I am holed up in a small town in Connecticut for the weekend, getting caught on the blog, copying video files, making plane reservations for Thanksgiving week, confirming visits through early November, logging key take-aways, and creating a new and critical list of lessons: what obstacles to innovation have people cited in these visits. It [...]
Organizations innovate either because they want to, need to, or both. This is the story of a school that really needed to innovate, back to the wall and the wolf at the door. After getting past that, they have used those trials to create an organization that is flat, nimble, and open to trying new [...]
If you work at an independent school and think that what your school does in preparing students for their future is worth $20,000-$50,000 a year, read on. If you work at a public school and think that the politics, demographics, and inertia of public education commit public education in America to either mediocrity or a [...]
At most schools I have visited on this journey I move, visit, peer into classes, talk with different groups of faculty and staff and students. Today I went to essentially one room and talked to one group of teachers and students. But what a “room” and what a group! I seem to be on a [...]
A few quick notes, then I will be posting from my exciting visit at Cushing Academy today: A big thanks to NAIS and President Pat Bassett for mentioning me and providing the link to my blog on the NAIS E-Bulletin today: "HOW INNOVATIVE IS YOUR SCHOOL? Join Grant Lichtman as he visits 60 schools to report [...]
We know that learning content for our students is generally easier than learning skills. The same holds true for adults. As we transform our ideas about how best to prepare our students for the world in which they will live, our teachers need to adapt to new ways of teaching. The “what” of new teaching [...]
The first step in innovation at this time for our schools is recognizing that the world is changing at an increasingly rapid pace, and that these changes are highly relevant to what and how we teach. If a school is not having this conversation, they will not innovate; if they are having this conversation they [...]
I have a few minutes this morning before I go over to the Pomfret School for the day, and am taking time to reflect back on my four weeks of visits. I was impressed last week by Mark Davis at St. Luke’s, who, along with his board chair, went back, dug through the mounds of [...]
The building which houses the Upper School at Poughkeepsie Day School is steeped in creativity; Thomas Watson and early IBM inventors once worked in the basement, tinkering with ideas that grew into one of the largest and most successful companies in the world. It is only fitting that PDS took over the building in the [...]
(Aside: there are not many places more beautiful on a sunny fall day than the Hudson River Valley with the trees starting to turn and leaves fluttering onto the winding two-lane from New Canaan to Poughkeepsie. I have to remind myself what it looks and feels like in January, when I will have my walks [...]