning and gathering the needed resources<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe planning of this trip developed over several months, as there were a lot of details to attend to.\u00a0 The two teachers made detailed plans for their students, mapping out how to get the most \u201cacademic mileage\u201d out of every minute of their stay and working out how to obtain the necessary financial resources.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Lynn\u2019s 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.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cFrom 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.\u00a0 Then, it was a matter of deciding what we were going to do with them [Lynn\u2019s students] when they arrived.\u00a0 We knew we wanted to put our students on a school bus, take them over to the airport, meet Lynn\u2019s kids coming off the plane, and all of us ride back to school on the bus; that was a given.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2026\u00a0 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 \u2026 we could bring the kids in and have both groups go through these classes at the extension service to get to know each other.\u00a0 So we did all these outdoor education classes \u2026 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s Kentucky colleague)<\/em><\/p>\r\nA 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!).\u00a0 Lynn\u2019s 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.\r\n\r\nThe 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And in the end, she also put in some of her own funds to cover the difference.\r\n\r\nYet after all this planning, when the 2001-2002 school year began, an unexpected event rattled not only their professional plans, but the entire nation.\u00a0 On September 11, 2001, the U.S. was faced with a terrorist attack, which eventually caused Lynn\u2019s district to make strict changes to its field trip policy.\u00a0 They sent a directive to all the teachers stating that any field trip to take place would have to meet the superintendent\u2019s approval, wherein this approval would be given only twenty-four hours in advance.\u00a0 A cross-country field trip could obviously not take place with such little notice.\u00a0 Airline tickets needed to be purchased, and all the collaborators\u2014the university professors, astronomers, etc.\u2014would have to know beforehand whether or not the fieldtrip was taking place.\r\n\r\nAfter 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.\u00a0 She received no response.\u00a0 After several attempts and no response from her district, she called a meeting to discuss the issue with her students\u2019 parents.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This was, after all, one of the only times many of their children would have the opportunity to fly to another state.\u00a0 They decided that they would all write letters to the superintendent, requesting permission to let their children go on this fieldtrip.\u00a0 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\u2019s approval.\u00a0 She went to her school principal, received his support, and was on her way to making this field trip happen.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Implementing and monitoring the initiative <\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nIn 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\u2019 parents to curb district resistance, and Lynn\u2019s desire to provide her students with an unforgettable learning experience won out.\r\n\r\nThings mostly went as planned \u2013 although a few decisions still had to be made on the spot to make everything go smoothly.\u00a0 The two teachers were there all the time, ready and able to respond to any surprise and make the necessary adjustments.\r\n\r\nThis experience was an unqualified success for everyone involved \u2013 as documented as part of <em>A Life Outside, <\/em>a video documentary of a year of Lynn\u2019s teaching (included among the <em>Other resources <\/em>section of the companion website).\r\n<a id=\"10.1.5.\"><\/a>\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.5. Lynn\u2019s innovation #3: Publishing an elementary science curriculum<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nLynn\u2019s 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.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>How the idea came about and was evaluated\/refined<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nThis project came about through a happenchance meeting at a national science teachers\u2019 conference. She was walking around the vendor\u2019s stalls when she ran into someone she knew, who was working at a stall that had science curriculum kits.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was at that point that the owner of the publishing company walked over.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nAfter returning to Rochester from the conference, Lynn received a phone call from the owner.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Thus, the owner of the company pursued her to work on this publication.\r\n\r\nLynn 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Planning and gathering the needed resources<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nThroughout the development of the elementary science curriculum, Lynn had substantial input in how the final product would eventually turn out.\u00a0 Most importantly, she did not want it to be \u201cteacher proof\u201d. She wanted it to push not only the students, but also the teachers to new levels of understanding science.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI wanted to provide something for teachers that was not saying to them \u2018Here is what you do\u2019.\u00a0 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nTo 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.\r\n\r\nGathering resources was not an issue in this case, as the contract covered for expenses \u2013 although Lynn still had to find the time to devote to this demanding initiative!\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Implementing and monitoring the initiative<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nAs she wrote these curriculum materials, Lynn used her knowledge of education in the structure and content of the book.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI know teachers, I know \u2026 what are road blockers.\u00a0 So I try to anticipate that in my notes.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nShe included sections that had suggestions to teachers on how to modify the lessons for grade level instruction.\u00a0\u00a0 She also aligned the goals of the modules with the national science standards.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It also included science kits providing teachers with all the materials required to teach the curriculum.\r\n\r\nIn the published version, Lynn wrote,\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThe focus of It\u2019s Alive! is to provide an environment that encourages children to be scientists\u2026The goal of It\u2019s Alive! is to educate children to think like scientists through the study of the characteristics of organisms; therefore, teachers must think like scientists.\u00a0 The teacher promotes inquiry by being an inquirer her\/himself.\u201d (Gatto, 2005, preface)<\/p>\r\nWhen she initially agreed to complete the project in six months, she had not fully realized how big an undertaking this was.\u00a0 Although she based the materials on her own practice, writing the text and creating the kits took her a lot longer than she expected \u2013 especially because she wanted to make sure that the materials would remain true to her goals of engaging students in inquiry:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI really worked hard at trying to develop activities \u2026 that would actually invite kids to question things.\u00a0 Materials was a problem because they wanted it cheap \u2026 and that\u2019s something that I never really gave much thought to.\u201d (<em>Lynn<\/em>)<\/p>\r\nFurthermore, 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.\r\n\r\nHaving a published product ensured that Lynn\u2019s creativity in designing experiences for elementary children would live on.\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.6. Updates on Lynn\u2019s story<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nWhile 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!\u00a0 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. \u00a0In this role, she initiated many innovations that transformed that program and greatly increased its effectiveness in preparing high-quality elementary teachers.\r\n\r\nBefore even starting in her faculty position, Lynn was instrumental in establishing the first university-based Horizons Summer program \u2013 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. \u00a0Lynn 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 \u2013 and doing most of the curriculum development, fund-raising, staff hiring and training, required to run the program.\r\n\r\nAfter her (second) retirement from the Warner School in 2019, Lynn still continued her mission through publishing.\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<h1><strong>10.2. Analysis of Lynn\u2019s entrepreneurial activity<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.1. Lynn\u2019s practices about vision <\/strong><\/h1>\r\nAs mentioned in the introduction, Lynn\u2019s 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 \u201clevel playing field\u201d and the experiences they needed to be successful in life.\u00a0 Her commitment to this vision was also quite strong, as testified by two of her closest collaborators.\u00a0 Her colleague in Kentucky stated,\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe doesn\u2019t just have a passion for the teaching; she has a passion for the students...She knows who she has to attend to\u2026 it\u2019s not administrators, it\u2019s not other teachers in the building.