1. A few months ago I plopped myself down in a front row auditorium seat next to a young man with frazzled hair and braces who was looking uncomfortable in a collared, button-down shirt with an overly wide and ornate tie often seen on middle school boys. "How's it goin'?" I asked. He looked up at me and smiled an awkward smile and nodded his head. "Good," he said. "I'm Will," I said, sticking my hand out. "Ben," he said as he shook my hand weakly and stared at the badge hanging around my neck. "You here for the conference?" I asked. "Um, kinda," he said. "I'm here to help people figure out where to go." It was early. His shepherding duties hadn't started yet. "Looks like a nice place," I said, craning my neck to take in a full scan of the theater. "Is this your school?" "Yep." "You like it?" I asked as I took a sip from a cup of tepid, pretty average hotel coffee. "Yeah," he said. "It's a good school." "What's good about it?" I asked, trying hard to … [Read more...]
How do we make the world better than we found it?
How do we make the world better than we found it? This is a question that has been raised in a number of our community conversations. Gary Stager mentioned it just last night in a chat with Will and Bruce. It's posted on classroom and school walls to inspire and promote a reason for learning that's something grander than ourselves. If we truly and honestly believe that the goal of an education is to help students do just that, where do we start? We are wrapping our month-long exploration of Belonging inside Modern Learners Community. The content, questions, and dialogue shared have sparked several a-ha moments among members in thinking about how belonging is truly established in our schools. Are learners seen? Do they feel as though they have a place learning within the classroom walls? Do they see themselves as an integral component of the life of the school? Do teachers feel a sense of belonging among colleagues? Do they feel seen? Is their school culture one … [Read more...]
#61 – Creating a Different School Experience
Is it possible to create a different school experience? Given the chance to do things really differently in your school, what would you do? That's the opportunity that Peter Wieczorek has as the director of Northwest Passage High School in Coon Rapids, MN, a public charter school that is pushing the envelope when it comes to carving our new ways of preparing students for the world today. They are creating a different school experience! While a lot of schools are doing project-based learning, as you'll hear in this podcast Peter stresses that at Northwest Passage projects are chosen by students, based on their interests, and supported by a staff of educators that is adept at making sure students learn deeply and navigate all of the expectations of the state standards and assessments. But what might be most out of the box for the school is that they offer students over 20 "expeditions" which are overnight excursions of up to two weeks into the real world. The emphasis is on … [Read more...]
2019 – Time to Choose
Here's my burning question for you in 2019: What are you going to do to change the experience that your students have in school to reflect more compellingly what you believe is the right thing to be doing for kids and learning? It's a loaded question, I know. It suggests that as an educator, you're currently employing practices that you don't really believe in. It suggests, also, that you are choosing to do that. Are you? I figure the beginning of the year is as good a time as any to lay this conversation around change squarely on the line. (At least it'll be all downhill from here, right?) And while I'm obviously trying to provoke, I'm also summing up a lot of what I'm leaving 2018 with in my head and in my gut. It's a feeling borne out by conversations with thousands of educators across about 150K miles of air travel this year, conversations that helped paint a complex if yet unclear picture for me of a turning point of sorts. That turn is this: … [Read more...]
The Most Important Skill for the Future: Being Human
Given how much I read, I wish I was more like my friend Rob who has the insane ability to remember just about everything he reads down to where it's located on the paper or digital page he reads it on. Unfortunately for me, that's not the case. It takes much longer for the patterns and themes to congeal when the texts in my head are shadowy fragments of themselves as they appeared in the real world. The good news (for me at least) is that every now and again, I recognize the patterns, though it's a process that sometimes feels like completing a puzzle at a molecular level. One such theme that seems to be emerging for me is that for all of our flagellation over the skills that our kids will need to thrive in the future, we may be missing the most important yet eternal skill of all: knowing thyself. Christian Talbot over at Basecamp used that phrase in a short post this week about the "School of the Future." In it, he glosses the Yural Harari book "21 Lessons for the 21st Century," … [Read more...]
