Bold Design Thinking Process To Lead Change Discussion at Pomfret School
October 9, 2012The first step in innovation at this time for our schools is recognizing that the world is changing at an increasingly rapid pace, and that these changes are highly relevant to what and how we teach. If a school is not having this conversation, they will not innovate; if they are having this conversation they…
Reflection, Reminder: On the Importance of Value
October 8, 2012I have a few minutes this morning before I go over to the Pomfret School for the day, and am taking time to reflect back on my four weeks of visits. I was impressed last week by Mark Davis at St. Luke’s, who, along with his board chair, went back, dug through the mounds of…
Commitment to Progressive Roots Spurs Organizational Evolution at Poughkeepsie Day School
October 7, 2012The building which houses the Upper School at Poughkeepsie Day School is steeped in creativity; Thomas Watson and early IBM inventors once worked in the basement, tinkering with ideas that grew into one of the largest and most successful companies in the world. It is only fitting that PDS took over the building in the…
Courage, Commitment Pay Off With New Engine For Innovation at St. Luke’s, New Canaan
October 6, 2012(Aside: there are not many places more beautiful on a sunny fall day than the Hudson River Valley with the trees starting to turn and leaves fluttering onto the winding two-lane from New Canaan to Poughkeepsie. I have to remind myself what it looks and feels like in January, when I will have my walks…
New Icon of Progressive Lab Tradition at The School at Columbia University, NYC
October 5, 2012This will be a somewhat abbreviated post, not because The School at Columbia University has little to report, but because it has become a well-known stop on school tours of the northeast and many of you know their story. I spent an hour and a half with Don Buckley, Director of Technology and Innovation and…
Asking Big Questions Leads to Remarkable New Student Opportunities at Berkeley Carroll, NYC
October 4, 2012Big discussions can lead to big changes, not necessarily in rapid-fire fashion, but at a more comfortable pace. This post is about a school that saw the need for big discussions, had the leadership and courage to enter the arena, and has created some profound ripple-on effects. A dam broke, not only freeing up time…
Systems Thinking Leads to Long-Term View For Students at Trevor Day School
October 4, 2012Teaching context, the weaving together of content, is more powerful than teaching content alone. But teaching context to our students allows them to understand that one set of contextual relationships. Teaching them the skills of how to acquire context allows them to develop context on their own for the rest of their lives. This is…
New Space+Powerful Leadership=Exciting Innovation at Marymount, NYC
October 2, 2012Some organizations innovate because someone comes up with a brilliant idea. Some innovate because they are facing existential risk and failure to do so means closing the doors. At the venerable Marymount School just off Central Park in New York City, a wave of intentional and highly successful innovation started with a problem: “no space”. …
Innovation DNA Breeds Exciting New Learning Opportunities at Dalton School
October 1, 2012This won’t be my longest post, but it will be rich in very specific details about how an old, highly respected prep school on the Upper East Side, arguably the Gold Coast of independent education, is changing what K-12 education looks like. It is not radical, but 10 years from now, learning at The Dalton…
Goals Merge Successful Learning With Innovation at Episcopal Academy
September 30, 2012On this journey I want to visit schools of all kinds to find out what innovation means, and how it is, or is not, taking root. Today’s post is about a school with more than 200 years of tradition, history, and success at fulfilling their mission. Why would a school like that worry about innovation? …
Authentic Community Reflection At An Unscheduled Stop, St. Andrew’s Episcopal
September 29, 2012I made an unscheduled visit to St. Andrew’s Episcopal in Middletown, DE this week. A colleague of a colleague Tweet messaged me in the morning to see if I could come down from Philly. Think about that: someone I had never met face-to-face got ahold of me via a pathway I did not have until…
Week Three Reflections
September 29, 2012I made it to the Atlantic. Top Ten Pieces of Advice for Anyone Else Thinking of Leaving Home for 12 Weeks to Drive All Over and Stay in Cheap Hotels and Eat Bad Restaurant Food: Don’t; you must be crazy Sometimes crazy is what needs to be done Don’t really need more Things I Find…
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