\u00a0 She knows that her vision [is] for teaching these students\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s Kentucky colleague)<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe gives 100% all the time, get the job done. To her, teaching is her profession. It doesn\u2019t end at 4:00 when the kids walk out the door, she\u2019s committed even at home.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s Kentucky colleague)<\/em><\/p>\r\nLynn\u2019s 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.\r\n\r\nLynn 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cAs [New York State] Teacher of the Year, I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 City kids are smart and they\u2019re great people, and the parents are great people.\u00a0 And no matter what, city parents love their kids, no matter what.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nLynn 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.\r\n\r\nLynn also recognized that empowering the parents to advocate for their children\u2019s rights was a critical element in this cause.\u00a0 Lynn helped parents understand the language and approach they must use in fighting for their rights.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nLynn showed a great ability to share her vision with others and get their buy in as needed to gain participation in her various projects\u2014as illustrated throughout her story. Her passion, determination, and the personal rapport she established with people all contributed to her success:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe just is a very determined person, and people who see her passion for this are willing to buy into her mission. \u2026 She breaks it down in such a way that people cannot refuse \u2026 they want to participate.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\r\nProviding a clear and concrete image of what she was trying to achieve also served her well, especially when writing grants.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI want people to see what I\u2019m seeing and picture the outcome, the same outcome that I\u2019m picturing, or the product.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.2. Lynn\u2019s practices about opportunities <\/strong><\/h1>\r\nLynn was always full of ideas for new initiatives, and treated each of those ideas as an opportunity to put her overarching vision into practice:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI guess that\u2019s how I view myself, I view myself as an educational inventor...I invent a lot of this stuff and... invent lessons. \u2026 I\u2019ve got an idea a minute\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe is always seeking innovations, ways to improve things.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\r\nHer 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 \u2013 as typical of many business and social entrepreneurs.\u00a0 Since she taught in a high-needs district, identifying such needs was never difficult!\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThey\u2019ve 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.\u201d \u00a0<em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<em>\u00a0<\/em>Sometimes it was a specific problem that provided the impetus for an innovation\u2014as 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.\r\n\r\nIdeas 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.\u00a0 Her husband explained,\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe keeps everything in big Rubbermaid tubs in the basement and periodically\u2026 when she\u2019s going to do that unit she sits down and says okay, \u2018This is how I did it last time, how can I improve on this?\u00a0 How can I make my work less, yet the kids get the same experience out of it?\u2019 \u2026 she\u2019ll come in and say, you know, \u2018Remember five years ago I did this?\u00a0 How can we make this look better now?\u00a0 Is there better technology out there now that we can use?\u2019\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\r\nLynn was also an early adopter of technology and she often looked at new technologies as opportunities to enhance her students\u2019 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\u2014although almost always she ended up significantly enhancing and transforming the original idea, as illustrated in the case of the Cookie Cutter Unit.\r\n\r\nLynn 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 \u201cgrant folder\u201d for future reference, ready to be implemented if the right circumstances came along \u2013 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI used to have a big folder of ideas and so when a grant comes out I flip through it and if there\u2019s something that matches then I write it up.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nSo, 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 \u201cacademic mileage\u201d for her students.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Further, she chose to pursue opportunities related to her own personal and professional growth.\r\n\r\nIf 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\u2014as illustrated throughout her story and captured in the following quote:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cSometimes you have to jump feet first into a project and later figure out where you are heading and how.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nYet funding and capacity considerations were not ignored, as suggested by her very practice of setting aside some ideas in her \u201cgrant folder,\u201d to be revisited if and when the appropriate funding opportunity came along.\r\n\r\nLynn 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\u2014be it time, emotions, or her own money\u2014to 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.\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.3. Lynn\u2019s practices about risk <\/strong><\/h1>\r\nWhile Lynn\u2019s initiatives rarely involved any financial risk, many of them involved breaking or bending the rules\u2014a family trait!\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cMy 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWhen I break the rules, it\u2019s only for their kids and they know that\u2026 and [parents] know I am their biggest ally.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nWhile Lynn did this purposefully and with considerable ease, she realized that the rule-breaking presented a personal and professional risk for her.\r\n\r\nSome of the initiatives Lynn was involved in presented a risk to her reputation.\u00a0 Lynn felt that publishing the science curriculum, for example, was a great personal risk, not so much in terms of the product\u2019s \u201csuccess\u201d or \u201cfailure\u201d, but rather how it would be received by her own teacher colleagues.\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWhat if people read this and say ...\u2018This woman doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s talking about\u2019.\u00a0 \u2018This is terrible\u2019.\u00a0 There was tremendous personal risk.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nOne of Lynn\u2019s collaborators describes her as a calculated risk-taker:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe does do a lot of risk taking. A lot of it is calculated, a lot of it isn\u2019t. She\u2019ll take the risk to the point where she knows she can do certain things. If she ends up coming up against an obstacle, there\u2019s ways around it, then the calculating starts, but most of the time she\u2019s a very good risk taker.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\r\nIndeed, as we saw in the previous section, most often Lynn would not embark in a new \u201ccostly\u201d 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.\r\n\r\nLynn was also not afraid of failure and mistakes, as she stated,\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI see failure as the opportunity to improve or to do [something] again and succeed.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.4. Lynn\u2019s practices about resources <\/strong><\/h1>\r\nAs a teacher in a public school, Lynn had essentially no control on her organization\u2019s 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\u2019s initiatives required funding\u2014especially her field trips\u2014she 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 \u2013 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.\r\n\r\nHer 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 \u2013 you also need to understand what the funders want and \u201csell your idea\u201d to them. Lynn made an explicit connection between seeking funding and \u201cselling\u201d:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201c\u2026that was why I sold shoes so well \u2026 a lot of times women would come in wearing a dress, and I would bring out [some shoes] and I\u2019d say, \u2018well you know, this looks good but they\u2019re not as comfortable, so you could try these\u2019 \u2026 so I\u2019m just seeing what the other person, how they think or how they perceive what you\u2019re trying to tell them or sell them.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nLynn also learned overtime the importance of identifying concrete products or outcomes in her grant proposal:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI try and give people a vision \u2026 I want people to see what I am seeing and picture the outcome, the same outcome that I\u2019m picturing or the product.\u00a0 \u2026 I always am very explicit in terms of giving examples.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nShe 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWhen 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 \u2026 I walked in with a bag because I knew generally what they were going to ask me \u2026 \u00a0\u00a0I brought artifacts [from my teaching] so when they asked me about something \u2026 that would help to jog my memory \u2026 so they were floored \u2026 they said you are the only person who has ever brought anything in all these years \u2026 \u00a0How can you walk in with nothing, you\u2019re selling yourself.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nLynn (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\u2019 parents as well as her friends.