If you haven’t heard (or seen) the movie “Most Likely to Succeed,” you may be in the educational minority today. The documentary highlights the problems of traditional schooling through the eyes of students, parents, and teachers who are seeking, and in some cases participating in a very different education, and it’s become one of the […]
#40: Interview With Ted Dintersmith Read More »
Do you know the difference between technical change and adaptive change? Most change in schools involves technical change, like “dressing up” the current situation, but not really addressing the underlying issues. Adaptive change, as defined by Harvard’s Ron Heifetz, is changing culture, worldview, and self-worth. These are the changes that are the hardest to make
#39: Using Adaptive Change Methods to Revolutionize Education Read More »
Why do we as parents and educators push our kids to do “whatever it takes” to get into the best college they can? We think we are helping our kids, but are we really setting them up for all kinds of challenges in which they cannot be successful? Do we tie our own self-worth into
#38: The Costs of High Expectations Read More »
Templestowe College, or TC as we call it in Victoria, Australia, was built to accommodate 1,000 students. At the start of 2010, those numbers had dwindled down to just over 200. Peter Hutton took on the challenge of rebuilding the school, despite severe challenges. Today, you will get to hear the story of the past
#37: Revolutionizing Education Through Student Empowerment Read More »
It’s time to get a little existential. In this episode, my friend an colleague Bruce Dixon and I are discussing the profound artistry of teaching. Fueled by our mutual love of the works of Seymour Sarason, Bruce and I are going to weigh in on some of the topics mentioned in our last Shifting Conversations
#36: Changing Educational Norms That No Longer Serve Us Read More »
Today’s show is another one of the “thought exercise” episodes, so get ready for your thinking to be challenged! We’re discussing a book that came out about 20 years ago, The Answer to How is Yes, by Peter Block. This book twists the way we think about how change happens and explores the relationship between
#35: The Answer to How is Yes Read More »
In today’s conversation, we take a deep dive into a recent article in The Guardian by Cathy Davidson, a professor at City University of New York. Cathy says we have to “reverse the outcome-oriented educational monster we have unleashed . . .” We also are discussing Peter Gray’s article in Psychology Today, “The Joy and
#34: Are We Doing the Right Thing in Schools? Read More »
Scott Looney talks to us about grades We are thinking outside the box today about the foundational elements of grades and high school transcripts in the US educational system. Scott Looney is the Headmaster at the Hawken School in Cleveland, Ohio, and the founder of the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC). He discusses his attempt to
#33: Mastery Transcripts to Replace Grades? Read More »
Happy Holidays everyone, and welcome to the final Modern Learners podcast for 2017. We’ve really enjoyed putting these together, and we hope you’ve enjoyed listening to them even more. This week, Bruce and I cover a couple of different topics. First, we pull back some of the layers around the language we use in schools,
#32: Words Matter, and an End of the Year Wrap Up Read More »
Building on Bruce’s post earlier this week, in our latest podcast we dive a little deeper into the expectations we bring to keynotes and presentations at large (or small) conferences. Do we want to be affirmed? Challenged? Both? Our feeling is that it’s incumbent upon those with a platform to use it to provoke a
#31: Cold Shower Keynotes Read More »
It’s an interesting time for the Internet. As I mentioned in this week’s Shifting Conversations post, much of the amazing potential of the Web that many of us felt a quarter century ago now feels like it’s being overwhelmed by anger and stupidity and silliness. And as the Web grows more complex, so too do
#30: The Past, Present, and Future of the Internet Read More »
If you’ve enjoyed being pushed by the conversations between me and Bruce in the past, you’ll definitely enjoy our latest podcast that digs into the value of teaching, not just in the modern world, but in general. After a couple of weeks of scintillating interviews with Joel Pelcyger and Conrad Wolfram, this week we spend
#29: The Value of Teaching Read More »
Why is the current state of math education not suited for the modern world of computers and phones and other devices? That’s the bigger question that Conrad Wolfram answers in our 28th Modern Learners podcast. Bruce and the founder of the amazing Wolfram Alpha have a wide ranging conversation around the state of current math
#28: Rethinking Math Class With Conrad Wolfram Read More »
We’ve moved from an experience rich, information poor world to an experience poor, information rich world. And that, according to Joel Pelcyger, is a cause for some deep thinking about the role and value of schools in the modern world. Pelcyger, who founded Pluralistic School One in Santa Monica, CA 46 years ago, has been
#27: A Pluralistic School Read More »
With all of the problems associated with standardized testing and school assessments in general, is it finally time to start a different conversation about how we assess learning in schools? That’s the question that Will and Bruce discuss on this our 26th episode of the Modern Learners podcast. This conversation stem from a post from
#26: Alternatives to Assessment Read More »
