Like many of you, I was captivated by the testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. While we all have personal and political stakes in the outcome, I would hope that we can start to come to consensus on at least something with respect to the issue of sexual misconduct. In nearly [...]
Strategic change is the new normal for schools as the marketplace of K-12 education becomes increasingly differentiated and customer-driven. For more than five years, the Canadian Association of Independent Schools has been leading the way in looking deeply into this future and helping schools start to make truly strategic changes. Last summer I partnered with [...]
Design thinking is an appropriate rage. The routines embedded in DT push us to imagine and design solutions that we otherwise would have likely never encountered. But sometimes we gloss over that key word "design". I see school teams rush to create solutions before they have a clear set of "design parameters". Lacking clear design [...]
You know I am a huge fan of Edutopia. They are the default site to visit if you are looking for ideas about what a deeper learning experience can be in your classroom or school. For five years I have been saying that many schools would transform themselves if teachers could just see what "it" [...]
How might we create classrooms that engage students and give them greater ownership of their learning? So many of the teachers I interact with tell me, "I just need to see what 'it' looks like". The growing library of short videos you can find at Edutopia provides just that. In just a few minutes, you [...]
An old friend who, way back in our 20's, called me a pine nut-eating tree hugger and the like, posted on Facebook today this image, and the note that "learning how to let things go is my biggest lesson right now. It feels so much lighter." She teaches kids with special learning needs, so you [...]
As the diversity of learning options for families continues to explode, fewer families choose to go to their neighborhood school just because it is close. While I don't have national data for ALL schools, I think we know that the most important driver of school selection is word-of-mouth. What we hear from our friends, family, [...]
There is one simple reason that coal-fired steam engines in trains and ships were rapidly replaced by oil-fired, then diesel, electric, and even nuclear power. No matter how fast you shovel, you can't make that steam engine go any faster. This is my new favorite picture for K-12 educators. We reached the limit of effective [...]
A short post, inspired by the daily sharing of Seth Godin, who was kind enough to spend a half hour with me on the phone this week. (It is a pretty great day when your daughter texts, "Seth Godin made dinner for us; he's really a great guy and is interested in what you are [...]
As we get ready to launch a new learning year, let’s laser-focus on a very simple reality: Schools, like every other organization that lives in a competitive marketplace, have just two “keys to sustainable success” according to strategy guru Michael Porter: good strategy and highly effective operational systems. Operational effectiveness means that your school is [...]