\r\n\r\nSince as a teacher Lynn did not have any control on other staff\u2019s 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\u2019 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. \u00a0At 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.\r\n\r\nThe most important team members in all her initiatives, however, were her students and their parents.\u00a0 These were the individuals who worked with her on a daily basis to inspire, create, develop, and sustain various initiatives.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The students worked tirelessly to create a successful company that produced cookie cutters and lesson plan booklets for other teachers to use.\u00a0 Furthermore, the students were the source of most of her ideas and the inspiration for all she did.\u00a0 Without their enthusiasm, support, and desire to learn, Lynn would neither have launch nor sustained her entrepreneurial initiatives.\r\n\r\nLynn 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe just is a very determined person \u2026 she\u2019ll say to somebody, the parents for example, I need five parents to be on an overnight \u2026 we\u2019re going to an overnight at a girl scout camp in the middle of Fairport and I need people to come and spend the night \u2026 \u2018well, I can\u2019t spend the night\u2019 \u2026 \u2018well, can you come for a couple hours and help with the meal?\u2019 \u2026 \u2018yes, I can do that\u2019 \u2026 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.\u00a0 So you got a parent, for example, who brings in some wood for the kids to work with in class \u2026 and maybe sticks around and helps them out, but that\u2019s not important, they did their share of the mission, of the total picture.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.5. Lynn\u2019s practices about growth <\/strong><\/h1>\r\nWhile as a teacher Lynn was not in any position to \u201cgrow\u201d 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 \u201cclients\u201d) 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 \u2013 as described in details in the last section of her story.\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.6. Other interesting elements about Lynn\u2019s case<\/strong><\/h1>\r\n<strong><em>Willingness to break rules<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn\u2019s 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 \u2013 as illustrated for example in the building of the greenhouse.\u00a0 In this process, she was always willing to bend or even break some rules!\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cTo be successful, you have to learn how to get around something, under it, or over it. ... There\u2019s always a way to get around the rules.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nA notable example of her \u201crule breaking\u201d 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).\u00a0 More frequently, she simply did not ask for permission for things beyond the norm and tried to do them \u201cquietly\u201d to avoid being noticed.\r\n\r\nShe jokingly recognized this as being a family trait, as she reported her mother saying to her at a young age: \u201cYou are rule-breaker just like your father.\u201d\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Capitalizing on networking<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nNetworking was a critical component of Lynn\u2019s entrepreneurial practice.\u00a0 For example, her work on the science curriculum arose out of a happenchance meeting with an old colleague at a national science teachers\u2019 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.\r\n\r\nMostly, 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI was at the jewelry store, talking to my jeweler.\u00a0 And his wife was there and \u2026 she said she wasn\u2019t working; her children were all gone off to college.\u00a0 And I said \u2018Well, then, what are you doing all day?\u2019\u00a0 She says \u2018Well, I\u2019m working here.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 And\u2026 she\u2019s a certified teacher! I said \u2018Well, then, I\u2019ve got a job for you!\u2019\u00a0 So now she comes \u2026 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!\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI 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 \u2018Now you own a liquor store?\u00a0 How did that happen?\u2019\u00a0 And I get the story and I said \u2018Well, gosh, you know, I could use some help in my classroom.\u2019\u00a0 That\u2019s just how I do it.\u00a0 I just pick people up.\u201d\u00a0 <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\nThrough these casual conversations, Lynn built relationships with other individuals who served as important assets to her classroom activities.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Choosing not to engage in organizational change<\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn 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:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI just stay out of school leadership.\u00a0 I have been burned so often.\u00a0 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\u2019t think the way most people do.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cSomeone said to me recently, \u2018you cannot be a prophet in your own land.\u2019\u00a0 And you know what?\u00a0 They\u2019re so right!\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n<strong><em>Creating entrepreneurial spaces within her own classroom <\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn proactively sought to create an entrepreneurial culture in the one place where she had control: her classroom.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nLynn felt that all of her students took a piece of her entrepreneurial spirit with them as they went through life.\u00a0 For example, one of Lynn\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Capitalizing on dysfunction in the organization\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nLynn 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 \u2014 or even simply because they did not realize what was going on until it was too late to stop it!\u00a0 Even in describing the dysfunctionality of her urban district, Lynn recognized that this enabled her to be the kind of innovative teacher she was:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cOne of the great joys of teaching in the Rochester City School District is that\u2026 the fingers on the right hand don\u2019t even know what one another are doing, so I can get away with a lot.\u00a0 Also\u2026I don\u2019t teach to the test, and I don\u2019t use any of the text books that they hand me\u2026 But the kids are successful, or I am deemed successful, because my students test well.\u201d\u00a0 <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.7. Concluding thoughts about Lynn\u2019s case <\/strong><\/h1>\r\nThis 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.\u00a0 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.\r\n\r\nIt is important to note that Lynn was able to find innovative ways to help her students reach their individual best <em>despite<\/em> being in a non-leadership position and working in an institution that, in many ways, did not encourage entrepreneurialism. \u00a0To do so, though, she needed to find or create spaces that would allow her to be entrepreneurial.\u00a0 Eventually, this opposition worn her down and she decided for early retirement \u2013 although she continued to be involved with teacher preparation and began a new entrepreneurial activity (developing a new summer school program).\r\n\r\nPerhaps even more than Ralph Spezio, the case reported in the previous chapter, we see Lynn as a prototypical example of \u201ceducation James Dean\u201d as described by Williams (2006). \u00a0This is especially true, unfortunately, when it comes to Lynn\u2019s difficult relationship with her colleagues and superiors:\r\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201c[T]hese James Deans tend to become folk heroes of sort and often have complicated relationships with administrators and union leaders.\u00a0 They tend to have a healthy chip on their shoulder and some degree of confidence in their ability to make things happen.\u00a0 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)<\/p>\r\nA 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.\u00a0 As exemplified by Lynn\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Nonetheless, this case study still points out many similarities between the actual behaviors, practices, and processes she used and those of other entrepreneurial educators.\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<h1><strong>10.3. Commentaries on Lynn\u2019s case<\/strong><\/h1>\r\nWe are collecting readers\u2019 insights and lessons learned from reading Lynn\u2019s case on the companion website, and we invite you to add yours by following the specific guidelines provided in the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/14q19j1oxSZLMPZqZ0QSc8oRSiEI5Pm9E6D_fPEk7RDM\/edit?usp=sharing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Guidelines for Contributions<\/strong><\/a>\u201d document.\r\n\r\n<strong><em>Posted commentaries about Lynn\u2019s case<\/em><\/strong> - <em>None available yet <\/em>\r\n","rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 150%;\">CHAPTER 10.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 150%;\">Lynn Gatto\u2019s case: Creating unique learning opportunities for urban elementary students<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><em>Raffaella Borasi, Shaza Khan, &amp; Ruthanne Vitagliano <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em>(with contributions from Linda Francis)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox textbox--learning-objectives\">\n<header class=\"textbox__header\">\n<p class=\"textbox__title\"><strong>Lynn\u2019s Profile<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"textbox__content\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left\"><em>Throughout her 30-year teaching career\u00a0in the Rochester City School District, one of the poorest urban districts in New York State, Lynn Gatto showed remarkable resourcefulness in providing her elementary students with the learning experiences she felt they needed to \u201clevel the playing-field\u201d and be successful in both school and life.