Inspiring Organizations to Make Radical Commitments to Solve Wicked Problems (post #3)

Stories about Pioneering a “Networked Impact” Approach to Large-Scale, Systemic Social Change

By Talia-Milgrom Elcott, Founder and Executive Director of 100Kin10

100Kin10 is an organization dedicated to addressing the nation’s shortage of STEM teachers with 100,000 new, excellent STEM teachers in 10 years.

We believed fundamentally — and still do — that a goal like 100Kin10 cannot be achieved by any one organization alone.

No university, foundation or corporation can alone train, place, and support 100,000 excellent STEM teachers. For all our nostalgic references to Apollo, neither can the White House.

It isn’t just that the logistical task of training, placing, and supporting 100,000 excellent STEM teachers is out of reach of any one organization; it is that the reasons this challenge is so hard would necessarily elude resolution by any single player. Like most of the wicked problems that continue to plague us into the 21st century, the challenge of getting 100,000 excellent STEM teachers into schools around the country is diffuse, complex, and immune to single-sourced responses. It demands a networked solution, and it demands that those who participate in the network themselves take action toward the goal in concrete ways.

In 100Kin10, we ask every organization that wants to be part to make a commitment to action; that commitment to action is the heart of 100Kin10.

When we first gathered 28 organizations together from across sectors to consider the challenge of 100,000 excellent STEM teachers in January 2011, the day after President Obama put out the call in his State of the Union, we asked for only one thing from participants: a commitment to do something. No pre-reading, no talking at each other, no trying to persuade an amorphous decision-maker. Nothing more or less than a commitment to devote organizational time, talent, and dollars to contribute to this goal.

Vint Cerf, a father of the internet, in conversation with Norman Pearlstine at the inaugural 100Kin10 Summit in 2011.

To become part of the network, organizations must commit their unique resources and assets to the goal of 100,000 excellent STEM teachers.

Those commitments need to be bold and actionable — which means they need to

• meaningfully contribute to the goal of getting and keeping 100,000 excellent STEM teachers in 10 years;
• go above and beyond what your organization is already doing;
• be within reach of what your organization can deliver; and
• be measurable.

To learn more about how we define and measure commitments as part of our nomination and application process, see our Nominee Toolkit.

Like so many other challenges, to reach the goal of 100,000 excellent STEM teachers will require all kinds of action, all manner of change, on the part of diverse actors. And so at that first meeting in January 2011, and to this day, we intentionally invite a broad cross-section of American stakeholders to take stock of this critical challenge and commit to taking action. Likely and unlikely allies is how we put it.

From STEM corporations to museums, school districts to non-profits, foundations to federal agencies, we believe everyone with a stake in the future and a connection to STEM can make a meaningful contribution to this goal. Our earliest partners included Google and the American Museum of Natural History, Los Angeles Unified School District and Teach for America, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the National Science Foundation, and now, five years later, our nearly 300 partners continue to reflect that same fundamental diversity of organization, all united by one shared goal: getting 100,000 excellent STEM teachers into schools around the country.

Not every organization can directly train new teachers, though some surprising ones agreed to try. When we opened up 100Kin10 to nomination and application, we found that hundreds of organizations wanted to be a part of the solution.

Whatever their expertise, these leading organizations found creative and authentic ways to contribute to the goal, whether by giving STEM teachers leadership opportunities so more of them stay, using a major media platform to tell stories about STEM teachers to a broader audience, or providing STEM teachers opportunities to refresh their STEM skills in cutting-edge corporate, federal, and university labs.

IGNITE, formerly IISME, a 100Kin10 partner since 2011, is bringing together thought leaders to make the “classroom of the future” a reality by empowering educators to disrupt STEM learning environments with education technology and project-based learning.

We identified three major pathways for partners to make commitments:

1. by directly increasing the supply of great STEM teachers by preparing more of them better;
2. by providing necessary supports to existing STEM teachers, so that more great STEM teachers stay and all improve; and
3. by building the movement for 100Kin10, so that we can sustain this effort over the ten-year time horizon, across the geographic span of this country, and despite competing demands and short attention spans.

To this day, with nearly 300 partners and many more commitments, the commitment to action remains the nucleus of the network, the sine qua non of the movement. To be a part of 100Kin10 means to take action toward the goal, in concert with your fellow partners, to bring us every day closer to the goal of 100,000 excellent STEM teachers.