The American experiment, which now seems so natural to us, is a thoroughly artificial device designed to counterbalance the natural impulses of group suspicions and hatreds. . . . This vast, artificial, trans-tribal construct is what our Founders aimed to achieve. And they understood that it can be achieved effectively only by intelligent schooling. (From E. D. [...]
When you are riding a bike and the wind is in your face, you think of little else other than, "when will I turn a corner and have the wind at my back?" When the wind is at your back, you tend to fairly quickly forget the boost you are being given. This is the [...]
While this space is used exclusively for matters related to education, we increasingly must find and deal with the Venn overlap of social, economic, and political trends that both reflect and impact the ecosystem of which education is just one element. What we teach/learn, and how we teach/learn MUST recognize the reality of the world [...]
America is not rural Nebraska. America is not suburban California. America is not 1955 and it is most certainly not 1776, 1863, or 1908. America is ALL of America, equal parts past, present, and future. Sen. Ben Sasse knows this…at least some of it. In Part One of this three-part blog series on Sasse’s book [...]
If you have not joined us in a Sandbox event yet, you are missing out on the post-Twitter chat revolution of education collaboration and professional learning. These are FREE one-hour face-to-face live video discussions with break-out rooms for small group interaction AND Guest Rock Stars who are leaders in their respective fields of deeper learning. [...]
What if all teachers told their students, "We are all learners, starting with me"? How would that change our school cultures? How would that shift the frame of schools from teaching to learning? How would that encourage a more intrinsically engaged relationship between teachers and students? As many of you know, my daughter, Cassidy, was [...]
Educators have often been confronted with uncomfortable, and sometimes life-changing questions: When is it acceptable to take a controversial stand? When is it imperative? When should we follow a community consensus and when must we lead in opposition to community norms? On which issues do leaders rise, even when the threat of doing so is [...]
I teared up watching 3-star Air Force General Jay Silveria speak to the entire Air Force Academy yesterday, praying that we find and elect THIS kind of leader to our political system. But more so, I found myself wondering how powerfully educators could heal the widening divisions in the American and global social fabric if we ALL [...]
I'm pretty good at distilling, summarizing, synthesizing, and then sharing; it is what I do best for my fellow educators. I certainly don't arrive at big ideas by myself. Most are the products of interactions with "others", which stew for some time in my mental crock pot before they are ready for consumption. I am stumped [...]
It is a pretty fair estimate that 7,000-10,000 American educators participate in at least one education Twitter chat each month of the school year. I also asked the EdCamp foundation to estimate about how many American educators attended at least one of these day-long events in the last year. Their best estimate is in the range [...]
