So this is a little bit different to my previous posts but I was inspired! For those of you who don't know I work as a learning scientist in a technology company called Practera. Our leadership team wanted to take a proactive approach to COVID - 19 so we've all been working from home for a month. We had a few weeks to get into the groove of working at home BEFORE the kids joined us in the craziness!
If you work in technology you may be familiar with a Kanban board! If not, don't worry! It's really just a fancy name for a To Do List (check out the image below) and the process is pretty simple really.
STEP 1: The team get's together with the SCRUMMASTER in a STANDUP (Fancy name for a meeting where everyone stands up instead of using chairs so the meeting goes faster!) and each person shares with the team which tasks they will do before the next STANDUP.
STEP 2: The SCRUMASTER adds each persons tasks to the Kanban board
STEP 3: The team breaks off and completes the work they've agreed. Moving tasks from the TO DO, DONING and DONE sections of the Kanban board as they complete tasks!
It's a great motivational tool! Everyone in the team watches as both their individual tasks and the teams collective list of tasks move from one side of the board to the other.
Practera's amazing Director of Engineering Beenish (aka our SCRUMMASTER) decided to test out the use of a Kanban board for her kids learning at home! It was such a great idea that I couldn't NOT share it!
Here's a step by step on how to implement scrum to help cut through the chaos of work and school from home!
A FAMILY SCRUM TEAM!
STEP 1: Call a family stand up at the start of the day! In the stand up get each member of the family (yep! Parents included) to set their goals for the day and list the tasks they commit to doing in the day! Help your kids out with suggestions on what should be on there! But they'll be much more motivated to complete the list if they come up with it themselves. Include a good balance of fun things (Sport outside and eating snacks!), and not so fun things (math practice!)
STEP 2: CREATE a family Kanban Board. You could do this with post it notes (like Beenish did) or if you want to get more tech savvy you could use ASANA or JIRA too!
STEP 3: Decide on a reward! Agree on a family reward if everyone completes all their tasks for the day.
STEP 4: Commit to helping each other achieve their tasks for the day! This could be one of your kids helping another with a challenging learning task or kids giving a parent 30min of uninterrupted time to take an important meeting.
STEP 5: Get to it and check those tasks off the list!
Implementing a family scrum like this can help bring order to the chaos and help your kids develop the habits they need to self-directing their learning. This is a great lifelong learning skill that will serve them well not just in this season but in their future!
Thanks Beenish for the amazing idea! If you want to check out her original post you can find it here. If you implement a Kanban board in your family send me a photo so I can add it to this post to help others with ideas of what tasks to include!