Moon-set at dawn from "my" porch. Every time I am in a new place of quiet beauty I thank God for waking early in the morning when the world is new, when the mist is still rising off the lake, two paddling loons trail V-ripple wakes across the shimmering reflection of the setting [...]
This very short post is why we can stop worrying about exactly what "it" is, that place where every great educator knows that real learning is taking place or about to take place or has the future potential to take place. This is what we work for. This from a friend who has taken her [...]
So many models of problem solving start at the end! The creators of this thinking have never looked at the roots of the issue. Solid buildings require foundations; sure they are not pretty and no one sees them and they are hard to dig, but it is the foundation that supports all else. Problem solving [...]
Sun Tzu says: Act after having made assessments. The one who first knows the measures of far and near wins—this is the rule of armed struggle. Yesterday I shared some of Bo Adam’s wisdom about the importance of systems in school transformation. It is so easy to check the box, to say “let’s go through [...]
Yesterday I virtually attended a talk by Bo Adams of Atlanta-based transformational design thinking firm Unboundary, hosted by the Southern Association of Independent Schools. Bo was talking about his visionary Pedagogical Master Planning template that they are starting to beta test at schools. Here are some kernels I Tweeted out during the session; most of [...]
First moral of this story: don’t book your travel with me. If I were a sailor, the crew would have thrown me overboard by now. Last Sunday: watched Denzel Washington crash land a plane in “Flight”. Last Wednesday, Dallas to Richmond. Emergency landing in Nashville, no real explanation. Fly to Atlanta with a connection to [...]
“Flipping” a classroom is wonderful slang; as soon as we learn what it means, the image sticks. Flipping 1.0 is about having students do work outside the classroom that they can do without a teacher present to free class time for personal interaction, questions, discussion, and the kind of face-to-face help that teachers can provide. [...]
I was happy and honored to get many responses via Twitter and on this blog about my two-part comments on the Common Core Standards. Here are some thoughtful conversations in my reading of the last few days. These are not talking-head pundits; they are all educators just like you. Is your school or district creating [...]
Yesterday I wrote a post prompted by comments from Bob Gallagher on the long-term goals of the Common Core Standards. I argued that CCS may be a step in the right direction, but that it is constrained to the same plane of thinking and learning that has defined the industrial age model. It is the [...]
Yesterday I found this blog post by Bob Gallagher, a retired Assistant Superintendent for Instruction, arguing that we have to give the Common Core Standards time to work, that the impatience of Americans often sacrifices long-term vision on the alter of short term results. I have never met Bob, but my bet is that he [...]