Change Practice, Not Buildings
May 8, 2016Want 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…
The Future of Education is Already Behind Us
May 3, 2016Here is what keeps me up at night: this 3D holographic learning is ALREADY a reality. How is your school or district preparing to intersect with a near-future where this is common place? If not, how can “school” be the place where students prepare for their own futures? How can we even put this kind…
Another School Dumps AP’s
May 3, 2016I can’t make the argument for getting rid of AP courses any better than Suzanne Fogarty, HOS at Lincoln School in Providence, RI. Listen to her 6 minute interview on NPR for why, what, and how…and the positive responses from across her school community. Is this right for every school? No; nothing is right for…
Relative Value of Elite College Education?
May 2, 2016What is the value of attending an “elite” college? This article in The Atlantic is almost two years old, and most of us, somewhere in the back of our minds, know the key messages. But I ran across it today and am incorporating several of the key takeaways into my thinking about the future of…
Teaching the Really Big Stuff
April 26, 2016Change is measured by the passing of time. Whether transformation is personal, organizational, social, regional, or global, change is always a measurement of “something different” on one axis, and “time” on the other. I write almost exclusively about education; I try to know my readers and most of them don’t care much about my worldview…
Partnership Between University and School for Tailored PD
April 23, 2016As I work on my new book, I am looking at a resurrected model of the Dewey-era “Lab School” for the 21st Century that includes multi-win collaborations amongst schools, colleges, community organizations, and companies. So I was really happy to see that my former school, Francis Parker School in San Diego, has developed a partnership…
Keep An Eye on Developments at Sunshine Coast Academy, B.C.
April 22, 2016Keep your eyes on a new school in western Canada that, when it breaks ground in a couple of years, will bust many of our conceptions about the word “school”. A 35 minute ferry ride from Vancouver, B.C, brings you to the small town of Sechelt, population about 10,000. A few miles to the west of…
One Way to Salvage the American Dream?
April 21, 2016How might educators save what is left of the American dream? A key lesson I tried to convey when I took students on two-week immersion experiences to the Philippines: in the developing world, most families live on the edge of functional bankruptcy every day. While starvation is rare in the Philippines due to plentiful water and…
Sometimes Evolution is Not Pretty
April 20, 2016Evolution is messy, dangerous, and rough (the opposite of smooth). Some of those who clamber to join the bandwagon of “learning is an ecosystem” look at the world through rose-tinted glasses, where ecosystems are healthy, the grass is lush, all of the denizens eat well, get fat, and die peacefully. Too bad that is not…
My Shortest Blog Post
April 16, 2016My shortest, simplest, and perhaps most important blog post. Does your school have a strategy that places it on a trajectory to intersect the future of education in the year 2036? If so, congratulations, and please feel free to share! If the answer is “maybe” or “no”, what are you going to do about that?…
Thinkabit Lab in San Diego: Lighting Fires of Innovation and Imagination
April 15, 2016A place where students can gain self awareness into their unique value; where they can see how they might make a positive impact on the world; and where they can tinker to learn about interests they may never have uncovered. Sounds to me like a darn good mission statement for any school! These are the guiding…
Some Great Research-based Resources via Edutopia
April 14, 2016How do we make decisions about what and how to teach? Effective organizations make decisions based on some measure of objectivity so we are not constantly pursuing personal agendas of the loudest person or strongest interest group. Several schools I work with have wrestled with the idea of creating “Simple Rules” to help guide these…
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