Practical TheoryPractical Theory21st Century Education, Science Leadership Academy and other educational issues Articles
SLA on Apple Education Website!
2010-10-23 06:22:00 If you go to the front page of the Apple Education Web Site, you'll see the Science Leadership Academy as one of the featured school profiles! It's a really incredible film and school profile. Go see the whole thing! More About: Website
Huffington Post - Rule of Law
2010-10-15 22:09:00 My latest entry -- The Rule of Law -- is up over at the Huffington Post . It's about the Zuckerberg gift to Newark Schools. Here's a snippet: In the end, we shouldn't do an end around state law. It's a bad idea in general (which many former Jersey politicians can attest), but it's a particularly bad idea when it comes to schools because it teaches kids that authority and the rule of law is something to be ignored at worst and winked at at best when you really want something. Worse, when politicians and businessmen conspire to subvert the democratic and legal process, we send a message to kids that if you have enough money, the rules of society do not apply. Feel free to head over and read the whole thing.
What I Ask of SLA Teachers
2010-10-11 05:08:00 [Cross-posted to Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant.] I want to thank Scott for asking me to do this and I want to curse him a little for making me go last. This is not an easy crew to follow. I couldn't get my head around what "administrators" in general ask of teachers, so I chose to focus on what I ask of Science Leadership Academy teachers. For the record, I think SLA teachers are, as a group, about the hardest working group of people I could ever imagine, and I think that is more because of the collegial atmosphere than anything I could ever do. So "work hard" isn't making the list. So without further ado. Top Ten Things I Ask of SLA Teachers. 10. Take care of yourself. Teaching is a marathon, not a sprint, and SLA teachers do put themselves out there early and often. I want my teachers to take time for themselves every day. I want SLA teachers to take trips, go to conferences, spend time with family and spend time with each other when they don't talk about school....
Huffington Post - This Is Not an Education Debate
2010-10-04 09:05:00 So... I will blogging for the Huffington Post 's Education section from time to time now. (And no, I cannot believe that they asked me to do so.) And my first post, This is Not an Education Debate , is up. Here's a brief excerpt: We should have a great debate in this country about education. Educational ideas are -- and should be -- controversial. The space between people like Alfie Kohn and Robert Marzano, between Deborah Meier and Ed Hirsch, could fill volumes. How we teach, what we teach, how we assess students... these ideas should be debated and discussed at dinner tables and PTA meetings across this country. That's not the discussion we're having. Go read it. Comment on it. Let's have a great debate on education on that site, so that we justify the attention they are paying the new education bloggers.
Elevating the Education Reform Debate
2010-10-04 00:29:00 This Monday evening, I get to be on a panel with a group of educators who I respect beyond words. Future of Education , Steve Hargadon and Edutopia are sponsoring Elevating The Education Reform Debate from 5 pm EST to 7 pm EST. I'll be sharing the virtual stage with a group of friends and idols from the world of education - Julie Evans, Alfie Kohn, Deb Meier, Diane Ravitch, Will Richardson, Sir Ken Robinson, Gary Stager... and me. The folks on this panel with me should have been MSNBC's first calls when they put together EducationNation. I'm honored to be part of this discussion, and I hope you join us. Date: Monday, October 4, 2010 Time: 2pm Pacific / 5pm Eastern / 9pm GMT (international times here) Duration: 2 hours Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support...
What Randi Weingarten Should Have Said
2010-09-27 06:57:00 [I apologize for not having the exact wording of how the exchange happened, but MSNBC doesn't have it up yet.] Tonight on MSNBC, as part of the Education Nation event, there was a panel discussion around (because it wasn't about) Waiting for Superman. The panel included Randi Weingarten, Michelle Rhee, Geoffrey Canada, John Legend and Davis Guggenheim, and at one point, Randi Weingarten said that the AFT was willing to work with Rhee in DC, and Rhee interrupted her (interestingly, it did seem like everyone was allowed to interrupt her) and said, "I find it disingenuous that you say you wanted to work with me, but the AFT spent $1,000,000 in the DC Election on the Gray campaign." And for some reason, Weingarten tried to say that education wasn't the only reason they supported Gray. She was - rightly - pounced on, and she did sound completely foolish. Of course, the AFT gave money to Gray because of education policies. Of course they did. And the thing is... just say it. Say, "Yes,...
