Tag: parents

  • A System That Can’t Deliver

    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…

  • What We Can Learn from Italian Filmmakers

    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,…

  • Everyone Needs a Coach

    Early in this new year, I read an article published in EducationWeek online titled “These Principals Insist on Connecting Every Student to an Adult They Trust.” The story starts with an important question for traditional school leaders, “How do principals ensure that students know they have at least one adult in the building they can…

  • Friday News Roundup

    It’s Friday. Here’s your news roundup. Texas Supreme Court Clears Way for State’s Education Agency to Take Over Houston ISD (The Texas Tribune) A friend of mine used to say, “Over the past 50 years of school reform, there is one body that has remained untouched by change – the school board.” Well, that might…

  • The World is Our Classroom!

    Learning design includes deciding “where” learning will occur. Everyone knows by now that learning doesn’t have to happen inside a classroom, although the traditional system leadership has worked hard the past three years trying to convince us otherwise. In June of 2022, architect Randy Fielding, founding partner at Fielding International, a team of architects and…

  • I Love My Wife, But…

    Last week I shared an article written by Getting Smart’s Nate McClennen and Tom Vander Ark titled “The Great Education Unbundling and How Learning Will be Rebundled.” The concept of “Unbundled Learning” is part of a six pillar campaign Getting Smart launched last summer. I thought it would be nice to cover the other five…

  • Keep It Simple

    Back in May of 2022, Getting Smart’s Rebecca Midles wrote an interesting article titled “Framing and Designing the HOW.” Midles uses Simon Sinek’s work on organizational why, how, and what as a guide to her writing. As we attempt to create a new system of learning, I thought it wise to return to Midles’s thinking…

  • MLK and Education per Valerie Strauss

    I’m a big fan of Valerie Strauss, the Washington Post education writer, who also authors The Answer Sheet blog. Here is a reprint of an article Strauss shared with her audience on January 17, 2021. “Here, as I have published in recent years to mark the federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,…

  • Friday News Roundup

    It’s Friday, and it’s a cold day in Iowa. Here’s your news roundup. America’s Public Schools Are Losing Students (Axios Finish Line) According to a report by Axios Finish Line this week, “The pandemic has supercharged a trend that has plagued districts across the U.S. for years – students are fleeing public schools.” “Why it…

  • Apprenticeships/ Residencies for Learning Coaches

    Earlier this week, The 74 released an article focused on how the traditional public school system is using apprenticeships to redesign teacher preparation. Reporter Asher Lehrer-Small begins by writing, “Wyoming is vast and sparsely populated. Its only public four-year university is located in Laramie, in the southeast corner of the sharply rectangular state. Those factors…