Organizations innovate either because they want to, need to, or both. This is the story of a school that really needed to innovate, back to the wall and the wolf at the door. After getting past that, they have used those trials to create an organization that is flat, nimble, and open to trying new [...]
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 [...]
At most schools I have visited on this journey I move, visit, peer into classes, talk with different groups of faculty and staff and students. Today I went to essentially one room and talked to one group of teachers and students. But what a “room” and what a group! I seem to be on a [...]
We know that learning content for our students is generally easier than learning skills. The same holds true for adults. As we transform our ideas about how best to prepare our students for the world in which they will live, our teachers need to adapt to new ways of teaching. The “what” of new teaching [...]
The first step in innovation at this time for our schools is recognizing that the world is changing at an increasingly rapid pace, and that these changes are highly relevant to what and how we teach. If a school is not having this conversation, they will not innovate; if they are having this conversation they [...]
I have a few minutes this morning before I go over to the Pomfret School for the day, and am taking time to reflect back on my four weeks of visits. I was impressed last week by Mark Davis at St. Luke’s, who, along with his board chair, went back, dug through the mounds of [...]
(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”. [...]
This won’t be my longest post, but it will be rich in very specific details about how an old, highly respected prep school on the Upper East Side, arguably the Gold Coast of independent education, is changing what K-12 education looks like. It is not radical, but 10 years from now, learning at The Dalton [...]