As schools think, discuss, and plan what they want to look like in an uncertain future, my sense is that how we get there is at least as important as what a school decides. Hathaway Brown in Cleveland has developed a well-deserved national reputation as a model of intentional innovation, due in large part to [...]
On this journey I wanted to visit a wide range of schools to find out what innovation means across the board. This post will be different from all the rest in many ways. At the start you will be depressed that education can still look like this in America. Don’t dare stop reading. The definition [...]
The only resources that schools have are money, time, people, space, and knowledge. Schools are constructed around the units of time, subject, age, and achievement. It is critical to understand that the one common element of what we need to function and how we are organized is time. This post is about a lot of [...]
School innovation is exciting. Passionate teachers work together on creative new ideas, imagine, test pilots, fail, tweak, and connect with each other and their students in new ways. It creates a buzz and energy at the school, infectious to colleagues, students, and outward to parents and the community. Many of the schools I have visited [...]
Reflections and Questions From the Second Week So many miles of stunted, brown corn across the upper Midwest. Sad, but global climate change is not a myth and it has real implications. Many great lessons we can share from both public and private schools. It is not about the name on the school but what [...]
One of the precepts for my journey is that both private and public education have much to offer in terms of innovation for the future. They face different challenges in terms of funding, politics, value proposition, and demographics, but learning is not public or private, it is learning. Already in the last two weeks we [...]
My great-great aunt and uncle founded Francis Parker School in San Diego in 1912, and in the last 14 years I have been proud to give my time and expertise, along with some blood and sweat, to help transform that great school. So it was a bit like returning to the Mother Ship when I [...]
Around my house, “old school” is one of the great compliments we can give. We are a volleyball family, and the best player in the history of the game (and new coach of the USA women’s team) is Karch Kiraly, who defines “old school” volleyball: good at every position, great at the basics, and willing [...]
Great schools have a clear mission that is known and shared by faculty, students, and administration. I have visited schools with a variety of missions, but I may never have been at a school with a more pervasive sense of mission than at Crossroads Prep in St. Louis. At Crossroads, from the Head down to [...]
Normally, good neighborhoods mean good public schools, and the opposite is also the norm, especially in a state like Missouri where public education is funded through local taxes, and not redistributed by the state. So it takes something heroic to run this process in reverse, for a school to help raise up a struggling community. [...]