Culture First
November 29, 2016A theme that comes up in every school I work with, and again today: Change at schools does not start with a shift in the daily schedule, the individuals in the room, the classrooms in which we teach, or a curriculum scaffold. Those will come in time. But first, change is about culture. It is…
2016 Elections Increase VUCA in Education
November 26, 2016Twenty years ago, “disruptive innovation” was introduced to educational lexicon by Clayton Christensen largely within the context of technology. Personal computers and rapid new technological inventions were going to fundamentally change the system of schools. A decade ago, flattened global economic relationships were going to fundamentally change schools as we shifted learning to prepare students…
Truth and Democracy: An Existential Choice for Educators
November 17, 2016Col. Francis Parker, a contemporary of John Dewey, said that the primary role of education was to instill in students the skills necessary for them to fulfill their roles as democratic citizens. If the events of the last year have taught us anything it is that these skills, and how they are exercised, are being…
Award-Winning Student Film on US-Mexico Border Issues: Learning Beyond Classroom Walls
November 15, 2016One of the hallmarks of deeper learning, and certainly one of the drivers of education in the future, will be a breaching of the walls between “school” and “world”. Another is demonstration of understanding based on something more authentic than an essay or a test. Yesterday I saw work done by two ex-colleagues at Francis…
Turn On Your Radar Screen
November 14, 2016Regardless of your politics, there is no question that the elections last week were revolutionary, and the potential impacts widespread. It is way too soon, with such volatility, to know for sure what those impacts will be for schools, communities, or individuals who comprise those communities. But if there ever was a time to make…
Aligning Physical Learning Spaces to Pedagogy
November 3, 2016i have been fortunate to both design new learning spaces in a major school renovation, and to see dozens of examples of new and re-tooled learning spaces. A virtual meeting with a pioneering school group yesterday to talk about a new school building, gave me the chance to think about the boundary conditions I would…
Process Before Product
November 2, 2016In the next ten days I will work with five very different schools/districts, and all five are (amongst other things) thinking deeply about curriculum. I am not a curriculum expert at all, but here is what I do know: curriculum is a tool of learning. Tools are at the far end of a logic model or…
Models Don’t Work Without Plastic and Glue
November 1, 2016We model success for others. Great teachers model success for their students; principals for teachers; coaches for their athletes. Consultants are known for the models they bring, models that can be clear, helpful solutions, but also overly-simplified cookbook recipes that sound great but often just don’t fit all of us. I was thinking about models yesterday…
Conversation on Innovation with StartEdUp
October 29, 2016For most of you who follow my blog, the conversation I had with Don Wettrick and Hunter Stone yesterday will likely be old hat. That is because you are on the leading edge! Perhaps there are others at your school who are now ready to transform to a deeper learning system…so share! Don and Hunter are…
Digging Deeply Into “Portrait of a Teacher”
October 27, 2016A thoughtful colleague at one of my client schools (anonymous now but not for long) wants to create a “portrait of a teacher” for and with her faculty. It is a great challenge: we need to know what we are aiming for if we want to hit it. She sent me some proposed questions for…
“We Are Not a Class; We Are a Start-up!”
October 26, 2016The way Bo Adams tells it, a couple of weeks ago they had a large group of visitors touring the iDiploma Hive at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School, meeting with one of the student cohorts who are working in teams on various self-selected, long-term design and development projects. A cell phone range and one of the…
Pre-Schoolers Own Design-Centered Learning at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian
October 25, 2016I have spent less time in early childhood pre-schools than at higher age and grade levels, so it was a treat to learn from Erin Carey at the pre-school division of Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta. What I saw was not only a huge leap beyond the color-and-paste days of my own pre-school days;…
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