How can school be a Meme? Most of us have seen viral memes on the internet. Whether they are from your favorite television show or commenting on a popular culture item, memes are everywhere. There are even meme creators for those of us who are not gifted in creating our own memes. This blog post is not about those kinds…
Category: Education Leadership
Building Your Leadership Team
A Starting Point Every organization has positions of leadership. Regardless of how small or large the organization, there is a group of people or a team that helps set the direction of the organization and strategizes tactics to help the organization perform well. Oftentimes, people who find themselves in leadership positions got there because of the skills they learned and…
The Schooling Paradox
A Problem: The Schooling Paradox There is an intriguing paradox in education that I want to spend some time discussing in this blog. Educators engage in an intellectual world of ideas while also navigating an organizational structure called school. Ideas for better learning options (or opportunities) often clash with the reality of the structure of school. We envision what the…
Covering the Curriculum
“I am so frustrated because the teacher went over three things today in class even though she knew that most of us didn’t learn the first one!” –My Daughter A Quick Exercise What does curriculum mean to you? Please take some time and make a list of words that immediately come to mind when you think of curriculum… As you…
Seek a Newer World
“Come, my friends, ‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.” -Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson The task which we have undertaken as school leaders is to create better worlds for our Learners and communities. We cannot shy away from this simple fact. To shy away from the duty we hold to future generations is not an option.…
Mass Customized Learning and “Normalized” Structures of Schools
The problem, as I see it, is that all of us involved in the designing of the MCL experience are subconsciously enmeshed in the current system. Our professional default mode is away from freedom (both physically and intellectually) and toward traditional, normalized structures.
Finding Humanity in our Learners
There are amazing things you can learn about a person when they are interviewing for a job. The job applicant usually starts the interview nervous and it is difficult (at times) to get beyond the nervousness so you can really learn about the person. I vividly remember one job interview in which all of us conducting the interview were having…
Design Thinking: A How-to Guide to Improve Your School
I was asked to do a series of blogs for the Association of Education Service Agencies (AESA). The third in the series can be found here on the AESA web site and below. The previous posts are found here and here. Can we continue meeting like we have been over the past three months? This has been great for me.…
The Essential Component of Personalized Learning
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins –Ben Franklin There is one misconception that I hear repeatedly from educators when they discuss mass customized learning or personalized learning, and it gets right to the essential component of mass customized/personalized learning. But let’s remember this about misconceptions…they can prevent educators from helping their students, advancing their schools, and furthering…
2 Filters of Uncompromisingly Learner Centered Schools
“Vigor and creative flow have their source in internal strains and tensions, it is the pull of opposite poles that stretches souls. And only stretched souls make music” -Eric Hoffer Eric Hoffer was considered the “workingman’s philosopher” and is best known for his 1952 book The True Believer. The above quote is a result of a line of thinking that Hoffer undertook…