Tag: students

I’m a historian by training. I graduated with a degree in history from the University of Iowa while researching aspects of the Cold War. I earned an advanced degree from the University of Houston researching colonial, Revolutionary, and Constitutional history. My love of history recently brought me to a place where I’ve become more and…

Yesterday, I shared some of Stacey Childress’s “Rethinking School,” an article first published in the Harvard Business Review in March of 2012. Today, I thought it would be nice to share more of what Childress was thinking about our traditional K-12 system, especially the diagnosis of what the current reality looked like over 10 years…

I’m always looking for ways to offer equitable learning opportunities to kids. It’s plain to see that our traditional K-12 system hasn’t offered that opportunity to so many of our young learners, especially those who are black, brown, and poor. That’s why I read with interest recently an article posted on Getting Smart online titled…

Most traditional schools are territorial places. Teachers take care of their own classrooms, and it’s a rarity to see them deeply collaborate when it comes to answering three questions: What do we want our kids to learn? How will we know that they learned it? And, what will we do when they don’t learn it?…

Back in 2019, Work Life (an Atlassian online newsletter) asked Daniel Pink, author of “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” five questions about motivation, and how motivation makes the difference when it comes to human performance – including learning. Here are excerpts from that interview: … Work Life: “Do you believe in the…

25 years ago, 12 students and one teacher were murdered in cold blood inside Columbine High School. I was finishing up five years as a middle school principal, getting ready to open a brand-new high school. Myself, my school, my community, my city, my state, and my nation were shocked at what happened at Columbine…

Last week, I wrote an article that shared some of Julia Freedland Fisher’s thinking from her article titled “Beyond Bans: Schools’ Role in a Hard Reset on the ‘Phone-Based Childhood’.” In the article, Fisher writes: “There’s another article that should lend urgency to getting this [Artificial intelligence and other technology innovations] right. It’s a memo…

My wife is critical of my vision for a new type of public schooling in this country. She is afraid that like-minded people will congregate together to begin their own version of “schooling,” while accessing public dollars to do it. She pleads with me “Scott, do you want learning pods of Nazis? Because that’s what…