Here is a sign of the times: in a meeting with about 14 senior administrators yesterday, the ink in my pen ran out. (I can still write faster on a yellow pad than I can type.) I asked for someone to lend me a pen. One person, Paul Ibsen, the business officer had one. No [...]
When I planned this journey I envisioned visiting schools with a range of attitudes and ideas about educational innovation. Not all schools believe that change is needed in order to enhance their value proposition, at least in the short term. That is not bad; markets, demographics, and local attitudes regarding both public and private education [...]
One of the emerging threads of this journey that defines schools that are making progress along the path of change is trimming away what is not critical and focusing on a core set of values. This post is about a great process of building change capability in the faculty and success with a new technology [...]
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Ian Kelleher, Science Dept. Chair at St. Andrew's Episcopal in Potomac sent me this and I think it is very worth sharing, with Ian's approval. It is a template for a faculty poster conference, the second I have heard of on this trip (in addition to the big one next month with Albermarle County Public [...]
Some large independent schools are the size and complexity of a small school district and often describe themselves as a Titanic when it comes to changing course from successful traditions to a more innovative future. But we have seen that many are indeed changing, with fascinating nodes of intense creativity. Innovation takes time, but the [...]
This post is about a school were the first teacher of the day states “We approach everything with the view of children as powerful knowledge creators”. It is about a school where, unprompted, a 5th grade boy tells me that Bloom’s Taxonomy is incorrect, that you don’t need to learn basic information in order to [...]
*Thanks, followers of EdJourney...700+ views yesterday! Incredible interscholastic sharing going on, free to all followers! Pass the link to a friend or colleague.* This post is going to be simple; clarity breeds simplicity. It will be about remarkable leadership and management style. There will be those who say, “we can’t learn from a public school [...]
1. Distribute the blog posts from my school visits to individuals or teams of faculty, staff, and trustees. Ask them to think of a bunch of questions that fit the simple form: “What if our school did _______________________just like ____________________ (fill in the name of the school they are reading about) is already doing.” I [...]
As I have mentioned before, some organizations innovate because they want to and some because they have to, and some a combination of both. I spent the afternoon at The Collegiate School in Richmond and confirmed what I have suspected for some time: my friends Head Keith Evans and Academic Dean David Colon and their [...]