Most educators who read my blog or follow me on Twitter are already in the "deeper learning" choir. You believe that learning should be increasing student-centric; inquiry, project, and thematically-based; incorporating creativity and design more than recitation and regurgitation. Some educators need to re-tool their skills to shift classroom practice to "get there". I don't [...]
One of the most common through-going themes of deeper learning schools is a marked increase in project-based work. One of our best resources for training and implementation of PBL is the Buck Institute. I was happy to contribute my observations to their blog this week with three lessons I have learned from visiting so many [...]
From Dumaguete City, Negros Island, Philippines Changing what we do in schools is uncomfortable, even hard sometimes, certainly complex. But as you ponder the “why, what, and how” of change at your school, in your district, or by your community, as you struggle with the inevitable discomfort and disruptions, take a look at what REALLY complex [...]
Rhetorical question for all educators: do you have or wish you had a really well-scaffolded curriculum? To be honest, I would have thought by now most schools could answer that integrated curriculum maps and tight alignment amongst subjects and grade levels were well in our rearview mirrors; that faculty who work in the same school [...]
I rarely use this space to discuss themes that might be interpreted as political. If the reader interprets this post as political, they are missing the point. This post is about history, knowledge, what we do with knowledge, and the utterly unique role that education plays in that sequence. In the last week I read [...]
And people wondered why the low income school with the mascot of a big wave with fists had a lot of trouble with fighting during recess... The new mascot is the green sea turtle that live in the shallow, southernmost reaches of San Diego Bay just a few steps from the newly renamed and rebranded Bayside [...]
Col. Francis Parker, a contemporary of John Dewey, said that the primary role of education was to instill in students the skills necessary for them to fulfill their roles as democratic citizens. If the events of the last year have taught us anything it is that these skills, and how they are exercised, are being [...]
One of the hallmarks of deeper learning, and certainly one of the drivers of education in the future, will be a breaching of the walls between "school" and "world". Another is demonstration of understanding based on something more authentic than an essay or a test. Yesterday I saw work done by two ex-colleagues at Francis [...]
The way Bo Adams tells it, a couple of weeks ago they had a large group of visitors touring the iDiploma Hive at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School, meeting with one of the student cohorts who are working in teams on various self-selected, long-term design and development projects. A cell phone range and one of the [...]
I have spent less time in early childhood pre-schools than at higher age and grade levels, so it was a treat to learn from Erin Carey at the pre-school division of Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta. What I saw was not only a huge leap beyond the color-and-paste days of my own pre-school days; [...]
