NAGC 2023 Opening Keynote Address, 11/9: The Innovator’s Mindset (George Couros)

The opening Keynote Address for my very first ever National Association of Gifted Children Annual Convention was nothing short of AMAZING! The speaker was George Couros. According to the NAGC website…

George Couros is a worldwide leader in the area of innovative teaching, learning, and leading, and has a focus on innovation as a human endeavor. Most importantly, he is a proud father and husband. His belief that meaningful change happens when you first connect to people’s hearts, is modeled in his writing and speaking. In his 20-plus years in the field of education, he has worked at all levels of school, from K-12 as a teacher, technology facilitator, and school and district administrator, and is currently an Adjunct Instructor with the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. George is also the author of the books, The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity, Innovate Inside the Box, and his latest release, Because of a Teacher and Because of a Teacher 2. Learn more and follow George at his website.

Here is George working the crowd before he begins! He stopped by my teacher’s and my table to meet us!

He was smart, relevant, and really funny! His PowerPoint was terrific- very streamlined with great photos. Moreover, his message was powerful. George taught us (in a nutshell) about the Innovator’s Mindset, which is the belief that abilities, intelligence, and talents are developed so that they lead to the creation of new and better ideas. There are the eight characteristics that make up this mindset. An innovator is: reflective, empathetic, a problem-finder/solver, a risk taker, networked, observant, a creator, and resilient.

He gave us different examples of what these characteristics might look like in the classroom or in our community. Here is one example I LOVED about a problem finder (watch this cool little TED Talk from a teenager, Maanasa Mendu, who noticed a problem and is actively solving it).

Here are my TOP THREE take-aways from George’s talk and what they made me ponder:

#1: “Would you want to spend the whole day learning in your own classroom?”

Wow- this question is a real eye-opener! Though I am no longer in the K-12 classroom, I am often teaching educators and administrators. So, I find this question completely still relevant to me. As a former teacher of 5^th graders, I do believe that students wanted to spend their whole day learning with me (I’m basing this on the amount of times kids would ask me if they could eat lunch in my room or hang out in my room during their recess time). However, I want to keep this question close at hand as I design the next course I’m teaching to teachers this semester. I want to make sure to balance the content with meaningful processing activities, personal connections, and some easy take-aways that teachers could immediately use.

#2: “When you have a compelling reason, you can learn anything!”

I could not agree with this quote from George more. Kids (and adults) need a reason to learn. My son used to lament to me quite frequently, “My teacher said we had to learn this for the test. I don’t care about the test or this class!” Nothing strikes up de-motivation in a student faster than telling them they must learn it FOR THE TEST!

Having a reason to learn reminds me of Marzano and Pickering’s 4 emblematic questions about student engagement from their book, The Highly Engaged Classroom (as a side note, I did a whole-year Professional Development series on this book with two different school staffs…):

1. How do I feel?
2. Am I interested?
3. Is this important?
4. Can I do this?

The questions “Am I interested?” and “Is this important?” directly relate to giving students a reason to learn something. We know there are things that we are obligated to teach students according to state or federal mandates. However, if we can frame our content in a way that connects somehow to what interests our students and/or what is important to our students, then students will learn better and will achieve better outcomes. There are many FREE reproducible resources at Marzano’s website.

#3: “Change is an opportunity to do something amazing.”

Heraclitus said, “There is nothing permanent except change.” How many people do you know who hate change, who actively loathe it and resist it, especially change in education? A lot, right? We as educators must adopt a different mindset about change. If we take George’s words and think of change as an OPPORTUNITY to do new and cool things and not as a burden, then we will be much happier teachers and our students will be much more engaged learners.

Let me leave you with my FINAL THOUGHT on the Innovator’s Mindset: teachers have so much power to help nurture our students to do amazing things! We have the power to develop all of our students’ abilities, intelligence, and talents. We can leverage change as an opportunity to try something new with our students and give them the chance to really show us what they know and are able to do. We can find the innovator’s characteristics inside of ourselves to impact our students. Have fun innovating!

If you want more content about and by George, you can connect with him through his social media accounts:

Twitter and Instagram: @gcouros

Facebook: facebook.com/georgecourosauthor

YouTube: @georgecourosim

He also has written several books, one of which I bought and he signed (The Innovator’s Mindset)!