Category: Learnings

On November 14, 2022, founders of Black-led pods and microschools and scholars who study Black self-determination in education gathered for a virtual event, sponsored by CRPE, an organization committed to reinvent public education in this country. The lively conversation between panelists Robert Harvey, Maxine McKinney de Royston, Janelle Wood, and Lakisha Young and moderator Chris…

Recently, I participated in an online workshop hosted by the New Hampshire Learning Initiative focused on “Grading for Equity and Deeper Learning.” In their post-workshop post, the New Hampshire Learning Initiative shared the following: “In our post-COVID world, New Hampshire educators in schools around the state have been heavily engaged in conversations over the need…

There isn’t enough time devoted to improving reading and writing skills with our traditional public school system. I saw it time and time again on the high school level when students struggled with content because they didn’t have the required reading and writing skills to master the assigned curriculum. Recently, Stephen Sawchuk from EducationWeek online…

All learners should have purpose. Sadly, many young learners inside our traditional school system can’t find their purpose. Some lose it while spending years traveling to and from classes that don’t matter to them. Last fall, Tom Vander Ark wrote an article for Getting Smart online titled “Purpose Powered Education”. Vander Ark writes, “’What if…

Last fall Trace Pickering wrote an article for Getting Smart online titled “Students Are Calling BS on High School and Opportunity Knocks”. I thought it would be a good thing to take a look at what some of America’s high schoolers are now saying about their present day learning experiences. Pickering writes, “Many students in…

Is it time for venture studios to enter the learning world? In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Steve Blank, an adjunct professor at Stanford University, a senior fellow at Columbia University, and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, explained what a venture studio does. According to Blank, “In the last two decades,…

Being able to write a clear and concise essay has become even more important in today’s world, given our tendency to write in short blurbs all over social media. But writing instruction has disappeared in many of our traditional schools, and young learner’s writing ability has arguably disappeared too. Recently, EducationWeek online wrote a story…

I met Trace Pickering through the group Education Reimagined. Trace was a co-founder and director emeritus of Iowa BIG, a Cedar Rapids-based opportunity for traditional school students to expand into out-of-school human-centered education. Last fall Trace wrote an article for Getting Smart online titled “Perfection is a 2nd Rate Idea.” Pickering writes, “While listening to…

Michael Fullan is a hero of mine. He was very helpful to the education non-profit I led in Houston when it launched in the early 1990’s. Fullan, a professor emeritus, is a former dean of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto and the global director of leadership for New Pedagogies for Deep…

Successful learning depends on strong partnerships, mainly between an adult learning leader and a group of young learners. Last fall, the Harvard Business Review posted an article titled “What Makes Creative Partnerships Work”. The article states, “In the most exceptional careers, it is often not all that lonely at the top: For the extraordinarily successful,…