The news that Maryland's biggest school district gave up on its attempt to change the grading scale for its 150K kids shouldn't shock anyone. But reading between the lines of the Washington Post story that chronicled its retreat back to an A-F format offers up a relevant postmortem on why many changes we try to implement in schools in general end in failure. To me, one question should guide our work in schools: Is what we are currently doing the absolute best we could be doing for our students? In essence, are we doing the right thing, or trying to do the wrong thing right? It's arguable that much of what we do in schools isn't the best thing we could be doing for kids. Some of the most prevalent constructs of current day schooling are in place primarily because they just make our lives easier. We make a conscious choice to honor efficiency over effectiveness despite the fact that given the opportunity to create schools based on what's best for kids, we'd  quickly throw many of … [Read more...]

It's inspiring, isn't it, to think that what was once just a whisper is today the voice of the crowd? The voice for change. Seventeen years ago as a new century was launched with fireworks and fresh ideas, a growing number of educators had an optimism for new models of school for the new millennium. Many thought the pendulum for school change was finally turning, provoked not least by the unprecedented opportunities that ubiquitous technologies were potentially offering students. However, as we know this energy for change was very quickly undermined by the clutter of anything related to "21st Century learning" which was busy putting new labels on old practice, and the momentum for change was subverted yet again.  But fortunately, it didn't take long for the clutter to become a splutter, and by the time we hit the end of the first decade the dialogue around school change became even more urgent, and now, inevitable. Like so many others, Will and I were frustrated by how easily … [Read more...]

Over the years, I've met and had conversations with hundreds (if not thousands) of school leaders. Superintendents, principals, heads of school, CTOs, curriculum directors, department heads...and various other titles and distinctions. I'm always intrigued by the initial interactions I have with them and that first sense that I get of who they are, what they know, what they believe, and what they want. I usually start with questions: What about your school are you most proud of? What's an example of the best work your students and teachers are doing? What's the most interesting use of technology that you've seen in your classrooms? What's your most interesting question right now? What principles drive your work? As you can guess, the answers to these questions (and others) are all over the map. But they give me a pretty quick take of values, beliefs, practice, and direction. And in my experience at least, there really aren't that many different buckets that leaders fall into. I know, … [Read more...]

Here's an interesting question for your next workshop, faculty meeting, or maybe even a dinner party? “Would you rather that your children were literate, numerate, or curious?” Pick one, and why? For many, it’s a tough choice; for most, you want all three. But if you had to choose one, which one would it be? In case you’re wondering, yes this is a leading question, which I’ll get to in a moment. But I for one would want to start my response by first asking exactly what you mean by each of those three words. Now I know I'm being picky, but we refer to literacy and numeracy, and even curiosity as if we have a shared understanding of their meaning. But as we have raised so often in this space, that’s simply not the case. Do you mean functionally literate? reading at age-level (whatever that is supposed to mean)? And is your definition of literacy a traditional one that relates to the printed word? Or are you thinking of a more contemporary perspective as Audrey Watters … [Read more...]

After more than forty years learning about learning, I'm intrigued by how much I still need to learn. I mean, from time to time, I’ve had profound insights on the topic, aided by the research and writings of many of the people Will and I often reference in our work, (and in our most recent White Paper 8 Must Read Books for Educational Change Leaders which you can snag in the sidebar at ModernLearners.com), but there is still so much more I want to know about learning. As a result of our work in Change School, and many of the workshops we’ve run, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on people’s beliefs about learning.  Sadly, by far the most significant insight I have gained from that is just how little we talk about it, think about it, or allow those beliefs to guide practice. Learning is, after all, what we are here for isn’t it? And yet over many decades we have too often come to accept schools as places dominated by a teaching culture, rather than one of learning, as Will … [Read more...]

"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned." ~Mark Twain It's been over a decade (yes...a decade) since I wrote one of my most commented upon posts ever (ah, those were the days) titled A Steep Unlearning Curve. One of the nice things about having 15+ years of thinking and reflecting archived online is being able to go back and see how things have, or haven't changed. In this case, it's feeling like the latter. To be blunt, in the 10 years since posting, none of the things on my list of "10 Things We Need to Unlearn" have we actually unlearned. In fact, I'm hard pressed to argue that we've even made inroads on any of them. That said, is anyone surprised? Yet, the idea that we need to unlearn huge swaths of the school experience is embraced by a lot of educators. Ten years ago, the comments on that post made that obvious. And I relearned that again last week when, without much thought, I posted the following to LinkedIn: I'm just wondering what my LinkedIn friends … [Read more...]

During one of our regular Roundtable discussions in Change School this week, one of our school leaders asked a very interesting question. “Given the number of books that have been written and papers that have been presented around  school change over more than 50 years by some very well informed and esteemed writers, why has there been so little change in schools and why do you think it will be any different this time ?” It’s a question that we’ve all struggled with from time to time, however, I do think the answer becomes a lot clearer if we step back and look at the bigger picture, which tells the story of school reform over the past hundred years and highlights why this time is different. Most importantly, it also gives meaning to the work of those who have gone before. For our purposes, I think that story beings early last century when  John Dewey,  Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner and others started challenging the wisdom of the early traditions of the teacher-centered … [Read more...]

It's been a long time since I've written about tools, but today, I'm writing about tools. Tools that I use, or am learning to use. Tools that I think change the conversation when it comes to what we do in classrooms. Tools that make my learning world so different today from what it was even 10 years ago when a blog was still a "thing." And I'll start with a tool that I just heard about yesterday via Don Wettrick: Anchor.fm. I'm not sure that Anchor will become "the Snapchat of radio" in the sense of all that implies. But it's just kinda fascinating to me that anyone with a smartphone (read: any kid with a smartphone) can now create and broadcast their own radio station on the fly. What does Anchor do? It allows you to record your voice. Allows you to record phone calls. Allows you to pull music from your favorite services like Spotify and Apple Music (with an account, of course.) Allows you to take call-in listener questions. And allows you to publish it all, from your phone, to … [Read more...]