\u00a0 This translated into many innovative initiatives that spanned from creating and even publishing innovative curriculum, to organizing and funding field trips to other parts of the country to enable her students to broaden their experiences.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h1>10.1. Lynn\u2019s story<\/h1>\n<h1>\u00a0 10.1.1. Introduction to Lynn\u2019s case<\/h1>\n<p>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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014including 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).<\/p>\n<p>Teaching elementary students in a large urban school district can be rewarding and challenging at the same time.\u00a0 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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI will be trying to make schools a better place for children until the day I die or get placed in a nursing home.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019 practices, and it is what fueled her constant drive towards innovation. Her husband, also identified by Lynn as her \u201cnumber one collaborator\u201d, testified,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe wants to provide for her students opportunities to experience the world just like all the other kids are experiencing the world.\u00a0 That\u2019s her underlying mission.\u201d \u00a0<em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><strong><em>\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Figure 10.1. <\/strong><em>Rochester City School District Profile<\/em> <em>(as of 2005, when Lynn retired)<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<p><strong><em>District characteristics: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Large urban district (69 schools; $582M budget \u2013 with $58M deficit)<\/li>\n<li><em>Percentage of free\/reduced lunches: <\/em>85%<\/li>\n<li><em>Students: <\/em>about 36,000<\/li>\n<li><em>Teachers:<\/em> about 2,900<\/li>\n<li><em>Graduation rate: <\/em>49%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Student demographics:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>14% White; 64% African American; 20% Latino\/a; 2% other<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Organizational structure:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left\"><em>Key reporting chain: <\/em>Teachers\/building staff \u2192 building principals \u2192 Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning \u2192 Superintendent \u2192 Board of Education<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Subject position: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left\"><em>Classroom teacher:\u00a0 <\/em>Making ultimate decisions about what is taught in her class and how, but within constraints created by state tests, district curricula and additional mandates that may be specific to a school<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><em>Subject\u2019s current school: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>632 students (with similar demographics as the district); 51 teachers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.2. Highlights of Lynn\u2019s professional journey<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><strong><em>A young entrepreneur AND teacher<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 Lynn recalls being only nine years old when she started her own, albeit unofficial, business.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cAs a kid I was, I don\u2019t know, nine years old.\u00a0 I had business cards made up, little business cards, and went around the neighborhood and passed out my business cards\u2026 I took care of kids all the time.\u00a0 I had like this little nursery school, it was called the Lilliputian School, which I took from Gulliver\u2019s Travels.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Other experiences helped her sharpen important skills.\u00a0 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\u2019s products.\u00a0 Lynn initially took this job because she wanted to have her own money to spend. She states,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cMy parents lived on a budget, on this very strict budget.\u00a0 So when I went to high school \u2026 everybody had these really nice clothes, and I wanted nice clothes.\u00a0 But my mother was like \u2018No\u2019.\u00a0 I remember her saying to me, \u2018If you want those clothes \u2026 get yourself a job\u2019.\u00a0 So the day I was fifteen I was working.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>Skills related to \u201cselling,\u201d 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 \u201cselling\u201d:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI think teaching is selling. You\u2019re selling a product: the knowledge &#8230; or the reading or the science experiment.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cA big part of being a successful teacher is knowing every single one of your students\u2014who they are as people, who they are as learners.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 In fact, school is one of the places where Lynn most vividly recalled being a \u201cfailure\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 This was because, given her outgoing personality, Lynn took advantage of any unstructured learning time to chat with her peers.\u00a0 Additionally, she found the teachers too boring, the subject matter too unapproachable, and the classroom rules too confining.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI think one of the greatest regrets in my life is that I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s what I saw my teachers doing &#8230; I didn\u2019t care about anything they were teaching me unless it was remotely interesting\u2014then 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Lynn recalled always wanting to be a teacher:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI was born a teacher&#8230;I never played with my dolls as my babies, they were my students.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cFrom 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\u2014I\u2019ve always known I\u2019ve wanted to be a teacher, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever wavered from that.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Early experiences as a teacher<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Yet finding a full-time job as a teacher was not as easy as Lynn had expected.\u00a0 After obtaining her bachelor\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI graduated from college &#8230; I was a hippie chick of the 60s and I was going to save the world and I could not get a job. &#8230; There were, however, special education jobs, so I went back to school full time and got a degree in special education &#8211; because I didn\u2019t care what I taught, just as long as I could teach\u201d.\u00a0 <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lynn\u2019s first teaching job was as a special education teacher in a self-contained class for students with severe emotional problems\u2014a job nobody else had wanted to take!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI was the fifth teacher in the room that year &#8230; that\u2019s how I finally got a job, the fifth teacher, they couldn\u2019t get anybody else to take this class, I said I\u2019ll take it &#8230; the first day kids were picking up whole tables and throwing them, they were like little 5-year-olds &#8230; so I remember that night emptying the room out of everything &#8230; saying, okay, we got to start right from the basics.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This extreme situation really challenged Lynn to question how she could reach difficult students and have them learn\u2014as 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cOver the years I\u2019ve become a better teacher &#8230; 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Even in this early stage of her career, Lynn was proactively looking for opportunities to meet her students\u2019 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, \u201clearning disability\u201d was a new label that was just starting to be used.\u00a0 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\u2019s educational and personal future.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Challenges and opportunities of working in a large urban district<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lynn spent over thirty years as an elementary teacher in the Rochester City School District.\u00a0 During this time, she witnessed the coming and going of several different superintendents, and she changed several schools and grade levels over the years.\u00a0 Her ability to work and grow as an entrepreneurial educator fluctuated somewhat depending on these contextual factors.<\/p>\n<p>At times, her district provided direct support for her creativity and passion for teaching, thereby helping her provide her students with rich learning experiences.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI 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?\u00a0 Not many! I had the opportunity to\u2026 go to other urban sites\u2026\u00a0 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\u2026 \u00a0[T]hat\u2019s why I say, personally and professionally this organization has been very good to me in many ways.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Other times, though, she felt stifled by the environment, often facing resistance to her unique pedagogy and activities from district and building personnel.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 At the same time her innovative practices, national recognitions, and successful students at times caused some jealousy and animosity amongst her building colleagues.