Creating an educational program should be like creating a piece of art. Make every piece essential and thoughtful. Waste nothing. Include only that which will enhance, ruthlessly, unapologetically remove everything else.

Think about it. We only have so much time to make a positive contribution to the lives of others. Design a program as you would a piece of art and you will ensure you make the most of these finite opportunities.

When I’m working with an organization, these are the top 5 elements I look for:

1. Relevant

Here’s how you can make sure your content is as relevant as possible. First, refine your message to those components most likely to pique student curiosity. Present these components in small, pithy bursts. Try to do this in less than ten minutes. Use the next ten minutes to encourage students to ask questions and interact with you and each other. Then provide another nugget of content, followed by focussed interaction. This is relevance-making in action!

2. Responsive

We’re inclined to view student questions and comments as a barrier to getting through content. But what if we designed programs to invite questions? Questions are our primary tool for learning. Why not encourage students to exercise this tool?

A word of warning. The value here is in students asking questions, not in you answering them. The process, not the product, adds value to learning.

3. Punctuated

Reading a book without periods, pages, or chapter headings would be a disorienting experience. The previous two elements work best where clear structure exists. Students need to know what you are talking about in clear terms. Once they’re on board, you can open the conversation. The structure you provide will serve to accelerate the learning process.

4. Coherent

Research on the brain indicates that when our brains can’t connect two concepts in a coherent manner, we’ll flush both. Work to make your material build upon itself in a logical manner. This takes work. It’s like rearranging furniture. There are innumerable possibilities, but some make a lot more sense than others. This may sound  rudimentary, but I see this a lot. What flows to us may not have a natural progression for the people we serve.

5. Actionable

Can students clearly identify how they will translate your curricula and program into action? If not, we’re wasting everyone’s time. Budget time to help students determine in clear terms how they plan to translate your conversation into actionable steps.

How are you doing on these 5 elements? What design changes will help your program be a piece of art? Making these changes requires courage.

Mostly Martha is beautiful film about a chef in Hamburg, Germany. At the beginning of the film, Martha, played by Martina Gedeck, makes the following observation about the best chefs:

One knows a good chef by the quality of his simplest dishes.

Take for instance salmon in a light basil sauce. Most people think it’s no big deal and put it on the menu. But frying or steaming a salmon just right and putting the right amount of salt and spices in the sauce is very difficult.

In this recipe there is nothing to distract you. No design. No exotic ingredients. There’s only the fish. And the sauce. The fish and the sauce.

The evidence of mastery is our ability to deliberately omit exotic, distracting ingredients. What remains is something people can savor for its simplicity and potent flavors.

Systems tend to grow in complexity—education in America, for example.

Artists create remarkable things by moving in the opposite direction. They pursue simplicity and move away from complexity.

Consider the design of the iPhone. Its circuitry is complex. Its interface is simple.

Education is complex. Our interface should be simple and artful.

This is a version of an activity I use in my training that you can use with your team.

Have each person study this picture:

Notice the platform shoes and can of organic soda. They are both sitting on top of a garbage receptacle. Next, have each person craft a story to explain how these items may have come to sit together. Compare the stories.

Why is this activity beneficial?

When we experience dissonance—the clashing together of two or more seemingly unrelated elements—it ignites our curiosity and mobilizes important learning tools. We immediately begin to develop a host of questions and possible explanations in an effort to resolve the dissonance.

Use dissonance to increase engagement with your message. For you, your message is a coherent, harmonic story lacking dissonance. But this isn’t the case for your audience. Your message appears to your audience like the picture. There’s dissonance. Use this to fuel learning.

In the same way you tried to make sense of this picture, your audience will naturally try to resolve their dissonance with your message. They will ask questions. Make comments. Sit in silence. Talk to each other. Challenge what you say. These are tools we all use to transform dissonance into harmony.

Furnish the right answer (if there is one) and you will negate this entire process. Trust that the people you work with, no matter what age, possess the abilities necessary to create harmony.

The result of this process is a new, clear understanding that changes how we see the world. What was foreign becomes familiar. The dissonance leads discovery. Eureka!

Few tools are more critical to learning than the ability to ask good questions. Unfortunately, most people believe that a good question is open-ended and a bad question is closed-ended. Not true.

This traditional standard is grossly inaccurate. Exceptional questions can be open and closed-ended. My daughter asked me, “Can dogs see better than humans at night?” This is an excellent question. The fact that it is closed-ended doesn’t matter.

Abandon the old definition of a good question. Don’t worry about whether a question begins with who, what, where, when, why , or how.

Consider a new standard for good questions:

1) Was the question’s origin authentic curiosity?

2) Did the question awaken curiosity in others?

3) Did the question generate additional good questions?

Promote learning and engage students at a deeper level by asking excellent questions. Better yet, teach students how to recognize and ask good questions for themselves. Few skills are more important for life-long learning.

