Tag: learning
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Talent, Space, and Time
Today’s public education system doesn’t understand the importance of talent, space, and time when it comes to producing smarter and stronger learners. Schools depend on a finite set of teachers, hired to insure student learning. In my old district, our human resources department had to fill 10,000 teaching positions for 200,000 students enrolled in our…
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A New Learning System by 2023? It’s Possible
The 2021-22 school year is coming to an end. Students, teachers, and administrators are all looking forward to a relaxing summer. But the 2022-23 school year looms as an unknown when it comes to what’s possible, like another COVID-19 variant disrupting teaching and learning, more teachers resigning or retiring from their positions, principals quitting because…
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Best of the Best – School’s Out: Liberated Parents
In September of 2018, I was asked to write an article for Education Reimagined, focusing on the liberated role of parents if schools suddenly didn’t exist, or didn’t exist as a near monopoly like today. The article was part of a series title “School’s Out.” Today, as part of ABPTL’s Best of the Best series,…
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You Can Lead a Horse to Water…
Compulsory education laws have been around since 1852, when Massachusetts became the first state to pass a bill that required public school attendance. These laws were originally put in place to improve literacy rates but also to discourage widespread child labor practices of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I think it’s time to get…
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Friday News Roundup…
I promised to give an update on the listening session I attended this past week at my neighborhood high school. The Des Moines Public Schools (DMPS) offered these sessions after a high school student was shot outside a school a few months ago. The evening reminded me how smart young people are when it comes…
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Let’s Try a New Type of Learning Cohort
The school year is coming to an end. Research tells us more black, brown, and poor kids will end this year more under-performing schools than white, middle-class youngsters – a lot more. Most of the black, brown, and poor kids, attending these low-achieving campuses are, destined for summer school, a place traditionally reserved for kids…
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What’s a Learning Coach?
A learning coach is not a teacher. Most public-school teachers utilize lesson planning, which includes instructional strategies, to present a state-approved curriculum to their students. Most of those strategies are judged successful or not by a state-approved standardized test at the end of a teaching cycle, usually 36 weeks. A learning coach creates a learning…
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Why School Districts Don’t Play Well with Their Communities
I’m heading over to our local high school tonight for a listening session. A student was shot and killed recently at another high school here in Des Moines and the school district is hosting a series of listening sessions to receive feedback from the community on school safety. I’m interested in hearing what the conversation…
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Learning Pods: The New One Room Schoolhouse
A few months ago, the Center for Reforming Public Education (CRPE) released a report titled “Crisis Breeds Innovation: Pandemic Pods and the Future of Education. In the report, authors Ashley Jochim and Jennifer Poon’s research offered the first in-depth look at families’ and educators’ experiences with pandemic pods, drawing upon a national survey of 152…
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Friday News Roundup…
It’s a rainy morning in Iowa this morning. Time to review this week’s news so I can make like a duck and head over to the Drake Relays today. The Education Culture War is Raging. But for Most Parents, It’s Background Noise (NPR) This one is a head scratcher. In a new national poll conducted…
A Better Path to Learning 