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThat\u2019s what winning awards has done for me, it has sustained me through all the naysayers &#8230; I feel so alienated so often that I think these awards have made me feel as though it\u2019s not me, there is nothing wrong with me, it\u2019s them, the people I work with.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Relentlessly engaging in instructional innovations<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI believe school should be fun for kids \u2026 the bottom line is that they are kids, and learning is fun, and I want school to be fun.\u00a0 I want them to have a good time!\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But she was also clear, though, that having fun is not enough by itself\u2014as 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.<\/p>\n<p>This approach translated in many unusual yet extremely valuable experiences for her students\u2014such as building a walk-in butterfly vivarium together with her students:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWe started with this idea of building a walk-in butterfly vivarium which is basically a habitat to raise butterflies &#8230; 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\u2019s the right shape and construction of it, how much netting &#8230; what kind of plants would fit in there. Just an unbelievable amount of everything went into that huge project and we\u2019re still using the vivarium &#8230; the kids still use it, it sits in the front hall of the school.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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 \u201csister\u201d 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 \u201ckiosk\u201d that would enable other students to use the park more effectively to learn science.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 These points are well illustrated by this account of how she built a greenhouse for her school, as provided by her husband:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWe happen to be walking into Sam\u2019s 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 &#8230; she looked at the instructions and it said it must be on a stone base &#8230; she didn\u2019t 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 &#8230; but he can\u2019t deliver it on this date. So, then we got an idea, I said you know what, why don\u2019t 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Lynn\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cdo what it takes\u201d 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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThat &#8230; family now has a brand new &#8230; front step because when I made [a house visit] I almost broke my neck, the bricks were falling all over the place &#8230; I knocked at the front door, I said, oh my God, these front steps are horrible&#8230;[the mother] says, well, that\u2019s why we don\u2019t use the front door &#8230; I said the landlord needs to fix these steps\u2026. 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\u2019s got a really good lawyer\u2014and don\u2019t think that those steps weren\u2019t fixed!\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cIf the student needs reading services, she\u2019ll advocate for reading services. If the parent has to sign paperwork, she goes to the parent\u2019s house and makes sure the parent signs the paperwork. If a kid needs glasses, she\u2019ll even go and take the kid to get glasses&#8230;she goes above and beyond what normally people would think of as a teacher.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lynn\u2019s desire to \u201cchange schools\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, she made her classroom very open for visitors\u2014whether 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. \u00a0Her 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.<\/p>\n<p>The following stories are good illustrations of the creativity and skills required to carry out these instructional experiences successfully as a teacher.<br \/>\n<a id=\"10.1.3.\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.3. Lynn\u2019s innovation #1: The Cookie-Cutter instructional unit<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>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\u2019s 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.\u00a0 The students were involved in all parts of the enterprise, including making the cookie cutters, writing the teacher\u2019s guide, and learning about how to create a company that would allow them to sell these instructional materials to other teachers.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>How the idea came about and was evaluated\/refined<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThere 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? \u2026 I\u2019m like: \u2018I need a big cookie.\u2019\u00a0 So I went on the search for a large cookie cutter and couldn\u2019t find one, so I said ah hah \u2026 we\u2019ll make them.\u201d\u00a0 <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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. \u00a0Sometime later, as she received a flier in her teacher\u2019s mailbox advertising a $1,000 grant for teachers, she began to think that this could be a good match.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 As such, it was going to move forward her vision of providing urban students with learning experiences that were \u201cfun,\u201d while at the same time preparing them for life and providing them with experiences available to their more privileged peers.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>Based on these considerations, she decided it would be worthwhile to go ahead and write a proposal for this grant.\u00a0 She was clear, though, that she would be able to go ahead with implementing the unit only if she got the grant \u2013 and, thus, the resources needed to purchase the materials to produce the cookie cutters.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Planning and gathering the needed resources<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lynn wrote the grant proposal.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The grant proposal also included a plan of how she would develop an interdisciplinary unit with her students around producing the cookie cutters.<\/p>\n<p>Lynn was thrilled when she learned she was awarded the grant!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After talking with the grant program officer, she came up with a creative solution that allowed her to keep the grant:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cSo, I get the grant and \u2026 it turns out there\u2019s this little fine print thing that you cannot buy raw materials with federal funds and then resell it. \u2026 Oh my God, what am I going to do? \u2026 I started thinking and I went, wait a minute, \u2026 if the kids create a teacher\u2019s 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\u2019s guide and a free cookie cutter could come with it.\u00a0 [The program officer] goes: \u2018Oh, that will be great,\u2019 and so I went okay, we\u2019re in business.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI called over to Edison Tech because I knew they had a metal shop there and spoke to the metal shop teacher. \u2026 I didn\u2019t know the guy, I sought him out \u2026 and talked to him about the project \u2026 he said, oh yeah, no problem, we can do that \u2026 he said you know the kids could do this, his kids could do a piece of it \u2026 he was all excited because it would be something interesting for his kids to do \u2026\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Implementing and monitoring the initiative<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Implementing the unit required a lot of attention to details \u2013 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201c[My students] did a field trip over to Edison Tech and they did the rivets \u2026 they learned how to work in the metal shop and the high school kids worked with the kids and this is really cool \u2026 then we wrote up this little teachers\u2019 guide, and it was really cute \u2026 like I did a little cover \u2026 but I made the kids do all the printing on the inside and it was when we had just gotten computers \u2026 so they wrote everything up on computers with their own little mistakes, and I left everything the way the kids had done it \u2026 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.\u00a0 It was really cute, and it was sort of like the kids writing to other teachers all over New York State.\u201d <em>(Lynn) <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em>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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI was just going to have the kids write letters to the teachers in the Rochester City School District and we\u2019d sell them \u2026.\u00a0 Well, the New York State Teacher Magazine ran this big article \u2026 and I don\u2019t even know how they got the story \u2026 they called me and said \u2018we heard you have this cookie cutter\u2019 \u2026 well so they came \u2026and they took pictures of like the kids with like these piles of New York State cookie \u2026 We sold out in 2 weeks.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Overall, the Cookie Cutter unit\u2019s implementation was a big success!<br \/>\n<a id=\"10.1.4.\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.4. Lynn\u2019s innovation #2: Organizing a field trip to Kentucky for urban 4th students<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><strong><em>How the idea came about and was evaluated\/refined<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>One of the forces driving Lynn\u2019s practice as a teacher was her belief that, in order to level the playing field, her urban students needed to gain \u201clife experiences\u201d 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. \u00a0So, 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.\u00a0 She stated,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cIf there\u2019s 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\u2019s going on outside of their neighborhood and what are the possibilities.