Creating a shared "North Star" vision of where you want to go is one of the first and most critical steps of changing your school. Each school with which I have worked has fashioned their own unique North Star, and I discuss these steps at length in Thrive. These North Stars have taken varied forms [...]
Here is a very simple way to start your school's new year and decade. Jean Case, in her book Be Fearless, distills five common elements of people and organizations that are effective change makers. There is really nothing new here; we have been shouting this for well over the last decade in K-12 education. But [...]
Why do some schools change and others do not? Why do some schools change quickly, while others take decades? Having visited and worked with more than 200 schools and districts in the last seven years, I am convinced it is not a function of demographics, school type, geography, or socio-economics. The key, I have found, [...]
Schools are full of myths; we create and perpetuate them all the time, which adds to the inertia that resists needed change. I have been fighting against the "small class sizes are always better" myth, and the "we can't ged rid of our AP's" myths for many years. Multiple studies have busted myths about the [...]
Several weeks ago I was visiting and working with an independent high school in New England that is fortunate to be blessed with wonderful new classrooms, some wooded acreage, and small class sizes. As I wandered on my traditional observational tour, I noticed that students seemed to be spending most of their time at their [...]
Do you see real-world learning as a disruptive challenge at your school or district? You want to provide those potentially life-changing, highly relevant experiences that break the artificial boundary between "school" and "world", but just can't see how to re-imagine time, space, and required subject patterns? The great news is that you don't have to [...]
I met a young woman this weekend. Her neighborhood high school is considered quite good. It is in a largely white, middle and upper-middle class section of southern California. Largely on her own, with the support of her parents, she has "hacked together" a completely personalized high school learning experience. She takes online courses at [...]
I have visited a LOT of schools in the last decade. It takes something special to shorten my breath, to stop me dead in my tracks, so full of wonder and questions that I just want to sit down, boil a pot of tea, and shut up and listen for a few hours or a [...]
High school students gather in cross-grade teams to ideate ways to advance one of four big themes for the future. Strategic plans should reflect the vision of a school community. Most do not. Most plans are the result of relatively shallow input from some school stakeholders, followed by a rapid synthesis by a [...]
Breakout space Last week was packed with learning and sharing for me, so I am going to do a set of very short blogs. First up is the INCREDIBLE new high school building at Mt. Vernon School in Atlanta. Followers will know that I have viewed Mt. Vernon as an exemplar, leading-edge school [...]
