Tubac, Arizona is just 25 miles from the Mexican border. For centuries it has been at the heart of the borderlands, rich in multicultural traditions and influences. Over time the border itself has been fluid, ephemeral, and often arbitrary. Currently, this area of the border is one of the most active in terms of commerce, [...]
My first interviews of Wisdom Road Leg 2 were in the small town of Tubac, Arizona, about 30 miles north of the border with Mexico. Tubac is like a mini-Santa Fe; a couple of restaurants but about thirty art galleries and flocks of snowbirds at this time of the year. The Santa Cruz River, really [...]
For more than two decades, forward-leaning educators have focused on a set of skills that for some reason all started with the letter "C": creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, etc. I want to add another "C" to that list, one, I would argue, that will be more important to the world going forward than all [...]
A colleague (Gardner Barrier, head of school at Forsyth Country Day School in Winston-Salem) asked me this week if I felt gratitude was a motivator for my Wisdom Road journey. In that moment and from that question I realized that gratitude is probably the principle driver on this complex, challenging, and frequently uncomfortable project. I [...]
How the mighty ripples of school transformation have spread! I just spent two weeks working with Unity Grammar, a K-12 co-ed Islamic faith-based school in Sydney, Australia. Yes, the clothing is different, and prayer time more frequent, but the hospitality, generosity, and fervor with which these edu-leaders want to change the traditional model of education [...]
Is the nuclear family, an icon of the 20th century American dream, a failed human experiment? Hidden within the seven weeks I spent on Leg 1 of Wisdom Road this fall was a feature of rural America that is becoming as extinct as the buffalo that once roamed the plains: large, extended families. As I [...]
The guiding values of McGillis School, in Hebrew and English A visit to the McGillis School in Salt Lake City has made a fine end to Leg 1 of Wisdom Road. McGillis is a K-8 school with several very interesting and almost unique elements that I think make it a sure bet to [...]
Joe White Mountain and his granddaughter, Tabitha Keller, who introduced us. Teaser: Joe reports first hand from an elder who was at Custer's Last Stand: the history books are wrong about how Custer died! If two families have a dispute of any kind, the older people would put on a feed and they [...]
Somewhere on this Sunday morning, church bells ring to call the faithful to kneel before a stained glass reprieve. There ain't nothin' short of dyin'Half as lonesome as the soundOn the sleepin' city sidewalksSunday mornin' comin' down Kris Kristofferson My God, the hues and textures of autumn grassy plains tipped by low morning sunlight, [...]
The real core of our lives is simplicity. There is almost zero chance that anyone who reads this blog got to experience what I did. I don't know many other things in life I can say that about. If a batch of still-warm chocolate chip cookies became sentient and knew how they were welcomed by [...]