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 Since she recognized that neither the district nor her students\u2019 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.<\/p>\n<p>One special field trip provides insight into the entrepreneurial nature of these initiatives.\u00a0 This field trip was scheduled to occur during the 2001-2002 school year and was to take Lynn\u2019s students on a field trip across the country, from New York to Kentucky, to visit the class of another teacher Lynn was collaborating with.\u00a0 The two teachers had met at a science conference ten years back, where they found that they had very similar personal and professional backgrounds.\u00a0 \u00a0Additionally, and most importantly, they found that they had a similar educational philosophy.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 This caused Lynn to begin thinking about Kentucky as an ideal end-of-the-year field trip.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 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 \u2013 Lynn\u2019s being predominantly urban African American, and her colleague\u2019s being predominately rural Caucasian.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Planning and gathering the needed resources<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The planning of this trip developed over several months, as there were a lot of details to attend to.\u00a0 The two teachers made detailed plans for their students, mapping out how to get the most \u201cacademic mileage\u201d out of every minute of their stay and working out how to obtain the necessary financial resources.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Lynn\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cFrom 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.\u00a0 Then, it was a matter of deciding what we were going to do with them [Lynn\u2019s students] when they arrived.\u00a0 We knew we wanted to put our students on a school bus, take them over to the airport, meet Lynn\u2019s kids coming off the plane, and all of us ride back to school on the bus; that was a given.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2026\u00a0 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 \u2026 we could bring the kids in and have both groups go through these classes at the extension service to get to know each other.\u00a0 So we did all these outdoor education classes \u2026 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s Kentucky colleague)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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!).\u00a0 Lynn\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And in the end, she also put in some of her own funds to cover the difference.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 On September 11, 2001, the U.S. was faced with a terrorist attack, which eventually caused Lynn\u2019s district to make strict changes to its field trip policy.\u00a0 They sent a directive to all the teachers stating that any field trip to take place would have to meet the superintendent\u2019s approval, wherein this approval would be given only twenty-four hours in advance.\u00a0 A cross-country field trip could obviously not take place with such little notice.\u00a0 Airline tickets needed to be purchased, and all the collaborators\u2014the university professors, astronomers, etc.\u2014would have to know beforehand whether or not the fieldtrip was taking place.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 She received no response.\u00a0 After several attempts and no response from her district, she called a meeting to discuss the issue with her students\u2019 parents.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This was, after all, one of the only times many of their children would have the opportunity to fly to another state.\u00a0 They decided that they would all write letters to the superintendent, requesting permission to let their children go on this fieldtrip.\u00a0 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\u2019s approval.\u00a0 She went to her school principal, received his support, and was on her way to making this field trip happen.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Implementing and monitoring the initiative <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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\u2019 parents to curb district resistance, and Lynn\u2019s desire to provide her students with an unforgettable learning experience won out.<\/p>\n<p>Things mostly went as planned \u2013 although a few decisions still had to be made on the spot to make everything go smoothly.\u00a0 The two teachers were there all the time, ready and able to respond to any surprise and make the necessary adjustments.<\/p>\n<p>This experience was an unqualified success for everyone involved \u2013 as documented as part of <em>A Life Outside, <\/em>a video documentary of a year of Lynn\u2019s teaching (included among the <em>Other resources <\/em>section of the companion website).<br \/>\n<a id=\"10.1.5.\"><\/a><\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.5. Lynn\u2019s innovation #3: Publishing an elementary science curriculum<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>Lynn\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>How the idea came about and was evaluated\/refined<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This project came about through a happenchance meeting at a national science teachers\u2019 conference. She was walking around the vendor\u2019s stalls when she ran into someone she knew, who was working at a stall that had science curriculum kits.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It was at that point that the owner of the publishing company walked over.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>After returning to Rochester from the conference, Lynn received a phone call from the owner.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Thus, the owner of the company pursued her to work on this publication.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Planning and gathering the needed resources<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Throughout the development of the elementary science curriculum, Lynn had substantial input in how the final product would eventually turn out.\u00a0 Most importantly, she did not want it to be \u201cteacher proof\u201d. She wanted it to push not only the students, but also the teachers to new levels of understanding science.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI wanted to provide something for teachers that was not saying to them \u2018Here is what you do\u2019.\u00a0 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Gathering resources was not an issue in this case, as the contract covered for expenses \u2013 although Lynn still had to find the time to devote to this demanding initiative!<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Implementing and monitoring the initiative<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As she wrote these curriculum materials, Lynn used her knowledge of education in the structure and content of the book.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI know teachers, I know \u2026 what are road blockers.\u00a0 So I try to anticipate that in my notes.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>She included sections that had suggestions to teachers on how to modify the lessons for grade level instruction.\u00a0\u00a0 She also aligned the goals of the modules with the national science standards.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It also included science kits providing teachers with all the materials required to teach the curriculum.<\/p>\n<p>In the published version, Lynn wrote,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThe focus of It\u2019s Alive! is to provide an environment that encourages children to be scientists\u2026The goal of It\u2019s Alive! is to educate children to think like scientists through the study of the characteristics of organisms; therefore, teachers must think like scientists.\u00a0 The teacher promotes inquiry by being an inquirer her\/himself.\u201d (Gatto, 2005, preface)<\/p>\n<p>When she initially agreed to complete the project in six months, she had not fully realized how big an undertaking this was.\u00a0 Although she based the materials on her own practice, writing the text and creating the kits took her a lot longer than she expected \u2013 especially because she wanted to make sure that the materials would remain true to her goals of engaging students in inquiry:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI really worked hard at trying to develop activities \u2026 that would actually invite kids to question things.\u00a0 Materials was a problem because they wanted it cheap \u2026 and that\u2019s something that I never really gave much thought to.\u201d (<em>Lynn<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Having a published product ensured that Lynn\u2019s creativity in designing experiences for elementary children would live on.<\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.1.6. Updates on Lynn\u2019s story<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>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!\u00a0 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. \u00a0In this role, she initiated many innovations that transformed that program and greatly increased its effectiveness in preparing high-quality elementary teachers.<\/p>\n<p>Before even starting in her faculty position, Lynn was instrumental in establishing the first university-based Horizons Summer program \u2013 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. \u00a0Lynn 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 \u2013 and doing most of the curriculum development, fund-raising, staff hiring and training, required to run the program.<\/p>\n<p>After her (second) retirement from the Warner School in 2019, Lynn still continued her mission through publishing.