Tag: teachers

  • 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…

  • The Rebundling of Learning

    Over a year ago, Nate McClennen and Tom Vander Ark wrote an article for the online newsletter Getting Smart titled “The Great Education Unbundling and How Learning Will be Rebundled.” In the article, McClennen and Vander Ark write, “More schools, more courses, more online learning experiences – for 25 years there has been steady expansion…

  • Learner Agency is Not a School Priority

    One more thought related to yesterday’s post [Try As They May, Schools Just Can’t Innovate] – if you take a look at the text describing various state policy related to desired innovation zones, it’s clear that these descriptions weren’t written by innovators themselves. Innovators employ creative phrases and provide a vision of what is possible.…

  • Try As They May, Schools Just Can’t Innovate

    Aurora Institute is one of my favorites when it comes to imagining what learning could be like in this country. Susan Patrick, President and CEO of Aurora Institute, and her group are the best at linking learner-centered policy to practice, trying to convince traditional public schools to change. If only the traditional system paid more…