Biggest Problem to Solve for Independent Schools? A Quick Pulse Check
January 18, 2021In our free monthly “If Not Now?” gathering, John Gulla and I asked attendees (mostly independent school folks for this event) to discuss and then post the biggest problem that needs solving at their school. It was no surprise that financial sustainability came in at Number 1; we have known for decades that the independent…
We Are Not In Kansas Any More
January 15, 2021For at least the last decade I (and many others) have been focusing your attention on our “rapidly changing world”. Education writ large has been remarkably slow in adapting to this rate of change, at least until now. Last spring I wrote about the nature of exponential rates of change, and how that acceleration is…
Strategy Now Focuses on Change
January 5, 2021Nothing could be more true for K-12 education than this by a team of seasoned management consultants writing in the MIT Sloan Management Review: A fundamental assumption underlying traditional approaches to strategy is that industry boundaries and economics remain broadly stable over time. This assumption is no longer realistic… Change, not stability, are the key…
The Richest 45-Minutes of Educator Collaboration?
December 16, 2020As many of you know, in October John Gulla of the EE Ford Foundation and I launched “If Not Now?” a free, monthly meet-up where we host an especially provocative guest within a fast, interactive 45-minute format. You can still register for future sessions here; we have an outstanding set of guests and topics…
The Twilight Of the Age Of Reason?
December 2, 2020Reason has been a key tool in the human tool chest for untold millennia. For about 500 years, reason has been amplified by the rise of science. What I think many people fail to understand is that science and reason are not about proving an absolute truth. They are about gathering a body of evidence that…
Classroom Resources: Separating Fact From Fiction
November 21, 2020“Information Literacy is THE critical education mission now and well into the future”. Superintendent Ken Wallace is shouting what so many of us are feeling at this moment of balance in our nation’s history, and perhaps in the arc of human history. For millenia, humanity has struggled with what to believe, with contrary narratives from…
Time To Plan For Post-Pandemic
November 16, 2020It is time to plan for the beginning of the end of the pandemic. With the still-tentative, but growing good news about vaccines, we can hope with some degree of confidence that, after what is about to be a very rough winter, some degree of normalcy may begin to return in the spring. For schools,…
Can We Capture the Joy Of Being In School Again?
November 10, 2020What if kids loved going to school? Hasn’t this been one of our dreams pretty much forever, from the dog days of September and the endless days of Spring when we were young, to our adult lives in the classroom as teachers? What if school was something that students looked forward to, rather than a…
What Is the Cost of Democracy?
October 24, 2020Roughly $265, for me, on this weekend. That is the approximate cost of gas and hotel to drive and stay in Phoenix to volunteer as a poll observer this weekend. The role of observers is to watch for, and report, anything untoward at a polling place, and I both hope and expect it will be…
An American Rubicon: Watching History Unfold
October 12, 2020Education is about passing along the lessons of the past to better prepare our students for the future. I believe we are seeing one of the most profound moments in our nation’s history play out in real time, a tipping point that may well spell the end of the Great American Experiment. While most of…
Educators: Unite Around Reality of Climate Change
September 14, 2020Wildfires in the North American west, increased frequency of hurricanes in the American south and flooding in the midwest, all have one thing in common: heat transfer. For the remaining climate change deniers, there is only one real question left: will this new normal last decades, or much, much longer? As a geology student at…
Learning Means Learning “We”
September 7, 2020Are we finally at a tipping point, in the long march for equality? Will the events of 2020 prove transformative or ephemeral? A chat this morning with my colleague Padme Raina at Ashbury College School in Ottowa about their budding pluralism project reenforces the idea that the answer to these questions come down to one…
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