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h1><strong>10.2. Analysis of Lynn\u2019s entrepreneurial activity<\/strong><\/h1>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.1. Lynn\u2019s practices about vision <\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>As mentioned in the introduction, Lynn\u2019s 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 \u201clevel playing field\u201d and the experiences they needed to be successful in life.\u00a0 Her commitment to this vision was also quite strong, as testified by two of her closest collaborators.\u00a0 Her colleague in Kentucky stated,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe doesn\u2019t just have a passion for the teaching; she has a passion for the students&#8230;She knows who she has to attend to\u2026 it\u2019s not administrators, it\u2019s not other teachers in the building.\u00a0 She knows that her vision [is] for teaching these students\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s Kentucky colleague)<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe gives 100% all the time, get the job done. To her, teaching is her profession. It doesn\u2019t end at 4:00 when the kids walk out the door, she\u2019s committed even at home.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s Kentucky colleague)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lynn\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cAs [New York State] Teacher of the Year, I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 City kids are smart and they\u2019re great people, and the parents are great people.\u00a0 And no matter what, city parents love their kids, no matter what.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Lynn also recognized that empowering the parents to advocate for their children\u2019s rights was a critical element in this cause.\u00a0 Lynn helped parents understand the language and approach they must use in fighting for their rights.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014as illustrated throughout her story. Her passion, determination, and the personal rapport she established with people all contributed to her success:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe just is a very determined person, and people who see her passion for this are willing to buy into her mission. \u2026 She breaks it down in such a way that people cannot refuse \u2026 they want to participate.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Providing a clear and concrete image of what she was trying to achieve also served her well, especially when writing grants.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI want people to see what I\u2019m seeing and picture the outcome, the same outcome that I\u2019m picturing, or the product.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.2. Lynn\u2019s practices about opportunities <\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI guess that\u2019s how I view myself, I view myself as an educational inventor&#8230;I invent a lot of this stuff and&#8230; invent lessons. \u2026 I\u2019ve got an idea a minute\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe is always seeking innovations, ways to improve things.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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 \u2013 as typical of many business and social entrepreneurs.\u00a0 Since she taught in a high-needs district, identifying such needs was never difficult!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThey\u2019ve 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.\u201d \u00a0<em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a0<\/em>Sometimes it was a specific problem that provided the impetus for an innovation\u2014as 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 Her husband explained,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe keeps everything in big Rubbermaid tubs in the basement and periodically\u2026 when she\u2019s going to do that unit she sits down and says okay, \u2018This is how I did it last time, how can I improve on this?\u00a0 How can I make my work less, yet the kids get the same experience out of it?\u2019 \u2026 she\u2019ll come in and say, you know, \u2018Remember five years ago I did this?\u00a0 How can we make this look better now?\u00a0 Is there better technology out there now that we can use?\u2019\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lynn was also an early adopter of technology and she often looked at new technologies as opportunities to enhance her students\u2019 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\u2014although almost always she ended up significantly enhancing and transforming the original idea, as illustrated in the case of the Cookie Cutter Unit.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cgrant folder\u201d for future reference, ready to be implemented if the right circumstances came along \u2013 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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI used to have a big folder of ideas and so when a grant comes out I flip through it and if there\u2019s something that matches then I write it up.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cacademic mileage\u201d for her students.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Further, she chose to pursue opportunities related to her own personal and professional growth.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014as illustrated throughout her story and captured in the following quote:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cSometimes you have to jump feet first into a project and later figure out where you are heading and how.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Yet funding and capacity considerations were not ignored, as suggested by her very practice of setting aside some ideas in her \u201cgrant folder,\u201d to be revisited if and when the appropriate funding opportunity came along.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2014be it time, emotions, or her own money\u2014to 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.<\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.3. Lynn\u2019s practices about risk <\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>While Lynn\u2019s initiatives rarely involved any financial risk, many of them involved breaking or bending the rules\u2014a family trait!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cMy 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.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWhen I break the rules, it\u2019s only for their kids and they know that\u2026 and [parents] know I am their biggest ally.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>While Lynn did this purposefully and with considerable ease, she realized that the rule-breaking presented a personal and professional risk for her.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the initiatives Lynn was involved in presented a risk to her reputation.\u00a0 Lynn felt that publishing the science curriculum, for example, was a great personal risk, not so much in terms of the product\u2019s \u201csuccess\u201d or \u201cfailure\u201d, but rather how it would be received by her own teacher colleagues.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWhat if people read this and say &#8230;\u2018This woman doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s talking about\u2019.\u00a0 \u2018This is terrible\u2019.\u00a0 There was tremendous personal risk.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>One of Lynn\u2019s collaborators describes her as a calculated risk-taker:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe does do a lot of risk taking. A lot of it is calculated, a lot of it isn\u2019t. She\u2019ll take the risk to the point where she knows she can do certain things. If she ends up coming up against an obstacle, there\u2019s ways around it, then the calculating starts, but most of the time she\u2019s a very good risk taker.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Indeed, as we saw in the previous section, most often Lynn would not embark in a new \u201ccostly\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>Lynn was also not afraid of failure and mistakes, as she stated,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI see failure as the opportunity to improve or to do [something] again and succeed.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.4. Lynn\u2019s practices about resources <\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>As a teacher in a public school, Lynn had essentially no control on her organization\u2019s 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\u2019s initiatives required funding\u2014especially her field trips\u2014she 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u2013 you also need to understand what the funders want and \u201csell your idea\u201d to them. Lynn made an explicit connection between seeking funding and \u201cselling\u201d:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201c\u2026that was why I sold shoes so well \u2026 a lot of times women would come in wearing a dress, and I would bring out [some shoes] and I\u2019d say, \u2018well you know, this looks good but they\u2019re not as comfortable, so you could try these\u2019 \u2026 so I\u2019m just seeing what the other person, how they think or how they perceive what you\u2019re trying to tell them or sell them.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Lynn also learned overtime the importance of identifying concrete products or outcomes in her grant proposal:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI try and give people a vision \u2026 I want people to see what I am seeing and picture the outcome, the same outcome that I\u2019m picturing or the product.\u00a0 \u2026 I always am very explicit in terms of giving examples.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cWhen 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 \u2026 I walked in with a bag because I knew generally what they were going to ask me \u2026 \u00a0\u00a0I brought artifacts [from my teaching] so when they asked me about something \u2026 that would help to jog my memory \u2026 so they were floored \u2026 they said you are the only person who has ever brought anything in all these years \u2026 \u00a0How can you walk in with nothing, you\u2019re selling yourself.