Daily Walkthroughs with GoogleApps and the iPad
2010-09-26 06:57:00 One of the mandates for high school principals in the School District of Philadelphia is to give more frequent written feedback to teachers based on the teaching and learning we see on a daily basis on our walk-throughs. It is one of those mandates that is pretty much indefensible in theory, but the devil, as always, is in the details. For me, the trick is to create a way to give teachers feedback that is useful, as observational and non-judgemental as possible, easy to manage, both for teachers and me, and something that can be more than just sheets of paper that are put into a binder and then forgotten about. So I am going to be using my iPad and a GoogleForm (and Spreadsheet) to get feedback to teachers quickly and (hopefully) wisely and well. The first thing I did was sketch out some ideas about the way I wanted to give feedback to teachers in a way that was productive, useful, manageable, and as non-judgemental as possible. This is meant for 10 minute quick visits not full ob... More About: Daily
Finding the Strength to Write
2010-09-23 16:13:00 So I haven't been blogging lately. It's not for lack of ideas. Certainly, with things like the DC election and Education Nation and Waiting for Superman going on, there's been a lot to write about on the national scene. And at SLA, we've started our first year without the first class. We have made major changes in the way we get work done to better distribute leadership to the people who want to get the work done, we are using GoogleApps for the first time, we have a new walk-through protocol that is all Google-Driven that makes it much easier for me to give feedback, and we are learning what it means to be a school that actually can feel like we know what it feels like to have four years done and can really start reflecting on practice deeply and start revising ideas and begin, in earnest, the transition from start-up to sustainability. And then there's this idea that I've been kicking around about where and how we should be talking about education reform in this country. The... More About: Write
What Comes Before Filtering, Fearlessness and Foresight
2010-09-10 07:08:00 My article in Technology and Learning magazine, Top 3 Leadership Skills, is up online! T&L asked me to write about the top three tech skills administrators need, and fortunately, they allowed me to write about the soft skills that are more important than knowledge of any one tool. I focused in a short piece on three ideas - Filtering: the ability to sort throgh all the information that comes through these days; Fearlessness - the need to be willing to take risks; and Foresight - the idea that we have to be able to imagine the ramifications of the decisions we make. Are those the most important? Maybe? Probably? Probably not? I don't know. Perhaps more importantly, they aren't explicitly tech skills, and that was the point of the article. Being a techie is a helpful start to bringing a school into the modern age, but it's not essential. If we counted on principals to be experts in everything at their schools, we probably wouldn't get very far. I'm very comfortable with the i...
New Year... New Challenges... New Goals... New Excitement
2010-08-28 07:56:00 Things I'm really excited about as we move into the new year... in no real order: Seeing who we are without the first class in the building. That's how you start to really see what you become... did the culture stick? Just listening to three juniors in my office today talk to some visitors... watching the upperclassmen teach the incoming 9th graders... I think we're in very, very good shape. I'm going to miss the graduates, and it has been a blast to see so many of them this week, but I am also excited to see how the Class of 2011 leaves their mark. A bunch of seniors confessed that they are staking out their claims to the various seats in my office. We built a much larger committee structure at the end of last year, and we're already seeing dividends. We've got enough teachers that we don't need to be "all hands on deck" all the time. For our week of PD next week, I'm running next to nothing... and the people who are running all the sessions are doing it because it is... More About: New Year , Goals
EduCon 2.3: Call For Conversations
2010-08-19 06:24:00 The EduCon 2.3 Call for Conversations is open! As many folks know, the students, faculty and parents of the Science Leadership Academy are hosting EduCon 2.3 on January 28th - 30th, 2011. EduCon has been successful in the past because of the incredible energy and spirit that everyone brings to the weekend. The conversation-style sessions are - and always have been - the heart of the conference. So please consider submitting a proposal to create and facilitate a session. Session proposals are due October 20th. And we really hope for another year of incredible conversations!
SLA Named One of the Ten Most Amazing Schools in US (and other news!)
