Most school communities and leaders say that significant, system-wide change from a traditional to a deeper learning model takes many years. I think we are about to prove that wrong. Thirteen months ago at The Tilton School the entire faculty and staff, most of the board, and a large number of students, came together to begin [...]
The ongoing discourse about "grit" received another jolt with an article by David Denby in the New Yorker (HT David Monaco). Denby adds his arguments in opposition to the oversimplified, or possibly misleading, research and logic of Angela Duckworth which has made the word "grit" a fixture in some schools' mission and vision statements. As we have [...]
Summertime, and the blogging is lazy. Sorry to be lax in my posting. Yesterday I had a great Google Hangout, part of a MOOC created and operated by New Zealand teacher Danielle Myburgh in which, amongst other points of discussion, I share some of the themes of the new book I am working on. Here [...]
Schools need students. That sounds trite, but until a very few years ago, this was not a concern for the vast majority of public schools. By far, the majority of students attended the public school closest to their home. That has now changed, and changed substantially for many American families who have a large and [...]
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 [...]
I have been tracking the progress of the first-ever student-designed and accredited Advanced Placement course. The two author-students, Anya Smith and Emy Schaeffer at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta, have finished the course for the year, and here is Anya's video reflection. I have asked these two student-scholar-pioneers to video in to several summer [...]
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 [...]
What if we ranked hospitals by the number of relatively healthy patients they admitted instead of how well they improved the health of sick people? What if we devoted more resources to making "sort of" sick people well, and fewer resources to healing "really sick" people? Would anyone think those were good measures of an effective [...]
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 [...]