Every Kid Can Do Amazing Things
How do you identify potential? Do you know what potential looks like, long before it is realized? Some examples are obvious. You know the sort of kid I am talking about. Almost from when he started to walk, he had a ball in his hand. When he threw it, he was a natural, and he could anticipate a catch from almost any angle. You liked to think he had some genetic advantage...or did he? If he were your child, you’d say yes. Potential identified, at a very early age; then nurtured, rehearsed, practiced until potential becomes a passion. Isn’t that the perfect mix? Or is it that his passion showed his potential? What comes first? Either way, helping him to navigate where his passion might take him becomes the main game. And the young girl who came onto the planet with hand-eye coordination you can only dream about. Must have been busy in the womb practicing, because her instinct for where the ball is seems as natural to her as breathing. We talk about it all the time. … [Read more...]
Designing for Learning
Turns out, we who live in western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies are actually as WEIRD as the acronym for that group spells out. According to research by University of British Columbia professor Joe Henrich (now of Harvard,) "Members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans." And therefore, Henrich argues, we have to be really careful to apply behavioral or psychological (or other) types of research done on WEIRD populations to humans in general, in short because we are not the norm in the world. In fact, we are at the far end of the outlier spectrum when it comes to our behavior. That point is raised at the beginning of a presentation by Carol Black that I came across this week. Black, the creator and early producer of the TV show "The Wonder Years," is also a powerful writer about learning and schools (and "unschooling"), and one of her blog posts … [Read more...]
Imagination, Inquiry, and Agency
Finish this sentence... “Imagine a place where students could...” Is that place your school? What would it take for that place to be a reality for your students? What do you think school could, and should be? That question is the focus of thousands of conversations in school communities across America and the rest of the world today. It’s a sign of the concern, the angst, and for some even the desperation to better understand how we can more relevantly prepare our students for the rapidly changing modern world we all now live in. It’s no longer a world of certainty and stability, but rather one of unpredictability and exponential change. It’s no longer a world where students in schools should be asked to go to a set class, at a set time, to be given set content, predetermined by tradition, habit and largely guesswork as to whether it will ever be relevant to them. On the contrary, we now live in a world where our young people can access whatever they need to, whenever and … [Read more...]
The Unpleasant Truth About Equity
Equity is a topic that takes center stage in many education conversations, and rightly so. It’s about every child being given a “fair go." We often voice our concerns about the plight of the underserved in our communities, and as educators, we always strive to address their disadvantage within the resources we have available. At times, it can seem almost pointless when faced with the barriers and handicaps that society has placed in front of so many of our young people, yet as educators, our moral compasses guide us to try and give every child equal opportunity. It’s not easy. Whether you are dealing with disability, cultural or demographic limitations, or probably the most challenging, financial disadvantage, every day schools across the globe seek to offer a leg up to the less fortunate in our communities. It can be as minor as funding books or technology or lunches, or as major as comprehensive welfare support programs such as those that are now common place in many … [Read more...]
A response to Prince Ea’s viral video “What is School For?”
The "Let's Change School" conversation came to the forefront again this week after a video collaboration between Ted Dintersmith and the rapper Prince Ea went viral. As we write this, the video has been up for a little over 4 days, and between YouTube and Facebook, it has almost 10 million views and over 25,000 comments. We think that qualifies as viral. Why would a video about the need to change school go viral? Why is this particular video zooming around the Interwebs at warp speed? Is it the high production value? The captivating spoken poetry by a well followed You Tube talent? The cute kids? All of the above? While those may be the most obvious answers, we'd like to add another one: Because almost everyone can relate. Ask yourself... With the caveat that at moments the video is a bit hyperbolic, a little too self-serving, and tries too hard for that emotional response (a couple of my friends called it “icky”) - despite all that, which of the messages embedded in the … [Read more...]