I have had the unique privilege of visiting more than 100 K-12 schools in the last two years, and in virtually every one I found a spark of what the school leaders called “innovation”. A principal or head of school says “you just have to see what Ms. Jones is doing in her classroom; it [...]
What are some key steps to ensuring that innovation takes root at your school, that it is not just a spark in the dark or checking-off-the-box on a laundry list strategic plan? In their article in Harvard Business Review (HT Bo Adams), Scott Anthony, David Duncan, and Pontus Siren of Innosight suggest a 90-day framework [...]
What does student ownership of learning look like? How do even young students rapidly engage when given the freedom to ask expansive questions? Do students really need to start at the bottom of Bloom’s Taxonomy before building to abstraction and synthesis? Do we even begin to tap the insights of students that would contribute richly [...]
As individuals and as schools, do we want to be successful or significant? Great or leading? What are common elements of the disruptions and mutations facing both K-12 and higher education? I was honored to share the stage with Dr. John Fry, president of Drexel University at the annual meeting of trustees and heads of [...]
Perhaps the most powerful driver of traditional, standards-focused education in America is the sense that we have fallen behind many countries in student performance. In our sound-bite world, the nexus of this concern are the results of international exams of math, reading, and writing. As I have written in the past, educators for whom I have [...]
Are your teacher teams working at peak performance to help bring about school innovation and change? It's sometimes easy in the late spring or dog days of August to gather ourselves and build a vision of deep, impactful learning for our students and ourselves. Then the hard work and long days of the school year take hold [...]
"What does a transformed learning space look like? How can I show my teachers what student-owned learning entails? Where can I send them?" These are questions I hear from nearly every school CEO I visit who is seriously trying to evolve the system away from the traditional assembly line model of teacher/subject/routine-centric education. Here is [...]
The classrooms look huge...but only because there is no clutter of "stuff and the minimalist furniture. "All we have to do is focus on the kids and not ourselves." That was principal Sonya Wrisley's response as I gawked at the seemingly vast amount of space that her students have in the newly-opened Design [...]