I am writing and re-writing the section of my book that will argue, in detail, that schools are becoming learning ecosystems, not assembly lines. This is not a metaphor; ecosystems are governed by a set of laws that are very different from those that govern an efficient assembly line. Education should not act like an [...]
A key takeaway from my EdJourney last fall and subsequent work with hundreds of educators this spring is that changing how and what we teach is not "hard"; it is "uncomfortable". I won't reprise the argument here; it is in my TEDx talk if you have not seen it yet. I also heard so many [...]
I have been remiss in my blog posts for several days; I am deep into writing, re-writing, and re-re-writing chapters of my book. I wrote a summary of my chapter on leadership, and though I am not a "cookbook" kind of person, I do believe the following to be true: When it comes to paradigm-level [...]
According to one large vendor in the room, "Poway is in the leading 1% of districts nationwide who are looking at this." According to several others, "90% of the bits and pieces are there; no one has put it all together." According to almost all the vendors, "We can't make this kind of investment with [...]
I came up with a set of professional goals before I graduated college, and they have never left me: work with smart people to tackle difficult problems, create elegant solutions, for something of value. This week has been another link in that chain! All this week I have been able to sit in with a dynamic team [...]
What if we named a public school "We Imagine" or "We Change the World"? I am working informally with a crack team at the large Poway Unified School District on two tracks: program design for a new K-8 to open in 2014, and an adaptive learning model to be piloted at the new school and [...]
A month or so ago I had my feet up thinking of draft language for a new vision statement for The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence. The broad mission of the Martin is professional development for educators, which is really just about learning. The challenges to how we will learn in a rapidly changing [...]
I think I just made up a new term: "missioning". It is the activity of bringing your organization's mission to life. This spring I have been focusing with school leaders on the relationship between three critical aspects of institutional sustainability: vision, systems, and value. Creating a vision is actually pretty easy. Developing systems-wide alignment between [...]
I had to post this; one of the nicer things anyone has ever written about my work to date. It is from a long and very thoughtful blog post by Jack Hassard, a writer, former high school science teacher and Professor Emeritus of Science Education, Georgia State University. The post also includes extensive connections with Narcis [...]
This is the future. No platform exists. Blank slate. Smart people. Tough task. Big, worthwhile goals. “Let’s build it”. I love it! Yesterday I got to spend three hours with a tremendous team at Poway (Ca) Unified School District imagining the future of differentiated and adaptive learning systems. Poway is a 35,000-student district, and visionary [...]