Day 3: Innovation in Action at Colorado Academy
September 11, 2012Wow, what a way to start my three-month journey. If you want to know how a school has made real progress at the process of re-inventing themselves to meet the challenges of the future, visit with the folks at Colorado Academy (CA). In this post I will try to summarize two main areas I learned…
Day 2: World As Teacher
September 10, 2012Day 2: Crossing Utah and Colorado There will be a learning lesson here, but first please permit me a Sabbath reflection. Sunrise, five miles west of Salina, open road but for a few early morning long-haul truckers, bottom land rich in ripe alfalfa bounded by rising buttes of banded red and white, Neil Young “Helpless”…
Day 1: Connect School to the World
September 9, 2012Day 1; Richfield, UT From a very experienced science teacher, old school, but passionate about his students, as he wished me a safe journey yesterday: “Get out there. We won’t know what we need to do unless we know what is possible”. Thanks, Dave! If you feel cramped in classrooms, cubicles, or just…
Journeys
September 7, 2012LOOK AHEAD: Visits during week of September 10 Denver: Colorado Academy, Denver Montessori, St. Anne’s Episcopal, Denver Green School Kansas City: Barstow, Pembroke Hill The nature of comfort and risk are skewed to our life experience. I try, utterly unsuccessfully of course, to empathize with those who have experienced war, devastating personal loss, or just…
Schools Should Be In The Wisdom Business
September 6, 2012Schools are in the knowledge business. We need to be in the wisdom business. Let’s find the fusion of those two. Great educators know this is true. We look back on our own lives and know that our moments of success come more from clarity and experience that lead us to make wise decisions than…
T-Minus Three Days: Share, Learn, Grow!
September 5, 2012T-minus three days! As you know, over the next three months I will be meeting with hundreds of educators at more than 50 leading independent, charter, and public schools around the country, each with a unique story to tell about how they are evolving their organizations to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world.…
Connect, Share, Learn: Main Goals of Journey of Learning
September 2, 2012This time next week I will be on the downhill ride to Denver to start my 3-month Journey of Learning with visits to a quartet of outstanding schools: Colorado Academy, St. Anne’s Episcopal, Denver Montessori, and the Denver Green School. Each are embracing innovative programs to help their students succeed in the challenges of their…
More on Jazz, Rhythm, Leadership, Learning
August 31, 2012Thanks Bo Adams for Tweeting me a link to the Harvard Business Review Idea Cast interview with management professor and jazz musician Frank Barrett, talking about his book “Yes to the Mess”. It is a great 20-minute piece and I encourage you to listen to it. I won’t repeat all of his wonderful images and…
Roger Fisher, Author, Peacemaker, My Uncle, Dead at 90
August 29, 2012Roger Fisher, co-author of one of the great books of our generation, “Getting to Yes”, and co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project, died last week at age 90. Roger was my uncle (well, first cousin, once removed actually) and one of my heroes. If you don’t read farther than this first paragraph, remember this: “Getting…
Rhythm, Frequency, Empathy, Learning
August 29, 2012Once again I am inexorably drawn to the root cause of our dissatisfaction with the current process of education. It remains deeply ensnared in a manufactured, assembly line design when our instincts as educators, our vision, our understanding of the information age, all tell us that we should attend to the lessons of the natural…
The Nature of Learning via Holly Chesser
August 28, 2012What is the nature of learning, as opposed to the nature of education? Holly Chesser, with SAIS, posted a story yesterday about a high school math student who, two weeks into the semester had already pretty much given up any future in math. She just was not grasping some foundational construct, and in math, you…
Leading Systemic Change at Poughkeepsie Day School
August 28, 2012One school started the new academic year with back-to-school faculty professional growth day yesterday, and there is a good chance this school will never be the same. When Josie Holford, (@JosieHolford) head of K-12 Poughkeepsie Day School shot me an email two days ago about this, I could see a dense web of critical leadership…
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