Does your school mission challenge you to meet the needs of the individual child? Do you, like most educators in K-12, want to expand the degree to which students are allowed to make choices, to own a greater portion of their learning? Do you recognize that early start days, particularly for teenaged students are detrimental [...]
Keep an eye on the evolution of a powerful new FREE teacher PD resource, the Sanford Inspire Program, out of Arizona State University. Funded by entrepreneur and philanthropist Denny Sanford, they are in the process of building an impressive line-up of free online modules to support teachers, particularly those early in their careers. The modules [...]
How do we know students are engaged in their learning? Do we need sophisticated tools to tell us that students are engaged? Or can we look at the dynamics of the classroom and get a pretty good idea? When I visit schools I poke my head into classrooms. Sometimes I am asked to sit down [...]
Can a non-charter public school in California, with near-the-bottom public funding per student, truly transform learning? As you know I have been closely following Design 39 Campus in Poway Unified, where the guiding principles are: Nurture creative confidence Practice design thinking Encourage inquiry Connect globally Use technology Promote courage Instill a growth mindset Well, here [...]
Yes, we CAN make substantial change in even underperforming schools in underserved communities, and the answer does NOT have to lie in longer hours and drilling for tests. The answer can lie in what John Dewey and the other giants of the Progressive Era of education defined more than 100 years ago: student experience, engagement, and ownership [...]
You can now read the full text of my article in Independent School Magazine on the collection and synthesis of the 2,000 "what if" questions I gathered from school communities all over the country in the last 24 months. Here is the key graphic that does not show up in the online article: Hopefully our collective [...]
What if schools were what we wanted them to be? Why are they not? As many of you know, I have collected more than 2,000 questions from teachers, administrators, parents, and students around the country over a period of more than 18 months. (HT Bo Adams was the first of many that I know of [...]
What if schools became the actual learning and innovation hub of the community, rather than an island where students and teachers go to download subject knowledge? I recently visited a school that is thinking of renovating some existing space, or creating a new building, modeled along the lines of the growing number of enterprise incubators [...]
What if every school set aside time for the students and teachers to deeply explore learning through the lenses of key all-school guiding principles? What if we aligned resources like time and teachers around those principles that we think lead to great learning, rather than silo-ed subjects? Design 39 Campus in Poway continues to blow [...]
Does design thinking run the risk of being the next buzzword in K-12 education? The theme of the recent National Association of Independent Schools conference highlighted design and innovation. One could not throw a rock without finding a session purported to link design thinking to learning. Many educators have realized that actually finding problems, asking [...]