I have been less regular with my blog posts and Twitter stream over the last couple of months. I have been working hard on my new book, including about 60 in-depth phone, video, and in-person interviews and regular writing hours every day. I am happy to report that I am about 80% through the rough [...]
Two years ago on this site we had a "lively" discussion about the nature of "grit" as then popularized by Angela Duckworth, a word that has seeped quickly into the lexicon, mission statements, and even the teaching programs at a diverse range of schools around the country. The point-counter point of "grit", in summary, comes [...]
What if the future is already behind us, and we just don't know it? While this sounds like Twilight Zone fiction, I think the future may be a relative term for school leaders. What is an improbable, fuzzy vision fraught with big obstacles, uncomfortable transitions, and unknowable outcomes for some schools is already in the rear [...]
Want to transform learning? If your school has or can raise $20 million dollars, build a new set of classrooms. Lacking a profound and sustained commitment to changing mindset, pedagogy, and program in how to USE those classrooms, you have just made a enormously wasteful decision. Want to really transform learning? I repeat several of the [...]
Here is what keeps me up at night: this 3D holographic learning is ALREADY a reality. How is your school or district preparing to intersect with a near-future where this is common place? If not, how can "school" be the place where students prepare for their own futures? How can we even put this kind [...]
What is the value of attending an "elite" college? This article in The Atlantic is almost two years old, and most of us, somewhere in the back of our minds, know the key messages. But I ran across it today and am incorporating several of the key takeaways into my thinking about the future of [...]
Change is measured by the passing of time. Whether transformation is personal, organizational, social, regional, or global, change is always a measurement of "something different" on one axis, and "time" on the other. I write almost exclusively about education; I try to know my readers and most of them don't care much about my worldview [...]
Evolution is messy, dangerous, and rough (the opposite of smooth). Some of those who clamber to join the bandwagon of "learning is an ecosystem" look at the world through rose-tinted glasses, where ecosystems are healthy, the grass is lush, all of the denizens eat well, get fat, and die peacefully. Too bad that is not [...]
My shortest, simplest, and perhaps most important blog post. Does your school have a strategy that places it on a trajectory to intersect the future of education in the year 2036? If so, congratulations, and please feel free to share! If the answer is "maybe" or "no", what are you going to do about that? [...]
A place where students can gain self awareness into their unique value; where they can see how they might make a positive impact on the world; and where they can tinker to learn about interests they may never have uncovered. Sounds to me like a darn good mission statement for any school! These are the guiding [...]