Journey Reflections After Two Full Weeks

Reflections and Questions From the Second Week

So many miles of stunted, brown corn across the upper Midwest. Sad, but global climate change is not a myth and it has real implications.
Many great lessons we can share from both public and private schools. It is not about the name on the school but what goes on there.
Innovative schools seem to ALL be connected with local colleges, universities, community organizations, businesses, or other schools. These connections are free and powerful drivers. If you are not similarly connected, why not?
If we want to bust silos, what if (particularly in elementary and middle school levels) we had just three blocks of learning: Humanities, STEM, and Art? How would that bring people together to focus on connecting rather than splitting instruction and time? How would that simplify and leverage the daily schedule?
What if every classroom had mostly writable surfaces on walls and cabinet faces? The paint for this is cheap and it would utterly change the relationship between students, actions, information, and teachers.
What if someone kept a log of how much time a teacher is talking, and how much time students are talking? What about the ratio of teacher questions to student questions?
What if we reduced the number of pieces of paper we hand out to students in a year by half? Is there a better way to learn than each student filling out a worksheet?

Thanks again to Bo Adams for recording our weekly interview, and for including a section on systems thinking from my book, The Falconer. Go to Bo’s blog site: I’ts About Learning to check it out.

More than 3,300 blog views in one week. “Wow” is all I can say. Wa it Wavy Gravy who had the great quote at Woodstock? “It’s about all of us, man, we’re all helping each other!” Think there is energy out there to connect with our colleagues and innovate? I would hate to think all those views are out of sympathy for my long hours on the road.

Thanks to all those who are following on Twitter as well (@GrantLichtman). I had several principals, many teachers, and a half-dozen schools start following me this week, so I hope they will push the blog out to others and urge them to connect with the schools I am visiting.

If every educator who follows this journey reaches out and connects with just one other school, think about the thousands of innovative nodes at work!