2010-08-16 05:14:00 Some very cool notes for a warm August night! The Science Leadership Academy was named one of the Ten Most Amazing Schools in the US by the Ladies Home Journal! We are honored and humbled to be listed alongside such incredibly innovative and interesting schools! I was on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane last week. Dr. Anne Gardiner of Bodine HS and I were talking about small schools in Philadelphia. It was a really fun hour, and it is archived as a podcast if you want to listen in. I have submitted a proposal for SXSW (South by Southwest) - one of the premier interactive / new media / social networking / new culture conferences in the world. Crowdsourcing makes up 30% of the approval process, so if you like the kind of ideas I write about here on the blog, please considering registering at SXSW and voting for my proposal - Building School 2.0 - Creating the Schools We Need. And while you're there, consider voting for the panel I'm on, too! Voting ends August 29th. As always... More About: News
The Big Lie (Thoughts on Why School Is Not Only About Workforce Development
2010-08-10 07:45:00 [This post is finally finding its voice after kicking around in my brain for most of the summer because of the amazing work of Umair Haque and his post A Deeper Kind of Joblessness.] I knew a lot of very smart, very academically successful kids when I was growing up. I went to CTY which was a rather humbling experience, and then I went to pretty high-powered college. And I knew a lot of kids who worked hard, got good grades, and got to the job market and realized that no one really cared. In the workplace, they were just the next 22 year old, and there was intro-level work to be done, and little of it really required that BA in Eastern European literature. My generation came of age with Douglas Coupland's Generation X, and Coupland's refrain of "You Are Not Your Job" made a lot of sense to me then... and I find myself reflecting on it a great deal lately. A frequent refrain of mine is that the purpose of public education is not the creation of the 21st Century workforce, but rathe... More About: Development , School , Thoughts
Leadership Day 2010: Be The Best Version of Yourself
2010-08-01 06:30:00 Scott McLeod has, once again, called for a day of posts related to leadership - Leadership Day 2010. While Leadership Day was yesterday, I'm hoping I can extend it to "Leadership Weekend." For me, leadership is intensely personal. The simple answer to finding your leadership style is this -- imagine the best version of yourself... the version of yourself that deepens your best traits and mitigates your worst ones... and then try every day to be that person. You'll fail a lot. Most days, you're not going to be that person, because that person doesn't exist. You're chasing a ghost that doesn't exist. But the effort to be that person will bring you closer to them. And in doing so, you'll realize that person is a moving target, because you're changing, and that best version of you will change. That's a good thing. Here's another way to look at it... try every day to be the person the all the people in your charge need you to be. It is the essence of servant leadership. That's...
New Work Flow with Tech
2010-07-29 03:24:00 [This might be my first purely techie post in a long time, but hey...] For the first time as a principal, I have a desktop computer on my desk. I've always just carried my laptop to and from school every day, but with the launch of the iPad, I thought it might be time for a change. The laptop is good enough, but there were starting to be too many times when I wanted more screen real estate, and I found myself really envying my wife's big honking desktop, but the big issue was really that I didn't want files in two places. My laptop was organized to the point where it was pretty much hardwired to my brain. (My knapsack is like that too, but even it is wearing out... some might argue, so's my brain.) With the summer hitting, and with a realization that carrying my laptop and my iPad to and from school every day was really counter-productive, I made the leap. How I made the changes: 1) DropBox - For $100 / year, I get 50 gigs of space. About 99% of the files I use are in two fo... More About: Tech , Work
Ten Challenges for the Network Age -- Part One
2008-03-21 17:03:00 Wharton Professor and long-time digital citizen Kevin Werbach (anyone else here old enough to remember his Bare Bones Guide to HTML?) posts the Ten Challenges for the Network Age on the Supernova 2008 blog. He is using these ten challenges as the framework for the Supernova conference this year, and while I am often wary of education thinking that we just have to take the questions that business is pondering and apply them to education, I've known Kevin through various digital communities for around fifteen years, and I greatly respect the way he considers issues. He does look at these questions from a media / communications lens, and that lens has some powerful ramifications for education as well. With that... here are some thoughts on his ten challenges: Scarcity and Abundance (Both are sources of value, yet they cannot coexist.) For education, clearly this challenge is particularly relevant -- This is probably a blog post or three all to itself. (O.k. -- they all might be.) But... More About: Part
A More Perfect Union
