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 [...]
I was recently honored to give a short presentation and host a dinner discussion at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. with a group of business officers of independent schools, hosted by First American Education Finance. The theme was "The Why, What, How and Inevitable Future of Education...in 45 Minutes". The "how" and the "future" [...]
NOTHING is as effective in transforming schools as seeing "it" in action. I spent Monday with a visiting team of elementary school teachers from Albermarle County in Virginia as theytoured four elementary schools in Cajon Valley USD, just east of San Diego. Albermarle Supt. and national edu-leader Pam Moran sent the team out to look at [...]
I have two big takeaways from a fast-paced, roiling week of interaction with hundreds of education colleagues in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore this week. The first is a powerful reinforcement of a paragraph early in the introduction for my upcoming book, Moving the Rock: Seven Levers That Will Revolutionize Education (Josey-Bass Education; coming out this [...]
Two years ago, Scott Looney, head of the Hawken School in Cleveland, told me about an idea they had to dramatically enhance high school student assessment and how that might revolutionize the outdated drivers of college admissions. He asked if I thought it would attract support from like-minded school leaders. I told him, simply, "get the first ten schools [...]
I am at The Hill School outside Philadelphia today and tomorrow; I have been working with the humanities departments this year on reimagining their program, offerings, and departmental structure. But this post is not about the humanities; we are prototyping solutions later today and will have have a lot to report by the end of [...]
What is the point at which people are not willing to look beyond the horizon? Next week at the annual NAIS conference (#NAISAC), John Gulla and are are giving a three-hour workshop with the primary goal of pushing education leaders' thinking beyond their current horizons. We will have between 85-100 leaders from something like 60 [...]
The pictures of water exploding through the eroding spillway of Oroville Dam is an opportunity for us to think about the nature of time, and the inevitable forces that control our collective destinies. It is a chance to back away for a moment of learning from the human-centric view of our world that governs most [...]
Keep an eye on Vista Unified School District in California. You may want to add it to your list of visits for your teachers and administrators to see how learning is dramatically changing, even in schools with very significant challenges. I have written extensively about Vista Innovation and Design Academy, and the dramatic positive changes [...]
I work with schools and districts that are in the early stages of transforming to a range of deeper learning models. My thinking on something has been a little bit stuck. How might a school or district, early in the transformation from a traditional to a deeper learning model, self-assess their progress? In those early [...]