If we can point to a moment when educators finally realized that the world was changing so dramatically that we had to take notice, it was within a year or so of the publication of Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. Friedman has a remarkable ability to take something complex that many of us know to [...]
In the earliest phase of work with each school with which I engage, I ask the site leader (principal, head of school, superintendent) to come up with a set of "boundary conditions" that will guide and govern a process of expansive strategic design. Boundary conditions set out both the limits and expectations of a project. They [...]
A theme that comes up in every school I work with, and again today: Change at schools does not start with a shift in the daily schedule, the individuals in the room, the classrooms in which we teach, or a curriculum scaffold. Those will come in time. But first, change is about culture. It is [...]
Twenty years ago, "disruptive innovation" was introduced to educational lexicon by Clayton Christensen largely within the context of technology. Personal computers and rapid new technological inventions were going to fundamentally change the system of schools. A decade ago, flattened global economic relationships were going to fundamentally change schools as we shifted learning to prepare students [...]
Col. Francis Parker, a contemporary of John Dewey, said that the primary role of education was to instill in students the skills necessary for them to fulfill their roles as democratic citizens. If the events of the last year have taught us anything it is that these skills, and how they are exercised, are being [...]
One of the hallmarks of deeper learning, and certainly one of the drivers of education in the future, will be a breaching of the walls between "school" and "world". Another is demonstration of understanding based on something more authentic than an essay or a test. Yesterday I saw work done by two ex-colleagues at Francis [...]
Regardless of your politics, there is no question that the elections last week were revolutionary, and the potential impacts widespread. It is way too soon, with such volatility, to know for sure what those impacts will be for schools, communities, or individuals who comprise those communities. But if there ever was a time to make [...]
i have been fortunate to both design new learning spaces in a major school renovation, and to see dozens of examples of new and re-tooled learning spaces. A virtual meeting with a pioneering school group yesterday to talk about a new school building, gave me the chance to think about the boundary conditions I would [...]
In the next ten days I will work with five very different schools/districts, and all five are (amongst other things) thinking deeply about curriculum. I am not a curriculum expert at all, but here is what I do know: curriculum is a tool of learning. Tools are at the far end of a logic model or [...]
We model success for others. Great teachers model success for their students; principals for teachers; coaches for their athletes. Consultants are known for the models they bring, models that can be clear, helpful solutions, but also overly-simplified cookbook recipes that sound great but often just don't fit all of us. I was thinking about models yesterday [...]