Once in a while I get the pleasure of working deeply with students, asking the adults to sit back and watch how their students expand and rise to unbounded, untested, unknown mini-challenges. That was the kind of day we had at the Shipley School last fall; here are just a few minutes out of our [...]
What might we learn by looking in our own rearview mirror? In reading Rise of the DEO by Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland, I noted the quick sketches of life/career by some of their interviewees. I grabbed a flip chart pad and knocked together my own career/passion pencil scribble in less than ten minutes. And [...]
As we search, dig, and devise ways to make K-12 education more relevant to the demands of the 21st Century, do we overlook what has been working for the last 100 years? Are the answers right in front of us? Many of us argue that this is, indeed, the case, but few have made the case [...]
Does your school mission challenge you to meet the needs of the individual child? Do you, like most educators in K-12, want to expand the degree to which students are allowed to make choices, to own a greater portion of their learning? Do you recognize that early start days, particularly for teenaged students are detrimental [...]
Grant Lichtman…author, speaker, educator, facilitator, innovation partner, “Chief Provocateur”…will be in New Zealand for ULearn 2015. Might we connect at your school during October 13-16? Grant keynotes, consults with, and facilitates workshops for both private and public schools and school groups interested in building a capacity for innovation and change. Grant is the author of [...]
Stephen Valentine, a member of the editorial board of Columbia University's highly respected Klingenstein Center "Klingbrief" publication published the following short review and recommendation of #EdJourney yesterday, entitled "Our Very Own Kerouac": Many educators know about Grant Lichtman’s recent road trip. He visited 64 public and private schools in 89 days, talking deeply with hundreds of [...]
Are "no excuses" the new "grit"? Last year in this space we shared a deep dive into the evolving meanings and educational efficacy of "grit" as popularized in the studies and writings of Angela Duckworth and others. Yesterday I bumped into similarly disorienting experiences with the term "no excuses". I visited ground zero of the growing [...]
Honored that Jossey-Bass Education featured #EdJourney as their K-12 book of the week! I have been moderating some Twitter ed-chats, and have a few more lined up for the fall. It is a great way to get our thinking focused on the keys to school innovation; if you know a Twitter chat moderator who might [...]
A major pitfall I find amongst schools that want to shift their learning practices is a mis-alignment of resources to a new organizational vision. Where schools get this right, innovative change is systemic and sustainable; where they fail, change is isolated, episodic, and often ephemeral. Sonoma Country Day School is a 35-year old K-8 independent school [...]
What is the difference between a "great" school and a "leading" school? Which would you like to be? Where would you choose to send your own child? How might a school be both? I spent several hours with Kim Diorio, second year principal at Palo Alto High School yesterday. Paly High is as close to being a private school [...]