Increased Competition For Students is the New Normal
October 16, 2019I had the honor of addressing about 100 public school superintendents last week, just as we were unpacking copies of Thrive for all of them! (If you have not seen it yet, I have updated the home page of my website, where you can click a link for a free download of the Introduction). They…
Are All-Male Groups de facto The B Team?
October 11, 2019How important is group diversity? If a group is NOT diverse, should we discount the group outcomes? How serious are we as educators about promoting diversity, and why? Adding to this discussion (this one happens to be about gender diversity only) is a study on the impact of gender diversity to group performance published in…
Courage to Change Springs From Social Proof and Social Herding
September 25, 2019Danvers Fleurry at TalentedApp reminded me last week that behavioral change is almost always a function of courage. We don’t change our personal or professional behaviors, even if we cognitively know we want to, unless we have the courage to walk over that bridge. Where do we find that courage? Major sources, and probably increasingly…
Sharing My Personal “How To” Archives in New Book
September 23, 2019Education is better off when we all share as much as we can. I decided to not hold anything back in my new book, THRIVE: How Schools Will Win the Education Revolution. In addition to what I hope you will find is a wealth of ideas about how to make your school or district what…
This is What Your Colleagues Are Saying About My New Book!
September 21, 2019Last fall I realized I had an important book contained in my work of the last 3-4 years; I just needed to write it. K-12 education is undergoing a period of rapid evolution unlike any we have seen in at least 150 years. Some schools, public and private, will rise to meet this evolutionary challenge;…
What College Are We Prepping Kids For?
September 12, 2019What does it mean for a student to go to a “college prep”-focused school today? In a provocative, well-researched, and often disturbing article in the New York Times, leading author Paul Tough takes a deep dive into the profound challenges that most colleges and universities face in balancing the desire for diversity and the reality…
What Comes First, School or Well-Being?
September 10, 2019What really drives your big, long-term school-wide decisions? In a video call yesterday with Corwin Press president Mike Soules and a group of Corwin authors, I noted that at virtually every school I have visited in depth for the last couple of years, student well-being has been at or very near the top of stakeholder goals and concerns. We…
By Definition, Better Learning Is “Innovation”
September 7, 2019Our colleague Miguel Guhlin started a good discussion on Twitter and in his blog post about so-called innovative practices in K-12. Miguel was prompted by an article by Mike Schmoker that questions if “innovations” like design thinking and makerspaces actually improve learning more than time-tested, research-proven activities. My response: Yes, and! By definition, innovation leads…
More Schools That “Do School Differently”
September 6, 2019In my new book, THRIVE: How Schools Will Win the Education Revolution, there is an appendix with a list of schools that I have curated over the last five years, schools that “do school differently”. I offer this as a “starter kit” for my readers, schools with which you can share ideas and igniters of…
Media Bias Tool a Boon for Thoughtful Educators
August 25, 2019One of our newest and most profound challenges as educators is navigating the poorly charted waters of truth and falsity in our media stream. Of course, there have been news sources of questionable repute in the past, but the volume and rapidity of the media stream, both creating, and as a result of, increased political…
The Best Short Start-of-Year Read I Can Share
August 9, 2019Like many of you, I have taken the summer off from at least part of my “day job”: blogging. I led several summer institutes and am getting my new book finalized for delivery in October, but I got lazy here on the blog front. And that is sort of going to continue as I ease…
Is the Classic “Hero’s Journey” Still Timeless?
June 17, 2019The Hero’s Journey lies at the heart of human storytelling. From the Bhagavad Gita to the Old and New Testaments; from Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology to the creational stories of indigenous peoples; from the life stories of comic book superheroes to the modern sagas like Star Wars and Game of Thrones, the Hero’s Journey…
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