Is “Active Engagement” the Key Characteristic of Effective Teaching?
September 2, 2014On this Labor Day, remember that schools are founded in the people who work there. A 2013 Gallup Survey found that: Seven in 10 American workers are “not engaged” or are “actively disengaged” in their jobs, are “emotionally disconnected” from their workplaces, and are “less likely to be productive,” according to Gallup’s recently released study,…
Industrial Age Education Dies So Learning Ecosystem Can Thrive: D39C
August 29, 2014I am so honored and lucky to have been involved in the creation of Design 39 Campus, the new K-8 school in Poway Unified School District. Leading education reporter Katrina Schwartz does a better job than I have in the past of painting a picture of D39C, so check out her article in MindShift and…
Transformative First Week of School at Ortiz! Follow/Share Their Journey
August 29, 2014Success, even in little steps, sure is great! The 6th grade teaching team at Ortiz MS in Santa Fe, N.M. should be absolutely BEAMING about how they transformed the first week of middle school, one of the toughest times in a student’s life, into one of the best. And I really want you to follow…
St. Andrew’s Leading in K-12 Brain Research…and In Aligning Strategy to Vision
August 29, 2014Is your school community aligned behind a well-defined group of forward-leaning, system-wide learning initiatives? Are you busting or re-enforcing silos with your strategic thinking? Are you using the most recent research in neuroscience to help craft learning routines and differentiate learning opportunities for each child? I had a full day to work with the faculty, staff…
Rapid Prototyping Leads to Insight on Process and Program at Ethel Walker School
August 28, 2014Why don’t we use faculty meetings for deep and collaborative thinking? Why do trustees and faculty work on parallel tracks that almost never cross? Does our school have a portfolio of value-generating innovative projects in the pipeline that will mature over the next 1-3 years? These are some of the expansive questions we asked and…
Dear Secty. Duncan: Find the Problem; Solve the Problem
August 26, 2014Dear Secretary Duncan, You can’t have it both ways: if the emphasis on testing is “sucking the oxygen” out of schools, delaying teacher assessments based on student testing for a year is not a solution. That is the same kind of push-it-down-the-road Band-Aid for which Washington DC has such a deserved, and unfortunate reputation. Over-emphasis…
Are Student-Teacher PLC’s the Next Generation of Collaboration?
August 23, 2014Where is the student voice in our educator Twitter chats? Why are PLC’s teacher-centric? How might we break the silo boundary between teacher professional growth and student learning? I get at least one good idea nearly every time I visit a Twitter chat. This morning I grabbed a seat at the #satchatwc (hosted today by education…
Build Global Student Connections: a Chat with Students at Albany High School, Auckland
August 22, 2014Are your students looking for global connections with other students who are designing their futures? How might we radically enhance student-student global connections to build capacity in our learning ecosystems? Read on! I had a wonderful skype session yesterday with students and their teacher, Katriona Main, at Albany Senior High School in Auckland, N.Z. As…
My Mythbusters Idea!
August 22, 2014Just so there is NO argument about who submitted this brilliant idea to the Mythbusters, I just sent this in! Title: No-Cost Power From Electrical Transmission Lines Myth: Can a homeowner living adjacent to high-voltage electrical transmission lines harvest enough ambient EM energy from the transmission lines to power their home? Background: Harvesting small amounts…
The State of Joy
August 21, 2014What is the difference between joy and the pursuit of happiness? In my last post I commented on my day at Holy Child School in Potomac, MD, and how we discovered that one word amongst hundreds in their visioning and guiding documents stood out to so many in the room: Joy. Science teacher Reesh Powers…
What If We Were Guided by Joy?
August 19, 2014At most schools I work with, we spend at least some time “parsing the vision”, highlighting key words and phrases in a schools guiding documents: mission, vision and philosophy statements, key learning goals, portraits of the graduate, etc. Why? We find that many of these documents contain words and phrases around which there is a…
#EdJourney Available on iBooks!
August 17, 2014Publisher Jossey-Bass has just announced that my new book, #EdJourney, is available now for download on iBooks! Go here and read all of the narratives and details of my travels across America, 89 days on the road in my Prius, meeting with hundreds of educators at 64 schools to find out how schools are successfully…
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