1. Teacher provides answers.

2. Teacher asks convergent questions and students furnish predictable answers.

3. Teacher asks divergent questions.

4. Teacher invites students to contribute ideas and opinions.

5. Teacher becomes curious about student ideas and opinions.

6. Students become curious and ask earnest questions.

7. Fueled by a sense of wonder, students and teacher collaborate for meaningful answers.

RSA added animation to one of Ken Robinson’s talks. I would suggest watching it several times. There’s a lot here in this 11:40 clip. His proposals comprise a call back to an educational paradigm that is consistent with how we actually learn.

The Teen Age: 40 Reflections on Relating With Teens—Andrew F. Robinson Eugene, Oregon— Who is the person who touched your life when you were a teenager? Isn’t that the person you want to be to the teens in your life? That’s the person they need you to be says Author Andrew F. Robinson.

Robinson just released his new book The Teen Age: 40 Reflections on Relating with Teens. Robinson’s book is not another self-help manual it’s a well researched, proven look at how each of us can better communicate with teenagers. Readers will find a clear, engaging and reliable roadmap to connecting with teens in ways that will positively impact them for life.

In reading The Teen Age you will also rediscover the things that stood out in your life and will find those same magic moments can impact the teen age around us. “Residing within each of us are resources that, when fully expressed, can make a world of difference in the life of a teen,” asserts Robinson, an educational coach who translates adolescent brain research into relevant applications for organizations throughout the U.S. In this collection of keen, compassionate and disarming essays Robinson both amplifies and models his thesis that the requisite for creating positive change is to risk bringing our full, authentic selves to relationships.

Throughout this highly accessible book Robinson paints memorable word pictures to illuminate both the complexities of the teen psyche, and the ways in which we may succeed—or fail—to secure a trusting, transformative relationship with the teens we care about. “I hope this book will both challenge our assumptions and affirm our deepest intuitions as we reach out to teens,” says Robinson. “I know the sea change that can occur in teens when they experience us as whole, vulnerable individuals who genuinely get them. This can literally save their lives.”

“The Teen Age is an invitation to think beyond our original boundaries—it encourages us to come along side teens, to come alongside one another, respectfully, with an eager curiosity,” says Christine Barber, a counselor with over 30 years of clinical experience, “I find myself fully absorbed in this book, and like a good meal, it lingers with me, naturally continuing to ask questions, to reflect on what I have read.”

“Like missives from a battlefield, The Teen Age gives you the sense that the author, Andrew Robinson, has been there and wants to help you in the work you do with young people,” says John Santin, a Project Coordinator with Oregon Research Institute.

The Teen Age: 40 Reflections on Relating With Teens is available at www.peoplechangepeople.com and on Amazon (click here). This is the author’s first book. About Andrew Robinson: Andrew Robinson is writer, trainer, and speaker who’s received enthusiastic reviews for his energetic and provocative presentations. Through his website, newsletter, blog and podcasts he advocates for effecting positive change by availing ourselves of our creativity and compassion. Robinson’s interest in the dynamics of change and relationships led him to pursue a master’s in education, with a marriage and family therapy specialization, at the University of Oregon. He earned his M.A. in 2001, and in the years following directed a youth development program, which grew to reach more than 50,000 students annually. He is now honored to partner with groups from all parts of the U.S.

The University of Oregon’s Substance Abuse Prevention Program sponsored the production of this video on making prevention education—all education, for that matter—personal.  These videos walk you through each of the three phases of the personalized prevention process: Crystallize, Personalize, and Relationalize (C.P.R.).

For learning to be powerful and life-changing it must be personal. These videos walk you through three ingredients that must be in place to move educational approaches from abstract and impersonal to concrete, personal, and life-changing.

I want to thank the University of Oregon’s Substance Abuse Prevention Program for this opportunity. Bryan and Sabine, thank you for your help planning, filming, and formatting the footage.

Part 1: Introduction to Personalized Prevention Education

Part 2: C.P.R. A Meta-Curriculum for Personalized Prevention Education

Part 3: Crystallize Your Message

Part 4: Personalize Your Methods

Part 5: Relationalize Your Approach

Part 6: Get Away from Group-think

Last month I launched a new twist on webinars called, Ten-on-Tuesday: A webinar’s worth of important information in ten minutes. Take a walk, relax at your desk, or carve our a corner in your local coffee shop. You can join the call from just about anywhere.

CLICK HERE to listen to the last Ten-on-Tuesday conversation, “What might evidence-based approaches be missing?“

Would you like to join our next call? CLICK HERE to receive updates on future Ten-on-Tuesday calls (You’ll also receive 3 free gifts).

Our next call will be next Tuesday, March 1st at 10:00 PST. The theme will be, “Take it personally: The key ingredient for transforming education.”