What are the common obstacles to innovation in a school? What are the characteristics of a leader who can routinely overcome those obstacles? In my book #EdJourney, I identified fear, inertia, silos, and college admissions as some of the key obstacles to innovation and school. Now we can drill down into, and learn lessons from, similar studies [...]
How can your school best create the conditions that support innovation? There are essentially three broad levels of concern that take up the attention of innovation-oriented educators: The 10,000 Foot Level: creating a powerful, value-laden, forward-leaning vision, and building towards it through long-term strategies. The 3,000 Foot Level: creating and sustaining the processes and practices [...]
Can students create their own Advanced Placement course? I guess so! I just talked to Katherine Jones and Anya Smith, two juniors at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School in Atlanta. They wrote, developed, submitted, are "taking", and have now been accredited for an AP Language Arts course. According to them it appears to be the first student-written [...]
In the aftermath of Paris, people of good will are wrestling with perhaps the existential question of our time: can we fight our way to peace, or does the solution lie in following those greatest teachers of our time—Gandhi and King—who argued that we can never “drive out darkness with darkness in kind, but only with [...]
Why does your school community still charge itself for expensive textbooks when fully accredited resources are available for free? For some schools the answer is simple: they are controlled by local and state requirements to use certain books. For other schools where these overly prescriptive regulations do not apply, news out of the Hewlett Foundation [...]
Let’s call her Jane. I met her last night. Jane is a white 9th grader from a well-to-do New York City family who attends what we all would call an “elite” independent high school. Her parents passionately believe in the power of a good education, as well as a well-rounded and balanced life. Jane has [...]
I love surprises in education and if you do, too, read on! Yesterday afternoon when I walked past the McGehee School in the heart of the New Orleans garden district, a neighborhood block clustered around an historic mansion, my first thought was “traditional girl’s school”. And when I got briefed this morning about the Regio-style [...]
This is HUGE for these kids. Ortiz Middle School (#ortizms) is a traditionally poorly performing school in Santa Fe, NM with almost 100% underserved students. Exactly one year ago, the overwhelmingly predominant learning style was "sit and get"; students lacked engagement and enthusiasm; they politely did their worksheets and listened to their teachers. The teachers decided to take [...]
If you are one of the nearly 500 people who already read my blog on Hobsonville Point Secondary School in New Zealand, you might want to follow this link to Claire Amos' blog that offers a great deal of detail about the boundary conditions of the school. It is a great guidepost and example of what [...]
Last week in New Zealand I visited a high school that may well be the exemplar for global high schools of the future. Hobsonville Point Secondary School (HPSS) on the outskirts of Auckland is just two years old, and only has about 20% of its build-out student population. It has been designed, physically and pedagogically to break [...]