One of the pleasures of research is to observe longitudinal change; revisiting a school from time to time provides that window. It was my pleasure to visit the campus of Colorado Academy for the third time in just over a year, and to see evidence of some of the courageous decisions they have made about [...]
Here is the question that education leaders should be screaming to each other and to the world: what is the business of school? For millennia, the business (some of my colleagues think we should not use the word business with respect to education; replace it with purpose if you like) of schools has been to [...]
I am so happy, honored, and to announce that I have signed a contract to publish my manuscript covering my travels and work of the last year with Jossey-Bass Publishers! To be honest, I had never given a lot of thought to who publishes the books I read. But when I started to reach out [...]
Words matter. The first time I saw the word “ecosystem” used to describe a process of learning more attuned to the future needs of our students was by Thomas and Seeley-Brown in “A New Culture of Learning”. It resonated with me; they described the teacher as a farmer who sets out the boundary fences of inquiry [...]
Exactly one year ago I was in my Prius driving through the Carolinas visiting schools and blogging from the road. This morning I am in Greensboro, N.C. and this time the Prius is back home in California. But I get to report on another school, Miami Valley School in Dayton, Ohio, that is taking some [...]
I did not think my afternoon session with the freshmen at All Saints Episcopal School could top the “you made my head hurt” whirl of systems thinking with the sophomores. I may have been wrong. I had a 70-minute learning block with the 9th grade cohort of the Tad Bird Honors College, and with virtually [...]
I just finished reading Creative Confidence by David and Tom Kelley. This is not a review, a summary of design thinking, or an argument on why design thinking is a critical life skill. It is a short list of both intellectual and emotional responses to the book, primarily as it relates to my field of [...]
Save the Date: The Martin Institute is offering a one-day Deep Dive conference on June 12, 2014, the day following the annual two-day Summer Conference. The Deep Dive will be a powerful day of active learning and inter-school collaboration on four themes that are key to transforming the learning environment in our schools: Leading Change [...]
Jeff Shields, President of the National Business Officers Association, posted comments and a link to a white paper by Ian Symmonds, one of our most respected consultants to independent schools and colleges. In the article Ian cites seven factors common to successful tuition-paying institutions, and Jeff invited comment. I did, as follows (it will not [...]
Alyssa Gallagher of LASD K-8 District welcomes the three teams to their iLearn Lab. Why do we wait for a conference or a formal gathering set months in advance? Days of intense learning are too infrequent and widely-spread for most educators, which was one of the main topics of discussion during a tremendous, [...]