For educators, this might be one of those moments you remember for many years to come: when you heard that we are going to radically change and improve how we break down the dam to school innovation that we call the college admissions process. You heard it here first! Yesterday at the NAIS annual conference, Scott [...]
What if one of the most important pillars supporting how and what we teach is wrong? What if you knew that most of our systems of grading, assessment, and promotion are based on faulty assumptions and bad math? What if the emperor had no clothes? This is what Todd Rose sets out to prove in [...]
I am really excited to have connected with colleagues in Canadian schools who are taking a truly hard, sustainable, and determined look at the future of schools. The Canadian Association of Independent Schools new Project2051, brings together many educators and thinkers from outside of education to wipe the board clean, imagine what schools might look like in [...]
I REALLY hate to quote Donald Rumsfeld, but he was right when he said we don't know what we don't know. Over the last two years I have held workshops with well over 5,000 K-12 educators. The schools and districts these people represent cross the spectrum from wealthy, autonomous, and successful, to poor, girdled by [...]
If your school is still doing strategic planning the same way you did five or ten years ago, you are robbing your community of perhaps its most powerful opportunity for the future. What does inclusive, collaborative, imaginative, design-based strategic thinking amongst a community of educators look like? Check out this post from Trinity Episcopal School in [...]
If you are not using your high school students as strategic partners, you are absolutely leaving a valuable resource on the bench. Every time I work with students in design mode, inviting them into the process of designing how to align teaching and learning more closely with the skills and content that is most valuable [...]
It is always GREAT to see proof that expansive design-based thinking leads to tangible change. Last June I was honored to spend nearly three days with the faculty and staff of several schools in Winnetka School District 36. Winnetka has a decades-old commitment to progressive education rooted in the legacy and presence of none other [...]
How long does it take to really change a school? I have previously written that "organic" percolation of ideas might require 12-15 years before we see true system-wide change. Even highly intentional processes need 3-5 years to really take root. What if we shortened our horizon to 6 months? Is it possible? Have courage; it's [...]
How explosive are the fires of school innovation today? Let me tell you. Two years ago southern California was a school innovation desert. Other than the HIgh Tech High charters and the tiny private Grauer School, one would have been hard pressed to find exemplars of deeper learning schools in all of San Diego County. [...]
Innovation takes time; it can be messy and uncomfortable, and there are times when even the keenest designer-thinker might well ask "are we ever going to get 'there'?" And then there is that moment of "ah-hah!", when the expansive thinking, discovery, research, brainstorming, and idea maps snap into focus. At the Tilton School, I am [...]