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>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\u2019 parents as well as her friends.<\/p>\n<p>Since as a teacher Lynn did not have any control on other staff\u2019s 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\u2019 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. \u00a0At 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.<\/p>\n<p>The most important team members in all her initiatives, however, were her students and their parents.\u00a0 These were the individuals who worked with her on a daily basis to inspire, create, develop, and sustain various initiatives.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The students worked tirelessly to create a successful company that produced cookie cutters and lesson plan booklets for other teachers to use.\u00a0 Furthermore, the students were the source of most of her ideas and the inspiration for all she did.\u00a0 Without their enthusiasm, support, and desire to learn, Lynn would neither have launch nor sustained her entrepreneurial initiatives.<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cShe just is a very determined person \u2026 she\u2019ll say to somebody, the parents for example, I need five parents to be on an overnight \u2026 we\u2019re going to an overnight at a girl scout camp in the middle of Fairport and I need people to come and spend the night \u2026 \u2018well, I can\u2019t spend the night\u2019 \u2026 \u2018well, can you come for a couple hours and help with the meal?\u2019 \u2026 \u2018yes, I can do that\u2019 \u2026 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.\u00a0 So you got a parent, for example, who brings in some wood for the kids to work with in class \u2026 and maybe sticks around and helps them out, but that\u2019s not important, they did their share of the mission, of the total picture.\u201d <em>(Lynn\u2019s husband)<\/em><\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.5. Lynn\u2019s practices about growth <\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>While as a teacher Lynn was not in any position to \u201cgrow\u201d 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 \u201cclients\u201d) 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 \u2013 as described in details in the last section of her story.<\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.6. Other interesting elements about Lynn\u2019s case<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p><strong><em>Willingness to break rules<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lynn\u2019s 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 \u2013 as illustrated for example in the building of the greenhouse.\u00a0 In this process, she was always willing to bend or even break some rules!<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cTo be successful, you have to learn how to get around something, under it, or over it. &#8230; There\u2019s always a way to get around the rules.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A notable example of her \u201crule breaking\u201d 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).\u00a0 More frequently, she simply did not ask for permission for things beyond the norm and tried to do them \u201cquietly\u201d to avoid being noticed.<\/p>\n<p>She jokingly recognized this as being a family trait, as she reported her mother saying to her at a young age: \u201cYou are rule-breaker just like your father.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Capitalizing on networking<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Networking was a critical component of Lynn\u2019s entrepreneurial practice.\u00a0 For example, her work on the science curriculum arose out of a happenchance meeting with an old colleague at a national science teachers\u2019 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.<\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI was at the jewelry store, talking to my jeweler.\u00a0 And his wife was there and \u2026 she said she wasn\u2019t working; her children were all gone off to college.\u00a0 And I said \u2018Well, then, what are you doing all day?\u2019\u00a0 She says \u2018Well, I\u2019m working here.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 And\u2026 she\u2019s a certified teacher! I said \u2018Well, then, I\u2019ve got a job for you!\u2019\u00a0 So now she comes \u2026 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!\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI 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 \u2018Now you own a liquor store?\u00a0 How did that happen?\u2019\u00a0 And I get the story and I said \u2018Well, gosh, you know, I could use some help in my classroom.\u2019\u00a0 That\u2019s just how I do it.\u00a0 I just pick people up.\u201d\u00a0 <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Through these casual conversations, Lynn built relationships with other individuals who served as important assets to her classroom activities.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Choosing not to engage in organizational change<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cI just stay out of school leadership.\u00a0 I have been burned so often.\u00a0 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\u2019t think the way most people do.\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cSomeone said to me recently, \u2018you cannot be a prophet in your own land.\u2019\u00a0 And you know what?\u00a0 They\u2019re so right!\u201d <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Creating entrepreneurial spaces within her own classroom <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Lynn proactively sought to create an entrepreneurial culture in the one place where she had control: her classroom.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>Lynn felt that all of her students took a piece of her entrepreneurial spirit with them as they went through life.\u00a0 For example, one of Lynn\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Capitalizing on dysfunction in the organization\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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 \u2014 or even simply because they did not realize what was going on until it was too late to stop it!\u00a0 Even in describing the dysfunctionality of her urban district, Lynn recognized that this enabled her to be the kind of innovative teacher she was:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cOne of the great joys of teaching in the Rochester City School District is that\u2026 the fingers on the right hand don\u2019t even know what one another are doing, so I can get away with a lot.\u00a0 Also\u2026I don\u2019t teach to the test, and I don\u2019t use any of the text books that they hand me\u2026 But the kids are successful, or I am deemed successful, because my students test well.\u201d\u00a0 <em>(Lynn)<\/em><\/p>\n<h1><strong>\u00a0 10.2.7. Concluding thoughts about Lynn\u2019s case <\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>It is important to note that Lynn was able to find innovative ways to help her students reach their individual best <em>despite<\/em> being in a non-leadership position and working in an institution that, in many ways, did not encourage entrepreneurialism. \u00a0To do so, though, she needed to find or create spaces that would allow her to be entrepreneurial.\u00a0 Eventually, this opposition worn her down and she decided for early retirement \u2013 although she continued to be involved with teacher preparation and began a new entrepreneurial activity (developing a new summer school program).<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps even more than Ralph Spezio, the case reported in the previous chapter, we see Lynn as a prototypical example of \u201ceducation James Dean\u201d as described by Williams (2006). \u00a0This is especially true, unfortunately, when it comes to Lynn\u2019s difficult relationship with her colleagues and superiors:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201c[T]hese James Deans tend to become folk heroes of sort and often have complicated relationships with administrators and union leaders.\u00a0 They tend to have a healthy chip on their shoulder and some degree of confidence in their ability to make things happen.\u00a0 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)<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0 As exemplified by Lynn\u2019s 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.\u00a0 Nonetheless, this case study still points out many similarities between the actual behaviors, practices, and processes she used and those of other entrepreneurial educators.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h1><strong>10.3. Commentaries on Lynn\u2019s case<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>We are collecting readers\u2019 insights and lessons learned from reading Lynn\u2019s case on the companion website, and we invite you to add yours by following the specific guidelines provided in the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/document\/d\/14q19j1oxSZLMPZqZ0QSc8oRSiEI5Pm9E6D_fPEk7RDM\/edit?usp=sharing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Guidelines for Contributions<\/strong><\/a>\u201d document.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Posted commentaries about Lynn\u2019s case<\/em><\/strong> &#8211; <em>None available yet <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"menu_order":5,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[],"license":[],"part":28,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/33"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/33\/revisions\/279"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/28"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/33\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oer.digitalscholar.rochester.edu\/promotinginnovationsineducation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}