Save the Date for Deep Dive Collaboration at Martin Institute
October 26, 2013Save the Date: The Martin Institute is offering a one-day Deep Dive conference on June 12, 2014, the day following the annual two-day Summer Conference. The Deep Dive will be a powerful day of active learning and inter-school collaboration on four themes that are key to transforming the learning environment in our schools: Leading Change…
“You Made My Head Hurt”: Highest Praise From Student to Teacher
October 26, 2013“You made my head hurt”, the 10th grader told me during reflection of our three-hour learning block on how to observe, analyze, understand, and communicate about systems. He assured me he meant it in a good way, and that comment immediately went into my top-five all time moments as a teacher. It was my honor…
Creating a Culture of Learning With Students in Poverty: Holy Names School, Memphis
October 22, 2013Is there a place for student-centered school innovation at the crossroads of poverty, test scores, and growth mindset? What does that look like? Many others are tackling this question, but I had the opportunity to see a piece of it today when Laura Dearman of the Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence and I visited Holy…
Independent School Leaders: Unique Collaboration Focuses on Strategic Sustainability
October 17, 2013I am proud and honored to help announce the launch of a unique 9-month collaboration amongst leaders of independent schools to take a new approach to the issue of long-term financial and market sustainability in these times of dramatic change. I have been asked by the partnership of the National Business Officers Association (NBOA) and…
Strategy, Luck, Leadership: School Success Factors via Ian Symmonds and NBOA
October 17, 2013Jeff Shields, President of the National Business Officers Association, posted comments and a link to a white paper by Ian Symmonds, one of our most respected consultants to independent schools and colleges. In the article Ian cites seven factors common to successful tuition-paying institutions, and Jeff invited comment. I did, as follows (it will not…
Three Districts Share Ideas on Moving Off the Assembly Line
October 17, 2013Why do we wait for a conference or a formal gathering set months in advance? Days of intense learning are too infrequent and widely-spread for most educators, which was one of the main topics of discussion during a tremendous, near-spontaneous confab amongst three forward-learning public school districts yesterday. Hosted by Los Altos School District and attended…
#DTK12chat This Wednesday Evening: How Do We Make Design Thinking Accessible to All?
October 15, 2013Every Wednesday evening (9 PM Eastern; 6 PM Pacific) a group of creative, energetic, risk-taking educators gathers for #DTK12chat, a virtual meeting on Twitter about the role and use of design thinking (DT) in K12 education. The pace and quality of the discussion is outstanding, including many links to resources to help others use the…
Learn On Mini-#EdJourney of @Design 39 Campus Team This Week
October 15, 2013The team from Design 39 Campus in Poway Unified is in the SF Bay Area this week visiting schools, Google, and IDEO. I will be with them tomorrow when we gather with teams from Los Altos and Milpitas School Districts to share forward leaning innovations at all three districts. I will post several blogs this…
Re-post: The Busted Bell Curve
October 13, 2013Last spring I wrote three posts in response to extensive research that proves that the bell-shaped curve of human performance is wrong. (I was reminded of it by watching Malcolm Gladwell’s talk about the distribution of performance by students at a range of universities.) The Gaussian distribution lies at the absolute heart of school assessment,…
Malcolm Gladwell Proves I Was Right About College!
October 13, 2013I love being proven right by the likes of Malcolm Gladwell! Pass this along to your college guidance office. When our son, Josh, was a rising junior in high school, we started looking at colleges. He was in the top 10% of his class at a very good independent school; knew he wanted to go…
Best School Mission Statement of the 21st C?
October 12, 2013Does your school mission statement sound pretty much like every other school mission statement? Try this, posted during #satchatwc today by Carrie Ann Gehringer, teacher and coach in Ft. Bragg, CA. She did not mean it to be a mission statement, but I think it would make a GREAT one! Carrie, am so going to…
The Nine Postulates of Systems Thinking
October 11, 2013In two weeks I get to teach a morning lesson in systems thinking to sophomores at All Saints’ Episcopal School. It’s time to brush up on my own writing, Step 3 in The Falconer. The simple steps of systems thinking are so similar to what many of us are now incorporating as design thinking in…
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