2008-03-19 15:13:00 [Note: I haven't blogged about specific party politics since I became principal of SLA. It's not hard to guess where I stand politically, and I have not taken down a single entry I wrote, but I felt I had to write about this.] Yesterday, I made up my mind who I was voting for on April 22nd. Yesterday, I saw the most courageous and powerful political speech in a generation, if not more. Yesterday, Barack Obama took the stage for what most thought would be a defensive speech in an attempt to repair damage made by his association with his pastor who has made controversial remarks over the years. Yesterday, I watched Barack Obama challenge all of us to change the way we think about race, to move beyond a zero-sum game and instead imagine a world where we can heal together better than we ever can apart. Yesterday, I watched a major candidate for president say openly and publicly the things that were often only whispered or spoken in "safe," homogeneous groups. Yesterday, I watche... More About: Union , Perfect
Al Upton and the MiniLegends -- Shut Down
2008-03-17 14:37:00 Al Upton is a teacher in South Australia who had been doing some really amazing work with 8 and 9 year olds and cyber-mentoring. I'd tell you to go read all about it, but I can't. The government shut down the program while it assesses the risk of kids posting work online. This is what we all fear... that someone can complain to someone on the other end of a phone in an office and all the work we do can disappear. Go read the conversation, lend your voice of support: http://alupton.edublogs.org/ And be sure to read the voices of the kids who feel the loss of a wonderful, innovative program. More About: Shut
One More Great Reason to Go to NECC
2008-03-11 06:30:00 As if there weren't enough reasons to go to NECC (EduBloggerCon, The Blogger Cafe, rumors of BBQ at the hotel, and you know... NECC), there's now another reason to go: Gary Stager, Sylvia Martinez and their friends will be hosting The Constructivist Celebration on June 29th. It costs $30 to attend, and Gary and Sylvia are some of the best folks out there at combining educational technology with progressive pedagogy in powerful, meaningful and real ways. It's a small event, and Gary told me told that spaces are going quickly. Reserve your spot now, and I'll see you there! More About: Great , Reason
Twitter In Plain English
2008-03-08 03:32:00 The folks at Common Craft have done it again. Twitter In Plain English : (Tip o' the blog hat to iJohn.)
Laws of Simplicity
2008-03-04 07:10:00 [Cross-posted at LeaderTalk] Recently, I read The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda, former MIT Media Lab guru and current President of RISD. It's a good, quick read that expands upon his 10 Laws of Simplicity. They are: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. Savings in time feel like simplicity. Knowledge makes everything simpler. Simplicity and complexity need each other. What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral. More emotions are better than less. . In simplicity we trust. Some things can never be made simple. Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful. None of these ideas, taken separately, are rocket science, but when put together, they have a lot to tell us. If we were to simplify the entire book down to one sentence, I'd say it's this: Life is complex; simplify everything you can so that you can devote yourself to the thin...
Live: 7 pm, EST 2/29 -- Something To Believe In
2008-02-29 23:33:00 At 7pm on February 29th, 2008, the opening performance of the original play "Something To Believe In" will air on Science Leadership Academy TV. The play is written and performed by the Science Leadership Academy students. Tune in! [Updated: Here's the play.] More About: Live
Letter To A Young Teacher
2008-02-28 09:07:00 I don't remember where I read it, but I was reading another article that mentioned the oft-quoted stat about how many teachers leave the profession within the first five years, and I was thinking about how many really amazing young men and women I've known in my career who fell into that category, and I was thinking about a conversation I had with an old colleague at Beacon and how she said, "Yeah... that year three or four mark, that's a dangerous time, because that's when you think you know so much more than you actually do." And I was thinking about my own progression as a teacher and how true that was... And I was thinking about some of the things people who stayed with the profession seemed to embody that the ones who left didn't. I was thinking about what I want to say to all those teachers who, right around year three or four, start to leave the profession... Dear Young Teacher Thinking of Leaving, You've stuck with this job for a few years now. You have made it past th... More About: Letter
Call for New SLA Faculty
2008-02-23 04:35:00 [To any bloggers who read this, I'd really appreciate it if you could link to this post, as we hope to cast as wide a net as possible as we recruit our new cohort of SLA teachers. We've counted on the edublogosphere over and over again as we've built SLA... why stop now? ] Call for Teachers: "How do we learn?" "What can we create? "What does it mean to lead?" These three essential questions form the basis of instruction at the Science Leadership Academy (SLA) a new Philadelphia high school opened in September 2006. SLA is built on the notion that inquiry is the very first step in the process of learning. Developed in partnership with The Franklin Institute a nationally recognized science and technology museum and its commitment to inquiry-based science, SLA provides a rigorous, college-preparatory curriculum with a focus on science, technology, mathematics and entrepreneurship. Students at SLA will learn in a project-based environment where the core values of inquiry...
