A Better Path to Learning

Tag: students

  • What I Learned as a First-Year Principal

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    Last week, I read an article from a principal that just finished their first year leading a school campus. The principal shared what she learned from her first-year experience. Here’s what she learned: “Have a goal; adjust as necessary; stay the course.” “Take time to build relationships.” “Share your goals. Repeat, repeat, repeat.” “Find a…

  • There Shouldn’t Be a Left or Right When it Comes to Learning

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    I like to think of myself as a left of center thinker, but all of my writing about parent rights, learner choice, and my criticism of the current public education system has some of my readers believing I’m a Trump-loving, ultra-conservative intent on destroying our public schools as we know them. Well, I’m not a…

  • The Value of a Constructive Conversation

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    Here’s a skill that is part of almost all “Portrait of a Graduate” profile school districts produce across the country – Our graduates will know how to communicate and participate in a valuable conversation. But how many schools spend time allowing their young people to learn how to build their communication skills and how to…

  • Friday News Roundup

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    It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup. Generation Meh: Students Give Schools Middling Marks, Gallup Poll Finds (The 74) What’s that old saying? “The customers never wrong?” Well, if that is true, then the American public education system is nothing more than mediocre to a majority of students inside schools right now. According to The…

  • A Little About a Lot

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    It’s summer, so school and learning news slows down a bit. So I’m going to try a new posting on Thursday called “A Little About a Lot.” The topics won’t necessarily be generated by what’s in the news, like Friday’s “News Roundup.” Instead, the stories will be about conversations or events that caught my attention…

  • A Summer School That Matters

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    I’m a historian by training. My undergraduate degree was in history, and I received a master’s pursuing the same subject. I decided to work in public education instead of higher education when I saw a comparison of a school principal’s salary and an assistant professor’s. What if we gave kids the opportunity to play around…

  • Schools Don’t Play Well in the Sandbox with Others

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    Here we go again. This time it’s Rick Hess talking about the importance of school districts “unbundling” the many roles they have joined together over the past 100 years. Hess writes about his ideas regarding “unbundling” schools in today’s EducationWeek online, “Over the past year or two, there’s been a lot of talk about educational…

  • A Tribute to Stevenson High School

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    I umpire tennis. A player friend of mine got me interested in it last year. I was in Chicago this weekend umpiring a youth tournament and, lo and behold, you’ll never guess what high school was close to the tournament site. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. For those of you not familiar with Stevenson…

  • Two Big Problems with Public Schools

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    Two articles from The 74 online caught my attention this morning. Both demonstrate how broken the traditional public education system is and how it can’t be fixed. The first article, written by two researchers from the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, warns public school teachers not to quit their jobs because, if they do, they…

  • My Brother the Lifelong Learner

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    My brother dropped dead a few weeks ago from a massive heart attack. Although Todd wasn’t exactly successful in traditional K-12 education, he exemplified a lifelong learner who possessed a personalized, robust learning plan throughout his life. My brother was a funeral director, and he knew he wanted to be a funeral director by the…