You Need a Slap in the Face
A couple of months ago, our Learning Omnivores group, spent time with Stan Slap, the author of Bury My Heart at Conference Room B. After reading this book and his second book, Under the Hood, we felt there were messages for educators in Stan’s work. And, we were correct. Stan […]
Metamorphosis Teaching Learning Communities
Metamorphosis Teaching Learning Communities Can We Talk? Lucy West & Yitzchak Francus Changing the day-to-day culture of schools from one in which adults work solo in silos has been a focus of the many leaders and researchers who understand that professional learning is the key to student learning, and that […]
ReImagining Learning: It Won’t be Easy!
ReImagining Learning: It Won’t be Easy! “Perhaps for the first time in history, human-kind has the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb; to foster far greater interdependency than anyone can manage, and to accelerate change far faster than anyone’s ability to keep pace. ” ~ […]
Gray Matters
By Bill Sommers Skip Olsen In the song by the Mama and Papas, there is line, “All the leaves are brown…” In working, leading, teaching, etc it seems like all the decisions are gray. It is easy to live in a world or work in an organization and in […]
Emotional Anorexia
Emotional Anorexia By William Sommers “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” Peter Drucker I ask you a question, “What are we waiting for?” Working in schools for over 40 years I keep hearing professionals (teachers and administrators) whining about not feeling appreciated. Yes, in many schools I have been a […]
Supervising Principals by Saphier & Durkin
Supervising Principals: How Central Office Administrators Can Improve Teaching and Learning in the Classroom — The Missing Link for Scaling Up School Improvement Jon Saphier & Pia Durkin Many change agents agree that putting a good principal in every school is the key to improving classroom instruction. Findings by the […]
Testing Destiny
As Pete Seeger sang years ago, “when will we ever learn?” Yes, that dates me and gives me over 40 years of perspective in education. So, my question is, knowing the results of the testing every child, when will we learn that this is not working? We all know Einstein’s […]
Comfort Stories: Stealing our Collective Intelligence
When I got home, as is my wont, I eagerly reached for the newspapers that had piled up on the steps. I wanted to find out what happened the past 3 days while I was away at a conference. Staring me in the face was the headline pictured here. My […]
SSDD
“The more things change the more they stay the same” — Bon Jovi Been thinkin’ a lot lately about education and schools and learning. That’s what happens when Bill calls, asking if I have a couple of minutes. He’s discovered some of the great quotes in whatever books he’s reading. […]
The five myths of NYC education reform
The five myths of NYC education reform by Winifred Radigan While education reform has been on the front burner of political platforms and public opinion pages, sadly, true reform continues to give way to quick fixes and bureaucratic structural changes that fail to have a positive and lasting impact on […]