Category: Learnings

Getting Smart’s columnist Kyle Wagner wrote an article titled “12 Shifts to Move from Teacher-Led to Student-Centered Environments.” Let’s examine 6 of those 12 shifts today and then, just for fun, assign a grade to how well the traditional school system is executing these changes. Wagner writes, … “In my work with aspiring agentic schools…

One of the criticisms facing learning pods and microschools is that they allow families to choose segregated environments by which to educate their children. We’ve talked before about the possibility of a group of Nazi families forming their own group of young learners to teach the teachings of Adolph Hitler, along with reading, writing, and…

Earlier this month, Tom Vander Ark, Chief Executive Officer at Getting Smart, posted an article titled “The State of the American High School in 2024.” Vander Ark writes, “Over the past 120 days we’ve conducted tours of over 50 high schools in more than 1,000 classrooms across various cities including Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Northern…

The last topic I thought I would write about for A Better Path to Learning was beavers. That’s right, the cute little animal with buck teeth. But as I read a recent article about our furry friend, and the impact it’s making within the city of London, England, I started to think about a connection…

My friend Nate McClennan, Vice President of Strategy & Innovation at Getting Smart, along with his associate Jordan Luster, published an article earlier this month titled “Small Schools, Big Umbrella: Expanding, Defining and Scaling the Microschool System.” McClennan and Luster write, “Microschools, while not a new concept, are currently garnering increasing attention as an educational…

There’s too much time spent discussing the teacher autonomy issue, and not enough time focusing on the importance of student voice moving forward. A recent issue of ASCD’s Educational Leadership focused entirely on the importance of teacher autonomy and why there wasn’t more of it in our K-12 system. Two articles caught my attention. The…

I don’t spend enough time trying to understand the conservative’s viewpoint these days. Like a lot of liberal-leaning folks, I tend to tune out the right, especially since most of their thinking seems to be skewed by Donald Trump. But I did read with interest an article appearing in The Atlantic  recently. Mike Hixenbaugh, a…

Friday will be the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. But as The 74 online reported last week, our public schools are more segregated today than 30 years ago. Why is…

One of the exceptional moments I saw at our personalized learning lab school years ago was when a group of learners became a team of learners. When that happened, individual learning stopped for the most part and collective learning began. It’s one of the reasons I believe 90% of the young learners gained 4 ½…

Here’s an excerpt from the latest “we can change schools for the better” pitch. It’s written by Dr. Tyler Thigpen, Academic Director of the Leading School Transformation program at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, and head of The Forest School: An Acton Academy and Institute for Self Directed Learning. Thigpen writes, ……