The school I visited on Friday in Boston is the smallest I will see on this trip, just 43 students in grades 6-12 on the third floor of a brick building on Beacon Street. Many will be tempted to dismiss the lessons from such a school as not applicable to their own issues and opportunities. [...]
If you work at an independent school and think that what your school does in preparing students for their future is worth $20,000-$50,000 a year, read on. If you work at a public school and think that the politics, demographics, and inertia of public education commit public education in America to either mediocrity or a [...]
(Aside: there are not many places more beautiful on a sunny fall day than the Hudson River Valley with the trees starting to turn and leaves fluttering onto the winding two-lane from New Canaan to Poughkeepsie. I have to remind myself what it looks and feels like in January, when I will have my walks [...]
Big discussions can lead to big changes, not necessarily in rapid-fire fashion, but at a more comfortable pace. This post is about a school that saw the need for big discussions, had the leadership and courage to enter the arena, and has created some profound ripple-on effects. A dam broke, not only freeing up time [...]
Some organizations innovate because someone comes up with a brilliant idea. Some innovate because they are facing existential risk and failure to do so means closing the doors. At the venerable Marymount School just off Central Park in New York City, a wave of intentional and highly successful innovation started with a problem: “no space”. [...]
The existential issue in education of our time, particularly in the public sector, is the tension between teaching to the test and teaching for the skills that students will actually need in their futures. It is unlikely that I will see that issue playing out any more clearly on my journey, and with a good [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Any educator interested in truly experiential learning could easily spend a week with Sheila Gurley and her team at The College School, a 260-student preK-8 in St. Louis. I am only going to be able to hit the highlights, but if you want to know how and why schools of the future are alive and [...]