SLA Students Attempt to Change the World
2008-02-20 05:10:00 There's a real buzz going around the halls of SLA these days as the students of Mr. Chase's English class attempt to change the world. The kids are researching and writing about an issue that matters to them, and then preparing their "elevator pitch" to a change agent about what can be done. The issues run from political to economic to environmental to societal. It's an amazing project to watch develop, and the writing the kids are doing is all via our Drupal blog, so you can follow it all via RSS. Here's Mr. Chase's explanation of the project and the project explanation (which is also a great snapshot of how to make the five core values really live in the work of the kids) and then, of course, the best part is the work of the kids: Silver Stream Gold Stream Stop by the student work... give them some feedback... perhaps even give them an idea or two about what they can do next. After all, when you're trying to change the world, a little help never hurts. More About: World , Students , Change , The World , Change The World
Chasing False Gods
2008-02-19 07:54:00 I was speaking to a group of high school students the other day -- not SLA kids -- and I asked them what they wanted their high school experience to be. Many of them said, "We want it to be fun!" It echoed some of what I think I hear from some voices in the School 2.0 movement. (Not all voices, probably not even most voices, but enough that I think this is worth exploring...) I've some conversations with kids at SLA about this idea... and yes, I think that SLA is a fun place to be, but more importantly, I think we've created a place that is a meaningful place to be, and that matters more. And that strikes me as what we want to create in our schools -- places of true meaning. I worry that we spend so much time looking at these amazing tools as tricks to make stuff more engaging and fun without tending a critical eye toward meaningful learning. I worry that we mistake engaging and entertaining, and I worry that the tools we have at our disposal allows us to amuse ourselves and amuse... More About: Gods
Show Me What You Believe
2008-02-18 06:34:00 Maybe it's coming out of EduCon, maybe it's because I've been doing some more speaking lately, maybe it's just because I'm watching the evolution of SLA and really thinking hard about what we're doing and why we're doing it, but lately, I'm thinking more and more about some of my own core beliefs about education... I'm noticing some new ideas cropping up in the things I talk about... and I want to explore one of those tonight. For a long time, I would get frustrated when I would hear people talk about edu-speak buzz words, and I would get frustrated when people would claim that words like "student-centered," or "project-based" or even "constructivist" (as examples) were just empty words when they were words that held so much power and meaning for me. And I don't think I understood how others could treat these powerful words as empty. And, of course, the reason why is that, in so many schools, those words don't have meaning because they are tied to nothing tangible. How ma... More About: Show
What About the Other Days?
2008-02-16 18:55:00 Conversations can cause epiphanies, sometimes... I was in a conversation with some administrative colleagues the other day, and the subject came around to standardized tests. We were talking about different ways to measure learning, and I, quite predictably, was talking about performance-based assessments. I talked about how every different assessment tool privileges different things, and I said, "I've come to realize that, as an educator, I am more interested in what kids can do as opposed what they know." Now, that, to me, is a continuum, and clearly, kids have to know stuff to do stuff, but I'm realizing that that dichotomy is at the heart of the disagreement between traditional education and project-based learning. And what I really like about Understanding by Design is that with understanding at the top of the way they frame their hierarchy of teaching and learning, you really can look at both of those things. But all of this is really something I want to explore more in ... More About: Days
Writing for Big Ideas: It's Just Not That Simple
2008-02-11 23:18:00 Just in case anyone wanted to read my response to the latest Big Ideas blog prompt: If you could make one unilateral change in public education with your magic wand, regardless of budget, what would it be? Shockingly, I talked about assessment. Enjoy. More About: Writing , Simple
Saying Thank You -- And the Spirit of SLA
More articles from this author:2008-02-10 08:35:00 Yesterday was a really amazing day, the kind of day every dedicated teacher deserves and so few actually get. The SLA faculty has nominated me for the ASCD Outstanding Young Educator Award and they used the end of our Science Fair Assembly on Friday as an opportunity to celebrate that nomination. It was a truly wonderful moment, and one that reminded me powerfully how lucky I am to have had the career I have had so far and to work with such amazing people every day at SLA. Throughout my career as an educator, I have been so fortunate because I have worked with and for people who have only ever asked "How big can you dream?" and "How hard are you willing to work in service of that dream?" At Beacon, I learned from educators who always believed in what was possible for kids. They believed in educating the whole child, and they believed in creating a community that mattered, that meant something. It has been my hope to create a community of care and meaning at Science Leadership, and i... More About: The Spirit , Spirit 1, 2, 3, 4 |
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