The Wayne Gretzky Dilemma For Schools
March 11, 2018Wayne Gretzky famously said. “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been”. How about a corollary for schools: “Design schools for the future, not for today”. This sounds embarrassingly obvious, yet it is not. This morning I read an article about the 11,000 student Carlsbad School District on the…
Outline of Steps to Lead Change at Your School
March 5, 2018Penguins, icebergs, and organizational change, all in a one-hour read. What’s not to love? John Kotter knows as much about change management as anyone in the world. I am embarrassed to say that I had not read Kotter until about two years ago, but perhaps that was actually good. I had to develop my own…
HOW to Change Classroom Practice; Join Us in The Sandbox March 6
February 28, 2018Are members of your school team struggling with HOW to change their classroom practices? The answer is “yes”; we all struggle with this, as many teachers teach the way they learned. We need to provide our teachers with the skills they need to be successful in a deeper learning model, particularly as we ask them…
See the Future in a Million Crystal Balls
February 27, 2018Here’s the problem: We can lose the future if we forget the past, but we can’t win the future with the past as our guide. What does that mean? None of us really know, because for the first time in human history, the past is a decreasingly useful guide to what will work and not…
Real Change, Even in the First Year of a New School Leader
February 26, 2018Four years ago when I published #EdJourney, I posited that significant changes at individual schools might take place over a period of 3-15 years, depending on leadership, intentionality, and focus. I have really never seen an example of significant change (other than in schools where a wolf is at the door) in the first year…
What Does “Community” Mean…Now and in the Future?
February 23, 2018My article on “community” was posted today in Ed Week as a Guest Blog with Next Generation Learning Challenges: I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that there may be no single piece of the education puzzle that is already starting to undergo a more fundamental, radical, and unpredictable evolution than the relationship amongst schools,…
If Your School is Ready to Accelerate Innovation, Join Us!
February 9, 2018The single biggest differentiator in organizations that implement successful, sustainable, value-rich innovation is the move from talk to action. Successful organizations DO. This is why I am so excited to join with the Canadian Association of Independent Schools in developing and offering a year-long Strategic Change Accelerator for schools that are ready to take on…
Tips, Tricks, and Hacks for Designing the Learning Space
February 8, 2018Last fall a school in Connecticut reported that they cancelled plans for a new classroom building, realizing that if they just did internal improvements to their existing classrooms they could achieve all of their goals for “deeper learning” physical spaces and save about $6 million. Every school I visit is space challenged: how do we…
Join Rock Star Jill Gough in The Sandbox Next Week!
January 31, 2018Jill Gough is one of the best educators I know. She has deep and rich background in the classroom and is a master teacher of others. She routinely converts what others think of as the most formulaic of subjects, math, into an experience of deeper learning. She is both a ground-breaker and a safe space…
Strategy is About Surviving Evolution
January 29, 2018Yesterday I spoke with an independent school head who emailed me on my views about strategic planning, how I might help, and who else they should reach out to. Here is what I shared: As I have written and spoken about for almost five years, the traditional independent school strategic plan is ineffective for a…
Final Blog From Amazing Week at Catlin Gabel School
January 26, 2018My big takeaways from observing the Catlin Gabel middle school J-Week: Fun, energizing engaging, rich, fast-paced, student-centered, real-life. Tiring, maybe a bit too full. An incredible pilot that the school can use to drive a deeper learning model across the division. What is next? Gather feedback from all stakeholders. Synthesize and filter the feedback; find…
7th Grade Prototypes of “Art in the Future
January 25, 2018Prototypes in just one of five 7th grade rooms where prototyping of the future is going on: Overall Theme: “Art in the Future” Active prototypes: The intersection of clothing, fashion and architecture. The art of what the world will look like in map form after a decade of sea level rise. Clothing that reflects war,…
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