NOTHING is as effective in transforming schools as seeing "it" in action. I spent Monday with a visiting team of elementary school teachers from Albermarle County in Virginia as theytoured four elementary schools in Cajon Valley USD, just east of San Diego. Albermarle Supt. and national edu-leader Pam Moran sent the team out to look at [...]
I have two big takeaways from a fast-paced, roiling week of interaction with hundreds of education colleagues in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore this week. The first is a powerful reinforcement of a paragraph early in the introduction for my upcoming book, Moving the Rock: Seven Levers That Will Revolutionize Education (Josey-Bass Education; coming out this [...]
Two years ago, Scott Looney, head of the Hawken School in Cleveland, told me about an idea they had to dramatically enhance high school student assessment and how that might revolutionize the outdated drivers of college admissions. He asked if I thought it would attract support from like-minded school leaders. I told him, simply, "get the first ten schools [...]
I am at The Hill School outside Philadelphia today and tomorrow; I have been working with the humanities departments this year on reimagining their program, offerings, and departmental structure. But this post is not about the humanities; we are prototyping solutions later today and will have have a lot to report by the end of [...]
What is the point at which people are not willing to look beyond the horizon? Next week at the annual NAIS conference (#NAISAC), John Gulla and are are giving a three-hour workshop with the primary goal of pushing education leaders' thinking beyond their current horizons. We will have between 85-100 leaders from something like 60 [...]
If you think you have it tough as a teacher, administrator, or parent... I just committed to partner with an education NGO in Bulgaria, and to keynote and workshop a conference for about 1,000 teachers, parents, and students in Sofia in November. It is a long way to go, and I am pretty sure I [...]
The pictures of water exploding through the eroding spillway of Oroville Dam is an opportunity for us to think about the nature of time, and the inevitable forces that control our collective destinies. It is a chance to back away for a moment of learning from the human-centric view of our world that governs most [...]
Keep an eye on Vista Unified School District in California. You may want to add it to your list of visits for your teachers and administrators to see how learning is dramatically changing, even in schools with very significant challenges. I have written extensively about Vista Innovation and Design Academy, and the dramatic positive changes [...]
A growing number of those I consider "leading edge" educators are joining an interesting new collaborative, Transcend Education, to share ideas and resources where appropriate on our work with specific schools and districts. It gives all of us an extended set of muscles to help you, the transformational educator, achieve your goals. I have agreed [...]
I work with schools and districts that are in the early stages of transforming to a range of deeper learning models. My thinking on something has been a little bit stuck. How might a school or district, early in the transformation from a traditional to a deeper learning model, self-assess their progress? In those early [...]